I’d pretty much written off Silverchair when, on its 2000 greatest-hits set, it confirmed all those accusations of post-alt-rock gravedigging by covering Minor Threat’s “Minor Threat” as a lameozoid jock-rock throwaway that proved that’s how the band heard it in the first place. (They also subtitled that disc “Volume 1,”…
Paid import price for this–it was out in the U.K. in January, released here last week–and, still, it was a bargain. The one-time Rolling Stones sleeping bag best known for a handful of cult releases and a stint sleeping in the street with a needle in her arm returns with…
Beware the former longhairs this week: With aging prog-rock giants Yes and Rush hitting the Smirnoff Music Centre separately in a three-day period (it’s like a non-coincidence out of an M. Night Shyamalan movie, isn’t it?), there’s no telling what one of them might do should you impede his or…
Dimly, across the crackling phone line, all the way from Australia, there it is: undeniably, a rooster. It’s dark all over America, but on Avalanches founder Robbie Chater’s end, countryside morning is being trumpeted. Cock-a-doodle-doo, punctuating commentary about The Avalanches’ summer-in the-city debut, Since I Left You. Odd, but appropriate…
Though she’s lived life as both a post-punk pioneer and an alt-rock heroine, Kim Deal’s got her doubts about her latest work. “Nobody’s gonna like the record,” she says of Title TK, the album she’s been trying to release for eight years. “Why would anyone like it? It’s slow. It’s…
You wouldn’t know it from her increasingly pleasant albums, but Beth Orton is one hell of a risk-taker. Her new Daybreaker swings so close to the kind of icky New Age treacle you only hear in dentists’ offices that it’s hard to believe it’s actually pretty close to what she’s…
The Baha Men are no doubt making more from Barry Sonnenfeld’s liberal use of their surprisingly immortal “Who Let the Dogs Out” in Men in Black II than they are from sales of their latest, Move It Like This (which seems as much a purchase-power directive as a suggestion to…
Everyone knows the various evils of the music industry and major labels. Or, at least, they should by now. The low royalty rates, deceptively large advances, secret recoupable expenses, accountants who “don’t hear a single” and pushing-50 white guys with glowsticks and pacifiers in hand, demanding bands add drum loops…
At this late date–15 years since its inception, or a century in hip-hop years–Public Enemy’s only competition is its own past. Chuck D knows this, too, and it irks him like nothing else since the Jews took over the media and shut down ex-calypso singer Louis Farrakhan. Though he’s been…
A few months ago I rode through rush-hour Times Square traffic in the backseat of a rented town car, squished between the two members of Blackalicious, both of whom could probably take me in a game of whatever they’d like. “If you start getting into things like, ‘Oh, if you…
Sonic Youth is old. Probably older than you. But they’re also an endlessly inventive bunch of grown-ups, a band that for 20 years has been examining and re-examining guitar-rock, finding and occasionally discarding new ways into the form. Murray Street, their new album, rocks. Probably more than you’d expect, and…
He knows what you’re thinking, this Chris Carrabba fellow. He knows you’ve seen his video on MTV, the one where he gets in the fight with the actress playing his girlfriend and she leaves the apartment and he stares forlornly into the camera. He knows you’ve heard his band, Dashboard…
Further proof that the U.S. DJ scene is getting respect globewide, Hoboken-based Chris Fortier comes to town on the heels of his new double-disc mix CD for John Digweed’s Bedrock label, Bedrock Compiled and Mixed Chris Fortier. (The 24 tracks fit together much smoother than the words in the title,…
The emo-pop underground gets no more mainstream-leaning than this: earnest Chicago quartet Hey Mercedes (who used to be called Braid when a different guy played second guitar), goofy Boston geeks Piebald and determined Ohio popsters Koufax, all hitting town the same week as their more successful contemporary Dashboard Confessional in…
Múm has the same creak-chic as Sparklehorse and the dying music box delicacy of Björk’s Vespertine. They’ve got the glacial sweep of Radiohead or Sigur Ros (though their scope is more modest) and timid Nintendo blips and beeps that skitter and skate over crackling accordions and other more organic electronic…
Spurred on by the July 23 announcement by SMU QB Kelan Luker that he is quitting school, and hence, the football squad, to play bass full time for his band, Submersed, we also have an announcement to make. As of August 1, we are leaving our post as Dallas Observer…
You can’t damn a man for following his nature, and The Rising is nothing but gut instinct–the populist reporting not only from the scene of the crime, but following up by visiting with survivors and victims’ families. That Springsteen would be the first singer-songwriter to emerge with a disc full…
She’s country for those who loathe the genre–or, more to the point, those who loathe the pale, limp pop to which it long ago succumbed (say, around the time Patsy Cline wrapped herself in honeydew strings). That she’s considered “country” says less about her work, which is as hillbilly as…
The congenitally collegiate Brooklyn-based indie-pop outfit Aden named its last two albums, Black Cow and Hey 19, after Steely Dan songs, and while the idiosyncrasies the band buries within the fussy clean-channel noodling on its new Topsiders probably wouldn’t attract the attention of Messrs. Fagen and Becker–can you imagine anything…
With Elektra Records seemingly placing more confidence in Rhett Miller and his new solo career (his debut–well, his first solo outing since Mythologies–is due September 24) than the band behind him, it’s only natural to wonder where the Old 97’s will go from here. It’s been almost a year and…
On September 17, singer Michael Jackson announced his plans for a $50 million charity record that would benefit the victims of terrorist attacks on America. The single, “What More Can I Give?,” would be modeled on Jackson’s hugely successful 1985 charity hit, “We Are the World,” which has raised $65…
Here’s a casually bizarre bill that should appeal to those pop fans who don’t consider the vehement packaging of catchy melodies and untucked shirts a reason to buy more stuff. Irish pop-punks Ash and Spoon front man Britt Daniel have both encountered a good deal of record-biz misanthropy–Ash must know…
