Hailing from the music factory of Omaha, Nebraska (Bright Eyes, the Faint, Cursive, Elliott Smith), Tilly and the Wall delivers warm, rich layers with delicious harmonies via three vocalists, and succulent beats from a nondrumming tap-dancing percussionist. (Yes, that’s correct. No drums in this band — just a tap dancer.)…
If the name’s the game, then Q-Burns Abstract Message is the right play. Taken from the DJ term for the scars a record gets from too much cueing or scratching, it’s the kinda tag only a divining vinyl enthusiast would devise — the mark that spells all, the read between…
Once a band has had a song featured on a Mexican soap opera, it’s fair to say the group has accomplished all it could ever hope for. Which is why it’s nice that Latin pop duo Sin Bandera is still touring. Performing at the Jackie Gleason Theater on its Mañana…
Like thoroughbred horses, industrial music has only a handful of forebears, so when the Big Three — Skinny Puppy, Ministry, and Front Line Assembly — seemed to be calling it quits or, at the very least, falling off around 1995, the future looked even darker than normal for the genre’s…
Anthony Hamilton wants to tell you something. “God is more important than I am in my life, more important than my wife, my kids, my family, and my friends. God centers me.” So there it is. Hamilton wants to spread the Word of God. The 35-year-old singer readily admits, “He…
Nestled in the Wynwood Art District, Cornerstone, a gallery cum performance venue, has been a host to local artists and performers since it opened one year ago in this neighborhood-in-the-making. There’s no Website, just word of mouth. Seekers have to look carefully for Cornerstone amid the empty warehouses and vacant…
My name’s Chris, last name Nelson. You wanna wear it?” You had to give the guy credit for the creative pick-up line. Some of his other stellar hooks: “You need another drink? I need another drink. I’m an alcoholic.” And who could forget the classic, “You ready to have all…
In 2005 Sonic Youth’s 1988 masterpiece Daydream Nation was inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Recording Register, an institution that has recognized just about every important aural document, from Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue to the first official transatlantic telephone conversation. It is a distinction far cooler than a…
Ralph Stanley’s high, lonesome tenor has defined the art of bluegrass singing for more than 55 years, and although his top end is a bit rough these days, it adds authenticity to the voice of a man who has lived the hard life he sings about. The Carter Family cut…
What’s this? Frank Black, the mercurial leader of the Pixies, one of the most brooding and foreboding bands from the postpunk era, sounding enthusiastic? Soaking up the vibe of an all-star musical assemblage — Steve Cropper, Spooner Oldham, Buddy Miller, The Band’s Levon Helm, Cheap Trick’s Tom Petersson, Bad Company’s…
“5 Year Eve,” the centerpiece of the collaboration between California’s Anticon beatsmith Alias and New York chanteuse Rona “Tarsier” Rapadas, features a string section gliding over crunchy, oddly patterned beats while a female voice waxes raspy about half-decades. And so Brookland/Oaklyn reinforces that hip-hop-inflected IDM beats paired with the intimacy…
Earlier this year, in a departure from its usual practice of signing Metalpalooza bait such as High on Fire and Nile, record label Relapse picked up a few instrumental-only bands, the most prized of which is semilegendary progger Don Caballero, whose members are free on waivers from Touch and Go…
Many bands revel in their roots, but few amble as close to the heartland as the Missouri-based Bottle Rockets. Their no-frills approach is tough and tenacious, reflecting an underdog attitude that tends to downplay resignation in favor of an occasional upward glance. Zoysia, their eighth studio set, provides the ideal…
Before 2005, not many people knew who Bebe was, possibly because her creative, flamenco-pop-punk debut Pafuera Telarañas hadn’t yet been released in America, but most likely because she hadn’t yet received five Latin Grammy nominations. Winning for Best New Artist, this Latin singer has come a long way since she…
Sunshine Blues Fest? The words sunshine and blues may seem strange together, but the juxtaposition will hardly matter when gold recording artist Clarence Carter performs. Renowned for songs like “Sixty Minute Man” and “Strokin’,” Carter, who was born blind in Alabama, has fused traditional blues style with his Southern upbringing…
The second annual Mambo and Salsa Project is a three-day event revolving around energetic performances, dance workshops, and late-night partying. The InterContinental Hotel will host the salsa smorgasbord from June 16 to 18. Friday, June 16, marks the kick-off party at Rendezvous on the Lakes, with DJs Joey G and…
Jack White is a huge supporter of the Michigan three-piece Whirlwind Heat. High compliment, for sure. But even a thumbs-up from a rock god can reveal his tastes to be flawed. Since 1996, singer and keyboardist David Swanson, bassist Steve Damstra II, and drummer Brad Holland have been churning out…
Jamie Lidell is, as he sang on last year’s Multiply, a “walking, talking question mark,” and Multiply Additions only makes him seem dottier and loopier. The ten-track album of redos and remixes finds Lidell straddling his most pronounced personas — the electronic enthusiast of his 2000 IDM-slanted album Muddlin Gear…
When it’s this hot outside, you really can’t ask for more than a free indoor music festival, even if it has a name you can’t actually pronounce. Fête de la Musique returns to downtown Miami to celebrate the summer solstice with another day filled with exotic music. This year’s festival…
Middle America can be hell for the touring rock band — especially one from the big city. But when New York City’s Theo and the Skyscrapers began their first U.S. tour last month, it’s like they never left the Big Apple. Even Utah felt like home. That much was confirmed…
This intended side project of the legendary instrumentalist-experimentalist collective began as the soundtrack for a real film these hallucinatory and rapacious Belgian-Californian sound collectors are making based on Brion Gysin’s novel about the Paris hotel where Gysin and William Burroughs pioneered their cut-up/fold-in nonlinear writing techniques. But listeners new to…
The Vibration hews closer to midtempo, noncombative postriot grrl than anything else. Make no mistake, though: Ann Fitzgerald could score frontwoman work in any Olympia, Washington dorm basement, for she embodies that particular scene’s favored bratty, up-in-your-grill-like-it-or-not vocal quality where sarcastically genial shifts seamlessly to borderline enraged. On Amarilla she…
