It is slightly bizarre to listen to someone find her voice without having any idea what she’s actually saying, but such is the experience for many of Juana Molina’s listeners. And really, “slightly bizarre” is the name of the Argentine singer-songwriter’s game. Molina frequently takes odd bends while remaining seemingly…
Danish synth-pop trio Tiger Baby adds its name to the growing list of acts reviving and revitalizing the sound of early-Eighties New Wave dance music. Vocalist Pernille Pang possesses the kind of breathy purr that can express both simmering sexuality and ironic detachment, often at the same time, which adds…
Like a vacant wind whistling across a distant prairie, the New Amsterdams’ hollow-eyed ruminations are often eerie and unsettling yet at times unexpectedly enticing. The band’s fourth effort is a mostly furtive affair, one that takes time to gain traction. Many of the melodies linger just out of reach, and…
After a silence of five years — during which time singer Tim Burgess temporarily embarked on a solo sojourn — the Charlatans have regrouped and released the most focused effort of their seventeen-year career. As always, there are ominous overtones residing just below the surface, from the drive and deliberation…
Moooore fiyah out of the Southbeat camp as DJ Spinna laces the bouncy single off Wrek’s debut album complete with cut-up Jeru the Damaja dialogue and House of Pain choruses. This MC doesn’t wait for anyone to say he’s nice; he tells you he already knows. Bring back Ed Lover…
Randy Watson, a.k.a. ?uestlove from the Roots crew, takes listeners on a nine-minute adventure — from broken beat to drum ‘n’ bass and coffee-shop neo-soul — with his percussive explorations on this Radiohead cover. Sultry vocals from Donn bring out all those emotions you thought were left for chick flicks…
Why these mystic-minded, lysergic journeymen (and journeywoman) felt inclined to pluck and cover a Beatles White Album obscurity is anyone’s guess. Their revision swaps out the central piano motif for countless equilibrium-challenged guitars and Isobel Sollenberger’s refracting, stoned vocals — with a bonus coda where the band delivers a low-key,…
More so than any genre, the blues embrace aging. Players in their sixties are kids to the stars who’ve made it to their seventies, eighties — the legendary Diamond Teeth Mary McClain played annual shows in Miami well into her nineties. So it’s pretty perfect that blues legend Buddy Guy,…
This electronic-music pioneer from Philadelphia has remained a strongly blinking blip on the ever-shifting sonar screen of big-room dance-sound enthusiasts, from his emergence as a live-recording college favorite in the early Nineties to his more recent minimalist house tracks. Wink’s latest album, Profound Sounds: Volume 3, dropped this past May…
Looking for an excuse to wear a costume before October? This one’s for you. The Junina Festival is an annual family-oriented Brazilian event featuring traditional food, music, games, and garb. Popular getups include men dressing as farm boys and sporting suspenders and straw hats, and women as farm girls with…
When a band’s name means “sound mixture,” you know you’re about to hear something deliberately style-bending. Sonido Batido has been performing in Miami since 2003, when it began building a reputation for making extreme live-music mashups work out okay. In the past, the band members used organs, trumpets, and traditional…
Originally from Kansas, Mia Vassilev plays a much meaner piano than Dorothy ever did. Vassilev is a classical pianist who, in addition to performing in her hometown, has played concerts in Oklahoma, Missouri, and Texas. Her renditions have been broadcast on Bulgaria’s Classical Radio Network, and she has performed for…
Prepare to face the dark side of the Force. The Dark Lords of the (metal) Sith are about to invade South Florida. Well, maybe this isn’t quite what George Lucas had in mind, but Vader, the veteran death metal band that takes its name from Lucas’s most famous villain, is…
Ask most respectable Latin American hipsters under the age of 35 what they think of the trova and they’ll: (A) tease that you’re a Sandalista — a postrevolutionary Birkenstock-clad volunteer bound for a nongovernmental organization in a small Andean village; or (B) offer you a snide reenactment of a sensitive…
It’s around 1:30 a.m., just south of downtown. In the warm, breezy outdoors, an onstage DJ pours Latin dance music over a crowd of jovial party people. Rod, an olive-complexioned 34-year-old, sits at a wooden table draped with a white tablecloth, a remnant of the long-gone dinner hour. Behind him…
When the Stills released their 2003 debut album, Logic Will Break Your Heart, critics were quick to lump them in with Anglo-inspired New York City bands like Interpol and the Strokes. The kneejerk brush-off: Yeah, more Joy Division/Echo and the Bunnymen wannabes. It didn’t matter that the Stills are from…
It’s 1:30 a.m., one week after the vicious murder of South Beach bouncer John Williams, who was stabbed in the heart and died outside Mansion nightclub while trying to break up a knife fight. The club’s main floor is packed with the usual throng of scantily clad young females toting…
The basic ingredients of Saturday’s Laptop Battle at Churchill’s Pub are, well, pretty basic. All that’s needed are an even number of computer-wielding contestants, an audience, and a few brave judges. Now, about the rules: Screw the rules. What do you think this is, American Idol? All right, so maybe…
Ghost repeaters are unmanned radio stations that broadcast narrow, prerecorded playlists — the AM radio equivalent of the record bins at Wal-Mart. Wisconsin-born, Massachusetts-based singer/songwriter Jeffrey Foucault has been waging war on bland Muzak all of his life, and this ironically titled set strikes another blow for genuine music made…
Between the ebb and flow of organic instrumentals and sporadic twinkling of programmed beats and synths, Munich’s Couch dissembles the commonly intolerable crescendoing moments of postrock. Figur 5’s opener (but surely a set closer), “Gegen Alles Bereit,” roars with multitracked guitar and packs its dense melancholia among hammered single-note-driven licks…
Walkmen frontman/lyricist Hamilton Leithauser does late-twentysomething/early-thirtysomething-in-midlife-crisis hand-wringing better than any other American working in indie rock today. That his band’s first two albums were titled Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone (in which he tried to convince himself his life didn’t suck) and Bows and Arrows (in which…
Don’t let those could-be Finnish song titles fool you. Anathallo hails from Michigan, its name draws reference from a Japanese folktale, and its debut, Floating World, bears little resemblance to any of the zillion CD-Rs recorded in recent years by Avarus or Avarus-associated concerns. This five-years-running septet fuses the reeling,…
