Music

“Apocalyptic” probably felt like a pretty sweet jam when Mountain Con was in the studio, and within an anything-goes context, it works. Exposed to the open air, though, it’s just plain embarrassing. DJ scratches, barnyard sound elements, funk, and sad white-boi rhymes (that one would expect Anthony Kiedis and Beck…

Languis crowds a lot of great stuff into a small, enclosed space here — a steady bass-drum beat; a jumpy bouncing-ball bass line; a muscled, shoegazing Wall of Sound; doubled vocals encased in a vapor trail of echo. Then the group ups the ante, slipping in disco guitars to give…

With the president’s popularity slipping to uncharted nadirs, the time was finally right for the Dixie Chicks to charge in with an unforgiving, unrepentant anthem that rebukes their censorious critics and doubles as an anthem of pride for anyone else who refuses to buckle…

The feathery and the massive collide neatly here, as braided clumps of nimble, lively guitar are immersed in churning, rapidly rising growling-amp waters. Halfway through the track, blaring, iron-ore-pylon riffs jut in, obliterating everything that came before — perhaps a miniature allegory of humanity’s merciless drive for progress supplanting nature’s…

Growing up in New Orleans, Pulitzer Prize-winning trumpeter Wynton Marsalis knew little about the historical and cultural significance of African slaves playing their indigenous music in what is now called Louis Armstrong Memorial Park from the early Eighteenth Century to the mid-Nineteenth Century. That all changed three years ago when…

Zeitgeist: German, from Zeit (time) + Geist (spirit): the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era. Yeah, it’s a loaded word, one that knots sober Teutonic gravity around dramatic academic loft. But Merriam-Webster’s definition couldn’t be more on-point in describing the music of UK quartet Bloc Party. When…

Every countryside in the Third World has drivers of beat-up pickup trucks who will take hitchhikers to the city. Most of the time the trucks are manned by farmers traveling to and from town to buy supplies, and often livestock like chickens or peccary share the cab. Hitching a ride…

With Expressions (2012 a.u.), Los Angeles MC-turned-crooner Dudley Perkins improves on his solid 2003 album, A Lil’ Light. For one, he sounds more comfortable singing and harmonizing, and even allows his rapper guise “Declaime” to take over at times (particularly on “Dolla Bill,” an effective reprise of A Lil’ Light’s…

“My twelfth album launch! Now everything is carte blanche!” trumpets the Rod Stewart of rap at the launch of his Todd Smith. The single “It’s LL and Santana” may be a thunderous collabo with Juelz, but Carlos would have been a wiser guest to intro the five “ooh girl ooh…

What an odd yet adventuresome fellow this Nick Wright, a.k.a. Dogme 95, appears to be. Although the music that graces The Reagle Beagle and last year’s companion piece, Arcadian Hymns, is the lowest of lo-fi, even downright primitive in places, Wright’s current concept — a fictionalized voyage with social scientist…

Critical disdain for the Fiery Furnaces reached its apex last year, when the NYC-based brother-sister pair recorded and released Rehearsing My Choir, a twisty time’s-outta-joint album — conceived with their grandmother — that rewards patience. The year prior, Blueberry Boat was assailed as unfocused, indigestible garbage. And now comes a…

Like Lucinda Williams, to whom she’s frequently compared, Shannon McNally packs a wallop of a vocal — a tough, tenacious delivery that’s equally adept at conveying both pain and poignancy. McNally’s latest album — a live showcase for a signature style she’s dubbed “North American Ghost Music” — emphasizes a…

Though drummer Glenn Kotche’s role with Wilco may be all the credence needed to draw the indie faithful, little evidence of his day job shows on this, his third solo outing. Drum solos were once the rage, but Kotche’s ability to hammer out increasingly complex rhythms on a variety of…

This track is brisker than the Yoshimi singles — closer to the spazzy sound of Hit to Death in the Future Head from 1992. Unfortunately the Lips haven’t regained their sinister sense of humor, leaving Wayne Coyne’s mawkish attempts at deep thought totally insufferable. It’s Styx for a sloppier subgenre…

One downside of the mashup is the way it can conflate diametrically opposed musical eras into a glop of mere nostalgia: the Jive Bunny effect. This clumsy combination of 1971 psychedelic apocalypse and 1981 postdisco futurism is an evil, awkward example…

It’s been only two years since DMX’s album Grand Champ, 24 months spent dealing with personal and criminal issues that would cripple a weaker person. But from the classic bark and bravado he and Swizz Beatz show here, you wouldn’t guess he’d even caught a cold…

She seizes your attention with hardscrabble, gritty guitar riffs and then holds forth on the title theme in aggro, anguished fashion, like the bastard spawn of Eddie Vedder and Alanis Morissette. Sure, no one’s really heard of Carol Bui yet, but that could and should change, provided she kicks the…