Originally released in 1977, Cluster & Eno was produced by Conny Plank, the studio guru behind Neu!, Kraftwerk, Can, and many others. It’s one of those largely unsung works that surreptitiously infiltrate future generations’ musical output like a recessive gene. Cluster’s Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius had by this point…
As a pop-freak myth, Alex Chilton isn’t quite J.D. Salinger, but he’s close. Chilton broke up the spookily gorgeous pop band Big Star in 1975 and has been playing surly white R&B ever since, but here comes In Space, his first studio album with the reconstituted band, now including cosurvivor…
Warning: Do not play Better in your office unless the boss is gone and your shit’s done for the day. Franz Ferdinand’s follow-up to last year’s acclaimed, multiplat debut is like a double shot of hard liquor — once it kicks in, your whole outlook is deliciously skewed for the…
The German duo Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner began their Mouse on Mars partnership in Düsseldorf, raising inevitable Kraftwerk comparisons. Instead of aloof and inhuman, Mouse on Mars made its machines sound all soft and squishy. Live, the duo stayed hunched over their joysticks, pumping out loud ‘n’ groovy…
One thing’s for sure: Trina’s Glamorest Life leaves no room for the blues. The songs on her third album are rife with tribulations, but Miami’s diamond princess remains completely nonplussed. When an unfaithful lover attempts to entangle the rapstress in tearful sentiments in “Here We Go,” the most heartache the…
Boston, a city that exports a thousand academics and financial advisers for every one Matt Damon, does not have style. The few oases of chi-chi glamour jammed into downtown are plagued by rumpled white men in old Brooks Brothers shirts. This is a classic-rock town, a place whose only stars…
Sad news: Vidavox’s three-year run through Miami’s indie-rock scene has come to a stop. Keys and bass man Carlos Vega has moved to the tundra of Michigan to pursue a Ph.D in (gasp!) mathematics, leaving drummer Jim Miller and guitarists Chris Salazar and Arnaldo Gonzalez with an 11-track album to…
Other critics have proclaimed that despite their foot-stomping, banjo-busting jamborees, the Hackensaw Boys emit a raw, moonshined vigor closer to Dust Bowl punk rockers than to modern bluegrass revivalists. And (shocker!) they’re right — catch the Boys in concert and you won’t believe how quick you’ll be barefootin’ stagefront and…
Once an irresistibly goofy Brit-pop trio with ungainly mutton-chop sideburns, Supergrass has reached a point of maturity where it finally seems more interested in studying the menu than in making goo-goo eyes at the waitress. On their fifth full-length, Oxford’s retro-groovers have outgrown monosyllabic teen anthems to embrace the emotional…
When last seen as a duo in 2002, Chief Xcel and Gift of Gab had just dropped Blazing Arrow, one of the most accomplished hip-hop albums in recent memory. An ambitious and humane collection, filled with eclectic samples, sensitive live instrumentation, and interesting guests (Ben Harper, Gil Scott-Heron), it was…
Who doesn’t want to root for the solo outing of rock’s deadpan ghoul of ’80s cool? Nexterday’s opening track, “Crackpot,” with its pelvic, ground-down guitar and Ocasek’s trademark throat-caught strut, sounds damned near sexy, even with a respirator for its backing track. Sadly, that anthemic potential evaporates quickly and quietly…
For too long now, the “mall” punk aesthetic has reigned over a genre whose very definition rebels against the corporate America that has commercialized it and packaged it for the masses. Not that there aren’t some gems that occasionally appear, but punk rock is supposed to be the anthem of…
In the 1997 film The Apostle, Robert Duvall plays E.F., a charismatic Pentecostal preacher who travels across the South, hitting the radio waves and filling tents with his fiery brand of syncopated hallelujah preaching and stomping, wild-eyed histrionics, inspiring hand-clapping, ass-shaking, and great wailing incantations. Pocketbooks open, and the good…
The year was 1979. The sound was disco, and the place was Opal Studios, a Manhattan recording house located a few floors above the legendary Studio 54. Perched behind a massive synthesizer, a 25-year-old music-composition student named Gary Davis was working on a slick dance number he’d just written. Davis…
Takk…, the title of Sigur Rós’ new album, means thanks in Icelandic. Perhaps it signifies gratitude to fans for not falling asleep over the course of their last two LPs. The band’s impressive discography has been high on melancholy and talent but short on range. On Takk… , things are…
You have to automatically concede a certain amount of praise for the massive imaginative output in Princess Superstar’s My Machine, a dystopic, sci-fi hip-hop concept album about a future celebrity who takes over the world with the help of a cloning machine. As in any good epic, apocalyptic replicant war…
Something like an Amazonian leprechaun, Curumin is a mythical jungle troublemaker in the guise of a feral child. His favorite tactic was misdirection — with his feet facing backward, poachers would never know exactly which way Curumin was heading. The same could be said for Luciano Nakata Albuquerque, the multitalented…
Your biggest concern after listening to Get Some is whether your shower ought to be hot or cold. Kicking up a miasma of filthy noise and musky lust, Nashville Pussy’s fourth disc veers precisely zero degrees from its headlong rush into the depths of Dixie-fried porn punk. Still, the disc…
If you want to interview Chicago-based singer-songwriter Jason Molina, you must follow some ground rules. First, Molina does not talk publicly about his personal life. He will not reveal whether he’s married or even if he has a family. In addition, he doesn’t like to refer to specific incidents in…
It’s another Friday night at Club M, and another local band throws down a hard-rocking set to unfazed regulars. Despite the swaggering, white-boy funkitude coming from the Bittercups — helmed by New Times staffer Jason Budjinski — the crowd reaction consists mostly of arched eyebrows, crossed arms, and trips to…
The sad truth is that there’s no term better than the overused folktronica to describe Aussie songwriter Mark Mitchell’s menagerie of digitally rendered psych-pop. Though recorded in the disparate urban locales of Adelaide and Brooklyn, Clue to Kalo’s second effort sounds more inspired by the mountains and lakes within eyeshot…
All vivacious jangle, thigh-slapping stomp, and grinning, good-ol’-boy charm, North Mississippi All Stars are the band Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer would’ve started if they knew where to get an electric guitar. Not to say that NMA’s fourth effort is at all rustic or simple: On the contrary, its compact,…
