Let’s eliminate any potential confusion right off the top: The Explosion is not the Blues Explosion. Besides, The Explosion couldn’t be more different from Jon Spencer’s garage-rock project. This Boston five-piece digs into punk rock the way it was done in Berkeley’s Gilman Street club, D.C.’s F Street club, and…
“The girls always looks good” has been Danny Jessup’s credo since the early Nineties, when he used the back of a real-estate office in Miami Springs to host a public-access TV show on local rock and roll. Sometimes you wonder if his glib style might be better received if he…
North Mississippi Allstars are actually Tennessee royalty. The Dickinson brothers, drummer Cody and guitarist Luther, are the sons of legendary Memphis producer Jim Dickinson, who recorded The Replacements and Spiritualized, among others. Dad used to take the boys on the road with his bands, where they learned at a young…
On New Year’s Eve, Churchill’s sound man Roach stepped from behind the sound booth and onto the stage as part of Sound 4 Sound. Roach proved his ability to drum at breakneck speed, and his band left ears ringing with a set described by one fan as “mosh-o-rific.” Sound 4…
This year opens with the deliciously blended harmonies of Baby Calendar. Jackie Biver and Tom Gorrio build a landscape of childlike innocence and wonderment with acoustic guitar, keyboard, and subtle percussion elements. The aural chiaroscuro of their vocals works well in this setting. Pop sensibilities are explored through stripped-down, midtempo…
Saturdays, Lounge 16; Wednesdays, Royal Bar Native New Yorker David Solero started his professional disc jockey duties back when 45s and belt-drive turntables were the norm. He hung out in the DJ booth of the city’s most legendary rent party, The Loft, and the Greenwich Village disco inferno, Paradise Garage…
Gabriel Fain has a superhuman ear for detail. You can hear it foremost in his euphoric, voluptuous house music sets at Space. But you can also hear it in his speech and in the careful way the Israeli-born DJ uses metaphor to tell a story. “It was like when you’re…
From the outside, Jimmy Eat World’s Tempe, Arizona, studio looks just like another sterile office space in a quiet, out-of-the-way business complex. But walk through the nondescript entrance and the place is a surprisingly cozy rock and roll den. There’s enough cushy seating for a decent-sized party, and instruments are…
Russell “Ol’ Dirty Bastard” Jones died from a drug overdose on November 13, 2004. This week sees the arrival of his first posthumous release, Osirus: The Official Mixtape. This is not unusual. Tupac “2Pac” Shakur’s Don Killamunati: The Seven Day Theory was released on November 5, 1996, almost two months…
The fourth album from Sufjan Stevens is hushed and intimate, as he gently whispers his lyrics while accompanying himself on acoustic guitar and banjo. The music on Seven Swans was originally slated for the 2003 album Greetings from Michigan, The Great Lake State. But it was already spilling over with…
Juana Molina is an Argentine singer/guitarist. When she plays live she allows her long brown hair to hang in her face while she picks simple figures on her guitar and overlays them with precise vocal lines; her bushy-bearded partner Alejandro Franov supplies a sticky keyboard goo that lends the music…
The whole girl-with-a-guitar genre is like your first “A Woman Needs a Man Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle” bumper sticker: Its overt earnestness is extremely embarrassing once you’ve moved out of the dorm and into the messy, “post-feminist” world full of things like strap-ons and Peaches. So Jealous, the…
Whether it inspires you or just leaves you pummeled, Funeral is a staggering debut. Over the course of just one album, The Arcade Fire bursts out of the rigid beats and chopping chords of its postpunk influences and straight into arena-rock territory; lead singer Win Butler’s raw-throated bombast has even…
Touring in support of their first album, The Beginning Stages of … , the Polyphonic Spree seemed likely to fall into a novelty-set trap, pushing the flowering, orchestral dream-pop of Mercury Rev and the Flaming Lips to its sweetest extreme. Together We’re Heavy, on the other hand, is more cake…
This remix compilation is filled with anthems from Osunlade’s Yoruba label that were previously available only on wax. Each single is an orisha for Osunlade, who conducts a spirit-getting service for the songs of Salif Keita, Cesaria Evora, Spacek, Shazz, Erro, and others. He dresses down 4Hero’s “Hold It Down”…
It’s been a long time coming, but Twista has finally been given the resources to generate an album worthy of his underrated talent. Off the momentum of the insanely popular Kanye West-produced “Slow Jamz,” Twista delivers no less than a classic presentation of mid-Nineties Southernesque hip-hop on Kamikaze, giving credence…
Your goal is to have as much fun as possible with as little static as possible, so South Beach, with its parasitic parking lots, outrageous cover charges, and celebrity peacocks, is out. For your purposes, however, Coconut Grove is in. In the area that surrounds the intersection of McFarlane Road…
When I visited New York several days ago, the streets were mostly abandoned. A few revelers braved the winter breeze, a prelude to the snowstorm that was about to hit. Until I made my way to Times Square, where holiday shoppers crowded the sidewalks and stood in lines that snaked…
Combining two artists’ debuts into one release was sensible marketing for Lil Jon, who sought to bring out further evidence of the young crunk culture of Atlanta. But the maneuver almost begged for competition between Lil Scrappy and the trio Trillville, even though both received the benefit of Jon at…
No Doubt’s best record, Return to Saturn, played like an unofficial Bridget Jones soundtrack. Gwen Stefani is jealous of cuter women, greets her birthday with grim gravity, clings to an unfaithful man, and frets: Who will be the one to marry me? Her pathological insecurity is absurd but never insincere…
Loretta Lynn had been a grandmother for over ten years when Jack White was born, so it’s fair to ask exactly what this Johnny-come-lately from The White Stripes has to offer one of the grande dames of American music. In pairing a country legend with a hip producer, Interscope Records…
It’s amazing math and science majors don’t outnumber metalheads at an average Isis show, as the Boston-born, LA-based quintet’s insistent cadences dovetail with such point-counterpoint precision that it captivates like covalent bonding. Strained bellows and a cascading, gnawing ensemble of guitars and electronics equally flesh and flay atop skewed meters…
