Potential can be a bitch. Proclaiming that a group “has potential” is a backhanded compliment at best, implying it may be decent or even great in the future — but only in the future. For the past few years, Zion I has been heralded (or dismissed) as tomorrow’s bride, the…
Post-modernism loves a ripe, juicy contradiction. Words like bittersweet and achingly tender sum up the beautiful tragedy of millennial existence, the quest to make meaning out of mystery. They also describe the wistful, faded glory that the National’s third full-length lowers on the listener. There’s an almost palpable autumnal sensation…
There’s a new piano man in town, and like Billy Joel, New Jersey transplant and Hollywood resident Brendan O’Hara is a hopeful romantic. The singer-songwriter’s band, which includes a boy guru who narrates poetically between songs, is called the Humble Ones; their newly released Perceptive Inception, a 20-song disc of…
“Everybody thinks we’re assholes,” Sum 41 guitarist Dave Baksh says. “We’re Canadian; it’s impossible.” Phoning from one of the asshole capitals of Los Angeles, the Bel Age Hotel near Sunset Strip, Baksh and his band are taking a breather from an extended road trip with punk legends Unwritten Law. The…
The inevitable indie-funk wave has crashed on American shores, and its salty foam’s getting critics all moist and breathless. We Are Little Barrie is a sly, hopelessly hip introduction to the trend: a tightly wound amalgam of Meters-like funk and Donovan-esque Northern soul psychedelics that’s as authentically British as Austin…
Full (and damning) disclosure: This correspondent and Mariah’s publicist were the only two people to publicly claim that the universally reviled Glitter soundtrack was the best thing Carey had ever done. I was the only one who meant it and still insist that that collection of ’80s-inspired froth and naked…
The bicoastal Boston/Berkeley MC Mr. Lif makes the sort of politically charged Bolshevik boom-bap that warms the coffee of both old-school hip-hop fans and MoveOn.org activists. Which — despite what that demographic might indicate — doesn’t mean that Lif can’t get down and party. On Black Dialogue, his new group…
Ya gotta respect Ates Isildak. First off, dude’s got a name that sounds like an Eskimo fertility god. Second, as Echo Me, Astronaut, Isildak has released an album of lucid, almost transparent guitar and voice studies, so quiveringly intimate that you can nearly feel his breath on your ear. It…
Mope-rock bands sprouted like mushrooms in the wake of Coldplay’s global success, though few captured the genuine spirit of Chris Martin’s earnest emoting and lyrical romanticism. The Perishers are certainly among the exceptions, a band that details the darker recesses of the brain without letting melancholy overwhelm. Credit this to…
It’s Thursday, typically an off-night for budding social butterflies. It’s pouring buckets, typically a disincentive for bar-hopping alkies. On a strip-malled swath of Federal Highway, John L. Sullivan’s is a high-gloss Irish pub wedged into the generic purgatory of Lighthouse Point. With blue blazers and blond perms gabbing over afterwork…
The mostly acoustic brainchild of U.K. producer Ben Lamdin, Nostalgia 77 frames vibrant, late-’60s soul jazz and sinister, mid-’70s fusion in the context of modern funk and hip-hop. If the concept seems academic, that’s because it is — but only a meticulous po-mo auteur could fashion such a compelling, ferociously…
The 42 songs on this three-CD Yo La Tengo career retrospective aren’t sequenced chronologically, but it wouldn’t much matter if they were. The two-decade tale of Hoboken, New Jersey,’s finest indie-rock band resists a linear celebration; rather than an evolutionary journey, it’s one of vast eclecticism and experimentation. The band’s…
Moz is the current poster child for career resurrection, ’80s rock-star division — and if issuing Live less than a year after the release of 2004’s You Are the Quarry, his studio comeback, seems ill-advised, the set’s quality more than justifies its existence. The album is a satisfying musical retrospective…
Independence: Some die for it. Others just rap about it. Living Legends fall into the latter category — though the long-standing Bay Area crew would have you believe that its staunchly indie ideal is noble enough to boast about in every other verse. Classic continues the tradition of sparse beats…
Barrio brothers Tropyco and Bombillo, better-known as the SoFla Kingz, have released an album capitalizing on the current Latin explosion in hip-hop and the rising popularity of reggaeton. The SoFla Kingz previously distributed free mixtapes all over South Florida, but this is their first CD of original songs available for…
The archetypal rock ‘n’ roll story always begins with a bang: It’s nearing 6 o’clock on a golden Sunday afternoon, and the hush of wind through the fan palms and the occasional restless bird are the only sounds outside Elegbaland Studios. Hidden within a ramshackle mother-in-law behind a green-and-yellow bungalow…
Lone lovers are singing bluesy tunes, reeking of wanton lust and sex residue. They’ve got their mean streak on. Outlaws lurking, Hotel and VV are on the prowl. “Get the guns out, get the guns out,” they sing together on “Love Is a Deserter,” one of the highlights of their…
Dylan Mills is not your average 20-year-old. At this precocious age, Britain’s hip-hop wünderkind — better-known as Dizzee Rascal — is already the star of a new music genre he helped establish. He’s also the first hip-hopper to win a prestigious British music award, started his own record label, and…
With his sophomore release, Santa Cruz MC Proe proves conclusively that all music is hip-hop if you just spin it right. Fresh and untainted at 20 years old, Proe fits squarely into the hip-hop generation, which was born into a world where everything from hard rock to doo-wop can bounce,…
Hot Hot Heat has bet its cred by making this major-label debut endlessly catchy. Sure, catchiness has been a calling card of this Victoria, British Columbia, quartet since 2002’s Knock Knock Knock, a Sub Pop EP that marked the addition of guitarist Dante DeCaro and the abandonment of synth-noise experimentation…
When a band loses its most menacing member, it’s just going to rock a little less. If said brute gets the boot because of a hard-partying lifestyle, that cranks the volume down another notch. So Queens of the Stone Age, now without Nick Oliveri’s bruising bass lines and barroom-brawler persona,…
So many bland new-wave bands have emerged so far in the ’00s that they’re beginning to dry up the musical credibility of the original ’80s synth-pop and -rock experiments they’re ostensibly inspired by. Fischerspooner is supposed to be New Order-meets-Cirque du Soleil, even as the old New Order continues to…
