Red Animal War releases its second full-length album, Black Phantom Crusades, on September 17, and it’s appropriate, if not entirely coincidental, timing. The fifth song on the disc, “When I Get the Feelin’ (Back in My Hands),” directly addresses the aftermath of September 11: “I’m waking up to the sound…
Three tracks in, Clipse introduces listeners to where it comes from: “In Virginia we smirked at the Simpson trial/Yeah, I guess the chase was wild but what’s the fuss about?/See plenty of my partners feeling like O.J./Beat murder like the shit is OK/That’s what our dough say.” When, say, Ja…
“Quick, dude, my hipster cousin and his girlfriend from Brooklyn are coming over to the house in, like, 10 minutes! Hide those Alice in Chains boots and find something cool to put on for when they get here!” You’ve been here before, right? We all have. (Well, not me personally,…
Plenty of DJs claim to “take you on a journey” with their sets, but Jace Clayton, better known as DJ /rupture, is one of the few capable of actually drawing a map. Despite the disjuncture his name implies, /rupture’s eclectic mixes–ranging from militant hip-hop and raga to his own noise-filled…
When Mark Stuart name-drops the Man in Black twice on the opening track, “Monte Carlo,” it makes the Bastards feel less like outlaws and more like a new-country galoot stressing that he always listens to Hank Williams but never sounds anything like him. But once Stuart’s “Monte Carlo” veers out…
The former singer for The Red Rooster Boogie Band isn’t shocked by what’s happened to him and his band in the two short years since they released their debut album. No, as he’s said before, it’s been like a surprise birthday party. He didn’t necessarily expect a party, of course,…
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, the latest from good-hearted Oklahoma City psychedelics the Flaming Lips, is the record you’ve been looking for this summer if Signs creeped you out and the new Def Leppard leaves you a little cold–it’s sonically imaginative, structurally adventurous work that doesn’t skimp on the Big…
Don’t you sometimes wonder how many of Beck’s artistic triumphs are more the result of context than ingenuity? That we wouldn’t be nearly as impressed by his raggedy folk songs if they weren’t preceded by Day-Glo disco-pop, or that we wouldn’t consider him the white man’s Prince if we didn’t…
Want to know why I really like Cyndi Lauper? Because no one else does. Come on, guys, haven’t you ever bopped your head to “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”? Thought that “True Colors” really captured a mood? Masturbated to “She Bop”? No? Then screw me. I’m a novelty. With stained…
Taken separately, any of the mid-’90s alt-rock dependables working hard for the money on this package tour might draw a respectable crowd and a low level of snickering. But together? It’s like Christmas, and the wise men are aging rockers with a quickly slipping grasp of the zeitgeist. What’s impressive–and…
Let’s hear it for the underappreciated singer-songwriter dudes. Except not really, in John Mayer’s case. This dorm-room heartthrob’s taken a nation of underage Dave Matthews fans by storm, giving jangly guitar-pop a voice that doesn’t necessarily pay homage to R.E.M. and doesn’t necessarily demonstrate any tangible allegiance to the “roots…
When we arrived at the Dallas Observer (not long after we landed in Dallas, period) one of the first albums we were given by the music editor at the time was Room 158, a disc by a band called Fugly. The name was horrible, but the music wasn’t bad. The…
Her reputation as critics’ fave well cemented–she writes gloomy and acerbic, sings scornful and angelic, collaborates with Elvis Costello, sleeps with Michael Penn–Aimee Mann need only break through to people who actually buy CDs (the Magnolia soundtrack excepted, since it had the kind of icky major-label distribution from which she…
The official book on Neko Case has her born in Virginia, growing up all over North America (though staying in Tacoma just long enough to call it home) and leaving that home at 15. Now nearly 32, she still can’t seem to decide where to settle down–Vancouver one minute, Chicago…
If The Willies is any indication, Bill Frisell could probably make “Achy Breaky Heart” sound like a walk in the clouds. Here the rangy jazz guitarist, banjo player (and Bad Liver) Danny Barnes and bassist Keith Lowe revisit the terrain Frisell explored on 1995’s Nashville, spinning a handful of folk…
Immediately after Bobby Bare Jr. is asked the question, one he’s undoubtedly been asked countless times since he joined the family business, he turns it around: “Well, what did your dad do when you were growing up?” He listens for a minute to the reply, a brief biography on a…
“I don’t think I’m a cynical person. I don’t think I’m a pessimistic person,” Allison Moorer says. “It’s just that I’m not an idiot. When was the last time you tripped through the daisies?” OK, so Moorer, who just released her third album, Miss Fortune, may not be the sunniest…
If this isn’t the summer concert season’s most cynically assembled package tour, I obviously missed the R. Kelly/Gary Glitter double bill. Lenny Kravitz gets to play to a younger audience than the graying Guess Who devotees he’s getting used to; Pink takes another step in the acid-washed, pre-alternative rock direction…
Last time I can remember seeing Pinkston guitarist Josh Daugherty, he was sprinting past me toward the Gypsy Tea Room bathroom at the Dooms U.K. reunion gig a couple of months ago. Actually, as it turns out, he didn’t quite make it past me or my just-purchased bourbon-and-whatever, spearing both…
Expanding on the sparse, understated pop of his solo debut, In The Sun, Prewitt’s 1999 follow-up, White Sky, upped the ante with majestic, meticulous compositions tinged in a melancholia linked thematically and emotionally to the autumnal equinox by cuts such as “Summer’s End” and “Final Season.” A sweet tantalizing treat,…
Since we’ve heard that some of you have grown tired of our recent fascination with Kelan Luker, Submursed and other bands on Wind-Up Records, we thought we’d take a few moments to clear out our inbox and cleanse the palate, dropping the needle on a handful of new local releases,…
Look, I’m as patriotic as the next guy (unless the next guy happens to be, say, Lee Greenwood), but I’m pretty sure I’ll never need some 10-10-220 shill taking a break from telling me exactly how much a buck is worth to deliver his U-S-A! U-S-A! fight song. Which, with…
