In case you missed it–and judging by the crowd jimmied into the newly reopened Trees, not many did–The Toadies celebrated the release of Hell Below/Stars Above on March 20 and 21. (The expiration date on jokes has officially passed.) Not sure what went down at the second shindig, but on…
You can bestow the title of History’s Greatest Rock Guitarist upon Jeff Beck, and few could provide a convincing argument to the contrary. He produces his wizardry “naturally”–merely using a modified Stratocaster and Marshall JCM 2000. Which means he could sit down with your very own guitar and be just…
I believe there exists an alternate universe–a parallel world in which Eminem doesn’t win Grammys, Fred Durst doesn’t run a record company and the Backstreet Boys work at Abercrombie and Fitch. In that world, bands like Teenage Fanclub top the charts. The Scottish trio has been crafting infectious power pop…
As someone who didn’t initially come to hip-hop for emotional or cultural validation, I’m always excited by rap that moves me in mysterious ways. That never happened much for me with stuff by Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, the two MCs I’d call the form’s most recent large-scale heroes/saints/philosophers, mostly…
If ever a rock band named itself appropriately, it was Bedhead. Between 1993 and 1998, the band, led by brothers Matt and Bubba Kadane, trudged through three albums chock-full of somnambulant tempos, geologically gradual dynamic shifts, and low-affect vocals and lyrics. Despite the occasional cowlick of countryish lead guitar, their…
Writing about U2 is a bit like dancing about old architecture. Not ’cause it misses the point (that’s writing about Coal Chamber), but ’cause these guys are like dependable buildings, solid and functional and, when you catch them in the right light, pretty now and again. “Beautiful Day,” the song…
A friend of mine (well, sort of a friend: We stopped hanging out when he started ditching me for the obviously-not-as-cool kids) used to try to convince me that Braid was the best example of the worst music white kids can make. He believed the Urbana, Illinois, foursome did nothing…
The first discordant moment of Standards, the latest album from Tortoise, signals a new direction for the Chicago instrumentalists. Actually, it’s as if Tortoise has not only changed directions but run the train completely off the track, the resulting sound being the freight engine barreling through pine and brush. The…
This year, for whatever reason, things seemed more possible at South by Southwest, also/better known as the music industry’s annual paid vacation. Something/anything/everything sounded reasonable, no matter who said it or how unlikely it probably was or even how bad it would be if it actually happened. Problem was, even…
South by Southwest, now as gangly and awkward as any 15-year-old, doesn’t take place in Austin–not really, not anymore. The music conference–which has become the climax (or anticlimax) of a film festival that draws the likes of Ann Richards, Sissy Spacek, Batman Beyond creator Paul Dini, two-thirds of Larry Sanders’…
The five guys standing behind us at Centro-matic’s early set Thursday night at Mercury Entertainment at Jazz (the clunkily titled venue booked by former Denton resident and Two Ohm Hop co-owner Philip Croley) obviously wandered into the wrong club. Obviously. Why else would they stay to heckle Will Johnson and…
Nothing says “adult contemporary” or “smooth jazz” quite like the presence of a tantric sex advocate, and the vocal appearance by Sting on alto saxophonist David Sanborn’s most recent release, 1999’s Inside, squarely places the album on the Najee-Celine Dion axis. A quick peek at the disc’s other guest spots…
Sometimes, it’s all about getting back to the basics. For Darren Emerson, formerly of the band Underworld, the basics mean getting back behind the turntables as a club DJ. The attraction to DJing is almost like an addiction, something that Emerson could not put behind him, even with the fame…
In recent years, a French achievement has been celebrated on this side of the Atlantic with a bravado not seen since Hollywood’s admiration for the romance of the Resistance–or ’60s French New Wave filmmakers realized American men would gladly fork over U.S. coin and accompany their social-climbing sweethearts to talky,…
Before a group of metal-schooled, post-punk-bred young American men came around in the early 1990s to smelt a solid sheet of polyrhythmic guitar and percussion abuse, “math rock” referred to an algebraic approach to adding up a band’s sound. Like any scientific speculation, it has its flaws, but there are…
By all rights, The Toadies should no longer exist, and perhaps, in one sense, they do not. Yes, the band that releases its second album, Hell Below/Stars Above, on March 20 looks, for the most part, like the band that released its debut , Rubberneck, in August 1994. Gone (long…
“Two nights ago in Manhattan, I was onstage thinking that there’s something very cheap about this job,” Rhett Miller says, via phone from the roof of a nightclub in Baltimore. Miller, singer-guitarist for The Old 97’s and band-proclaimed “face man,” is loading in for a show at the beginning of…
“Mikael?” the voice on the phone asks. “Uh, yeah,” I answer hesitantly, suddenly thinking hard, trying to remember if I’ve forgotten to pay my phone bill or call my dad on his birthday. “It’s Steve.” A beat. “How’s it going?” That’s how Stephen Malkmus introduces himself on the phone when…
Red Animal War’s debut long-player, Breaking in an Angel, isn’t officially in stores yet, but that doesn’t mean you can’t buy a copy of it. Singer-guitarist Justin Wilson delivered a copy of the album last week and said the band had just received its first shipment from Deep Elm Records…
Japancakes Sometimes it’s better when plans fail, when ideas go nowhere, when you don’t get what you want. For instance, if Brant Rackley and Eric Berg had gotten what they wanted when they were starting the band that eventually became Japancakes, the group would have been, as Rackley now says,…
Shannonwright often is compared to Tori Amos, the other red-haired, piano-playing singer-songwriter, but, she points out, only by male rock critics. Perhaps that’s why I don’t understand the comparison. It’s akin to equating Sid Vicious and Eric Clapton on the basis that they were brunet Brits famous in the ’70s…
It may be unfair to say Portland’s The Minders and The Shins are, lumped together, an unentertaining waste of time, and then to blame it on the hometown they share, but, as they say: You can take the insipid pop out of the town, but you can’t take the town…
