Local feel-good mavens the Nancy Drews are going to rot their teeth on so much sugary pop music. The appropriately titled Fridge Full of Food, self-released on their own label, is like gorging on the stale leftovers of such late-’90s power-pop confections as Superdrag and Nada Surf. But the Nancy…
The music on Januar’s latest can be hazy, indistinct and difficult to pin down — and that’s generally a good thing. Rather than present their material in straightforward ways, the performers create a series of aural moods in which mystery and merit are joined at the hip. The Januar lineup…
Lindsey Buckingham, Under the Skin (Reprise). Buckingham continues his solo trend of steering clear of Fleetwood Mac-styled numbers for a trippy, deeply layered pop journey. Heavy studio effects fill many of the songs with echo and reverb as Buckingham’s creative instrumentation (he plays everything) meanders across the pop spectrum: haunting,…
Doing his part to make genres and labels obsolete, Florida’s Andy Bothwell — whose nom de musique is Astronautalis — gleefully rips the indie hip-hop “kick me” sign off his back, folds it into a graceful origami swan and sends it flying into a wastebasket filled with tattered scraps of…
Anaheim, California, seems an unlikely place for one of the country’s better garage-rock revival bands to call home. Fortunately, the saccharine sweetness of Disneyland — the burg’s biggest attraction — hasn’t permeated the Willowz’ earnest brand of youthfully exuberant, stripped-down garage punk. Formed in 2002, when its members were still…
The trouble with an act like the Chromatics is that they’re really cool. It’s intimidating, really: You can’t listen to Nite, their newest Troubleman release, without second-guessing the hipness of the rest of your record collection. Hailing from Seattle (the land of the too-cool- for-school mindset), the act is an…
Like pimply, overweight teenagers, the four Welsh boys of Bullet for My Valentine wave their Iron Maiden fan-club cards proudly as they thumb their noses at the whine-and-grind school of metalcore popularized by their Trustkill labelmates. This potent metallic monster balances dewy-eyed romanticism and slit-eyed cynicism as well as it…
While some fans of the now-defunct Phish do not bubble as wildly for the latest musical spawn of Trey Anastasio, there appears to be no shortage of appreciative minnows hatching in his ongoing musical pool. Touring in support of his latest effort, Bar 17, Anastasio pulls into the Fox for…
Politically charged punk rock has always been an iffy thing to take on. Bands start off with a hopeful anarchistic stance and, if able to survive for longer than a couple of small tours, inevitably end up at that music-industry fork in the road. It’s usually a question of going…
Once upon a time, Evanescence’s Amy Lee was seen as a Christian rocker — at least until she figured out it would be more profitable to come across as a secular rocker with a spiritual side. Now, however, she’s transformed herself into the Celine Dion of gloom. Throughout The Open…
Calvin Johnson has never made a hit single, and unless “down” suddenly becomes “up,” “wrong” changes to “right” and “injustice” and “justice” swap meanings, he never will — despite the slew of music he’s created by himself or as part of Beat Happening, Dub Narcotic Sound System or the Halo…
Formed in 2003 by the members of Rivers Run Dry, To Be Eaten — which will play one of its last shows ever this Friday, October 20, at the Marquis Theater, with Cephalic Carnage, Elucidarius and AinMatter — has produced some of Denver’s most jarring and devastatingly intense metal. Evoking…
Sundays at the Fox Hole used to be one big, gay ol’ time, but since the space in the increasingly gentrified (and occupied) Platte Valley was revamped into the Whitehouse Lounge, the boys-who-like-boys and the girls-who-like-girls have voted to get their drink on elsewhere. Soung Kang and Steve Bedinger bought…
Wicked!” exclaims Richard Winn as he stands on the Seattle Center’s Broad Street Lawn during Bumbershoot, expressing appreciation for the French band Nouvelle Vague. “That’s weird — I got goosebumps on that one.” He then pulls up the sleeve of his blue sweat jacket to prove it. The bubbly 42-year-old…
If Focus on the Family’s James Dobson ever becomes dictator of these United States, ownership of The Body The Blood The Machine, the latest CD by the Portland, Oregon-based Thermals, will be punishable by days on the rack or weeks of “re-education lessons” — whichever is more painful. That’s because…
Erika Wennerstrom, a native of Dayton, Ohio, speaks with a slight country drawl. Her voice has a homespun grittiness that rumbles softly, like worn-out tires on a dusty dirt road. When she sings, however, she summons a deep-throated hum that, when provoked, lunges into a bellyache howl. Her Cincinnati-based band,…
New Found Glory has always suffered critically from guilt by association with a lot of pop-punk bands that really had no business making music. Sum 41, A Simple Plan, Good Charlotte — these bands will most likely become footnotes to footnotes in music history. But frontman Jordan Pundik and company…
Outside of perhaps the Hold Steady — which shares a proclivity for Bruce Springsteen — nobody plays straight-up rock these days as convincingly as Lucero. Led by Ben Nichols’s gravelly croak, Lucero has finally produced the definitive rock record it’s been edging closer to since leaving behind the alt-country leanings…
In flicks such as Crash and Hustle & Flow, aspiring thespian Chris Bridges is convincing when called upon to act grim or edgy. If only he could translate such emotions to CD. Luda’s latest Release suggests that he’s got more range on the screen than on disc. The innate humor…
Jeffrey Lewis could be Jonathon Richman’s angry little brother. He crams songs with twice as many words as they should have and undermines himself as the ultimate anti-rock star; self-effacing, he airs every embarrassing, parenthetical thought as a preemptive strike against himself. Anything you can criticize, he’s already noticed with…
The Album Leaf’s best effort, Seal Beach, distinguished itself in two ways: The songs were all instrumentals, and the record was only an EP. On his subsequent full-length releases, the Album Leaf’s Jimmy LaValle further cultivated an introspective, expansive style of tranquil electronica, but the discs’ longer running times and…
Jimmy Stofer has heard a lot of applause lately thanks to his gig as touring bassist for the Fray. When he’s not thumping for his newly flush employers, however, he’s just another local musician trying to get his band off the ground. Mirror E.P. , the latest from Dualistics, a…
