Despite the way this will undoubtedly be marketed, there’s not as much novelty here as on 1994’s American Recordings: Johnny Cash singing a U2 song? Hell, he did that on Zooropa. Singing with Tom Petty and backed by various Heartbreakers? That’s all Unchained is. And sure, he offers his take…
MT. PLEASANT — It was getting late on that brisk Thanksgiving evening in 1950 as a new face in the expanding world of country music stood onstage in an out-of-the-way East Texas honky-tonk. An inventive promoter, eager to lure the holiday crowd, had offered patrons free turkey dinners and beer…
What does the music wrenched from the reluctant psyche of a tortured man sound like? Kid A. With more audience anticipation than the birth of a nation, Radiohead has released Kid A, the fourth album from the media-defined Most Important Band in Rock. To listen to Kid A is to…
A week from now, or a week ago, people would be staring. The suit-clad, tie-loosened 9-to-5ers bellied up to the bar at the other end of the room would give each other getaloadofthesefuckinguys smirks and elbows in the ribs. The out-of-towners looking for a little companionship and maybe a bowl…
Put a Nick Drake record on the turntable and poke a hole in one of your speakers. Grab a bottle of red wine and a pair of scissors. Forget who’s asking or answering, or even what they’re talking about, and just read. Start in the middle and end at the…
Paul Oakenfold has no band, no instrument to play, and nothing except two turntables in front of him–OK, three–but right now he is a Rock God. High above a sweaty Chicago crowd at the legendary Crobar, the clever Brit darts, weaves, and jukes between deep cuts of spacey beats with…
It’s not by accident that Centro-matic’s latest (and fifth, if you’re keeping score) begins with the sound of a typewriter hunting and pecking out a miniature backbeat, a writer finding his rhythm. South San Gabriel Songs/Music is not necessarily a concept album, but it certainly sounds like a novel set…
You should know that Sunday’s Best has ruined emo. I tell you this because they won’t. They’ll probably tell you that they’re sensitive young men who’ve had their hearts bruised by feminine wiles–a couple of times, actually–but they’ll leave out the part where they use the same bruised hearts to…
Here we have an interesting bill: three bands that started out as hungry ones with blue stars in their eyes that have deliquesced into fleshy middle-aged inurgency, making music not for the kids who once listened (or they once were), but for adults searching for the soundtrack to their undoing.Well,…
This won’t come as a shock to anyone who’s ever had the misfortune of seeing us perform that point-and-jump-and-duck step Rerun used to do on What’s Happening? or try to recreate the finale of Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, but we can’t dance. Not really. Not unless the polka counts, and…
I’ve listened to this disc every which friggin’ way: straight, stoned, sitting down, standing up, standing on my head, standing in a full bathtub holding a plugged-in toaster. I’ve played it cranked up and turned all the way down, in the office and in the car and in the house…
Dwight Yoakam: There are very few times anymore that my wife of 10 years is in the mood for marital relations. In fact, there are only three ways in which I can assure myself that I’magonnagetmesum: one, if she downs more than three Gloria’s top-shelf margaritas; two, if I clean…
If the Cardigans were, as their third album claimed, the first band on the moon, Tahiti 80 are that little car the astronauts drove in while they were hanging up there: unnecessary but a hell of a lot of fun. Puzzle, the Paris band’s just-released debut, is a superb post-modern…
The reason I don’t like Moby isn’t because Play, his steam-gathering smash record from last year, pillages from the past and calls it the present. Some folks had problems with the fact that samples of anthropologist Alan Lomax’s field recordings made up the bulk of the record, claiming that Moby…
FOR: “It took a lot of work to be the ass that I am,” sings Isaac Brock on Modest Mouse’s latest release, The Moon & Antarctica, and quite a few people would agree with him. The work has paid off: After two albums on Calvin Johnson’s K Records label, and…
When people write about Yo La Tengo, they typically concentrate on the fact that the band’s drummer, Georgia Hubley, and its singer-guitarist, Ira Kaplan, are married, and that they sometimes sing about it. But the Hoboken trio are far more than an indie-rock version of the Eurythmics. They’re really about…
“Is this the home of Rebert Harris?” I asked anxiously. The woman who had answered the phone said yes. “Rebert Harris of the Soul Stirrers?” Yes, she said again. I told her I was writing a story on the legendary gospel quartet from Trinity, Texas, and I wondered if I…
They packed into the House of Blues on Sunset Strip, that strip-mall museum with its overpriced booze and overfried food, and held their breath. They chanted (“X…X…X…X!”) and waited, pushing toward the stage until the crowd became a crush. They wore their faded tour tees and talked about their favorite…
Dean Fertita had lots of time to kill and plenty of willing assassins; he was, after all, in a record store. A drop of the needle could either chase the blues away or invite them to stay awhile, depending on his mood and which Stones record was on the turntable…
Mandarin’s debut, Driftline, hits stores this week (October 1, to be exact) courtesy of Two Ohm Hop Records, but at least one member of the band is too absorbed in another project to notice. Well, that’s probably not entirely true, but guitarist Brian Smith is pretty busy these days, about…
There’s a weird moment toward the end of Warning, Green Day’s sixth album and first since 1997’s Nimrod. Well, it’s not weird so much as unexpected, and that still doesn’t accurately describe the moment in “Jackass” when an honest-to-goodness, blow-Big-Man! saxophone solo turns off E Street and crosses the bridge…
Last time out, he stepped onstage and fell into the orchestra pit: Songs from The Capeman, in which Simon played tough-guy dress-up for the Broadway crowd while adopting the cause of an unrepentant murderer, left a nasty taste in the mouths of even the die-hards, who still love the old…
