Being at the fore of rap’s hottest trend comes with perks. Those perks can be found on Crunk Juice, Lil Jon’s fifth full-length, which features an A-list roster of rap superstars, including Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, Nas and R. Kelly. Lil Jon needs all the help he can get. His…
“I’ve been running out of stories/I’ve been stealing Tom Waits songs,” sings Canadian John Guliak on the title track of this thoughtful, funny and rootsy effort. With a voice recalling fellow countryman Leonard Cohen, Guliak fronts a large folk ensemble as his deep, gravelly tone expresses quiet, rural concerns. “I’ll…
To those who feel American Idol represents the worst aspects of the pop-music assembly line, Kelly Clarkson is just another Mariah Carey clone. But the Burleson girl’s rags-to-riches story tugs at the part of us that finds something endearing about high school show choir, about an earnest soloist burning with…
On the surface, much of Do You Want New Wave or Do You Want the Soft Pink Truth? is an album of electro-pop covers of punk songs from Drew Daniel–ex-punk rocker, current Björk collaborator and Matmos member, and button-pusher behind the Soft Pink Truth–that’s perfect for apolitical dance floors anywhere…
At any town meeting, you have your concerned citizens who speak from the podium and your rowdy folk hollerin’ from their seats. The same was true at Denton’s “One at a Time: A Singer/Songwriter Night,” considered by the latter to be an acoustic-only round-robin of local musicians. But then Cody…
On his self-titled 2002 debut as Citizen Cope, Clarence Greenwood (former DJ with backpack-rap stars Basehead) made like a more granola Everclear: a hip-hop dude dabbling in folk-soul melodies and rudimentary acoustic-guitar strumming. On The Clarence Greenwood Recordings, his tellingly titled follow-up, Cope reverses the equation: Now he sounds like…
At this late date in the Exploited’s punk rock career, you might expect to find the group in line for the dole, belching and chuckling. Could they possibly have anything to say to the latest generation of Mohawked and pierced punkers? Well, probably no. But it turns out these middle-aged,…
There are so few genuinely talented female guitarists. A short list might include Nancy Wilson, Bonnie Raitt and, um, Lita Ford? But it would certainly include Sue Foley, the Ottawa-born roots-rock sweetheart known to swath the stage in blue and burn the mother down. Still in her mid-30s, Foley has…
Isis is for the metalheads. Isis is for the metal-haters. You know those parts in a Tool song when everything breaks down and fat layers of saturation bounce off each other before another dramatic riff comes down the pike that’s 10 times bigger and better than the last? That part…
Here’s the second-best thing about Scott Hoffman, the bass player and co-songwriter at the center of New York’s Scissor Sisters: He’s part of a band that makes delicious dance-pop as vibrant musically as it is culturally. The five-piece group’s self-titled debut is a confident romp through a glittery Times Square…
“There are family things that I should’ve attended to, but I said, ‘No. You knew what you were getting into when you got involved with me.'” Those words are as close as metal mastermind Kerry King, guitarist and co-songwriter for Slayer, comes to opening up about his two-decade career. Family…
Over the past decade, few Dallas bands have rivaled Slobberbone–a scraggly and swaggering group of musicians capable of both bruising live performances and songs that grew richer with each solitary listen. But after 13 years, four full-lengths and more tours than a truckload of carnies, Slobberbone is calling it quits…
Who knew Snoop Dogg was a member of the red-state massive? On Rhythm & Gangsta, the man who’s appeared in both Starsky & Hutch and his own direct-to-DVD porn expertly hews to Dubya’s creepy conservative vision: Guns? Love ’em. Women? Hate ’em. Money? The more (for me) the merrier. What…
Insert drug reference here, ’cause somebody’s snortin’ (shootin’, smokin’) some serious shit–the guy who made it, the company that released it or the customer who buys it, take your pick–though I’d vote for all three and hide my stash. The vocals strenuously aim for Peter Gabriel’s rasp but wearily hit…
Mistakenly thought of as a novelty act after their infamous psycho-bluegrass makeover of Snoop Dogg’s classic “Gin and Juice,” the Gourds have nonetheless released a series of compelling, whacked-out alternative country efforts for 10 years. Blood of the Ram continues in the same tradition, with top-notch playing, rough-hewed singing and…
As the lead singer of the legendary Bauhaus, Peter Murphy was the epitome of gloom-and-doom, early-’80s goth rock. But now all evidence points to him being…happy? Well, maybe that’s taking things too far, but with Unshattered, Murphy seems to be taking the advice he offers in “Give What He’s Got”…
There’s nothing wrong with being a singles act, but that doesn’t stop performers like Fabolous from trying to show they can do more than make radio fodder. For proof, check out Real Talk, which places a couple of first-rate hits alongside some ill-conceived misses. Although the opening track, a spoken-word…
In the 18 months captured in this seven-disc set, Miles Davis is between milestones. His astonishing early-’60s sextet (which gave us, among other things, the seminal Kind of Blue) is no more, and he is searching for what will eventually become his groundbreaking mid-’60s quintet. The collection encompasses an exhaustive…
Just in time for Christmas–and a slew of lawsuits–comes another reminder that one of the great musical talents of the late 20th century is long past his prime. The Ultimate Collection is a comprehensive five-disc compendium of Michael Jackson’s career–including a live DVD and a handful of unreleased material–and yet…
Spoon trivia 101: The band appropriated its name from a song by German underground experimental (Kraut)rock icons Can. Spoon trivia 201: Front man Britt Daniel has long acknowledged the Austin band’s debt to enigmatic art-punks Wire, whose jagged sensibility dominates 1998’s criminally overlooked A Series of Sneaks. Of course, those…
Since We Last Spoke, indie-rap mixmaster RJD2’s latest, proves there’s room for advancement in instrumental beatscaping post-DJ Shadow. RJ veers away from Shadow’s encroaching-doom atmosphere and heads toward an inviting vision of funk-rock as fixated on texture as groove. What the album doesn’t do is necessarily guarantee a good time…
Dolly Parton may be the best celebrity ever. She’s amazing with fans, she’s witty and charming, and damn if she can’t make us weep with those songs and the stories that inspired them. Don’t even get us started on that tiny, mighty figure onstage divulging the poverty-stricken tale of “Coat…
