Ben Vida is great at keeping out of his own way. Talk-singing softly in enjoined, run-on couplets more impressionistic than cerebral, he leaves plenty of space for swooping, mewling keyboard brushstrokes, hints of sloping violin, and brittle acoustic strum, all eventually usurped by a fascinatingly intricate mélange of tight, tribal…
In a smoky, dimly lit room filled with a waiting audience bundled up in winter gear because of the seemingly frigid Miami air, two musicians took the stage at Churchill’s for the last time for a long time. Awesome New Republic — affectionately known as ANR — celebrated its going-away…
Hey, Jared: Ryan Brown from Burner here. I recently received a press packet from Virgin Records for your band, 30 Seconds to Mars. Now, Jared, when I got your CD in the mail, I was so excited. I was all “I’m going to make fun of Jared Leto. This is…
All hail R.E.M.! They were the jingle-jangle morning of indie rock, and their latest albums are … not bad for a bunch of old farts. For all the great tunes, we have held our tongues with regard to goofy frontman Michael Stipe. But no longer. For releasing yet another of…
Ted Lucas, CEO of Slip-N-Slide Records, must be asking himself why he let slip away the artist who caused a bidding war between Def Jam Records president Jay-Z and other label execs. DJs from Miami’s top urban radio stations know exactly why there was a fight for a piece of…
Remember back in 2002, around the time Rolling Stone magazine famously and lamely declared that rock was finally back, we were hit by an avalanche of bands trying to sound like the White Stripes or look exactly like the Strokes? Now we can all safely say that the Hives are…
What is it about California that causes its young to thrash out on Les Pauls and Fender Strats in such large (and high-quality) numbers? From Agent Orange to Rancid, each new generation of Golden Staters seems to take up the punk rock cause, with Bay Area band No Use for…
When Bob Marley died in 1981, a seismic shift in reggae was set into motion. Island New Wave shook Kingston clubs in the form of dancehall. The man credited as the pioneer called himself Yellowman. His beats attracted legions — at one point he had 40 singles charting the island…
Rock critics can’t resist calling Of Montreal “sunny,” and there’s plenty of truth to that description. Since 1997, the Athens, Georgia-based band has put out seven albums of whimsical pop psychedelia that play with shimmering, sophisticated layers of guitar and keyboard melody, over-the-top vocal harmonies, surreal lyrics, and unpredictable arrangements,…
Willie Clarke seems always to be taking a quick breather from work or walking the stairs back into the studio. He’s either at Domingo, Chocolate, or Roach T-Bone, the three Miami studios he splits his time between these days, some three years into his teacher retirement pension. Heading toward another…
When the Wu rolls into South Florida this week, we’ll witness what is arguably the greatest hip-hop group ever in a rare live appearance. The key to Wu’s success lies not in the compatibility of its members but in their aesthetic and thematic differences from one another. If Meth is…
All hail “Are You Gonna Go My Way.” That slice of Seventies-meets-Nineties mass-market rock was a nice break from the sour-faced caterwauling of the “alternative” years. But Lenny Kravitz has far outstayed his welcome, and now he has debased himself for Absolut vodka. For slapping on the assless chaps and…
Based in Montreal, Canada, the Italian-born Barbara “Misstress Barbara” Bonfiglio has been DJing for a decade, playing everywhere from Singapore to the Dominican Republic to London. DJ magazine ranks her as one of the Top 100 DJs in the world, and she draws hundreds of people to her club gigs,…
Talented singer-songwriter Aimee Mann first appeared on the scene back in the mid-Eighties with post-New Wave group ‘Til Tuesday and its one-hit catapult and corresponding video “Voices Carry.” Who knew the statuesque lead singer would craft such biting yet tender and slyly humorous songs, dripping with juicy pop hooks, on…
Indie rock works in discordance to popular music, that much we know. But let’s be honest; without pop there is no indie, and without indie there is no reason to shred the whole thing in a blender. The albums released by Elephant 6 Collective offshoot Of Montreal sound like a…
If this blurb about the much-anticipated Wu-Tang reunion show were written in Wu-Song Format, it’d go something like this: First a clip from Scarface would play. Next we would hear some people get into an argument about how someone is trying to “rob their gate.” Then there’d be gunshots for…
Torche has been cutting mighty swaths with its down-tuned scythe for some time now; its full-length debut on Robotic Empire Records last year has garnered praise from both indie and major press camps. These veterans of the local scene are rumored to have most of a second album completed, and…
Ten years ago, in the unlikely town of Extremadura, in southern Spain near the border of Portugal, singer, songwriter, producer, and guitarist Fernando Echave, a.k.a. Gecko Turner, discovered Afro-beat master Fela Kuti. Gecko quickly absorbed and later applied that African sound to the bands he was involved with at the…
It has been nearly ten years since Coldcut issued its last album, Let Us Play. The wait was worth it. Eschewing the cut-and-paste turntable antics of the duo’s last album, Sound Mirrors pairs deep (if slightly glitchy) instrumentals over which a host of guests — from Ninja Tune stars like…
Allen Ginsberg is undoubtedly the greatest American poet of the latter part of the Twentieth Century. Bob Dylan’s innovative lyrics owed a huge debt to Ginsberg’s stream-of-consciousness approach to composition, and when the two met in the late Sixties, Dylan encouraged Ginsberg’s dream of becoming a singer/songwriter. The results are…
Arctic Monkeys, who have conquered the British charts with their debut singles and album, can be seen as the Stone Temple Pilots to Franz Ferdinand’s Pearl Jam. If Franz bandmates are icons of a new trend in British rock, the Monkeys reaffirm the success of that aesthetic while subtly removing…
Light years removed from her early harsh-whisper-to-raw-scream dynamic, this revered indie queen is all about Memphis-spawned, pure-as-honey pools like “The Moon.” It is a luminous lunar ode consisting of a single recycling full-bodied guitar motif, reverb-haloed and orbited by Marshall’s spectral, just-this-side-of-hoarse queries: “When they put me six feet underground/Will…
