Funny how it all works out. “I remember when Beyoncé Knowles announced she was going to make a solo record, but Destiny’s Child was still gonna be a band,” Rhett Miller says on the phone from Los Angeles, where he’s lived off and on for the past few years. “I…
Jimi Goodwin didn’t get it, didn’t understand why he had to go to America. And usually, when Goodwin or anyone in his band, Doves, doesn’t get it, there isn’t much to get. Not for them, anyway. Sure, other British groups had done it, tempted fate and attempted to cross the…
The last time Josh Davis had lots of people he didn’t know talking and writing about him, he had just fomented what many of those people had decided would become a fundamental change in the way musicians make records. His debut album as DJ Shadow, 1996’s Endtroducing…, seemed to present…
Summers in Dallas are always hot. But to Todd Lewis, the summer of 2001 was downright hellish. He had unwillingly broken up his band, the Toadies, after a dozen years of lineup woes, record-company stifling and personal difficulties. Bummed out and burned out after a hastily assembled farewell tour, the…
Months before we got a copy of Rhett Miller’s second solo record, we heard from people in the know that it was, well, kinda boring. It’s not. Unless, of course, you’re referring to the album cover, which is like the happier answer to the photo that graces Andrew W.K.’s I…
So, did she jump, or was she pushed? Six years after singing herself “Blue,” the Garland gal goes where everyone’s gone before–Shania, Faith, Britney, Beyoncé, Christina–and returns with head and hands empty; if this doesn’t end her career, it’s only because audiences will buy anything, and Rimes has never been…
The new Apples in Stereo disc–aptly titled Velocity of Sound–is indeed a very fast record, much more dynamic and, believe it or not, loud, much more so than anything they’ve put out thus far. But it’s more than just uniformly high-pitched vocals pitted against roaring backgrounds. Of course, there’s a…
Martin Sexton is rare, not so much for his musicianship, for good musicians are a dime a dozen, but because he’s an old-fashioned performer–selling the audience not only with the music, but the passion and energy behind it. Perhaps it can be attributed to his naturally impetuous and rebellious nature,…
The roster of reckless rock-and-reefer rollers goes back to the days of cheap schwag and crude pipes made outta tinfoil; from Bloodrock to The Godz to Kyuss and Monster Magnet, tank-topped pothead freaks have operated under the radio radar for years. Queens of the Stone Age seem to have picked…
If you’ve got a taste for long-running rock-and-roll bands, you can wait till the Rolling Stones make their way to San Antonio in November to get your rocks off this autumn. But you might do just as well heading to the Ridglea Theater on Saturday night and watching Luna, New…
Luna’s show Saturday night at the Ridglea Theater is the week’s best alternative to seeing the Stones next month in San Antonio; Ryan Adams’ gig the same night at the Granada is the second-best. Or is it? When it’s not hitting the spot, Demolition, a new CD of tunes the…
Two dozen musicians. That’s enough for, say, six bands, and that’s being conservative. You could book an entire weekend at just about any local club with that many players to choose from. That number, however, is not enough for The Polyphonic Spree: The group wants to add one more member,…
Dave Minner got his stage name a decade ago, back when he was spinning records at The Hottie Shop, the electronic-music record store he opened in his hometown of Orlando. And, once you understand what it means (think AK-47, the assault weapon Jackie Brown’s Ordell Robbie is talking about when…
Two months ago, Norah Jones went into the office of Bruce Lundvall, the president of Blue Note Records, and asked of him something no musician has ever asked of a record label boss. “Haven’t I sold enough records yet?” she wondered. Simply, she was tired, cranky, verging on burnout. Twelve-hour…
Subtle as a sharp blow to the groin. That’s how Phonosynthesis–the latest mix opus by L.A.’s spirited decks-mistress DJ Irene–begins. Starting out at an alarming 140 beats per minute with her own co-production “Acid Eaterz” and then launching into a one-woman display of some of the hardest progressive house, breakbeat…
“The subway is a porno/The pavements, they are a mess.” So desperately intones Interpol’s Paul Banks just a few lines into “NYC,” itself just a few tracks into Interpol’s debut full-length, Turn on the Bright Lights. “NYC” is a downcast and pointed song, a dismayed meditation on the squalid streets…
OK, the name is, let’s just say, unfortunate. (If you think four guys with a name like Manplanet should be ending their set with, say, “It’s Raining Men” and/or “YMCA,” well, consider us on the same page.) That aside, this Minneapolis quartet sounds (and looks) more like Devo, only if…
So many respectable B-list indie-rockers hitting town this week it’s a wonder they didn’t all coordinate their schedules and throw a big convention–there’s bound to be room at the Polyphonic Spree’s place for all of them, and just imagine the 3 a.m. games of Truth or Dare waiting to be…
“There he is, ladies and gentlemen!” says the voice in the megaphone down New York’s Fifth Avenue. “Enrique Lavin!” Wrong. Same first name, different writer. But José Luis Abreu, a.k.a. Fofé, the singer for Puerto Rico’s Circo, is usually right. He has the memory of a Sanskrit scholar–and the business…
Last September, Roger Clyne organized a gathering at a southern Arizona fairgrounds to celebrate the Festival of the Chubascos–chubascos being shorter and fiercer Mexican versions of the monsoons that Arizonans contend with every year. The part of the chubascos phenomenon that Clyne really loves is that people in Mexico eagerly…
For all the talk of hot new garage-rock bands making their way out of expensive rehearsal spaces in gentrified New York City neighborhoods, this year’s most crucial artifact of scrappy guitar-bass-drums friction is the sixth album from a Portland-based band that, as its album artwork has it, practices in a…
A few weeks ago I called the Lenny Kravitz/Pink/Abandoned Pools show that stopped in at the Smirnoff Music Centre the summer’s most cynically assembled package tour. That was an easy call–it was August, and anyone hitting the road with Kravitz obviously isn’t hankering for a slam-bang set of rock and…
