As implausible as it sounds, VHS or Beta has emerged from the woods around Louisville, Kentucky, to tell us that the Euro-retro-dance stylings of Daft Punk sound even better when interpreted via real instruments. No doubt about it — with wah-wah guitar, slap-happy bass, and the patented 4/4 bounce that…
Did you ever blast the transistor under your pillow loud enough to risk your mom storming in? How long has it been since you’ve heard a hit? A tune so hot it can even make you believe you’re devastatingly attractive screaming it at the intersection? If you can’t remember, fire…
For all its technical, sample-splicing glory, the reason DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing… became a modern classic was how deftly it conjured the raw source code of human melancholy out of elements pilfered from a seemingly infinite pile of dusty thrift-shop vinyl. No other electronic musician had come so close to investing…
With perennial collaborator Tobin Sprout, Robert Pollard presents his second full-length effort as Airport 5. Life Starts Here is the 18th overall installment in the Fading Captain series, a body of work that includes the busy Guided by Voices singer’s nonstop solo flights and side projects. Recorded in separate studios…
Latin ska bands suck. Actually, all modern ska bands suck, period, and they suck in Spanish, English, and Croatian. Early Fabulosos Cadillacs and a few other post-Specials byproducts notwithstanding, the “refreshing” ska movement is as imaginative as the best of the middle-class, white, one-hit-wonder rasta bands that tend to disappear…
Growing up is hard to do, especially if you’re a rock band. It’s the same from Metallica to R.E.M. to the Replacements to Soul Asylum and all points in between. When cult acts abandon the underground sound that granted them status in favor of the slower tempos and quieter guitars…
If it’s blues guitar you want to learn, who would you conjure up to be your teacher, anyone, living or otherwise? John Lee Hooker? Freddy King? Buddy Guy? Sure, you could do worse. But there’s no way you could do any better than having the immortal Robert Johnson, King of…
You’d think that after releasing its first album in a couple of years, 2001’s Here’s to Shutting Up, seminal indie band Superchunk would at least be able to pull off headlining a national club tour. This, after all, was one of the most important indie bands of the 1990s. Superchunk…
Like a trail of ants, our talented musicians always seem to pack bags and leave South Florida, making a straight line for Los Angeles. There oughta be some kind of technology available so we can seal the borders, tag the fleeing perps, and make ’em stay here where they’re needed…
Love Jewel. Hate Jewel. Fear her manipulative mom. Laugh at her poetry. Give her props for not fixing that snaggletooth. Marvel at her staying power. Almost seven years ago, I interviewed the fresh-from-Alaska Jewel Kilcher, before she’d sold many copies of her first album. At the time, she’d just parked…
It’s a proven fact that individuals are always happier while immersed in the process of creating something. For Free Dominguez, singer with Los Angeles electrorockers Kidneythieves, that process itself must begin with a clean emotional slate. “I can’t create unless I’m happy in some way,” she professes. “Anything I’ve written…
Following a successful tour of the Northeast, New Orleans’s Papa Grows Funk arrives in Florida this week, where the band demonstrates why it’s the hottest thing to come out of the bayou since your Uncle Louie’s Cajun pepper sauce. Theryl deClouet, lead singer of Galactic (another collective of funky New…
Carl “Kilmo” Pacillo has been hard at work, making it possible for roots-music types to sneak Sally through the alley again — Alligator Alley, that is. His old location (in a strip mall!) boasted the bestest sound system in the area but was located way the fuck out on University…
“When you’re playing music that has some humor to it, you can make all the mistakes you want,” offers Chris DeAngelis of the Miami band Avenging Lawnmowers of Justice. “With serious music, one mistake and they hate you.” By that yardstick, the ‘Vengers should be allowed more than their fair…
Animal lover, former vegetarian, beloved local folkie, and all-around sweetheart Magda Hiller has endured a rough six months. Life had been good since Hiller split two years ago from her Hollywood haunts to Orange City, a sleepy burg north of Orlando. She still makes trips down here to visit old…
Bryan Ferry, the paradigm of rock ‘n’ roll freeze-frame, would never be so disheveled as to be frantic. But he can be urgent and persuasive — qualities that dominate this album, his best in a good ten years. Paced by a propulsive, infectious cover of Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now,…
Rather than spend another night at the standard Broward or Palm Beach watering holes, why not take a trip down to Miami this Sunday to get in touch with your inner rock ‘n’ roll child? With long-time drummer Tommy Larkins in tow, Jonathan Richman brings his naive schtick to South…
With the roar being generated over the new Wilco album, it’s hard to hear the smaller releases that are its contemporary and, in some rare cases, nearly its equal. The Radar Brothers’ new record is one such work that is clamoring for cocked ears. Although the Brothers are far from…
If there’s one thing the world most definitely does not need right now, it’s another watery mix CD from some overhyped trance DJ — you know, the ones with the tastefully modernist cover art (invariably featuring a handsome European staring meaningfully into space) and the interminable synth buildups that eventually…
We regard the Breeders as perhaps you regard your no-account, jail-prone Uncle Bob — if he shows up for Thanksgiving dinner at all, you’re happy and relieved. Even if he’s wearing his pants inside out and drooling all over the table. Yeah, savor that image. Title TK certainly embodies it…
Since powering up goth pioneers Bauhaus in 1979, Peter Murphy remains an enigmatic figure whose music and mysticism have landed him the unofficial role of goth grandpappy. “We were the adjective of dark music,” Murphy says of his Bauhaus days. “That was always a chain around our necks. But I…
“I had a friend who castrated himself,” goes one Emo Phillips joke. “I didn’t think he could pull it off.” Hopes were similarly low for Wayne Koss, promoter of the beleaguered Florida Music Awards, which two weeks ago looked unlikely to happen at all. But happen it did, on Tuesday,…
