Most of Moorer’s songs have always explored life’s darker side, which is understandable; when she was a teenager, her father murdered her mother and then took his own life. On Getting Somewhere, Moorer takes her demons for a walk in the sun, and although it’s not all sweetness and light,…
Boston-bred folkie Susan Werner vies for contention via a new American anthem, one reflecting the sad state of our nation. With a theatrical delivery bolstered by solo piano and a swell of strings, Werner laments a country that “tilts sharply to the right, with our leaders straight and white,” where…
The insistent bomp of crunk meets a disco beat and is tempered by techno’s distanced cool. Green Velvet shares the anthemic tendencies of label mates Tiefschwarz, but this stylistic smashup, though still dance-floor suited, has just enough burr and blur to be reminiscent of the Jesus and Mary Chain’s fuzz-out…
Few musicians create such universal music as does Kenny Garrett. Throughout a nearly 30-year career, multi-Grammy nominee and alto saxophonist Garrett has performed with jazz greats like Miles Davis and Art Blakey, as well as rockers Sting and Peter Gabriel. Garrett’s spin on jazz has allowed him to work in…
You can imagine how seriously Demonic Domain’s songwriter/guitarist takes his death-metal band when you find out his name is D. Mon. But maybe, as a member of a barely two-year-old group with street teams in most major cities, he has the right to. “We’re kind of amazed at the attention…
Bandleader, singer, composer, trombonist, Grammy winner, political activist, and living legend Willie Colón has done it all. He cut his first album, El Malo, at the age of seventeen with vocalist Hector Lavoe, another man with a now-legendary resumé. El Malo helped define the “New York Sound” — known today…
RBD’s bandmates began as stars on the Mexican teen soap opera Rebelde before releasing their debut of the same title. The album went platinum, with more than 500,000 sales in the country. Nuestro Amor, their second album, sold 127,000 units in seven hours. Suffice it to say, these guys are…
Frontman J.D. Wilkes has always thought of fiery Pentecostal preachers as true Southern punks, what with their charismatic showmanship and fear-for-your-lives ranting. Manifest that philosophy in a rail-thin body weighing in at, oh, about a buck ten, leaping about stage as he baptizes the crowd with his sweat and some…
Few bands bridge the divide between instrumental proficiency and sharply crafted songwriting as deftly as the Samples. Long before the term jam band was coined — way back in the mid-Eighties, in fact — this Colorado combo funneled its freewheeling melodies into odes etched with inspiration — reflective, evocative songs…
On its first major tour, Chicago’s Mirror Mirror will be bringing some mellower metal to Miami. “We call it melodic metal core,” says singer Brandon Butler of his band’s style, which combines moments of slower, softer singing backed by more soothing guitar chords with harder and heavier musical breaks. “We…
That’s Demolition, as in reducing things to rubble; Doll, as in a hot drummer chick on a stand-up kit; and Rods, as in kiss my double entendre. The family Doll Rod has been available to get naked and make a jolly shambles of wedding receptions, bar mitzvahs, and kiddie birthday…
The title translates as The Thread, and the album is built on a subliminal tone that runs through every tune. A bit of electronica and a few acoustic instruments pop up now and again, but most of the music is created by Camille’s astonishingly limber multitrack vocals. Her pure, breathy…
If you’ve been listening to South Florida radio for the past decade, chances are you’ve caught the unmistakable sound of Terror Squad/Big Dawg Pitbull affiliate DJ Khaled. Not one to continuously rattle off the regular station playlist, Khaled consistently reps the home team and comes with more energy than Dwyane…
Indigenous’s Chasing the Sun sounds like an old-fashioned blues record; the spirit of 1969 hangs over every guitar solo, drum beat, and vocal. Frontman Mato Nanji’s vocals are somewhere between frantic and detached, and “Out of Nowhere” never relaxes for a second as it updates the heavy, conflicted sound of…
A leggy blond in a curve-hugging pink dress stretches out on a leopard-print couch, her eyes shut and her face relaxed — she’s oblivious to the very public arena of Tantra (1445 Pennsylvania Ave., Miami Beach, 305-672-4765). Her suit-clad suitor obediently kneads her bare feet, sliding his fingers up and…
The original punk-rock summer camp celebrates a dozen years running this summer. According to tour founder Kevin Lyman, this shouldn’t be happening. “We should never talk in the present. We should be talking in the past tense like this is history. For this to still be around twelve years later…
Long considered one of the most popular dance artists in the nation, with a Grammy to his credit (he won in 2002 for remixing No Doubt’s “Hella Good”), barrel-chested Roger Sanchez is a health nut who likes to decompress in the gym. He’s beloved by some Miamians for hosting the…
In the mid-Seventies, Memphis DJ Rick Dees composed a novelty tune called “Disco Duck.” That song turned out to be a massive hit and transformed Dees into a Top 40 radio celebrity. Thirty years on, the non-Spanish-speaking Dees is trying to capture the Hispanic youth demographic with his very own…
Mr. Lif’s sophomore full-length is brilliantly structured to be a metaphor for the battle people endure to be heard. Mo’ Mega moves from a chaotic first half in which the Boston rapper’s frustrated voice cranes through the rubble of El-P’s production (every bit as suffocating as it was when Cannibal…
Though the Knife’s forthcoming Silent Shout will soon overtake Sissy’s All Under in the interesting-and-weird-girl-fronted-electronica sweepstakes, this duo from Toronto, Canada, is deserving of its own prize for meritorious experimentalism. Johanne Williams and David Trusz use old-school Moogs, Oberheims, tape-delay machines, and band-pass filters as anti-digital calling cards, yet Trusz’s…
Without question, Clement “Sir Coxsone” Dodd was the man who contributed most to the development of modern Jamaican music. He formed several record labels, ran sound systems, imported rare platters, and produced classic Jamaican records. All of this activity centered on his legendary Studio One label and the studio from…
Bluegrass maestro Del McCoury has bravely gone where few bluegrass bands have gone before, playing rock and jam-band venues, thereby introducing his high, lonesome sound to a new generation of listeners. On most of his albums, McCoury successfully straddles the divide between progressive and traditional music. The Promised Land, a…
