Embrace hasn’t had a successful album since its 1998 debut, The Good Will Out — until now. On the British quartet’s fourth album, Out of Nothing, a song penned by Coldplay’s Chris Martin (the crescendo-filled “Gravity”) and the surge of emotionally pulling, feelings-showing-from-the-inside-out type of music that Embrace has always…
Like the Pogues and Black 47, those bad boys of Beantown in Dropkick Murphys effectively retool Irish folk music (fifes, fiddles, accordions, and bagpipes) into frenzied and ferocious punk anthems. While their riveting new album rocks and rants in typical Murphys mode, they shake up the sound with humor (“Wicked…
Circling the Sun, the Orange Peels’ third album, is a sensuous delight, a rich, vibrant ten-song set that finds primary Peel Allen Clapp singing with a lilt and clarity that could hasten wider recognition. Titles such as “How Green the Grass” and “Long Cold Summer” evoke imagery as vivid as…
Contrary to many fairer-sex DJs who misguidedly decide they are singers, Colette has had years of vocal training, which pays off with her debut, Hypnotized. It boasts distinct shadings of Shannon’s “Let the Music Play” on “What Will She Do for Love,” a unique cover of Cherrelle’s “I Didn’t Mean…
Even with heavy-metal genes, electronically enhanced vocals, and a fashion-punk backing band, Kelly Osbourne couldn’t rock. Her debut disc, Shut Up, filled with powerless ballads and mild outbursts, stocks more bargain bins than Tony Martin-era Black Sabbath. Like Pink, another artist who turned in a stylistically unflattering inaugural release, Osbourne…
For nearly two decades the man with the ever-present tan, a closetful of ruffled carnival shirts, and lightning-quick conga-beating hands has served as the opening act for countless international performers inside one of Miami Beach’s most famed ballrooms. But Gaby Gabriel’s task goes beyond warming up the stage for the…
If you’ve been to a Beenie Man or Kevin Lyttle concert, then chances are you’ve heard Calibe. A talented Caribbean singer who splits her time between her native Jamaica and Miami, she has made her mark in the industry as a back-up singer. But if her two EPs, 2003’s First…
Country! Rock! Alternative! Pop! Reduce them to an acronym and you get CRAP — that is to say, the CRAP Festival, an annual compendium of Southern bands. The 18 Wheelers specialize in the back catalogue of big-beat honky-tonk and rockabilly. Will Thomas perpetuates the recurrent yet somewhat underappreciated rockin’-country-boy-drenched-in-Southern-R&B subgenre,…
Magical Maydaze has become a tradition as familiar as Black Beach Week, a throwback to the candy raves of yore and a rare opportunity (outside of Winter Music Conference) to partake of a host of electronic sounds and ideas. But why is it being held in June instead of the…
DJ Craze has had two musical identities since he began peppering his hip-hop sets with drum and bass tracks in the late Nineties. Unlike those heady bygone days of turntablism, now he usually keeps his personas separate. And, save for a fleeting track or two, he serves up mostly mainstream…
That Los Lobos’ sound has had a distinctive impact on Americana music is pretty much a given. Until they came along, most roots rockers found their sources in places such as Bakersfield, Memphis, and Nashville and in groups such as the Byrds, the Band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and ensembles who…
It’s Saturday night, and Jimmy Cavallo is doing what he has done nearly every weekend for the past decade. The 78-year-old singer and sax man is playing to a full house at Doogie’s, a jazz supper club in Deerfield Beach. Between Sinatra standards, Louis Prima hits, and big-band-era favorites, the…
Why does a song sound better when someone is pining for love than when someone is singing about being in love? Is it because the listener is envious of the artist’s romance? Or does the listener simply find it cloying? It has been said that in order to make genuinely…
For those worried by recent photos showing Jack White becoming Michael Jackson, the cover shot of Get Behind Me Satan should come as a relief: He has turned Goth mariachi instead, offsetting Meg White’s proffered white apple. Better news is the highly compressed opener, “Blue Orchid,” on which Jack sounds…
Crónicas de un Laberinto (Chronicles of a Labyrinth) is a glorious mess. Saul Hernandez (a veteran of Caifanes with Jaguares drummer Alfonso André), Cesar “Vampiro” Lopez, and coproducer Adrian Belew form a three-guitar attack, but they’re more interested in moods than in solos. The first single, “Hay Amores Que Matan”…
On his previous albums, Corey Harris seemed more archivist than entertainer, one who found inspiration in blues traditions and their link to African culture. He hasn’t abandoned his quest with Daily Bread; it’s imbued with a variety of idioms, including the blues, reggae, folk, jazz, gospel, and zydeco. This time,…
Since their promising 1998 debut, Behind the Front, the Black Eyed Peas have become the group you love to hate, an unabashedly pop act who would have earned the epithet “sellout” if everyone else wasn’t selling out too. Monkey Business is shallow and corny, an overproduced and derivative simulacrum of…
Norwegian pop extraordinaire Annie Lilia Berge Strand’s blog-darling status means the U.S. release of her debut, Anniemal, is virtually irrelevant; it’s been out in Europe since last fall, so you probably downloaded it already. But that’s okay, since Anniemal revels in the past. Annie, along with producers such as Richard…
If German goddess Ellen Allien set out to dissolve techno’s rigid edifice on her third full-length album, Thrills, she more than accomplished her goal. While highly danceable head-bobbing beats abound, dissolute tracks such as “Cloudy City” float in an oceanic haze of electronic atmospherics. Throughout the standout track “The Brain…
More than 35 years, an entire generational divide, have passed since the Sixties faded from view, so any bill boasting an archetype from that era might arouse suspicion. The remnants and recasts starring in the Strange Days Festival are anchored by secondary members covering signature songs with varying degrees of…
Since first appearing (and being overshadowed by Big Daddy Kane and Craig G) on the posse classic “The Symphony” way back in 1988, Masta Ace has been one of the most underrated artists in the hip-hop genre. Perhaps because his consistency has yielded plenty of underground hits — his G-funk-era…
At this point, Keane falls short of fascinating, but bandmates Tom Chaplin, Richard Hughes, and Tim Rice-Oxley could be headed in the right direction. After all, Radiohead, one of the group’s principal role models, wasn’t considered terribly innovative when it emerged during the first half of the Nineties, but that…
