Yes, it’s true: The Beastie Boys are pushing 40. As their original fan base comes to terms with being 30- and 40-somethings, the Beasties have responded by looking to the past on their latest CD. To the Five Boroughs represents a throwback to the formative days of rap music, casting…
Imagine you’re cutting through the dark waters of the Atlantic Ocean in a cigarette boat stashed with several hundred pounds of cocaine and a Coast Guard helicopter hot on your ass. Now you can have the soundtrack to that little fantasy. Now It’s Overhead, the brainchild of Athens, Georgia, producer…
Mouse on Mars are the young lions of German techno, their squishy, bulbous music so thoroughly modern and forward-looking that it makes Kraftwerk sound like an old Volkswagen. Ten years after their debut, the duo of Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma remains well ahead of the curve, but Radical…
When Ronnie James Dio was in Black Sabbath in the early ’80s, it may have been hard for him to express his inner self. Left to his own devices, though, Dio let his imagination loose in Dungeons and Dragons land. And there it has stayed, from the opening strains of…
Surely, Ben Gibbard’s lyrics have been the impetus for many a mixtape since Death Cab for Cutie started in 1997. His lyrics drip and ache with longing and lust and extract that ubiquitous feeling that deep down we’re all fucked up, searching for that one person to unfuck us up…
Caetano Veloso has often been called the Bob Dylan of Brazil. But it’s just as accurate to say that Dylan is the Caetano Veloso of America. Both are founding fathers of modern pop music, deified as icons in their respective countries. Each has written poetry, worked in film, and are…
Joe Satriani is a guitarist’s guitarist, someone who can also speak to the ears of nonnoodlephiles. By taking technical, blatantly wankcentric music and rescuing it from the cliché so common with other shredders (Yngwie Malmsteen being the ugliest example), Satriani creates layered music as opposed to a two-dimensional backdrop for…
IQU The press photo for Seattle electro group IQU (pronounced ee-koo) shows Japanese-American singers Michiko Swiggs and Kento Oiwa posing in front of people dressed in furry-animal costumes. How deliciously Japanese, you think. But the duo’s music isn’t all cute and cuddly. On its latest album, Sun Q, theremins screech,…
Chicks That Vote In case you haven’t noticed (clean up under that rock, would ya?), there’s an election coming up. And as one of the most important states in this election, musical acts have been convening en masse to educate and rock us all into voting. Sure, you’ve got your…
Heroine Sheiks The Heroine Sheiks dwell somewhere in the miasma between post punk, no wave, and alt metal. Thankfully, the band isn’t relegated to the shadows of front man Shannon Selberg’s flashy madman persona. When he was singer for the Cows, Selberg could always be counted on to do things…
Cave In Though Cave In certainly started out playing a blurry kind of speedcore/math metal, the band’s newer stuff might tempt you to call them pop. Those in disbelief over the Dillinger Escape Plan’s latest stylistic expansions need look no further than Cave In for an example of how it’s…
The punch heard ’round the music world may have catapulted the Von Bondies into the spotlight, but their sophomore album Pawn Shoppe Heart puts to rest any doubts that the Detroit foursome’s talent is superceded by a smackdown from their one-time supporter and White Striper Jack “Cold-Cock” White. With new…
Philly rap demigods the Roots established themselves long ago as the most exciting live hip-hop group around. It was only with 2002’s Phrenology that the group made an album that even held a candle to the energy that drummer ?uestlove and the rest of the band exude onstage. The Roots…
A few years ago, you couldn’t throw a bag of fast food out a car window in Fort Lauderdale without hitting a bar or club that Hashbrown had played or was currently playing. Early this year, the ubiquitous funk/soul band of brothers moved to the Big Apple, but they can’t…
As part of Broward’s ongoing crusade to foster underground hip-hop, the All Night Garage Sale is a gathering of vendors from Broward and Miami-Dade slinging vinyl, tapes, CDs, and even eight-tracks for dirt cheap and a showcase for up-and-coming hip-hoppers. Of course, this night is about much more than beefing…
Check out The Show Is the Rainbow, Troubled Hubbled, and Sybris at 10 p.m. Wednesday, September 22, at the Lounge, 517 Clematis St., West Palm Beach. Call 561-655-9747.
If the notion of a revved-up rockabilly band specializing in pure Southern honky-tonk seems somewhat out of sync with South Florida’s tropical leanings, then perhaps we ought to remind you that this isn’t the first country combo molded down here. The Mavericks were regulars on the local circuit, serving up…
You might think you’re old-school. Maybe you’re wearing gold chains. Maybe you’ve got an ironic Flock of Seagulls haircut or an even more ironic mustache. But you aren’t old-school. Reverend Horton Heat is old-school. His greaser hair and sock-hop-band finery place him firmly in the ’50s, as do the rockabilly…
The birth of feminist electro-punk was midwifed by three ladies: JD Samson, Johanna Fateman, and Kathleen Hanna, better-known as Le Tigre. And Hanna was one of the mothers of the early ’90s Riot Grrl movement, giving a middle finger to the establishment as the front woman of Bikini Kill. That’s…
Devin Marsh, a.k.a. Nori Nori, is not your typical musician. A graduate of the prestigious Berklee College of Music and a recipient of a B.A. in music education and a master’s in studio production, the former elementary school teacher and his merry band of men tap into roots reggae, jazz,…
By now, Gary Lightbody is probably bloody well sick of the c word. Despite the success of Snow Patrol’s latest album, the gorgeous Final Straw, the Irish front man of the buzz-heavy group can’t avoid the Coldplay comparisons. You’d think no one else knew how to craft intricate make-out music…
