The Graham Colton Band is ready for its close-up. Just listen to “Don’t Give Up on Me,” the opener for their debut album, Drive, slick as a waterslide with its sing-along chorus and digitally tweaked vocals. It’s like it was born on MTV2. Actually, the band’s origins are much closer…
Every copy of Let’s Get to Second should come in a Land O’ Lakes box; Chomsky’s national debut practically drips with butter. Vocal doubling reaches levels that would make Elliott Smith roll in his grave, and the beefy mix sometimes drowns out lead guitar and synthesizer parts. Those changes may…
Wayne Hancock isn’t one of those alt-country stars to whom roots-music fans turn for the red-blooded emotion so many tin-eared grouches insist is missing from Nashville-produced radio fodder. On A-Town Blues, Hancock’s most recent studio album, Wayne “The Train” Hancock sings, “I’m sorry, darlin’, that I hurt you so/I don’t…
When the Legendary Shack*Shakers took the stage at 2003’s South by Southwest, I stood in the front row wondering why everybody had just taken a giant step back. Ten seconds into the set, I figured it out: These guys are some sadistic sonsabitches. Lead singer “Colonel” J.D. Wilkes squawked and…
Indie rockers, by definition, don’t age well. Sure, it’s cute to collect ‘zines and Elephant 6 singles for a while, but somewhere during the third decade of a life, you gotta hang up the All Stars. So what’s the problem with Beulah’s latest record, Yoko? The San Francisco band ruffled…
Check out the reviews from the recent Coachella Festival in California (and ticket sales while you’re at it). Look at what’s being downloaded on iTunes. Turn on MTV and MTV2. Listen to the radio. What’s going on is not as sudden and shocking as when Nirvana smelled teen spirit more…
We’ve got an open slot with Lionel available for you tomorrow at 4:20,” said the sweet, accommodating voice on the other end of the line. “Would you be interested?” Lionel Richie? Hell yes. And no irony there, you friggin’ wiseacres: It’s high time closeted Richie fans began to publicly praise…
While The Who’s Tommy has landed firmly in the jazz hands of community theaters across the country, that other infamous concept-album-cum-stoner-film, Pink Floyd–The Wall, doesn’t get much stage time. That’s not surprising, really. The 1982 Roger Waters/Alan Parker film is essentially a visual riff, the story of a spoiled rock…
Go back in time and destroy every copy of the Descendents’ 1982 Milo Goes to College, and the Warped Tour never happens. Because without that record, and the band that made it, there would be no Blink-182 and, oh, about 100 other bands. They aren’t fawned over and fetishized like…
East L.A.’s greatest-ever band has so far spent the 21st century backing away from the formal and textural experimentation that marked the work the group did in the 1990s. In 2002, Good Morning Aztlán winningly showcased the band’s roots–a hard, Latin-keyed rock and soul with plenty of swing–but felt a…
It’s safe to assume that the shaggy-coifed dudes of Mystic Chords of Memory wouldn’t pass the company drug test. Their self-titled platter has all the stoner charm of the psychedelic folkies they serviceably emulate. Spark one up and press play on the languid “Barry Creek Falls.” Sound a little familiar?…
In the two decades since Mission of Burma dismantled, its members have risen to the rank of indie-rock legends. Fans who discovered their manic, unique destruction of rock precedents a few years too late got a second chance when the lineup reunited for concerts in 2002, and after 22 years…
Juliana Hatfield seemingly has everything going for her. She has a girly, interesting voice, a cooler-than-thou attitude, and she carries plenty of indie cred courtesy of her stint in the on-again/off-again Blake Babies. Still, on every one of her solo albums she’s managed to disappoint. In Exile Deo, her seventh,…
The world at large remembers the Porky’s movies, if it remembers them at all, as the precursors of the American Pie films, a way station between Animal House and the most recent crop of movies that encourage us to laugh at young people and their genitals. The more savvy film…
You could assume a lot of things about a Dallas band that takes its name from a Waylon Jennings song–but you shouldn’t. This Wurlitzer Prize has little to do with Jennings other than a standard vocals/guitars/keyboards/drums setup and some good, clean, simple songs about love and frustration. There’s nothing fancy…
Not enough people love Pleasant Grove. On its albums, PG sounds like a band with a huge cult following: the kind with crazed Internet discussions, endless bootleg trading rings and packed club concerts. The Dallas band combines the thickly brewed melodies of Whiskeytown, the tempered melancholy of Morphine and even…
The first time I met Edie Brickell was in the summer of 1988. “What I Am,” the first single from Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars, her band’s major-label debut, was in heavy rotation on Q102, and the newly famous Edie Brickell and New Bohemians played a show outdoors in the…
Late last Saturday night, I was headed to the Cavern on Lower Greenville for a late-night smackerel when something caught my eyes. Well, not caught them so much as stung them, badly. My throat began to burn in the weirdest, most unnatural way. As I reached the corner of Eight…
Last year Alabama’s Drive-By Truckers wooed a nation of hipsters with their terrific Decoration Day, an album of Southern hard-luck stories told with you-are-there detail and delivered with there-you-are muscle. From the sound of Welcome to the Woods, their major-label debut, Atlanta’s Lost Trailers would like to seduce those same…
White out Jack White’s name as producer and collaborator, and Loretta Lynn’s latest probably flies under the radar and into the discount bins sooner than later. Such is the usual fate of the country legend deemed too old for radio or resurrection at this late date. Never mind her stature…
The Brooklyn bands just don’t know when to leave the party. They’re lingering at the Pabst keg in tight pleather and blasting dopey new wave records. And if you had a nickel for every conversation that included the word “electro,” every last OMD T-shirt on eBay would be yours. French…
Semi-stranded in the Czech Republic in April 2002, I found succor in Canadian crooner Diana Krall’s The Look of Love, an easy-riding pop-jazz confection that feels like a million bucks when you’re staring down your third meal of conspicuously vegetable-free goulash a fellow traveler more accurately dubbed “oil soup.” Pre-Norah…
