Don’t blame the fiery Pérez Prado for that enervating Louie Vega remake of “Mambo #5,” though you could possibly blame him for Ricky Ricardo, as well as America’s continuing obsession with the sensual Latino experience. Even James Brown’s infamous grunts and “hunh”s are echoed in the hollers of this diminutive…
Mexican alt-rock fans won’t be surprised by Barcelona, Spain’s the Pinker Tones, for they present a cut-and-paste formula of pop, funk, soul, bossa, breakbeat, swing, lounge, and psychedelia. The fact that band members Mister Furia and Professor Manso played a long list of instruments in their own recording studio, Pinkerland,…
Props are due Anti-Flag for not merely chucking to its Warped Tour mall-rat constituents some three-chord poli-sci punk they can shout along to, but also for writing liners chock full of thoughtful essays and links to provoke further research of U.S. capitalism’s ills. It doesn’t hurt that this “ef Bushco”…
Nearly three years after their semibreakthrough into the MTV2/VH1 cultural consciousness, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs return with a lead single celebrating the previous decade’s FM hegemony. To wit: Karen O genuflects before Courtney Love’s gritted-teeth yowl and Polly Jean Harvey’s wordless yet expressive yelp while the rest of the band…
This tinfoil-helmeted indie ditty telegraphs its paranoia through subject matter and structure alike. Jittery, nervous guitars constrict and snap in harried rhythm while birds are revealed as spybots and “The footage is beamed back to central headquarters/Where all of the agents know their orders.” Who says police-state horror has to…
Quirky New Hope, Pennsylvania duo Ween can’t be put into any sort of musical genre box or category. So don’t even try, big-booty bitch. Over the past two decades, Gene and Dean Ween (Aaron Freeman and Mickey Melchiondo) have kept their devoted fans amused with music only a fifteen-year-old boy…
It seems like there’s some unwritten law dictating that all great American jazz performers must migrate to Paris in order to be appreciated back home. Dee Dee Bridgewater is no exception. During her self-imposed exile in France, Bridgewater’s great voice finally found its place as a great interpreter. Her majestic…
Angst. Anger. Apathy. Issues. That’s what you get from L.A.’s Get Set Go. A self-professed slacker, singer Mike TV fesses up that he’s a loser, unworthy of rock-star reverence. The new album, Ordinary World, is buttressed by self-effacing irony, insecurity, and ineptness. Bereft of cash, girls, ambition, and purpose, he…
British indie-rock quartet Editors is constantly compared to Joy Division and Interpol, and justifiably so. But what the group lacks in innovation it makes up for in absorbing anthems that remind us why the New Wave revival happened in the first place. Editors’ debut album, The Back Room, blasts vigorous…
The geeky Motion City Soundtrack is often called punk because of its label Epitaph’s punk-heavy roster. Truth be told, the band is just about as punk as similar-sounding Jimmy Eats World, and, well, that’s just not very punk at all. The Mark Hoppus-produced Commit This to Memory followed up the…
Think of the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. Not the spooky, psychedelic depiction you might find displayed under a black light in a head shop, but the huggable Disney version who puffs out fluffy vowels and silhouettes of crocodiles from a questionable water pipe that rests on a giant mushroom…
In the song “Street Fighting Man,” Mick Jagger wrote a lyric that seemed to suggest an employment opportunity: “What can a poor boy do but to sing for a rock ‘n’ roll band?” Indeed the Stones have slogged it out for the better part of the past 45 years, but…
Massive Attack’s coolness expiration date is as yet unknown. The Bristol, England-based cooperative came to prominence with shivering bass, unpredictably syncopated beats, reggae-flecked rhythms, Middle Eastern rattles, and vocals as seductive as they are threatening. Over the years the core members have been joined by a revolving door of collaborators…
Michael Ramos, the Austin, Texas musician who records as Charanga Cakewalk, grew up bilingual and bicultural and made a name for himself as a sideman playing with John Mellencamp, Paul Simon, and Patty Griffin. As a young man, he turned away from his Latino heritage to pursue rock, but when…
The name Tanya Morgan might sound like that of a neo-soul songstress, but it is actually the pseudonym of a collaboration among MCs — Brooklyn’s Von Pea and Cincinnati’s Ilwil (Ilyas and Donwill). The trio met online and began e-mailing song demos back and forth between takes on their other…
Eliot Lipp’s sophomore album, Tacoma Mockingbird, is meant to be a tribute to the young producer’s hometown of Tacoma, Washington, but the album seems more in love with sound than anything else. With the zeal of Roger Troutman or James “D-Train” Williams, Lipp piles on thick, retro-futuristic keyboards that exude…
Jason Collett redefines the traditional notion of the dewy-eyed, shoegazing folk-rock troubadour. On this, his sophomore solo set, Collett — a professional carpenter when he’s not gigging with the Toronto musical co-op known as Broken Social Scene — offers a dozen concise acoustic gems enhanced by burnished, back-porch arrangements …..
Ray Davies’s first solo album and first new studio album since the Kinks’ Phobia from 1993 might seem like cause for celebration, especially if you’re a young Kinks konvert who hasn’t bothered to check out the albums that followed Muswell Hillbillies. Sadly it doesn’t take long for Other People’s Lives…
Producer Don Was gives Jessi Colter’s Out of the Ashes a gratifyingly dry post-Willie Mitchell groove, and Colter boasts pop moves. The cover of Bob Dylan’s “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” contextualizes this female outlaw, while her own “Starman” bears comparison to the David Bowie song of the same…
New York R&B newcomer Cassie sounds blasé about everything, even her sexual history. “I know them other guys, they been talkin’ ’bout the way I do what I do/They heard I was good, they wanna see if it’s true,” she mentions on her debut single, “Me & U.” Her goodies,…
Wyclef Jean’s presence is rather gratuitous in this infectious if twerpy (watch out for that ringtone trumpet) ode to the honesty of Shakira’s lower torso; in the current pop context, he sounds like a cheap substitute for will.i.am. He’s not really welcome in the video either, where he distracts from…
On “Turn Out the Lights,” Matthew Pryor of the New Amsterdams has a touch of country in his crooning — not a twang so much as a prairie-state lonesomeness. A distant guitar drones in the background, adding to the broodiness of the tune, which is all about finding redemption in…
