With big hooks, roaring guitars and coy humor, Cheap Trick was America’s answer to AC/DC, a catchy, hard-rocking act boasting arena-size heft. And the band crashed Big Star into Thin Lizzy, producing three end-of-the-’70s albums—Cheap Trick, In Color and Heaven Tonight—that dwarfed their contemporaries’ output, though it took At Budokan…
Rockabilly’s trappings are encased in the amber of ’50s culture, but that doesn’t mean its attitudes have to be. Or, at least, that’s Kim Lenz’s perspective, something the red-haired rockabilly siren demonstrates with It’s All True!, her third album and first release in a decade. The record bleeds a sass…
It’s easy for an artist to idle as they slide down the long tail, settling into their niche of cult fandom. But Michael Franti’s been able to maintain his creativity as strongly as his social activism for more than two decades now. He initially burst on the scene in ’88…
Florida folk-punk act Fake Problems has canceled its Thursday, July 30, performance at Rubber Gloves. The fiery, upbeat quintet had already been playing short-handed for a few days; guitarist Casey Lee’s taken leave of the band to be with his family after his father died suddenly last week when he…
John Joseph McCauley III has always had his heart set on musical world domination. It’s just taken him a few years to get there—and he apologizes for leaving you waiting. The 23-year-old leader of rustic, ambling folk rock act Deer Tick had to escape from high school, record a critically…
In many ways, Stereo Total’s François Cactus and Brezel Goring are musical ambassadors with a potluck aesthetic: Their pop-addled eccentricity bubbles with playful goofiness and irony, riding an eclectic mix of girl-group pop, garage-surf, new wave fervor and burbling electro-pop grooves. Their pan-cultural approach is further infused with a childlike…
No Western Wear cowboy, Chris Knight earned his country backwoods bona fides working as a mine reclamation inspector and living in a trailer on 90 acres in Western Kentucky. And his frighteningly honest, no-frills style matches early inspirations John Prine and Steve Earle, finding a home somewhere between country, folk…
In eight years, the Eli Young Band has graduated from neighbors in the University of North Texas dorms to a major-label country act whose star is on the rise. Steady touring earned the Eli Young Band a sturdy regional following, and a friendship with Miranda Lambert eventually introduced them to…
Back in the ’90s, AA Bondy fronted Verbena, releasing one of the decade’s finest debuts, 1997’s Souls for Sale, a ragged, rowdy blast of Stones-y rock raunch that could’ve challenged the Drive-By Truckers and earned the band a major-label shot for 1999’s Dave Grohl-produced Into the Pink. Unfortunately, the record…
An adherent of the “more is more” philosophy, blogosphere darlings Annuals fashion widescreen pop majesties in the image of The Flaming Lips. And, like the Lips, the Raleigh, North Carolina, sextet billows with fluffy, kitchen sink arrangements that sample widely from baroque, twee and indie pop, are cooked over a…
One of the math-rock genre’s pioneers, Don Caballero formed in the early ’90s, picking up the torch from Slint. And, for almost a decade, this group of Pittsburgh instrumentalists led the charge into complex, rhythmic workouts characterized by sharp angles and hard edges that exchanged verse-chorus-verse for deep-seated edifices like…
There’s no shortage of challengers to iTunes’ hegemony: In September, MySpace opened its new music storefront, and Best Buy purchased Napster to dip into online music retailing; in August, Rhapsody formed a partnership with MTV/Viacom to help market its subscription and download service; two years ago, Microsoft launched its Zune…
If you’re in this business long enough, you learn how to spot incipient trouble. Here’s how to tell if your band is/has been… On Drugs Telltale Quote: “Does anyone have something to help wake up/take the edge off/revive the guitarist?” Best Case: Get famous for your excess, then clean up,…
The Rosebuds are in something of a precarious spot. “We’ve been in a band all these years, and Under the Radar wants to do a feature on our band, and I think, ‘Great, it’s taken six years to get in a magazine called Under the Radar. Maybe in seven years…
Glasgow’s Scott Hutchison, an art school grad who tired of drawing, picked up a guitar five years ago and hasn’t looked back. His shambling, jangling indie pop with Frightened Rabbit recalls the sweet, guileless, ramshackle charm of ’80s Scottish twee poppers The Vaselines and The Pastels. Steeped in fragile honesty,…
Brightblack Morning Light is about a vibe. The Alabama-bred duo’s laconic folk-psych-soul is foggy like a Phish concert, sliding down droning, somnambulant grooves coated in Muscles Shoals funk lighting a velvet night sky. Inspired by the Staples Singers’ Southern gospel and My Bloody Valentine’s narcotized textures, Brightblack Morning Light’s spacey,…
An expression of Los Angeles’ rich cultural melting pot, Ozomatli grew from a loose collective supporting the transformation of an old building into a community center as part of a labor dispute 13 years ago. That generous, familial spirit infuses this horn-driven octet, offering a combination dance party/celebration of the…
Sky Eats Airplane hopes it’s not out of sight, out of mind. It’s been so long since the Fort Worth quintet played a local show, the band’s starting to fear that its area fans may have forgotten them. Sure, it’s been a busy year—between recording their recently released self-titled second…
This Minneapolis duo has been a team since their teens, when DJ Abilities left home and Eyedea’s mom put him up in their basement, where their partnership flourished. Eyedea began competing in battle rap competitions, taking top honors in the ’99 Scribble Jam before he was18, and winning the HBO-sponsored…
While the G-funk hip-hop genre garnered headlines in the early ’90s, influential crews began percolating along the West Coast, such as Los Angeles’ Freestyle Fellowship and what would become the Hieroglyphics crew in Oakland. Captained by Ice Cube’s cousin Del tha Funkee Homosapien—who got his start writing for Cube’s band,…
Their hellbent country-punk theatrics suggest the offspring of Tim Kasher and David Eugene Edwards. A combination of The Good Life’s conceptual psycho-dramas and 16 Horsepower’s Pentecostal fury, Murder by Death’s latest album, Red of Tooth and Claw, brings all the band’s elements into tight focus and cooks it at 425…
Pop-punk and an errant exclamation point are nothing but distant memories on Panic at the Disco’s second album. The Las Vegas quartet makes a bold—and brilliant—stab at baroque pop on Pretty. Odd, as if somebody had switched the band’s Fall Out Boy CD collection with copies of Sgt. Pepper and…
