Remembering Never Women and Children Die First (Ferret) Simplekill A Novel in May (Self-released) Between these two undersubtle, overwrought Fort Lauderdale hardcore bands is only the tiniest distinction. Simplekill screamer Panjo sounds like he gargled a bowlful of thumbtacks, while Remembering Never’s Peter Kowalsky growls like he’s smoking a diesel…
Unlike book jackets, album covers reveal a lot about the musicians they depict. DJ Irene poses for her CDs with bikini babes and blinging decks. Paul Oakenfold takes to turntables in the clouds as if he’s God’s personal DJ. Ferry Corsten’s Moonshine mix depicts him shaking the hands of hundreds…
The word “galactic” is a story in itself, conjuring up globular clusters and cosmic debris, spacemen, and silver ships. For New Orleans’ hard-touring Galactic, the word implies a hyperdriven spin out of the sweat-stained back alleys and inbred, funky old soul of their hometown into a thoroughly modern, body-moving blend…
Holy Ghost is an extraordinary career-spanning box set of rarely heard material by revolutionary saxophonist Albert Ayler. But it isn’t a must-have for even the most serious jazz collector. While the archival aspect of the package is noteworthy — eight CDs of live performances, an assortment of historical ephemera (including…
While most people use their basements for washing clothes or hiding bodies, Paul Westerberg has been busy pumping out a steady stream of records from his Minneapolis subterranean studio. If you’re a fan of the more bipolar ragings on Grandpaboy, you may be a bit disappointed by Folker. Clearly, Westerberg…
The Fiery Furnaces, the Brooklyn sibling duo that could, are restless. With their second full-length Blueberry Boat only six months the elder, they now send EP toddling out into the world. Its girth wide enough for LP clout, EP is a neat assembly of B-sides and new material. Tracks are…
Can we give out a Nobel prize this year for the Most Evolved View of Gender Relations in a Hip-Hop Song Still Saddled With Gratuitous Use of the Word “Bitch?” (We can do it the same night we award the Prehistoric Fuckface trophy to Dr. Calvin “Snoop Dogg” Broadus, whose…
The formula is pretty much fail-safe: Cram 1,400 seasoned revelers aboard a chartered cruise ship with 25 hard-charging bands, lubricate briskly with around-the-clock boozing and recreational drugs, and spike it with the debauched lawlessness afforded by international waters. Sure, some tolerance for hyperextended solos and pinwheeling hippies is required, but…
It’s Nice 2 Be Rich (Self-released) On his second self-released full-length, West Palm Beach rapper/producer Rich Nice strings together a solid collection of rugged, street-level sketches on the eternal hip-hop hustle. Nice has a clipped, well-measured flow that lurches out of the gate a little woodenly, but by midway through…
Gabriel Fain has a superhuman ear for detail. You can hear it foremost in his euphoric, voluptuous house music sets at places like Voodoo Lounge and Club Space in downtown Miami. But you can also hear it in his speech, in the careful way the Israeli-born DJ uses metaphor to…
From the outside, Jimmy Eat World’s studio in Tempe, Arizona, looks just like another sterile office space in a quiet, out-of-the-way business complex. But walk through the nondescript entrance and the place is a surprisingly cozy rock ‘n’ roll den. As guitarist Tom Linton and bassist Rick Burch join front-man…
Two words: Hawaiian hip-hop. Not hip-hop made by inner-city Hawaiians but stuff as authentically islander as that flowered polyester shirt you bought at Marshals last summer. Dreamt up by Bay Area producer Jim Greer and multi-instrumentalist Brandon Arnovick, a duo known for its work with Dan the Automator and Galactic,…
Your friends are totally going to make fun of Gwen Stefani’s first solo album. Granted, they have quite a bit of ammunition at their disposal. “Cool,” a synthy pile of schlock about Stefani’s overly coifed marriage (to Bush’s Gavin Rossdale), just sucks. “Harajuku Girls” is amusing in a blippy, ring-tone-happy…
Double albums are inherently problematic: Sheer bulk causes even the best of them to come across as uneven. At first listen, the 13th offering by Nick and his Bad Seeds — the first without Einstürzende Neubauten’s Blixa Bargeld on guitar — is no exception. The rowdier disc, Abattoir Blues, launches…
There’s a great but untrue story of pre-Clash Joe Strummer going into a bar and spotting Graham Parker. Strummer says he saw the Sex Pistols a week before. Asked what he thought of the band, Strummer replies, “Whole new thing, man.” Hearing Devotchka provides the same stunned sense of surprise…
“I have tasted the maggots in the mind of the universe/I was not offended/For I knew I had to rise above it all/Or drown in my own shit.” — Funkadelic, “Maggot Brain” “Everybody wants to throw peace signs, talk about ‘Make my funk the P-Funk,’ but man, they just don’t…
Call it wet, call it wild, just don’t call it dull. 2004 was a year of ups and downs for the local music scene. Plenty of national attention was focused on our golden shores as awards shows flourished, celebs flaunted, and Mother Nature literally tore off the roof. Along the…
Hanukkah and Christmas don’t directly overlap, but when it comes to celebrating the season, any hopes for hearing Hanukkah music are pretty much crushed by the Jewish holiday’s steroid-inflated cousin’s complete domination of December. Hanukkah doesn’t have a chance. The Jewish folk music band the Klezmatics is trying to change…
For hipsters, the coolest things are to be found 20 years ago, the most dreadful things ten years ago. So starting a few years back, we were deluged with ’80s electro and synth-pop, and we pretended to forget jungle ever existed. Electroclash, the first naive sortie by dance music into…
Hip-hop is an elusive mistress. She takes on so many forms these days that it’s a lost cause trying to pin her down. The art form once branded a fad has matured into a complex, well-endowed empire, one that’s skewing younger as it grows older, haunting the inner cities as…
It has all the right ingredients for prize-winning radio hip-hop: reedy, snake-charming synths; a raggamuffin dancehall hype man; a smooth-crooning homeboy chorus. So why is Lauderdale MC Mike West’s single “Don’t Know Me” so damn sterile? West suffers from the same problem that much of Southern hip-hop falls prey to…
Britney got married. Ashlee was caught lip-synching. ODB died. Congress continued to wring its hands about the legality of downloads, which flourished anyway. Conservative groups condemned sex in popular culture, while Usher’s sultry Confessions shot to number one. A major label signed a guy who can’t sing, can’t dance, and…
