Firewater is billed as the fifth and final release by the Alkaholiks, a group that has, despite issuing several good albums, never achieved critical mass outside its California fan base. You wouldn’t know this from the group’s music, however, since the trio — Tash, J-Ro, and producer E-Swift — rarely…
In 2005 jazz’s vault diggers unearthed several gems, including rediscovered live recordings by the Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane, Coltrane’s classic quartet, and Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. While those recordings may be more celebrated by the insular jazz critic establishment, there’s little doubt that Miles Davis’s The Cellar…
Tired of being a one-man band, Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden has been heavy into collaborations as of late. Here are his recent sessions with dusty-fingered jazz drummer Steve Reid, and his recasting of “A Joy.” The frenetic lead-off track from last year’s Everything’s Ecstatic now sports hip-hop-quotable Eighties microphone legend…
Acoustic indie-rock plaints of this nature are a dime a dozen, yearning, spare, and incidentally pedestrian. Like Downey’s other lovesick inanities, “Flame Out Flyboy” almost begs for grit and gravitas — amniotic no-fi, sullen vocals, bleeding amps — the stranded-in-a-cave style Robert Pollard adopted for those late-Nineties solo masterpieces that…
For the first time in either’s career, LL and J.Lo seem aware of their limitations and expiring pop appeal. On “Control Myself,” LL does a PG-13-rated sex thang, mimicking the flow of Tone Loc’s “Wild Thing.” J.Lo, meanwhile, simply (and wonderfully) coos in the background. Producer Jermaine Dupri ensures understatement…
George Van Orsdel has taken his penchant for rockabilly, punk, and horror to a whole other level. The ubiquitous hometown favorites the Van Orsdels have begun their own monthly party, dubbed Psychobilly Spookshow Saturdays, at the spookiest venue in Miami, Churchill’s Pub. Van Orsdel made his name in Miami as…
The youthful and intrepid Soweto Gospel Choir, a South African-based troupe that includes some 30 members, is one of the most inspiring musical performances you’ll see this year, regardless of which altar you pray at. Under the direction of choir leaders David Mulovhedzi and Beverly Bryer, the Soweto Gospel Choir…
A few verses and explosive horn riffs from his accompanying band prove Elain Morales packed every ounce of his swing when he made his way to the States from Cuba more than five years ago. Despite his lack of mainstream recognition and exposure, the Cuban singer is one of the…
Usually once a South Florida band has achieved a modicum of success and national exposure, it leaves our little corner of the world and sets off for greener pastures. Bucking this trend, the genre-scaling gymnasts in the Linx are returning to the South Florida live music scene after a two-year…
On the rooftop of its Washington Avenue headquarters, the label-mates of Miami Beach’s SouthBeat Records — a motley crew of hip-hoppers, an R&B singer, and a scruffy, thirtysomething producer — are more or less piled on top of each other. The scraggly facial hair of Wrekonize, one of South Florida’s…
Following speculative pieces in New York magazine and other publications, the New York Times published an article this past week definitively exposing former literary it-boy JT Leroy as a figment of fortysomething Laura Albert’s imagination. According to the article, Savannah Knoop, half-sister of Albert’s associate, Geoffrey Knoop, played JT’s familiar…
“Rooowwwrrraaarrrrooowwwrrr!” A guttural growl straight from the deepest pits of Hell has just emanated from the throat of Melissa Cross, who follows it up with a giggle. “See, that didn’t hurt at all. But you should see the looks I just got!” she chirps. That’s because the chipper, red-tressed, late-fortysomething…
Dear D4L, I address you in a public forum, but I nurse a private wound. Indeed so grievous is my wound that once again I have stilled the rivers of fudge and shuttered my factory. I can do nothing now but lie in bed in utter darkness and await death,…
Let us now discuss the labyrinthine, in-your-face, introspective, esoteric, head-bobbing, fist-pumping, booty-shaking, genre-defying mélange of the Rock Critic Cliché milieu. (Riffage. Let us also discuss riffage.) Next time you spot one of these doofuses at a party (rifling through the host’s CD collection, pilfering all the Cheetos, sulking despondently in…
If We Are Scientists have heard Eazy-E’s tale of a bank robbery gone awry, you won’t find any lyrical hints beyond the title of “Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt,” Love and Squalor’s leadoff track and first single of their debut album. In fact, song for song, here at the beginning…
With song titles such as “Hong Kong Cable Car,” “Bangkok Cock Fight,” and “Shanghai Rickshaw,” Les Baxter’s The Fruit of Dreams will likely yield the sort of faux-exotica music that was all the rage in the space age Fifties and Sixties before making a hipster-fueled comeback in the Nineties. But…
For the armchair listener who cannot possibly keep up with the prodigious vinyl output of German house, that sleek BMW roadster of the genre, at least once a year comes a mix CD that gleans any number of highlights. In years past, it was Triple R’s Friends and Michael Mayer’s…
Although there’s only a handful of recent, previously unreleased live tracks to tempt collectors, the mere fact that The Long Road Home is the first real retrospective to embrace John Fogerty’s entire career is in itself ample cause for celebration. Combining his seminal work with Creedence Clearwater Revival and his…
Having the gonzo electro warriors in the Crystal Method put together the soundtrack for London, a film with drug-fueled plot lines, seems like a natural choice. Based on the perfunctory idea of London’s substance-induced stories, the Crystal Method’s changeable beat structures, such as those in “Fire to Me” (a collaboration…
Just when you thought “My Humps” broke the undie-rap Geneva Convention, the Peas have taken Cee-Lo, Talib, and Q-Tip hostage, with Taboo threatening even more reps in his shout-outs. Ironically the problem with the track is that the tepid beats and braggadocio are too close to their pre-sellout mediocrity —…
Instead of writing not-subtle-enough puff-punk love letters to their creator of choice, the Christian undercover agents of Relient K are now singing about how much he sucks. Refreshing, but their verbosity is still too cutesy and hookless. And hey, the second-chance stuff — this one’s about God too, isn’t it?…
Back in Cuba during the Forties and Fifties, when conversations turned to sonero Beny More, the most common refrain was “Todo podrán imitar lo, pero nadie va igualar lo” (“Everybody can try imitating him, but nobody will ever equal him”). There have been a slew of tribute albums by lesser…
