If you were disappointed by Beach House’s last South Florida show, guitarist Alex Scally wants to make it up to you. He says he’s terribly embarrassed by the way his duo performed five years ago.
Rara is Haitian festival music played with drums, maracas, and bamboo trumpets, which are known as vaksen. Until recently, the music was always played by men. That changed when Dieuvella Etienne bucked tradition and formed the group that is now called Symbi Roots, the all-female rara troupe that has taken up residency in South Florida over the past couple of months.
Some bands, no matter how popular they get, aren’t meant for cavernous arenas or massive amphitheaters. Perhaps their sound is too intimate or their stage presence too introverted. Muse is not a band with that problem.
After 17 years with English indietronica band Hot Chip, why did Joe Goddard decide to release his first solo album, Electric Lines? “I just had the chance to do it. I had the free time in my studio, and I decided to make a bunch of songs,” says the mild-mannered Brit, who’s slated to play the Electric Pickle this Saturday.
It is an understatement to say Venezuela has been in a state of unrest. The South American country has been dealing with widespread inflation that has left a large swath of its population unable to afford food and medicine. As the tragedy plays out, South Florida’s Venezuelans have been feeling their friends’ and families’ pain.
Growing up on Key Biscayne in the ’90s, Xavier Manrique’s foremost passion was playing tennis. But there was always something about the movies. “Any time it was raining, we couldn’t play tennis, so we’d watch movies,” Manrique tells New Times. “I’d obsess over everything on the screen: the photography, the music, the costumes. Same with every Sunday, when my Dad would take me to the Riviera or the Miracle Center to see a movie.”
Rod Reiter’s gig at Churchill’s falls on May 17, the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia. “I grew up when homophobia was a normal thing,” he says. “I got abuse in high school in Boca Raton just for being friends with a gay kid. In my lifetime, homophobia’s thankfully…
One of the curses of being a millennial is that 60 years’ worth of musicians got to go through the dictionary and cherry-pick their act’s name before you got around to it. So when Abel Makkonen Tesfaye wanted to christen his dark R&B project the Weekend but discovered there was already a Canadian band that had copyrighted the name, he didn’t give up.
The words “bluegrass music” can conjure images of the hills of Appalachia. But Anders Beck says another kind of community might also come to mind. His band, Greensky Bluegrass, was formed in the midsize Midwest town of Kalamazoo, Michigan.
What is it about the ’60s? Why does that decade still seem to affect music more than any other? Guitarist and keyboardist Adam Smith believes he has the answer.
The lyrics of one-hit wonders’ songs get stuck in your head. The names of the artists who recorded them usually don’t. Admit it: You don’t know who recorded “La Macarena” or “Tootsee Roll.” Some songs inspire dance crazes that seem to pop out of the cosmos, belonging to us all equally and democratically rather than associating them with a particular person.
New Times’ eighth-annual Brew at the Zoo is headed for Zoo Miami on Saturday, May 6, from 7 to 11 p.m. There will not only be food and more than 100 local, international, and craft beers, but also some pretty fine tunes.
A full decade after the release of their last album, Miami’s favorite funk fusion instrumentalists, Spam Allstars, have finally issued their sixth record, Trans-Oceanic. “Our last album came out in 2007,” says the band’s mastermind, DJ Le Spam. “I was burnt out, and most of my downtime from gigging was spent recording other people in the studio.”
Though he calls his current project “Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness,” Andrew McMahon is a man who knows exactly where he is, where he’s been, and where he’s going.
Two months and 38 states into their first national tour, members of the Magic City Hippies have evolved beyond the average bandmate relationship. “Before this tour we’d only ever been gone from Miami for a week,” drummer Pat Howard says. “On this tour we’ve become a brotherhood, with all the…
Chris Brown often says Michael Jackson is his biggest inspiration. And it’s easy to see the foundation laid by the King of Pop in Brown’s work. Take his video for “Party,” for example; as the 27-year-old Brown dances, you can imagine Jackson’s moves, so much a part of Brown that…
Outside of country music, no musical genre is as white — or at least believed to be as white — as metal. Blame it on Beavis, Butthead, Bill, or Ted, but if asked to describe a typical metalhead, most Americans would draw a long-haired Caucasian bro making the Devil’s sign…
When singer Rino Cerbone and drummer Andrew Koussevitzky named their rock band Stellar Revival in 2008, they had no idea how apt that name would be almost a decade later. “We were in different bands in Miami,” Cerbone says of their formation. “I was in Copacetic, and Andrew was in…
Movie and television audiences tend to appreciate subtle, understated work from actors. But music is a different story. Singers who simply let the song carry their voice, without theatrical flair, don’t always get the love and admiration they deserve. If they did, Dionne Warwick would have a fancy nickname like…
“It’s soul music. It touches the soul and the soles of the feet that gets everyone moving to the orchestra in my head.” Zach Deputy’s description of his sound is both inspiring and pun-tastic. The Savannah, Georgia-based Deputy, who will play the Wynwood Yard this Saturday, is a 21st-century version…
Kid Koala is best known as a DJ who plays his turntable like an instrument, both as a solo artist and with acts such as the Gorillaz and Deltron 3030. But he is also a comic-book creator. With Nufonia Must Fall, the man born Eric San has combined his twin…
As grownups living out their teenage rock-star dreams, it’s only right that the five guys who make up We the Kings named their band after the Bradenton middle school they attended. “We all went to Martha B. King Middle School,” keyboardist Coley O’Toole confirms. “Travis Clark and Hunter Thomsen started…
