Tom Petty: Live in Ft. Lauderdale
Not more than two seconds into a thunderous opener of “You Wreck Me,” a knock-out whiff of Moroccan hash blooms from somewhere a few rows back, and most people around me lift their noses to the air...
View ArticleThe Boxing Lesson: Our Exclusive Interview
Easily one of the most interesting bands we’ve come across all year, The Boxing Lesson offer a brazen revival of the psychedelic blues sound, tinged with a love of the early punk and new-wave they...
View ArticleFrom Giorgio Moroder to Geico Caveman: You Oughtta Sue, George!
Definitely NOT Giorgio Moroder! If you too wish Geico would just dump the increasingly awful “Caveman” commercial series while their marketing people might still be able to salvage a scrap of...
View ArticleSo Far: Best Albums of 2008
Now that we’re nearing the final third of the year [insert “how time flies” cliche here], the minds of all music dorks worth their weight in vinyl will gradually turn to the usual “best of” lists. We...
View ArticleThe Best Album You’ve Never Heard: Bill Fox’s “Shelter From the Smoke”
Bill Fox with The Mice in the 1980s (Far Right) Trying to find Bill Fox these days is a bit too much like trotting the globe in a hot air balloon in search of Amelia Earheart’s plane. And trying to...
View ArticleBruce Springsteen: He’s Bringing Darkness Back
It’s been a long time since we’ve heard anything genuinely “dark” from the artist not always known as “The Boss.” Back before his working man’s hero act became as kitschy as a Phil Levine poem with...
View ArticleTexas Tornado: The Times and Music of Doug Sahm
To open Jan Reid’s book Texas Tornado: The Times and Music of Doug Sahm (U of Texas Press) is to stumble into a time warp where Bobby Womack is more famous for marrying the woman whom Sam Cooke...
View ArticleThe Grammies Get it Right! (Wait, say WHAT??!)
Just when you think the Grammies are so full of crap that you can barely stand the stink any longer, they toss some nods in the direction of folks like Arcade Fire, Black Keys, Vampire Weekend, Band...
View ArticleThe Atlantas: “One of the Best Bands No One’s Ever Heard of”
A coy and unaccompanied drum beat shuffles the song into motion, and then a radiant synthesizer bursts into the mix like a blinding glimpse of the sun. The track is “Transcendicity,” the latest...
View ArticleBest Albums of 2010 Series: “Before Today,” Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti
If you too have been waiting for the band that can capture the sound of Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog kickin’ it to a Rick James slow jam at Studio 54 circa 1979 after several hits on a buddy’s bong,...
View ArticleBest Albums of 2010 Series: “Buzzards,” Margot & The Nuclear So and Sos
“I’m never gonna break your heart, not unless I have to,” Richard Edwards howls over the booming guitars and drums of “New York City Hotel Blues,” one of Buzzards’ highest moments. Clearly Mr....
View ArticleBest Albums of 2010 Series: “High Violet,” The National
Like Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs, The National’s High Violet has the feel of an important record on the order of Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Modest Mouse’s Good News for People Who Love Bad News,...
View ArticleBest Albums of 2010 Series: “Crazy for You,” Best Coast
Best Coast is Neko Case trapped inside a Jan & Dean song. They’re what happens when the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows” agrees to a schoolyard throwdown with Wanda Jackson’s “Heard-headed Woman,”...
View ArticleBest Albums of 2010 Series: “Warm Slime,” Thee Oh Sees
If Thee Oh Sees were a dorm room, it would be half-a-foot deep in paper plates stained with pizza grease and have a kitchen sink so bloated with the foul and crusted silverware of meals long past...
View ArticleR.I.P. CAPTAIN BEEFHEART
1941-2010 If you find yourself browsing a site like this one on a Friday night, chances are you know by now that Captain Beefheart is dead, finally released from the horror of a prolonged battle with...
View ArticleBest Albums of 2010 Series: “Le Noise,” Neil Young
No matter how many “Best Albums of 2010″ lists you read on the web this month, somehow you just can’t shake the feeling that you’re reading the same one over and over again. There’s a pretty good...
View ArticleMeet Lloyd’s Garage, “the antidote to Autotune”
Lloyd’s Garage is what happens when Adam Duritz rides a time machine back to 1973 to lay down some tracks for Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night. It’s what happens when R.L. Burnside lunges out of his...
View ArticleBest Albums of 2010 Series: “The Suburbs,” Arcade Fire
2007’s Neon Bible found Arcade Fire sneaking early-’80s Bruce Springsteen into an abandoned church in Quebec and having him sing about antichrists in the television while the band kept the car...
View ArticleBest Albums of 2010 Series: “July Flame,” Laura Veirs
You don’t know it yet, but you are already a fan of Laura Veirs. You’ve fixed dinner or cleaned the house with the television braying somewhere off in the background when that LG Optimus cell phone...
View ArticleBest Albums of 2010 Series: “In Black Robes,” Sarah June
Sarah June sings like a dead girl’s ghost. She’s got the kind of voice that sounds like the wind when it howls through door locks and window panes, the high-pitched and breathy wail of a drowned...
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