Much has been made of the JT LeRoy-like mystery surrounding Clutchy Hopkins’ identity: A MySpace page and a host of YouTube vids recall a crusty ex-Motown engineer traveling the world and making tracks, but that could just be a smokescreen for an anonymous side project of Ubiquity’s Shawn Lee and…
Nobody would blame Sheryl Crow if she decided to turn pensive on Detours, her first album since breaking up with Lance Armstrong and beating breast cancer a couple of years ago. But her last CD, 2005’s Wildflower, was pretty much that record — an introspective and melancholy “personal” album that…
In case you didn’t already know, Erykah Badu’s long-awaited album, New Amerykah, Part One: 4th World War is in stores now. The album came out yesterday on Erykah’s birthday and it’s tight. Yesterday was also Ky-mani Marley’s birthday…and it seems that a musical lovechild between the two artists must be…
By ANDY VIHSTADT DangerKeys Photo by Melanie Pullen for Fat Possum Records Akron, Ohio’s Black Keys called on Danger Mouse and a handful of guests to flesh out their two-piece sound for LP5. Stream the first single, “Strange Times,” at the duo’s MySpace page. Attack & Release hits stores April…
From the first moment you get on the phone with Willie Stewart, you can tell he’s vibrating on a higher plane. The 55-year-old musical savant speaks with the slow joviality of a sage — or at least a man who’s learned a thing or two during a lifelong journey through…
Why does everything have to be Forbes magazine?” scoffs Aaron Funk, the electronic music madman who performs as Venetian Snares. Speaking with New Times by phone from his native Winnipeg, Canada, he’s 30 minutes into his first U.S. interview in two years, and on a rant of sorts. “I see…
There’s an uncomfortable sense of placelessness to the sound of Saba’s debut CD. Though it could be attributed to her press-release ready biography (Italian/Ethiopian parents, Somali birthplace) or the diverse array of musicians on the disc (from Cameroon, Senegal, and Italy), there’s also the nagging sense that it’s simply a…
On their follow-up to 2006’s Madrugada, Miami’s Elastic Bond shows all the right stuff, with maturity, solid arrangement, and know-how all on display. Working off of Andrés Ponce’s arrangements, Excursion is an album you can get your dance on to, get your fuck on, and still be able to play…
Jack Johnson would undoubtedly make a wonderful dinner companion. Unlike the average rock star, who might break the good china, wipe his face on the curtains, and succeed at banging your wife, Johnson’s the type to wash dishes once he hears you use environmentally friendly light bulbs. But niceness doesn’t…
On his latest disc, South African-born jazz musician Deepak Ram presents us with a solid album and a sonic challenge. How can one adapt “Giant Steps,” one of John Coltrane’s best-known compositions, to the bansuri (a wooden Indian flute)? The answer is: by giving some tunes a Brazilian bossa-nova structure,…
In the early ’80s, before Sting rose to international superstar status (musician/actor/activist), he was but one-third of new wave combo the Police. Back then, few British artists bridged the worlds of reggae and mainstream rock/pop like the Police, with their blend of Jamaican rhythms and urgent, polished melodic flair. Call…
The versatile multilingual vocalist Elin was born in Sweden, but you would never know it by listening to her. Her style has a strong Brazilian influence even when she is belting out standards like Gershwin’s “Fascinating Rhythm” or her own compositions, as heard on her début CD, Lazy Afternoon (Blue…
Never mind the misleading band name: Average White Band were racially mixed, but still hailed from very unfunky Scotland. Amazingly, the [usually] sextet created a brand of Seventies R&B with a serious swing that sounded really American, and really soulful. Their songs were rife with juicy breakbeats, and as such…
By ANDY VIHSTADT Sex & Violence For your viewing pleasure: the new Kanye West video, directed by Spike Jonze. Much like his 1995 vid for Wax’s “Southern California” (reminisce here), Jonze shows his penchant for slow motion and fire. Add a shovel-wielding lingerie model to the equation and you’ve got…
Everybody’s favorite local 305 hip-hop curator, DJ Khaled, is movin’ on up yet again. Yesterday, he announced the launch of his new record label, We the Best Music (named after his 2007 album, of course, We the Best). It’ll be ecxlusively partnered up with and distributed by Def Jam Entertainment,…
A group of Central American and Mexican men waits anxiously outside the Medrano Express courier offices in Homestead for a five-dollar snapshot. They’re posing next to local Guatemalan talent Lily Alvarez, a sweet, voluptuous gal in a silver sequined top who could pass for Selena. Most of these migrants left…
My audience didn’t care,” veteran folk singer Tom Rush says laughing as he tries to explain why he didn’t receive the same backlash for going electric with his sound in the 1960s the way Bob Dylan did. “I don’t know why that was,” he admits, “but I think Dylan had…
When it comes time to do the horizontal mambo, conventional wisdom dictates that you go with the usual suspects on the stereo: James Brown, Al Green, Barry White, Marvin Gaye, D’Angelo, Donna Summer, Serge Gainsbourg, AC/DC, Sade, etc. (Note: Joe Tex’s “I Gotcha” is too raunchy to have sex to.)…
Lenny Kravitz hates it when critics call him retro, contending that love, revolution, and smooching should belong to every generation. But the problem with Kravitz’s new album, It Is Time for a Love Revolution, is not just its bland message; it’s that it rips off artists like David Bowie, Led…
Contemporary R&B quite often seems like a genre that’s become a victim of its own name. There hasn’t been a lot of progress out of the genre in the past 15 years, and the best stuff out there is typically recycled Mary-J.-Blige-meets-Luther-Vandross material that doesn’t offer anything new. So it’s…
Call it an amendment to Godwin’s Law: As reviews of Vampire Weekend accumulate, the probability they’ll mention Paul Simon’s Graceland approaches 100 percent. It’s a lazy game of connect the dots, really. Graceland traces an MOR-shattering pilgrimage wherein Simon spent 17 days recording in South Africa, cheesing off the United…
The departure of a performer as strong as Jason Isbell, who went solo last year, would cripple most bands — but not Drive-By Truckers. The group has rolled on for a decade-plus despite personnel changes because songwriters Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley continue to share shifts behind the wheel. Thanks…
