Aaron Lazar talks fast and fervently. His language is a swagger. He doesn’t mince words; he uses them like a butcher knife. As the trash-talking frontman of the Giraffes, his don’t-give-a-fuck-who-we-offend attitude is the jet propulsion behind the Brooklyn-based band’s heavy guitar licks and lyrical candor. Sure, it’s kind of…
Paul Maroon is slow-baking himself to death outside his Philadelphia home. The Walkmen guitarist is parked in his car for this little conversation, and not only is his air conditioner broken, but his power windows gave up a few days ago. Small potatoes, though, considering his band has just released…
The men of Minneapolis’s Tapes ‘n Tapes create an indie-rock mélange that recalls at least a dozen acts from the genre’s past — and, relatively speaking, that’s a good thing. Rather than aping a particular group, Josh Grier and company draw from oodles of inspirations, and if they don’t quite…
Owen Pallett is the brains and brawn behind Canadian-based Final Fantasy. He is the frontman and the backing band, and often even seems to act as his own one-man audience. He Poos Clouds expels self-conscious orchestral arrangement into the experimental outhouse of indie singer-songwriter overindulgence. The arrangements of pedal-looped violins,…
Fresh off a brain aneurysm, Neil Young gives the right wing an earful, clobbering our befuddled Decider-in-Chief with a righteous bitch slap that exceeds forty minutes. Leave it to Johnny Rotten’s favorite hippie — a Canadian with health care, no less — to hold up the mirror, cluck his tongue…
It’d be an understatement by half to claim that it’s been a strange and surprising trip for sisters and Chicks founders Emily Robison and Martie Maguire, especially since it was latecomer lead singer Natalie Maines who got their band into trouble in the first place and whose Bush-bashing from a…
Ben Pittz is a nice guy. It’d be hard to peg him as the swell kid next door, however, if the judgment were based on a To Be Eaten show, what with Pittz’s thick, red dreadlocks whipping through the air as he bangs out wicked metal guitar libations between stints…
Heavy is the head that wears the crown. But until criminally ambidextrous DJ Z-Trip (whose mixtapes fetch as much as $200 online) abdicates the throne, the short-lived mash-up phenomenon will have one reigning king: Arizona’s Zach Sciacca, the crate-digging force behind widely bootlegged copies of Uneasylistening, Vol. I, a shining…
Founded last spring following a one-time get-together for a rainforest benefit in Boulder, Great American Taxi is most prominently driven by former Leftover Salmon frontman and unabashed loon Vince Herman — but he’s by no means the only driver with pedal power in the band’s collective talent pool. The outfit,…
Vibraphonist Greg Harris is best known around here for his membership in Pete Wernick’s Live Five, a quirky, innovative ensemble that blends jazz and bluegrass. Open Space, for its part, focuses on the former — and while its musical blend is mellower and more conventional than the Live Five’s, the…
Although Felix Stallings Jr.’s nickname implies that he’s a just another house-music producer, this particular DJ is very much his own cat. Since first stepping behind the decks as a teenager circa the late ’80s, he’s established himself as a superstar spinner, a record-company impresario (he founded the Radikal Fear…
Voxtrot’s eponymous EP may be the best indie-rock debut since, oh, the Pixies’ Come On Pilgrim. Each of the five songs on Voxtrot is nigh on perfect — a crystalline distillation of the band’s love of ’80s British pop. That’s not to say that the Austin quintet’s disc is a…
Old Time Relijun subscribes to three basic tenets of life: Eat, drink, fuck. Bred in Olympia, Washington, the band carries a sound that is both primal and urgent — as if barnyard animals were rioting through an uppity art college. The three-piece, fronted by the enigmatic vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Arrington…
Jof Owen and Pete Hobbs, two of the Least Likely performers in modern pop, are either completely lacking in cynicism or simply better than the average person at hiding it. Their current full-length, The Best Party Ever, available on the Too Young to Die imprint, begins with a song whose…
Conceived while insanely prolific Warren Defever played guitar for shockabilly outfit Elvis Hitler circa 1989, His Name Is Alive embodies ambitious experimental dream pop infused with acoustic folk, dub-deranged gospel and funkified electro-jazz. “Like dating a star-crossed werewolf behind your parents’ back,” the Livonia, Michigan-based outfit’s website declares — though…
Sugar and spice and indie-pop-star potential, that’s what these little girls are made of — emphasis on girls. Smoosh is a Disney exec’s cha-ching dream of wholesome ‘tween entertainment. Made up of the singly named (how rock star) sisters Asya and Chloe, the duo plays cute keyboard-and-drums pop that rings…
True story: I never used to use profanity. It made me uncomfortable, and every time I tried to utter “shitassdickface,” it just came out an awkward mess of syllables that weighed the same on the grace scale as June Cleaver dropping a “fo’ shizzle.” But like a straight-edge kid selling…
London’s Eddie Halliwell is one of house music’s fastest rising stars. Even though he’s only been spinning a relatively short period of time, Halliwell’s technical ability has enabled him to carve out a unique place for himself among the U.K.’s elite. He first started deejaying at the age of fifteen;…
Jared Leto has been fasting for four days. Except for water, fresh lemon and cayenne pepper, he expects to eat nothing anytime soon. This isn’t one of those trendy Los Angeles diets, though. The actor, who has appeared in such films as Requiem for a Dream and Fight Club, is…
After a somewhat unremarkable debut EP, produced by Spoon’s Britt Daniels, the five men of Austin’s I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness returned to the clubs and basements that spawned them, searching for their secret selves. Along the way, they stumbled upon longtime Ministry collaborator and fan of all…
Why the hell did ’70s superstar Todd Rundgren agree to lead a faux reunion of the Cars dubbed the New Cars? According to him, even some of his most fervent followers have been asking similar questions — although he admits, “I haven’t actually indulged myself in reviewing all of the…
Take a mental Polaroid of Murder by Death; what will you see? Pretty-boy metal-heads with black-painted fingernails? Starving rockers with welts under their eyes? You just may be surprised by what develops: namely, three guys in button-up shirts and a girl armed with a cello. The Bloomington, Indiana, quartet composes…
