The Yips Bonfire in a Dixie Cup (Siltbreeze) On the Yips’ 1995 single “1000% Fox,” pinched-voice vocalist/bulldozer guitarist Gilmore Tamny kept her anger in check, and throughout the assaulting gem she made a point of bragging about it: “The rage in my cage stays mainly on the page.” On the…
On almost all accounts, Davey Molnar was the quintessential nightmare roommate. I met him freshman year in college, back in 1984, this pale bony kid from Jersey, a math genius utterly oblivious to the basic arithmetic of human interactions. He spoke in a slow, clogged manner, as if his sinus…
Various Artists America Is Dying Slowly (Red Hot/Eastwest) After releasing seven successful AIDS benefit compilations that focus on genres ranging from dance and jazz to indie rock and country, the Red Hot Organization has put out its first hip-hop record: America Is Dying Slowly (note the acronym). But with African…
R.L. Burnside A Ass Pocket of Whiskey (Matador) Recorded in one afternoon in the Holly Springs, Mississippi, hometown of 69-year-old blues great R.L. Burnside, A Ass Pocket Of Whiskey documents a noisy, spirited session between Burnside, his sideman Kenny Brown, and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, a New York City-based…
Keb’ Mo’ Just Like You (OKeh/Epic) Alvin Youngblood Hart Big Mama’s Door (OKeh/550 Music) California-born bluesmen Alvin Youngblood Hart and Kevin Moore (Keb’ Mo’ for short) share more than just a label and a birth state. Both men are in their thirties and are equally dazzling guitarists and vocalists. More…
Metallica Load (Elektra) Soundgarden Down On the Upside (A&M) For headbanger careerists like Metallica and Soundgarden, heavy-metal angst can present some real artistic problems when all those bad vibes and bad-ass guitar riffs start sounding like the same old bitch-and-boogie. But as their latest albums indicate, Metallica knows this and…
Los Lobos Colossal Head (Warner Bros.) All artists show their influences in their work. What separates the sublime from the hapless in this regard is the ability to do it without being crass. And there’s certainly nothing crass about Colossal Head, the seventh long player from Los Lobos. Genius is…
This is going to be difficult for me — for all of us, I expect — because this isn’t going to be some misty recollection, but rather the dredging up of a very specific and humiliating sliver of the past. Which means what we’re dealing with is, in essence, disclosure…
The Specials Today’s Specials (Virgin/Kuff) You can’t say the time isn’t right for the triumphant return of the Specials, the English group that way back in the late Seventies combined punk’s rant-and-roll dynamics with the slippery grooves of Jamaican ska. Close to fifteen years after the Specials broke up, their…
Guided by Voices Under the Bushes Under the Stars (Matador) Three albums after the rock press discovered them in 1993 (and nine since the band formed about ten years ago), Guided by Voices remains the rarest of indie-rock rarities — a critically hoohahed outfit that actually deserves the hosannas. Robert…
The instrument seems such a natural fit in his large, graceful hands that it’s hard to imagine a time when Buddy Guy wasn’t playing the guitar. Truth is, the 59-year-old blues legend had no idea what a guitar was as a child. “I grew up on a farm near Simmesport,…
Jesus Alemany Cubanismo! (Hannibal/Rykodisc) Various Artists The Montuno Sessions — Live from Studio “A” (Mr. Bongo) There is little in life that can top the excitement and exhilaration of hearing a group of musicians taking off on an impassioned flight of inspired innovation, soaring atop wandering chord progressions, navigating solos…
Brother J.T. and Vibrolux Music for the Other Head (Siltbreeze) John “J.T.” Terlesky has more extracurricular music projects than anyone this side of George Clinton. In addition to his regular gig as frontman for garage rockers Original Sins, Terlesky has released a slew of savagely bent albums and singles over…
The Grifters Ain’t My Lookout (Sub Pop) For the past six years, the Grifters have made some beautifully fractured and schizophrenic music — loose yet deceptively complex, chaotic and noisy but susceptible to moments of majestic pop splendor. Over the course of three albums, an EP, and a slew of…
They chose their name as a joke, but the trio of rock and roll goofballs known as the Presidents of the United States of America has been the object of intense media questioning about their intentions in Campaign ’96. Therefore the band has released the following statement through press secretary…
Steve Earle I Feel Alright (Warner Bros.) Alejandro Escovedo With These Hands (Rykodisc) Survivors are nothing new in rock and roll. Survivors with something interesting to say, however, don’t come rolling out of rehab or obscurity every day. Alejandro Escovedo and Steve Earle are survivors. Escovedo has logged time in…
Iggy Pop Naughty Little Doggie (Virgin) Wayne Kramer Dangerous Madness (Epitaph) As punk rock’s generational cycle spins ever onward, with last week’s angry young thing replaced by this week’s rabble-rousing shaver, it’s reassuring to know that two of the music’s fortysomething architects are still around spewing bile and caustic protest…
Aimee Mann I’m With Stupid (DGC) Aimee Mann has been hauling her dented and dinged heart around for more than a decade now, pulling it out of a box for show-and-tell on three albums by her old band ‘Til Tuesday, and on two solo records, 1993’s remarkable Whatever and now…
Curtis Mayfield People Get Ready!: The Curtis Mayfield Story (Rhino) Although this lavish three-disc set is devoted to the musical achievements of one man, it also acts as a kind of rhythm and blues history. As much as James Brown, Curtis Mayfield has helped chart the course of the music…
Mutiny Aftershock 2005 (Black Arc/Rykodisc) Of all the spin-off satellites orbiting George Clinton’s Parliafunkadelicment mothership, Mutiny was arguably the best A and one of the few to distance itself from its former employer. The group was formed in the late Seventies by drummer Jerome “Bigfoot” Brailey, the coauthor of several…
Mighty Mighty Bosstones vocalist Dicky Barrett has just one thing to say to all those music critics who once wrote off his Boston-based ska-punk band as a novelty act destined for obscurity: “Thank you.” Huh? “Seriously. I always felt it was a good thing when we got that kind of…
Gaunt Yeah, Me Too (Amphetamine Reptile) If you’re looking to point a finger at the most fertile patch of American punk-rock soil, aim it north to Columbus, Ohio, the home base for an abundance of noise-making underground visionaries, from old-timers such as Mike “Rep” Hummel and Ron House to Monster…
