When 24 Hour Party People hits film screens this July, the tale of Factory Records’ rise and fall will most certainly ignore the career of the label’s perennially underappreciated Stockholm Monsters. After all, Factory had plenty of Manchester bands with marginal singers (New Order, Happy Mondays) making a much bigger…
At the heart of all pop music is theft. Almost by definition, popular music borrows the more palatable elements of the underground to forge an easier and softer version, perfect for mass consumption. The final product should be friendly but also deep enough to make any listener feel hip, like…
Here’s how you find Nappy Roots. Leave Atlanta, where Outkast reigns. Then head northwest through Tennessee, the state Arrested Development once employed as a metaphor for black (nay, human) tradition and transcendence. Keep going, and eventually you’ll wind up in the presumably unlikely stomping grounds — Western Kentucky! — of…
Too much fame too soon can hurt — kind of like sucking down too many Jägermeister shots. To avoid a hangover, Schatzi guitarist/vocalist Chris Kyle plans to pace his party. “I wanted to build the band by playing shows and turning people on to the band that way, instead of…
Move over, James Brown — there’s a new hardest-working band in show business. With more than 600 shows played in its three years of toddlerhood, the rock ‘n’ roll experience known as River City High barely stops to fuel the van. Having squeezed out two EPs and one full-length CD…
Two years ago, this publication was ready to proclaim the Rocking Horse Winner — whose young members hail from Davie and Boca Raton — just about the best Florida export after fat-lady postcards. A pair of albums and national tours since, and nothing’s changed: Bandwidth thinks the foursome, obviously on…
If there’s a book that details the problems inherent with one-man-band albums, Jonah Matranga — d.b.a. Onelinedrawing — has surely committed it to memory and has avoided every pitfall with the self-assurance of someone who has already learned enough bitter lessons. Formerly with Far and New End Original, Matranga has…
During a recent segment on Today, host Matt Lauer asked Celine Dion about her claim in a previous interview that she enjoyed changing the diapers of her first child, René-Charles. Dion replied that this was definitely the case, in part because when she opened up the wrapper encasing her tot’s…
The members of the California indie-psych band Beachwood Sparks must get sick of being compared to the Byrds, but Make the Cowboy Robots Cry will once again remind astute listeners of nothing less than Roger McGuinn and company during their most aerodynamically challenging period. There just aren’t too many bands…
Drawing its dark pop power from ’80s-era bands like Echo and the Bunnymen and Bauhaus, New York City trio Judith deftly encapsulates life’s unpleasantness through equal measures of self-reflection and melodrama. From the title track, with its gray-London-sky textures looming over a somber soundscape, Play of Light embraces all things…
It’s the first week of May, and Torquil Campbell has finally opened the windows of his Montreal apartment, ushering in a breeze he’ll let blow for the next three months. Campbell recounts this past winter as “unbelievably brutal” and is spending this afternoon letting the spring air rejuvenate him. As…
There’s no way around it. A band of 40-something punk purists that is still raging red-faced as it targets lack of idealism begs the question of relevance. And with The Process of Belief, which marks Bad Religion’s return to Epitaph as well as the 20th anniversary of its seminal debut,…
Jazz vocalist/pianist Diana Krall’s career took a turn for the stratosphere following her 1999 release When I Look in Your Eyes. Not only was the album a mondo success and international best-seller but it earned Krall a Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance and was the first jazz album in…
The tribute record is the most abused marketing concept in the record biz. Generally, a huge band has its ego stroked by several similar but less successful outfits trying to siphon some of its juice. Last year’s Weezer tribute was particularly pointless: Why is it necessary to pay tribute to…
Born in Wyoming, raised in Missouri and Texas, schooled in New York and London, and living in Wales, Jeb Loy Nichols is a child of the world. This clearly shows in his musical explorations. Nichols’s work is rooted in folk/country/soul, but it lives in nearly as many places as he…
The San Francisco band Pepito — comprised of Ana Machado and José Márquez, with help from Brian Fraser and Chris Palmatier — isn’t afraid to poke fun at its eccentricities. For instance, in the middle of the jerky electro-pop tune “Salyut,” Márquez sings, “I don’t get it/This song is about…
Jeff Rollason, lead singer and guitarist of Miami’s experimental rock outfit the Curious Hair, is not at all interested in the music industry. “That’s not what I think about every day,” the long-haired 29-year-old professes before a late-night performance on the patio of a Coral Gables bookstore. Behind his small…
It had scarcely settled into its cradle after the last cry for help when the scarlet Bandwidth TipLine telephone rang anew. This time, the call was from local singer/guitarist Chris Bright, complaining of censorship. Bandwidth — which cannot stomach oppression in any form — was on the case. Since Bright…
By the time the Sex Pistols called it quits in 1978, the isolated youth of America were coming to grips with the budding romance of not caring — or finding fashionable reasons to seem that way. But before safety pins adorned faces in Stateside strip malls, Rocket from the Tombs…
It’s hard to think of Green Day as somebody’s old man. Punk lends itself to youthful exuberance, which makes even the originators of the punk revival seem like a bunch of boys out for a joy ride in their daddy’s car. But many in the silly string of punk and…
Deftly marrying ancient and modern, the organic with the synthetic, and heartfelt emotion with complete and utter alienation, Lumin’s intriguing sophomore effort, Hadra, is a study in colorful contradictions. Best described as Middle East-meets-West electronica, this is ancient folk music birthed from the worldly womb of a laptop. Well, not…
With Ryan Adams now anointed roots-rock’s commercial savior, can Will Hoge’s ascension linger far behind? Nothing on this CD hasn’t been said before, but the vivid intensity with which the singer expresses himself warrants the wider audience Hoge is beginning to receive. (Since taking up music professionally in the late…
