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(11/12/14 5:50am)
To Brother Ali, hip-hop is about more than music. It’s a culture, a lifestyle, a community and an account of the social and cultural issues that the evening news can only speak of in the third person. This Thursday, Nov. 13, Brother Ali returns to his hometown for an eagerly anticipated show at the High Noon Saloon. I spoke with the artist about his upcoming show, what music means to him and the potential it has to change the world, one listener at a time.
(11/04/14 6:33am)
As someone regularly headphones-deep in the critical music world, it’s easy to lose sight of how honestly fun music can be. You obsess over the ins and outs of an album: how visceral its songwriting might be, how raw its tones are, how perfectly refined its production is, how relatable an album’s struggles are and so on. In all of this, pure joy seems bogged down by process.
(11/04/14 5:53am)
From their humble beginnings as students at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana, Umphrey’s McGee has built up an ardent fan base thanks to their remarkable musicianship, ability to change genres on a dime and unparalleled work ethic, playing more than 100 tour shows a year since 2001.
(10/29/14 3:43am)
A trio of first-rate psych rock bands graced the High Noon Saloon last Friday, including local band Dolores, who opened for Australian outfits Doctopus and Pond.
(10/24/14 3:15am)
As artists like the Replacements and U2 spent the 1980s paving the roads leading to the many futures of rock music, a band of rebels from New York’s alternative scene tore up the same roads, carving their sonic landscapes deep into the American music consciousness. After carving his teeth in experimental guitar orchestras and hardcore bands, it's with these rebels that Thurston Moore first made his name. In Sonic Youth, Moore helped tear apart rock music convention, crafting soundscapes of distorted noise rock and fury driven punk.
(10/23/14 3:30am)
For almost a decade, The Glitch Mob have been on a mission to bring their unique brand of electronic music to life on stage, on their own terms, in a way that seems to reach out to a wide variety of music fans. Sunday, Oct. 19, they brought their new live show to the Orpheum Theater. The moment I entered the Orpheum, after walking past the monochromatic display of black clothing at The Glitch Mob’s merch table, I was greeted by an audience that was as eclectic as it was energized. Neon and tie-dye-clad EDM fans shared a dance floor with mohawk-sporting punks in black leather jackets, everybody equally excited for a show that had been preceded by months of anticipation.
(10/22/14 3:27am)
There’s no telling exactly what you’ll experience if you come out to see the Meat Puppets perform at the High Noon Saloon this Wednesday, Oct. 22 with tour-mate Cass McCombs. In fact, they don’t even know themselves. “I think we’re gonna wait until we get to the venue, and then put some thought into it,” says guitarist, vocalist and primary songwriter Curt Kirkwood. “We got a few different ideas we’re messing around with. We brought acoustic guitars, we might try to hook that up. We’re just playing it by ear.”
(10/17/14 4:00am)
Mary Timony, the main force behind the recently formed Ex Hex, is a punk veteran. First as a member of Autoclave in the early ’90s, then Helium later in the decade, Timony was a powerful figure of heavy, melodic slacker punk.
(10/14/14 3:44am)
J Mascis’s last record, Tied To A Star, was far more subtle than Dinosaur Jr.’s power-trio theatrics normally lend themselves to. Mascis, the lead guitar-player and vocalist for the Massachusetts alternative rock legends, turned in his thundering riffs and blazing solos for a gently picked acoustic guitar and meditative falsetto. While his fluid electric guitar stylings would occasionally make themselves known in Tied to a Star’s more dynamic moments, it was still largely another Mascis acoustic album.
(10/14/14 3:36am)
To say I’ve seen a lot of concerts in my relatively short span of time seeing concerts may almost be an understatement. From AC/DC to ZZ Top, it’s tougher for me to name a band or artist I haven’t seen than it is to name the one’s I have—or at least it feels that way sometimes.
(10/13/14 3:25am)
I personally find it effective to compare music to dessert, because I tend to consume a lot of both. Jazz albums are so rich and intense that it’s almost bitter, just like a piece of triple-layered dark chocolate cake. Shoegaze albums feel like warm bread pudding that overtakes your mouth with a heated wave of nostalgic cinnamon sensation. In my experience, punk music is pound cake: a uniform, no-nonsense loaf of straight calories. This is very much the case with debut album Poison Everything from Southern California-based punk band Obliterations. If there was an ingredient list for Poison Everything, it would be a pound each of noisy guitar riffs, classic hardcore drumming and violent aggression.
(10/10/14 3:30am)
Lately, it’s been tough to stay a loyal Weezer fan. I had the luxury of hitting my music fandom stride around the same time people started realizing The Blue Album would be a classic. Unfortunately, this coincided with the band’s descent into failed experimentation and messy collaborations. Weezer walked into the pitfall of confirming their own stereotypes by emphasizing their quirkiness and penning meaningless lyrics on their most recent releases.
(10/09/14 4:00am)
The liberating drawl that swims through alternative rock staples like You’re Living All Over Me is a humbling one. J Mascis is a man whose guitar sings opera. His drumming sounds off a demolition man’s battery. He laid a defiant foundation for alternative rock in the 1980s with Dinosaur Jr. and delivered a Nordic thunder behind the drum kit in doom metal outfits like Witch. Yet, if it wasn’t apparent in the melodic heart in even Dinosaur Jr.’s heaviest moments, Mascis has a tender side.
(10/09/14 3:45am)
Following up last year’s You’re Nothing, Danish punk band Iceage have released their third studio album, Plowing Into the Field of Love. The Copenhagen natives have a considerably more confident and solid approach, but the young band still has a long way to go.
(10/02/14 2:03am)
Gerard Way takes a bold and intentional step away from punk rock with his first solo effort, Hesitant Alien, released Sept. 30, 2014. Way was the lead singer of My Chemical Romance since its inception in 2001, until it disbanded last year. Traces of the punk rock band’s sound can still be found on his new record even as Way ventures into new genres.
(10/02/14 1:58am)
There’s nothing new that will stand out to a seasoned music listener, but the Canada-formed pop-punk band Dangercat’s new album To the Moon delivers solid songs about the joys of partying when you hate yourself. There’s power chords, occasionally melodic guitar work, scratchy, earnest singing and a fair amount of f-bombs. If you’re looking to have a few beers and let loose some frustration, all soaked in a sense of wistful melancholy, then To the Moon will set the mood for you.
(09/30/14 3:33am)
Approaching the hole-in-the wall haven that is The Frequency, I could feel some real live music magic in the air. The rest of the square was pretty much dead, but the lull of bright lights and cigarette smoke lured us magnetically towards the end of the block, where we found musicians and concert-goers alike basking in the awesomeness of the first quarter of the night.
(09/30/14 3:28am)
King Tuff (real name: Kyle Thomas) doesn’t hide behind any autobiographical ambiguities on Black Moon Spell. In fact, he’s pretty forward about who he is and what he wants to do. In “Madness,” he declares his raison d’être in traditional Alice Cooper fashion: “King Tuff is my name/I got madness in my brain/Pleased to meet ya/I’m gonna eat ya/because I’m batshit insane!” Nor does he hide where he comes from; echoing Springsteenian mantras, Tuff declares in “Black Holes in Stereo”: “I learned more working at the record store than I ever did in high school.”
(09/25/14 10:54pm)
In a world dominated by main stage dance music, where the success of an electronic musician is too often defined by their ability to make a crowd “rage,” a select few artists have been making strides to break out of the EDM prototype and bring fresh, meaningful ideas to the table. Porter Robinson is one of them. This Saturday, the Orpheum Theater will host Porter Robinson’s “Worlds” tour, an extravagant and cohesive live show centered on Robinson’s new album Worlds, which dropped worldwide last month.
(09/23/14 4:04am)
“Twin Peaks” is an ABC television drama created by Mark Frost and David Lynch. It follows an investigation lead by FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper into the murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer in the town of Twin Peaks. Its pilot episode was first broadcast on April 8, 1990.
