Beach House at Fillmore Miami Beach May 8

In the early Nineties, American Music Club was hailed for its original sound and singer/guitarist Mark Eitzel’s lyrical talents, which ranged from self-deprecating to astutely perceptive of humanity’s shortcomings. Now, after ten years in limbo, the godfathers of emo have reunited. Far from sounding outdated, however, the San Francisco group’s…

Pinback’s new release, a catchy indie rock affair entitled Summer in Abaddon, could be its best work yet. Intricate vocal harmonies provide an essential component to its sound, which took three years of fine-tuning. “Zach and I are different people,” says multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Rob Crow of his coconspirator, Armistead Burwell “Zach”…

— Hans Morgenstern Some electronic recordings ring so cold, precise, and gimmicky that they can wear thin after a few listens. With its self-titled debut, Waterford Landing brings a human pulse to an often overprocessed style of music. On the CD, the group wittily straddles the divide between rock and…

The anonymous four-artist team collectively known as Lansing-Dreiden has certainly made a name for itself since relocating from Miami to New York several years ago. Their multimedia creations incorporate video, photography, text, performance art, and jewelry into oblique presentations such as Death Notice and Greenscreens. Now the group’s 2003 debut…

The phrase “singer-songwriter” usually conjures up images of blandly dressed young men with acoustic guitars intoning personal songs in an overwrought voice, not noise artist Xela Zaid. Zaid comes from an alternate universe. He has developed his own method of tuning and plucking a guitar that allows him to produce…

After a schizophrenic few years spent releasing Red House Painters albums alongside solo albums, Mark Kozelek returns with a new band: Sun Kil Moon. Despite the name change, his deep-rooted ardor for Seventies rockers and vocal similarities to Neil Young remain apparent. No fancy synthesized augmentations weigh down these tracks,…

“I just want to be able to do this full-time,” says the soft-spoken singer/songwriter Isaac Lekach, a skinny guy of Russian/Cuban heritage better known as Poulain. The 22-year-old from North Miami Beach hopes he’s found the ticket to independent living in a new recording contract with Fiddler, a music label…

The bubbly sound experimentalist collective called Stereolab has made a profound mark on alternative music. Over its thirteen years in existence, the group has touched on bubblegum pop, space-age bachelor pad music, Krautrock, garage rock, acid jazz, and electronica — often blending three or more of these diametrically opposed styles…

Never has electronic music sounded warmer or more human than Casiotone for the Painfully Alone. Owen Ashworth uses equipment that could be considered antique (SK-1 or MT-100 models of Casio keyboards) to provide a humming, squeaking, buzzing backdrop for his tales of pained love. When he opens for the Scottish,…

Jeff Rollason, lead singer and guitarist of Miami’s experimental rock outfit the Curious Hair, is not at all interested in the music industry. “That’s not what I think about every day,” the 29-year-old professes before a late-night performance on the patio of a Coral Gables bookstore. Behind his small black-framed…

The San Francisco-based quintet Vue, a band in touch with the purest of rock and roll’s primordial ooze, is regularly hit with observations regarding its similarities to other seminal stalwarts. Guitarist Jonah Buffa puts up with the volleys of comparisons but defies anyone who would try to pigeonhole Vue as…

Back in the Nineties, Kathleen Hanna kicked off the riot-grrrl movement and kicked ass on the male-dominated punk/hardcore scene with angry albums from her group’s self-titled Bikini Kill (1992) to PussyWhipped (1994) to Reject All American (1996). Now Hanna is back with the all-womyn electro/punk-rock trio Le Tigre, a group…

Desaparecidos might sound like a Latin alternative band concerned about the disappearance of innocent citizens by some repressive South American regime, but this aggressive rock and roll outfit hails from Lincoln, Nebraska. And these Nebraskans are pissed about the disappearance of the American landscape beneath mammoth chain restaurants and stores,…

Many a musician has written a song about love, but few enjoy discussing their intimate lives. Andy LeMaster, singer and mastermind behind the rocking, synthesizer-heavy Now It’s Overhead, kindly volunteers his feelings about his relationship-themed, self-titled debut album and its painful inspiration. On the phone from Presto! Recording Studio in…

Justin Gracer seems none too satisfied, crouching alone on the outdoor stage of Piccadilly Garden’s PopLife, packing up his guitar. As the crowd of hipster indie-rockers and wannabe Brit-poppers mills about the fountain and foliage, the vocalist/guitarist of the Miami-based alternative rock quartet Machete slips his sleek white Stratocaster into…

By the time Trans Am arrives in South Florida this weekend, it’ll have a new paint job. Valves will have been adjusted. That sticky window vent will be fixed. Since 1993 the Washington, D.C.-based indie-rock trio has garnered a reputation as a purveyor of eccentric instrumentals that merge the cold…

Like the twisted ladder of genetic material that fuels life, Recluse DNA is a shifting chain of elements that come together and split apart. The band of six core members can attract additional members to double in size or shrink back, all the while switching musical codes from dark, ambient…

In his tiny bedroom at the top of the steep, white-tiled stairs of his family’s modest South Miami-Dade townhouse, Richard Rippe strikes a blow against everything that is wrong with the music industry. The 24-year-old’s Afro-topped, six-foot-three frame is folded over his Apple PowerBook, his long fingers gently brushing the…

Whirlaway takes the stage in a wash of loud guitar atmospherics and a flash of psychedelic lighting effects. Singer Adam Rosenberg takes center stage, bathed in the glow of a red light that spills out to cover the rest of the group. A projection of multicolored bubbles appears to melt…

The members of the altrock trio Carnival Waste sit outside a local Starbucks, sipping coffee just before closing time. Cars rush by on darkened U.S. 1 as the musicians try to agree on the cover art for … A Perfect Day, their forthcoming album. The South Florida band’s frontman-keyboardist Robert…