A friend of mine (well, sort of a friend: We stopped hanging out when he started ditching me for the obviously-not-as-cool kids) used to try to convince me that Braid was the best example of the worst music white kids can make. He believed the Urbana, Illinois, foursome did nothing…

Writing about U2 is a bit like dancing about old architecture. Not ’cause it misses the point (that’s writing about Coal Chamber), but ’cause these guys are like dependable buildings, solid and functional and, when you catch them in the right light, pretty now and again. “Beautiful Day,” the song…

As someone who didn’t initially come to hip-hop for emotional or cultural validation, I’m always excited by rap that moves me in mysterious ways. That never happened much for me with stuff by Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, the two MCs I’d call the form’s most recent large-scale heroes/saints/philosophers, mostly…

“Mikael?” the voice on the phone asks. “Uh, yeah,” I answer hesitantly, suddenly thinking hard, trying to remember if I’ve forgotten to pay my phone bill or call my dad on his birthday. “It’s Steve.” A beat. “How’s it going?” That’s how Stephen Malkmus introduces himself on the phone when…

I won’t cop to it if you ask me tomorrow, but I was not an early supporter of Lucinda Williams. Now, of course, I love her, think she’s great, wish her luck, would stop using Napster if she asked me (OK, I wouldn’t do that, but I would become one…

Eric Bachmann doesn’t like to think of himself as a singer-songwriter. Ask him about the idea, and he’ll probably rasp himself into a fiery cul-de-sac about how the very idea of singing about your problems is nothing but self-indulgent whining. That if you’re singing in the first place, you are,…

Gotta get this out of the way right now: Neither band gracing the stage February 27 at the Galaxy is worth much anymore. Don’t get me wrong: One used to be worth quite a lot, and the other used to be a good joke, but tonight, today, right now, Bratmobile…

For their latest pictures, independent-film mainstays the Coen Brothers and Sam Raimi have made an ulterior mission of resuscitating “real country music”: that rustic species of popular creative expression indigenous to the southern United States. Both movies, the Coens’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Raimi’s The Gift, utilize their…

“It’s pretty simple. There’s no smoke and mirrors. We’re just a musical group.” John Herndon is looking for a way to make it clearer, to say that all he and the rest of the guys in his band do is plug things into amps and set up microphones and think…

Caithlin De Marrais is afraid she sounds like a dork. “You know how MTV has those shows that have little snippets of other music in it?” she sheepishly asks on the phone from her home in Connecticut. “Just recently, a song from our new album was on during the Top…

On his new solo album, Karate frontman Geoff Farina asks the question burning heart-shaped holes in a hundred thousand indie-rockers’ ironically T-shirted chests: Can you rock without rocking? A good question, but I like his answer better: “Um, well, hell yeah.” Doesn’t sound like much, but I’m inclined to take…

Speaking generally for a sec, I don’t like singers who talk instead of sing. That’s why hip-hop (well, besides Ol’ Dirty Bastard and Biz Markie) took a while for me: no singing, just talking. Or rhyming. Or whatever. (To clear my name, I have of course since seen the light–or…

I’ve never been to nebraska–I don’t think I have anyway–but the place gives me the creeps. Not, as you may have guessed, because I have a fear of small towns or flat land or multi-grain breads, but because all the bands I know from there scare the shit out of…

There’s a great scene in Amy Heckerling’s Clueless where Alicia Silverstone’s character is talking with her friends at school about all the guys they know–about their sloppy clothes, their unkempt hair, their unshaven faces. They go on for a bit and then the camera cuts to a slo-mo shot of…

Who in the hell sucked out the feeling? Four and a half years ago, Knoxville power-poppers Superdrag had a hit single on the radio and a multi-album deal with Elektra to show Mom and Dad. Now it’s 2001 and about six people (the band and, I suspect, Mom and Dad)…

Head to the Bronco Bowl tonight if for no other reason than to witness the two endpoints of commercial pop-punk’s current crop sharing one sweat-soaked, irrelevance-swathed stage. I’d say that’s a fair way of sizing up the graying Green Day and the still-green Get Up Kids, two bands who’ve made…

The Top Six Reasons Why the Year 2000 Made Me Think It’s Better to Be Blind Than to Be Deaf (But Not Really, Because I’m a Bit Neurotic, and That Kind of Proclamation Doesn’t Really Do a Karmic Body Good. I Mean Well. Good. Well.) 1. Coldplay, Parachutes (Parlophone/Nettwerk America):…

Snoop Dogg: Like the dirty, unshaven uncle no one in your family will claim at the holiday dinner table, Snoop Dogg couldn’t give a shit if he’s outstayed his welcome or if you’re saving his seat for your damn grandma. But don’t playa-hate him ’cause he’s dutiful: The man is…

Afew years ago, former New Times Los Angeles music editor Keven McAlester (who once held down the same post at the now-defunct Met) came up with a system to determine the worst albums of the year, a scientific formula that separated the chaff from the wheat with such precision, its…

Did Beck Hansen really change the layout of the pop cosmos? That is, were folks (or headz or peeps or what have you) mixing and matching genres in three-minute chunks like it was going out of style before it was, um, in style? Like, duh. The Beastie Boys could school…

As far as the blues go, I might as well have just heard Robert Johnson for the first time last week. It’s a form I’m just getting familiar with, having just discovered the Howlin’ Wolfs and the Willie Dixons and the John Lee Hookers. Dunno why it took so long…

Of these two discs–both from would-be Becks from south of the border–Plastilina Mosh’s sophomore release, Juan Manuel, is the better, mostly because it’s more of a live-band thing than band-in-a-box product. “Boombox Baby,” the record’s second track, is its best: bubblegum bass, chicken-scratch guitar, lemon-meringue synth. Its tongue barely fits…