Chicago’s Psalm One is the kind of MC you instinctively want to applaud. Intelligently observant, a gifted collector of details, she ranks up there with Jean Grae as a strong woman on the mike who refuses to pen a summer club thumper about her pussy. Unfortunately, though, The Death of…
Most one-off solo projects fail to cast much light on the musicians who make them — but the debut by Greg Graffin, longtime lead singer for Bad Religion, is a noteworthy exception. Cold as the Clay is a dark folk album that works on its own terms even as it…
Cut Chemist’s The Audience’s Listening could be from a time capsule buried in 1998, when epic instrumental albums like Return of the DJ and Q-Bert’ s Wave Twisters were all the rage. And that’s a good thing. Unfairly maligned in recent years as the province of bedroom geeks disconnected from…
Don’t limit BaSheBa Earth by calling her a rapper. The woman born Portia Davis is also a fashion designer and a performance artist, not to mention a lyricist with a lot more on her mind than the average rhymer. Mothership runs on consciousness, and thanks to Davis’s passion and commitment,…
The members of Fissure Mystic are as DIY independent as they come, judging from their homemade CD case, which is fashioned from stapled canvas and cotton balls, with cover art glued to both sides. Based on the unique packaging, you’d almost expect the band to be some half-baked indie-pop outfit,…
Counting Crows, New Amsterdam: Live at Heineken Music Hall (Geffen). Why are these guys still around? Haven’t they already inflicted enough damage on music lovers? Isn’t a 74-minute concert souvenir whose few tolerable moments are (as usual) stolen from other, better artists a classic adding-insult-to-injury situation? Wouldn’t a nice, quiet…
They’re back. It’d be easy to call the members of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young dinosaurs, but that’s not really fair. Dinosaurs are extinct; these guys are still alive and kicking. And with a catalogue of songs as great as theirs, sticking around is justified. Anthems like “Wooden Ships,” “Our…
Any ’80s-era ska-revival fan worth his or her checkered glad rags remembers the English Beat’s cheerful way with a politically charged song — whether it called for peace, love, unity or Margaret Thatcher’s head on a plate. Birmingham’s premier roughriders even managed to make Andy Williams seem cool, covering his…
Black Moon burst onto the hip-hop scene in the early ’90s, just as the hip-pop of MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice was vanishing and Snoop and Dr. Dre were bringing the West Coast rap scene back to prominence. The act carried East Coast hip-hop on its back and introduced a…
Darrell Scott’s compositions have been recorded by an impressive roster of country heavyweights led by Garth Brooks, Faith Hill, the Dixie Chicks, Brad Paisley and Sara Evans. Yet the majority of these covers were used as album cuts, not singles, for reasons made clear by The Invisible Man, Scott’s new…
In the late ’80s, before marketing types had invented terse buzzwords such as “alternative” or “college rock” to encompass anything outside the mainstream, Concrete Blonde’s videos were played alongside those of Jane’s Addiction, Living Colour and Faith No More on shows such as MTV’s metal-centric Headbangers Ball. In 1990, the…
Muse’s singer, Matthew Bellamy, is still a dead ringer for Thom Yorke: his tone, his phrasing — even the way he sucks in oxygen before delivering his affected syllables. Even so, Muse can no longer be considered the poor man’s Radiohead, a tag that was reasonably justified until now. The…
Blame Tim Robbins. Sometime during Ronald Reagan’s second-term nap, while recruiting talent at UCLA for his experimental Actors’ Gang Theatre, the future Mr. Susan Sarandon introduced musician/hambone Kyle Gass to an obnoxious teenager named Jack Black. Now with goof-metal Tenacious D a household name, will the same hold true for…
For Slayer fans, 2006 might very well bring the apocalypse. There are just too many signs to ignore. First there was the reunion of the band’s original lineup, with drummer Dave Lombardo resuming the throne he’d abdicated after 1990’s Seasons in the Abyss. Then there was 6/6/06, which brought the…
Not so long ago, Paul Fonfara brought his multi-instrumentalist brilliance to the original incarnation of DeVotchKa. In addition to his prowess on the clarinet, which he played in that band, Fonfara also applied his considerable talents to live versions of Woven Hand, Maraca 5-0 and the Denver Gentlemen. He has…
At the turn of the decade, trance was arguably the most popular sound in the dance world. As time went on, however, “trance” became a dirty word, largely due to overexposure: It was simply inescapable. L.A.’s Christopher Lawrence (due at the Church this Thursday, July 20) is one of a…
Neely Jenkins is crying on the other end of the phone. “I’m having a really hard time with leaving,” Jenkins confesses. “It’s so hard. I’ve been thinking about it so much. We’ve been gone a long time, and it’s just really hard, because we’re all very, very close to our…
It’s just after 7 p.m. on a soggy Friday night, and I’m sitting at a table on a flagstone patio outside of Shooting Star Cafe, enjoying a brief reprieve from the rain and waiting for the members of Uncle Zant to finish setting up their gear. I’m also thumbing through…
For a woman who spends much of her time rapping about sex, Canada-born Merrill Nisker, who performs as Peaches, doesn’t seem all that concerned about having fun. Take “Two Guys (For Every Girl),” a provocative cut from Peaches’ new CD, Impeach My Bush, in which she declares, “I wanna see…
As part of our continuing drive toward journalistic excellence, Westword has uncovered the private blog of director Chris Applebaum, in which he discusses his work on Paris Hilton’s new music video, “Stars Are Blind.” May 4, 2006, 7:49 a.m.: WHAT HAVE I DONE? Remember that Carl’s Jr. ad, the one…
In a kind-bud-cured Alabama drawl, Nathan “Nabob” Shineywater talks about music like a ’60s counterculturalist: part social critic and part shaman. The self-titled second release from Brightblack Morning Light, the project he helms with childhood friend Rachael “Rabob” Hughes, evokes the deep Southern gospel of their religious upbringing and blends…
Tom Petty is perpetually underrated. He debuted too late in pop music’s historical continuum to seem deserving of full classic-rocker status (although he’s certainly earned it by now) and came across like an apprentice rather than a peer when collaborating with Bob Dylan et al. (a result of his modesty,…
