The Problem With… Katy Perry’s “Firework”

It seems, much as we try, no one can avoid Katy Perry. Hell, she’s pretty much everywhere these days, between awards shows, popping up (or not at all, turn out) on Sesame Street. She even lashed out at Microsoft over their closed-source softw… no, actually, her fans just wanted free…

Last Night: Joanna Newsom at the Granada Theater

Joanna NewsomGranada TheaterNovember 10, 2010 Better than: listening to Joanna Newsom’s recorded songs. I think it’s fair to say that very few people would accidentally find themselves at a Joanna Newsom concert. With her unique voice, epic song structures, and unusual instrumentation, she is not a casual musical choice. Last…

Giveaway: A Pair of Tickets to See Bear Hands Tonight at The Nightmare

Three years after making waves with its debut 2007 EP, Golden, New York’s Bear Hands has finally gone ahead and released a proper full-length album called Burning Bush Supper Club. And the four-piece’s new album is an interesting one, too, delving into funk, dream pop and relatively straightforward rock ‘n’…

The Daily Fail: Beady Eye

Liam Gallagher’s post-Oasis band Beady Eye isn’t going for the same Beatles-aping sound of his past work. It’s going for something different–the same indie garage rock thing everyone else is doing these days…

Blixaboy

We may be stuck in a hopelessly mundane future—no jetpacks, no laser guns and no sex robots, in neither a post-apocalyptic wasteland dystopia nor a beautiful utopia—but Kliks & Politiks sounds like the future as promised by sci-fi movies. Over stuttering, thumping beats and throbbing bass float ray-gun zaps, ethereal…

Crushed Stars

Five albums in, Todd Gautreau’s Crushed Stars still makes the kind of textured, soothing, chill-out rock that perfectly suits gray drizzly days or droopy-eyed late nights. The deliberate mid-tempo lullabies are just as calming as ever, with the same whispery delivery that made a moderate radio hit earlier this year…

How Do Bands Move On After Bandmates Die?

As The Will Callers’ Jake Murphy adjusted to a bit of bracing, life-altering news, he was already making up his mind about his group’s immediate future. He didn’t have any choice but to make a decision in quick order—the band was set to play a show just a few days…

The Levon Helm Band with Ray Lamontagne

At 70, renowned country and rock icon Levon Helm can still kick some serious ass. Forever known for his drumming and vocal skills demonstrated in The Band, Helm’s career has surprisingly surged in recent years. His 2007 comeback album, Dirt Farmer, earned the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album…

Mission To The Sea

Put Morrissey on a yacht in the middle of the ocean on a beautiful day and he’d probably sill find some reason to be sad about it. But Mission To The Sea’s debut album Tranquilo, which meets the above criteria almost perfectly, is a lighter, only slightly melancholic effort. That…

Wolf Parade’s The Closest We’re Gonna Get to Neutral Milk Hotel

It’s difficult to think of another indie-pop record in the past 20 years as influential and surrounded by romantic lore as Neutral Milk Hotel’s 1998 masterpiece, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Frontman Jeff Mangum, then part of Athens, Georgia’s legendary Elephant Six collective, spun timeless tales of love, longing…

Denton’s NX35 Becomes The 35 Conferette

When you leave your humble abode to attend NX35 in Denton this March, you’ll actually arrive at 35 Conferette. The Denton-based festival made the name change official this week with the launch of a new website. And they’re already selling bracelets for the 2011 run. The name change has been…

The Dandy Warhols, Hopewell

Andy Warhol and The Dandy Warhols share more than just a similar name: Both artists have a history of having their art used in advertising. From The O.C. to Good Will Hunting to Mythbusters, this Portland-based post-punk outfit uses their signature sound to make a name for themselves on the…

The Felice Brothers, Adam Haworth Stevens

At once vaudevillian and also contemporarily raw, New York’s Felice Brothers have been perhaps the key cog in the recent surge of indie roots rock. Their varied sound, featuring horns, ragtime piano and fiddle (among other distinctive noisemakers), lends the group a sincere diversity that even folk-intensive indie acts, such…

Elton John, Leon Russell

Elton John has been a superstar for decades. His latest collaborator, Leon Russell, on the other hand, has been something of an obscurity for most of his 40-something-year career, which started as a session musician and featured one semi-hit album, 1972’s Carney, and a few other charting records before his…

Gaslamp Killer, Daedalus

Adept at both production and turntablism, Gaslamp Killer—known for many years as the Motherfucking Gaslamp Killer (he’s since dropped the Oedipal reference)—is as new-school as it gets. The Killer’s hip-hop stylings are all over the place: You might hear him drop Led Zeppelin next to some underground rhymes, and he’s…

Miniature Tigers Goes Big The Second Time Around

As the leader of Miniature Tigers, Charlie Brand crafts infectious pop with reckless emotional abandon at its center. Big, generous hooks convey somewhat fantastical metaphors about girls whose “Hot Venom” frightens and excites, a soul-devouring “Cannibal Queen,” or a pretty “Lolita” spotted in a “gypsy crystal ball wet dream.” On…