Music

I knew as soon as I saw this week’s featured poster for tomorrow’s Jonathan Tyler and Northern Lights show on the We Are Villains MySpace page that it would be the winner. I’m a sucker for circus-themed art to begin with, and this flyer is especially well done. The simulated…

Last week, we told you where to find some of the already-leaked tracks from Faux Fox’s latest , All That Remains. And, in this week’s paper, Ms. Merritt Martin went ahead and reviewed said disc, calling it “a more dynamic, more dramatic, but equally tongue-in-cheek effort” than Faux Fox’s earlier…

You’d think that, after 20 years of hearing his band described as the quintessential grunge group, Mudhoney frontman Mark Arm might have succumbed to the inherent weight and common associations of the term. Yet Arm (real name McLaughlin) disputes the word “grunge” as applied to his band, and he doesn’t…

Onstage and in interviews, Lee “Scratch” Perry’s persona is a mix of giddy surrealism, folk wisdom, apocalyptic theology and simple crudity (fart jokes, raw sex talk). And while there’s fun to be had listening to him ramble, when you unpack his riffs, there are deep worries in there—his lines about…

In the ’90s, Stereolab albums were charming junkshops selling rock history’s neglected treasures, mainly ’60s French pop and ’70s Krautrock. This decade, on one chirpy release after another, the London-based group’s extreme stylistic conservatism has been laid bare, its retro-rock demoted from “ironic” to merely “vintage.” And just like a…

James Mulhern, guitarist/vocalist of What Laura Says Thinks and Feels, speaks of his first concert experience with pride. It was a Bon Jovi show; Mulhern was in the ninth row, and it was “pretty badass.” The rest of the band, meanwhile, has no qualms about listing the “skin flute” as…

Influence is a funny thing. Unlike inspiration, which can strike at any time, influence seems to follow the trends of what’s hot in music. It’s rare for an act to dip into the music history archives and pull out an interesting, ear-catching influence without others quickly following suit. This happens…

Earlier this year, Radiohead released its latest album, In Rainbows, on its Web site using a pay-what-you-wish model. A few months later, Nine Inch Nails released Ghosts I-IV employing a similar scheme, only with more business savvy: There was a tiered scale with prices ranging from free (low-quality digital audio…

It’s quite appropriate that such a diverse lineup would play at the closing party for the Jason Janik exhibition at Kettle Art Gallery. Over the past decade, Janik’s photgraphy has captured striking images of musicians ranging from Tripping Daisy and Dimebag Darrell to, um, Vanilla Ice and an amazing shot…

The old adage is that folks who excel at playing the blues are the ones who have lived the blues. Coming from Los Angeles (by way of Detroit), Janiva Magness is a blues/R&B diva that has more than paid her dues over three decades of recording and performing. And, perhaps…

Jangle-rap? Pop ‘n’ roll? Rock-hop? Whatever the label, Oakland’s Why?, the delightfully subversive trio led by Yoni Wolf, raises the bar for innovation yet again with Alopecia. The follow-up to 2005’s Elephant Eyelash, it finds Wolf and company (joined this time around by Andrew Broder and Mark Erickson of Fog)…

Although Common is eager to discuss the future of his burgeoning acting career—”I want you to be able to say, ‘Common’s one of the great actors of our time,'” he says, with all earnestness—the two-time Grammy winner (he’s been nominated 11 times) is still best known for his socially conscious…

In the 16 years since the “Bedside Table”/”Living Well” 7-inch scored a direct hit, Los Bros Kadane (Matt and Bubba, where you been?) have never disappointed and always delighted—astounded, even, by which I mean usually. Theirs has always been a singular brand of quiet-loud-LOUDER that, upon first impression, felt a…

Faux Fox’s latest, All That Remains, will make you want to fashion some sort of bizarre shrine to Gary Numan, Depeche Mode, irony and tight pants using decoupage and fake fur. It’ll make you want to fuck around on your SK-1 and record brazenly self-indulgent lyrics in your bedroom while…

Los Bros. Kadane…and friends…The New Year. (Allison Smith) In this week’s paper, which is already either at or near an Observer rack near you, you’ll find Robert’s take on the brand spankin’ new self-titled record from The New Year. As you all should know, The New Year is the most…

We’ve got quite a backlog of CDs we’ve never gotten around to, so we’re going to try to chip away at the pile with this regular feature. Some are left over from previous music editors, others fell by the wayside because they were trumped week after week by albums that…

I’m not real sure what happened to all the you-tubers this weekend. Actually, I think I have a good guess, but apparently they didn’t see Pete’s post about this past weekend’s shows. Something seemed to be amiss on the cyber waves. Apparently the you-tubers decided they needed some time off…