Angels & Airwaves, We Don’t Need to Whisper (Suretone/Geffen). Ex-blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge is the rare musician who appears to have told the truth when he said he separated from his previous band over artistic differences. Problem is, he replaces blink’s pop punk with bloated arrangements, pretentious lyrics and guitar…
Quavery-voiced New Jerseyan Daniel Smith may have a singular vision, but he plays well with others. Ships, his new disc for the Secretly Canadian imprint, finds him in the company of artists with whom he’s worked (or wanted to work) over the course of a career that’s eccentric even by…
For Philadelphia’s notably disheveled Man Man, hackneyed comparisons to Captain Beefheart and Tom Waits must be flattering, but they’re hardly applicable. Granted, frontman Honus Honus (Ryan Kattner) has the kind of pipes that make him sound like he gargles with sand and yells at traffic all day — but his…
Even when Vinny Caruana was fronting the hardcore-tinged punk band the Movielife, he never really considered himself a singer or a songwriter. But after the group dissolved in 2003 and he was left to his own devices, he discovered that he actually had a lot to say. And so he…
The industrial-music scene is an incestuous orgy of member-swapping between synthesizer swingers. These days, you can’t throw a rock into a room of rivetheads without hitting at least one person who did a guest spot on a Revolting Cocks album. Front Line Assembly’s Bill Leeb is no exception (although, to…
When Coloradans talk about great musical artists with local roots, they seldom mention jazz guitarist Bill Frisell — and frankly, this omission is mystifying. Frisell, who graduated from East High School and put in a couple of years at the University of Northern Colorado, has been releasing albums under his…
If socially conscious worldbeat star Baaba Maal hadn’t followed his heart, he might have ended up a humble fisherman, or — God forbid — a lawyer. Thankfully, he chose the same path as blind childhood pal Mansour Seck, whose ancient caste carried the honorable burden of preserving Podor, Senegal’s oral…
In 2002, when the Streets (aka Mike Skinner) burst onto the scene with his debut, Original Pirate Material, he was lauded for his offbeat flow and the careless attitude he dropped over British two-step garage beats. Skinner must’ve anticipated the shelf life of garage, however, because two years later, he…
Most of the music that came out of L.A.’s glam-rock explosion during the ’80s was largely disparaging toward members of the fairer sex — despite the fact that most of the men from that era went to great lengths to portray a feminine image. Chicks in bands just didn’t exist…
What I wouldn’t give to be a greaser. The life’s all about hot rods and hotter broads, pomade and pompadours. I’ve wanted to be a greaser since the first time I saw The Outsiders. Like my uncle used to say, though, I have “wavy hair” — my one hair in…
Little Louie Vega has enjoyed a twenty-year career as one of the most influential artists ever to be involved with dance music. As part of both Masters at Work and Nuyorican Soul with partner Kenny “Dope” Gonzalez, Vega has redefined again and again what house music can be, and he…
Bird, bird, bird, the bird is the word. The Soiled Dove took flight from its longtime home on Market Street earlier this year, exchanging LoDo for the new-urbanist sprawl of Lowry. But beyond the fact that this venue is nested in the basement of the Tavern Lowry, located at 7401…
Donovan Welsh and Bryan Knoebel came together over a blow job. “True story,” says Welsh, Dork’s bassist. “In 2001, I used to live at this house that was just crazy, and Bryan ended up at a party there. I had just bought a guitar that day, and he was playing…
Given the highly varied nature of Pelican’s music, it’s only natural that Laurent Lebec, a guitarist for this Chicago instrumental group, would have eclectic tastes. Still, even he’s amazed at how diverse his list of favorites has grown. For instance, he’s a big fan of Leviathan, a black-metal act whose…
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…
