My, my, my. South Florida, give it up to the Fluent. Here’s a young band actually — thankfully — doing something different and doing it damn well. I imagine that the four Fort Lauderdale teenagers’ thinking process behind Apartments, their debut EP, went like this: Dude, dance punk is too,…
Ashlee Simpson sucks. A Yahoo search on that phrase generates 135,000 hits. Last December, New Times contributed to that chorus, writing that she had “dyed blandness black.” But we revised that opinion after witnessing Simpson’s compelling caterwauling during the Orange Bowl halftime show in early January. Despite her deceptively demure…
Moby is far too wealthy to care about credibility in the dance-music world he left behind after 1996’s ill-conceived rock album, Animal Rights, and the mega-success of 1999’s Play. Dissed as a crass merchant of bogus blues, soul, and gospel retrofitted for the laptop generation, Moby earnestly guffawed all the…
The danger in a project like the Decemberists’ — basically, the Portland band plays intellectual sea chanteys about topics both grim (unrequited love) and grimmer (murder by whale) — is the inclination toward the half-assed. In a post-Elephant 6 era in which gear is as affordable as it’s ever been,…
Best I could tell from months of listening without a lyric sheet — thank you, Internet — this second disc from the kin of itinerant evangelist Leon Followill had something (OK, everything) to do with fuckin’. You could hear it in singer Caleb Followill’s delivery, the greasy whine of the…
How do you follow up an album that opened with the sound of a surgical saw cutting into someone’s chest cavity? You make cartoon music, of course! No matter how hard it might try, though, Fantomas just isn’t wired for levity, which means that Mike Patton and his hyperabrasive supergroup…
I’m still trying to figure out what Pompano Beach middle-of-the-road-rock outfit I Digress is referring to with its name. There really isn’t much of a digression from anything on Justice, the group’s straight-ahead, self-released debut. Standard midtempo power balladry dominates the disc, both of the axe-grinding, fist-pumping variety and also…
As any driving school instructor will tell you, you can’t teach people who don’t want to learn. Miraculously, Hollywood-based folkie Matthew Sabatella has packaged a history lesson in the guise of a strikingly good album (Ballad of America Volume I: Over a Wide and Fruitful Land, released last month) and…
Of all the human traits rock ‘n’ roll expresses — joy, angst, rebellion, lust — perhaps the most difficult to convey is soul. Rock ‘n’ roll is all about youth, while soul is eager but wise, earnest but earthy. To pull off a legitimate union of the two requires young,…
Coming from South Florida, where good times are the highest priority, Seven Star’s serious, studied commitment to hip-hop culture stands out. You can hear the weight of dedication in his sober, workmanlike My Mother and Father Were Astronauts, a compilation of b-sides and 12-inch singles meant to prelude the MC’s…
It’s after 1 a.m. at Amp Fest ’05, the recent local music weekend at Boca Raton’s Surf Café. Amid a semi-mocking crowd, Monserrat, badass front woman for Broward County-based alternative dance band Dance Planet X, sings, “I got lots of tricks, daddy/I got magic in my fingertips.” She flaunts lacquer-black…
Back in 1997, the world was thirsty for Thievery Corporation. European acts like Kruder and Dorfmeister and Fila Brazillia were ranking high on the IHI (International Hipster Index), and as Rob Garza and Eric Hilton rose from the D.C. underground with their late-night brand of smoky, dub-inflected beatscapes, downtempo coalesced…
No, your Prefuse 73 CD is not skipping. It’s just the wizard of schizophrenic enterprise, Scott Herren (who also records as Delarosa & Asora, Savath & Savalas, Piano Overlord, and La Coreccion), flashing his mixing skills. On Surrounded by Silence, his fourth Prefuse album, Herren scratches and knob-twiddles his way…
If Frances the Mute were a horror movie (and with its ominous imagery, that’s not much of a stretch), it would thrive on gotcha moments, those sudden shocks that make viewers spill their sodas or otherwise soil their seats. In the past, the Mars Volta has bungled this approach, either…
Al Green cleared his throat with I Can’t Stop, his smooth, formulaic return to secular form in 2003. With Everything’s OK, the Memphis minister is in full voice: His second disc with long-time producer Willie Mitchell finds the two at the top of their game. Largely written by Green, Everything’s…
What we have on Kevin “Fyah Blaze” Morris’ fully loaded 16-track recording Truths and Rights is roots-rock-dancehall. The Davie resident’s lyrics flow like Anthony B’s straight-ahead dancehall tracks — “Lion Paw” and “Curfew.” But he breaks away with his own agenda on the upbeat “Circle of Life” and the mellow…
This week’s episode finds the magical Flask, borne by its intrepid guardian, Johnny Z, stalking the crowded streets of carnivalesque Austin, Texas. Filled with that potent elixir called Jameson, the vessel has been drawn here by the legendary gathering South by Southwest. Annually for the past 18 years, over one…
Beneath a lacquered veneer of black suits, hip coifs, and oblique lyrics, Interpol poses a conundrum to fans and foes alike. The quartet — singer/guitarist Paul Banks, guitarist Daniel Kessler, bassist Carlos Dengler (a.k.a. Carlos D.), and drummer (and Fort Lauderdale alum) Sam Fogarino — has been deemed both innovative…
Meet Mason, West Palm Beach post-punk quintet whose soon-to-be-released Just Shake Hands is actually scream-worthy. Skylar Mondell, Jesse Lee, Brandon Shaffer, Brian Burliegh, and Anthony Young are vicious as a five-headed Hydra. But their racket is not without sunny guitars, soothing silences, and idyllic, tender bridges. Mondell’s vertiginous voice is…
In the language of analog recording, wow and flutter were terms used to describe the distortion common to the recording process. The title of The Kills’ second album is obviously ironic, because the duo’s powerful, stripped-down sound is built on a foundation of fuzz, feedback, and distortion. Hotel, a highly…
Once upon a time, the existence of Jennifer Lopez CDs was entirely justified by the photos included with them. Given that she’s now 34 years old and has become one of the most overexposed celebrities to tread the planet’s surface, I figured this would no longer be true — but…
The second in Sonic360’s globe-spanning, electronic-loving Beatwave series, Japan differs from its predecessor in its wildly diverse influences. While the artists collected on Argentina swayed deeply to their country’s traditional tango rhythms and showed a devotion to somber synth-pop, Japan hopscotches with the same kind of dizzying overstimulation that’s on…
