Tricky’s ascension to worldwide critical acclaim and not-unimpressive commercial prosperity was one of the more unlikely success stories of the 1990s, since for all it shared with the down-tempo chill-out fluff it’s inspired, Tricky’s music was the singularly difficult and complex product of a singularly difficult and complex mind. Maxinquaye…

Two options for a disorienting Saturday night this week: Stay home and watch NBC’s Critical Assembly, in which four college students build a nuclear bomb just “to prove how easily it can be done,” but then regret their hubris when terrorists steal the damn thing. (“Mayhem follows,” TV Guide assures.)…

Someone must’ve done the alt-rock fairy a favor: This summer brings us not only former Lemonhead-professional junkie Evan Dando’s unexpected return to record-making and show-playing, but also the long-awaited jump-start of ex-Weezer-Rentals dude Matt Sharp’s solo career. His new four-song Puckett’s Versus the Country Boy EP isn’t at all what…

If I’d gotten that job as Sony Music Soundtrax pooh-bah like I should have, I’d have called this 14-song soundtrack to the second installment in what fun-loving humans can only hope will end up a many-part series Charlie’s Angles: You’re only likely to not find something you can dig if…

The two buzzed-about shabby-chic bands hitting Rubber Gloves this week–Portland’s Glass Candy, who sometimes go by the cooler-sounding Glass Candy and the Shattered Theatre, on Saturday; and New York’s A.R.E. Weapons, who should sometimes go by the more accurate A.R.E. You Serious?, on Tuesday–would lose to the Dixie Chicks by…

So here we are: Texas’ own trio of harmony-singin’, Toby Keith-hatin’, faux-hawk-sportin’, bluegrass-appropriatin’, controversy-causin’ hell-raisers return to the state they’re ashamed to share with the president, the launching pad that gave them to the world, whether or not the world was ready. And what is Texas to do with them?…

Here’s a list of the top 10 things I’d rather do on Sunday than go to Ozzfest, with each item keyed to the Ozzfest act I’d most like to do it with: 1. Go to Home Depot and pick out new wall-to-wall carpeting for my breakfast nook (Ozzy Osbourne). 2…

Have you listened to the White Stripes’ Elephant through headphones yet? I just did, and I can’t believe how sloppy some of it is: that raggedy-ass piano intro to “Little Acorns,” Jack’s guitar chug-a-lug in “Black Math,” the killer electric-piano blurts in the otherwise Queen-precise “There’s No Home for You…

At a moment when one of the two biggest rappers in the world is parlaying a life spent selling drugs and getting shot into a multiplatinum, multiformat, multimillion-dollar career, and the other is doing the same with a background filled with mental abuse and evidently treacherous women, there isn’t a…

If, like me, you found yourself at the dentist’s office last week, desperately thumbing through People in an attempt to stave off the pain you went to the dentist’s office to experience in the first place, you might have read what radio DJ/astute cultural observer Rick Dees thinks of California-based…

San Francisco resident Topher Lafata has the same bright idea lots of other former indie-rockers are riding these days: Ditch the electric guitars, mopey breakup songs and human drummers that the mid-’90s proved could be so useful and feed all that pent-up postgrad angst into the computer instead, sharpening a…

Third Eye Blind front man Stephan Jenkins once led a semi-charmed kind of life: His band’s self-titled debut enjoyed both commercial success and mild critical acclaim (I loved it!); he spent time as Charlize Theron’s boyfriend; he got to indulge his pet hobby of R&B production, helming a cover of…

Myopic indie types do a lot of jawing about the Philadelphia band Lilys’ incredible stylistic breadth, but it says something significant about underground rock when a group that has simply channeled different strains of British guitar-pop–shoegazing noise, Kinksian strum, psychedelic poesy–over the past decade is celebrated for its open ears…

I’ve got absolutely no problem with the Y2K+ pop model of producer-as-star: Timbaland; the Neptunes; Jermaine Dupri; shit, Jerry Finn–these folks practically guarantee a good time, with high-level artistry an occasional fringe benefit and brand-name consistency a handy way to organize skipping around the radio dial. But the Matrix, as…

Two helpings of rootsy strum-and-twang from unexpected sources this week, beginning with an appearance by the hardy indie vets in Jets to Brazil at Trees on Friday night. Singer-guitarist Blake Schwarzenbach, as every magazine and newspaper profile written for the rest of his life will happily inform you, used to…

Though there are certainly occasions when the miles-of-smiles pop-punk proffered by the likes of Good Charlotte, Simple Plan and Bowling for Soup makes my day that much better, sometimes–like, say, on trash day, or when CSI is a rerun–I get a hankering for some three-chord monte of a darker variety…

As someone who hasn’t yet tired of the Flaming Lips’ big-hearted grown-up whimsy, I keep trying to find ways to excuse the half-assedness of the band’s new Flight Test EP: “They’ve been busy on the road becoming the aw-shucks Gallaghers of major-label art-rock”; “You can’t expect full-blown brilliance from a…

To people who weren’t members of the New York Dolls, the new New York rock scene isn’t exactly lacking in spunk or attitude: The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Strokes make up for what they occasionally lack in the songwriting department with a polished streetwise sass, and even that one…

Ipecac Records’ traveling Geek Show hits the Ridglea Theater in Fort Worth on Wednesday night; if you’re disappointed in the turn metal’s taken through the mainstream in recent years, you should, too. Headliners Tomahawk are a straight-up supergroup staffed by Faith No More/Mr. Bungle/Ipecac mastermind Mike Patton, ex-Jesus Lizard guitarist…

What’s the only thing better than a killer novelty song about dancing that marries disco’s forward momentum and textural whoosh to rock’s blow-dried grit and radio-hit brevity? A whole album full of them! These two groups–Detroit five-piece the Electric Six and Danish duo Junior Senior–are the proud owners of two…

It’s the attack of the Earnest Guitar-Strumming White People! On his debut with the band that bears his name, the aptly titled Famous Among the Barns, Ben Taylor sings, “I am the sun/That’s all I’ve ever been since I begun/All I’ll ever been until I’m done.” But, people, it’s called…

Ready for three more so-so emo bands to separate you from your hard-earned eight bucks? Elliott, Vendetta Red and Mae, three of the so-so-iest emo bands around, sure are. Elliott drops in in support of the new Song in the Air, the Louisville outfit’s third album and its first since…