Sitting in the apartment that Modernage lead singer Mario Giancarlo shares with guitarist Xavier Alexander, you wouldn’t get the impression you were among thriving rock musicians. Instead of instruments and equipment, which the band keeps at a separate practice space, the apartment holds a comfortable sofa, a flat-screen TV set,…
What you see is what you get with Elin. A pretty face with a voice to match, the Irish-Peruvian jazz starlet creates breezy music as intriguing as her background. The singer spent years refining her mature and sultry sound while learning five languages and absorbing the cultural awareness particular to…
Imagine that a prehistoric Mongol demon commandeered Tom Waits’s notorious throat and a fistful of Martian instruments for a possessed joy ride through a weird western canon (“In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” “Ramblin’ Man”). Kuvezin and Yat-Kha (who took their name from a long, kotolike zither) hail from the…
If you don’t find yourself compelled to hunt down Andy Bothwell and beat his head in after the first few minutes of “Short Term Memory Loss,” his professed desire “to become the Bob Dylan of this rap shit” might seal the deal. A more thorough surfing of the tracks yields…
Surrounded by mountains of amps stacked and cranked to unhealthy heights, Jucifer can shatter half of generic modern metal’s fibulas with just its feedback. The coed Atlanta duo literally rattles plaster loose, and drummer Edgar Livengood pounds the skins so hard he has broken his bones midset. The smash-riff-bash stoner…
Like Nick Cave, the Go-Betweens, and Midnight Oil, the Triffids resided in the rarified strata of Aussie rock bands that carved an indelible indie niche in the mid- to late Eighties. They did produce a series of minor classics, all of which are due for domestic reissue by the Domino…
Has Khaela Maricich fallen in love? The zippiest, kickiest tune on Paper Television, “Parentheses” keyboard-bops with an ear-to-ear grin antithetical to the blue, lonesome musings and bleak, desperate character studies that Blow albums usually feature. Could it be that new collaborator Jona Bechtolt’s input is more than creative? “If something…
The West London collective has a dance classic with Back in the Doghouse, and this single definitely sets the table with the electric vocals of Bembe Segue over some rapid-fire Bugz broken-beat drum patterns. You might need to re-register for those zumba classes to keep up with the up-tempo speed…
From the Idlewild soundtrack, this drumline-inspired song sampling Morris Brown College’s Marching Wolverine Band showcases one-half of OutKast doing what he does best: putting together creatively funky music. “Two dope boys in a Cadillac still,” Daddy Fat Sacks raps to Sleepy Brown as he rides shotgun in the colorful video,…
After Fidel finally falls, what’s going to be the anthem for the celebratory concert in Miami? Garcia might have the front-runner right here, as he shouts out Cubano slang to Latinos across los Estados Unidos over the screwed chorus and marching-band horns of this Rice & Peas production. He gets…
Classifying themselves as a retro-Latino act, Rhett y Los Borrachos Empeñados have worked hard to perfect the Latin-rock sound they’ve strived for since they began the band two years ago. Their music varies from sensitive soft-rock to faster funk, all the while maintaining the band’s Cuban roots. All four members…
Opening its metaphorical door in 2000, the Green Room is the musical cooperative founded by Colombian-born Jorge Mejia. Though he sports a degree in piano performance from the University of Miami, the 33-year-old Mejia is as adept at New Wave-style rock — something evident with one spin of his first…
If you’re a follower of the local hipster club scene, you’ve probably heard of Marqui Adora. But you’ve probably rarely, if ever, actually seen the group play. Since last year, the moody three-piece has only infrequently emerged from the shadows that inform its dark, postpunk sound. Tonight’s show, though, might…
Of the slew of Big Bad Apple bands to emerge at the beginning of this decade, few have culled the core like the Walkmen. Brash, blasted, and organic, they took what was best about a bar-room brawl and rooted it in the heavens. Best, they did it without the garage-rock…
The way Chris Perez’s long, blond hair shields most of his face as he sits over his keyboard echoes a shyness shared by other performers who once hid behind their locks, like Kurt Cobain and Elliott Smith. Not until after he finishes playing and begins to boldly explain his agenda…
In the Scandinavian fairy tale popularized by Hans Christian Andersen called The Snow Queen, a brother and sister begin seeing everything in horrorvision after demons bearing an ugliness-reflecting mirror from Hell shatter the looking glass, sending splinters of blight into the eyes and hearts of the children. Based in Stockholm,…
In the Miami of the early Nineties, the hip-hop scene that existed apart from bass music and Uncle Luke wasn’t large, but it did encompass a young, earnest, and close-knit community. Many artists were either too young or didn’t have enough clout to land shows at local venues, but there…
Every day he’s hustlin’, but on his debut, Port of Miami, Rick Ross barely works up a sweat. Sometimes he rhymes slowly, sometimes he rhymes quickly, and sometimes he doesn’t even rhyme. He likes to repeat phrases instead of thinking up new ones, and ends up doing a disservice to…
As a house producer who dramatically ascended from an internship at Om Records to become its A&R executive and flagship artist, Ryan “Kaskade” Raddon exemplified the San Francisco imprint’s aesthetic: lightly throbbing bass, heartfelt vocals, and soft, percussive grooves. How soft, you ask? Well, one of the tracks on Here…
Solo Andata’s Paul Fiocco and Kane Ikin don’t bother much with the antiquated methods of joint musicianship. Rather they Internet-swapped sound files for their debut, Fyris Swan, with Fiocco recording and sending via laptop from Sweden and Ikin from Australia. Though Fyris Swan boasts the subtle clinks and loops that…
About time that math-metal sounds were used for a little good; it was beginning to look as if the thrash-indies were going to keep releasing the stuff without ever making melody out of unlistenable morass until the entire genre became rock and roll’s answer to the holiday fruitcake. Intronaut’s shrill…
With a resumé that includes a day job with the Mavericks and occasional moonlighting with Los Super Seven, former Miami homeboy Raul Malo bows to middle age and the middle of the road with a solo set of sanitized standards. Finding his Roy Orbison-like tenor recast as a smooth cocktail…
