There are a couple of things stopping U.S. audiences from realizing that World Outside My Window, the debut album from soul singer Glenn Lewis, is one of the more brilliant, satisfying R&B albums of the past year. For starters, Lewis hails from Toronto. When you think of the future of…
If Beenie Man weren’t still smashing it on the ragga circuit, as he has been for nearly a decade, his crossover success in U.S. markets might taint his street cred. But instead, his lyrical skills and charisma just translate, making him a pioneer in bridging the long-puzzling disconnect between Jamaican…
Metro Area transports listeners into an alternate universe, where the lush sounds of Salsoul and Prelude were never overpowered by the harder sounds of hip-hop and breakbeat. Instead, it picks up where Prince and Paul Simpson left off in the mid-Eighties, crafting modern disco, with just enough modern flair to…
Call him precocious or wise beyond his years, but Sondre Lerche is hardly your typical nineteen-year-old songwriter. While most barely legal bards are likely to bang out three-chord tunes about girls, drugs, and the burden of being perennially misunderstood, Lerche has come up with a collection of luxurious, grown-up pop…
We are movin’ on, baby. Decked out in our finest threads. No zoot suits; head wraps and kufis are the now. Cornrows replace pimp hats. Silver and onyx replace Dolemite diamonds and gold. Stones representing cultural heritage dangle on small silver links of ancient tribal significance. Tarheel jerseys and Oxfords…
When Robert Pollard was 21, halfway between Dayton high school basketball stardom and a fourth-grade teaching gig and a few years before starting his lo-fidelity beer-drinking rock band, Guided by Voices, he, his brother Jimmy, and some friends would get together. They’d descend their basement steps and spend hours banging…
“I guess you get to a point in your life when you start asking the big questions, like what does it all mean,” says Eric Knight, sitting in a Kendall Barnes & Noble, reflecting on personal turns of events that have changed his priorities. Sure, the shelves of the corporate…
Miami ska-punk stalwarts Going Nowhere are doing just that, calling it quits after five years and one CD.Thousands of bands (you’ll find at least one in any college town) have paired basic punk with ska rhythms, creating a sound no less enjoyable for its predictability; Going Nowhere was as dependable…
The Rolling Stones’ 1960s catalog has been treated with little respect over the years. Take ABKCO’s abysmal Stones CD series issued back in 1986. Some tracks were mastered on the wrong speed. Worse yet, ABKCO used the Stones’ inferior U.S. catalog as the basis of the collection, rather than the…
On their new album, Germany’s Terranova crew prove that the art of breaking beats is not an obsolete force in music. Drawing influence from the past, Terranova (now Edition Terranova) fuses the classic days of both hip-hop and drum and bass in what may well be the best breakbeat album…
With the excess of empty sugar calories fattening music listeners, Cribabi’s Volume is an example of how a little glucose in one’s diet can be a good thing. The debut of Japanese underground starlette Yukari Fujio and ex-Fine Young Cannibal guitarist Andy Cox, Volume disperses ample supplies of glitter and…
VP’s Reggae Gold 2002 compilation is a blend of all the right ingredients: a selective combination of powerful producers, talented artists, and radio-poised hits. “Give It to Her” by the talented team of Tanto Metro & Devonte strikes that perfect balance of party funk and soulful contamination. Devonte’s heart-wrenching voice…
Though the band members dis critics — even those who give them good ink — on their Website, I’ll go out on a limb and say that this is the best record of 30footFALL’s nearly decade-long career. Granted I haven’t heard any of their eight previous releases or approximately twenty…
Given the current craze for anything in a mop-top and skinny tie, it will be no surprise if Kindercore Records’ the Agenda becomes the next MTV mod-revival darling. The music industry is gaga for garage rock, and the Agenda fits the bill (dollar signs were visible between the lines of…
Whatever you call the Damn Personals, please, please don’t refer to them as the saviors of rock and roll, even if their retro indie rock is the stuff that makes lazy music critics sling the clichéd term at bands like the Strokes, White Stripes, and the Hives. Working their way…
Beneath the shimmery dresses and couture suits, Miamians are social animals driven into the night by the basic need to connect. No one really likes to be at home on a city weekend, thumbing through old high school pictures. It’s just that lavish fêtes and glamorous grand openings now fulfill…
Ruben Blades has always made music that is a record of his time. In representing the soul of a marginal Latin American culture that has since moved into the mainstream, his great albums of the Seventies and Eighties were catalysts for both the global popularization of salsa and for contemporary…
“I’m like the only Latin woman in hip-hop,” declares radio personality/rapper Angie Martinez. Hmmm, what about fellow Puerto Rican rapper Ivy Queen? “Maybe this will make it easier for her,” Martinez concedes. “Her time hasn’t come yet.” Martinez believes in the importance of role models, so maybe that’s why she…
It happens to the best of us. Jerry Rivera, the onetime salsa wunderkind famous for singing about his baby face (and for exclaiming in a petulant tone “Baby!”), is not quite so babyish anymore. “A little kid called me sir,” he exclaims in shock. Still safely under 30, Rivera is…
The last time Gonzalo Rubalcaba played for a South Florida audience, conditions weren’t exactly ripe for a good performance by the classically trained jazz pianist, born in Cuba but based in Coral Springs since 1996. And we’re not talking politics this time, or inclement weather. It was a little more…
A new Levi’s commercial shows a couple plunging their car into murky water to the tune of Air’s “Playground Love.” Techno duo Orbital makes a cameo appearance in this summer’s action film xXx. Though electronica has penetrated every living room in the nation, the electronica scene doesn’t have much to…
It’s 4:25 a.m. when the nightlife vampires stir. The time between late night and sunrise is no place for the faint of party. The weak and weary have already retired their dancing shoes. Only the hard-core remain clubbing. The downtown traffic on NE Eleventh Street thickens. Those not willing to…
