Howzitgoin' ya junky reprobates youse? I was walkin' up Avenue B the otha day an' thought thit mebbe – jus' mebbe – ya might be lookin' fer a new hit awready! 'At's right, I thought aboucha, but don' go gettin' all emotional or nothin' – I jus' figgered ya might awready be itchin' even though the SWAG I laid on ya las' week was pretty sweet. So I got onna stick an' I started lookin' an' I foun'a whole bunch...
"So is it better than their last one? Or is it worse?” asked a friend and fellow fan when I told him I was reviewing the new NOFX record. It might sound crass, but the question is valid in the eyes of some fans; over the last little while, NOFX has experimented with a bunch of new ideas and different angles to their music. Some of them have been great and some of them haven't, but fans have supported the...
So is it better than their last one? Or is it worse?” asked a friend and fellow fan when I told him I was reviewing the new NOFX record. It might sound crass, but the question is valid in the eyes of some fans; over the last little while, NOFX has experimented with a bunch of new ideas and different angles to their music. Some of them have been great and some of them haven't, but fans have supported the...
Even if you're not the single greatest fan of a band, it's hard not to get into them a little when you're joined in a room by a bunch of other people who are loving what they're seeing. Such is the epiphany that Ground Control head photographer Raymond Ahner had when he walked into DNA Lounge to shoot Finnish folk metal icons Korpiklaani on the eleventh anniversary of September 11th; he wasn't sure what he expected to see, but what...
You know those bands that you forget you’re in love with? The Bronx is most certainly one of those. I don’t know why it is that I never think of them anymore when I scroll my iPod, because “False Alarm” is arguably the perfect rock song. Maybe it’s because we think of them more as “that Mariachi band with punks in it” nowadays, I’m not quite sure. But what I do know is that the chance to see such a...
After the 2010 reissue campaign which saw The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion re-examining, re-configuring, re-imagining and re-structuring staple catalog titles including Orange, Acme, Now I Got Worry and Extra Width, fans' hunger for the soul-flaying sound of Jon Spencer, Russell Simins and Judah Bauer was whetted, but not satiated. They wanted more, and no amount of looking back would do; so after a series of globe-trotting tour dates which knocked audience's socks off and set their minds on fire, JSBX...
Legendary pop icon Adam Ant and his band, The Good, The Mad and The Lovely Posse, kicked off The Blueblack Hussar tour, the singer's first US tour in seventeen years, with a sold out show at The Mayan Theatre in Los Angeles. The Grammy-nominated artist, once voted Sexiest Man Alive by MTV viewers, played a two-hour set which included such crowd favorites as “Goody Two Shoes," “Stand and...
How does David Byrne do it? Thirty-five years after Talking Heads: '77, one of the most unique albums to come out of the entire punk movement, he is still releasing music which sounds like nothing else out there. Love This Giant, his collaboration with songstress St. Vincent, is a disconcerting record, both familiar and bizarre, funky and offbeat, poppy and avante-garde. Some songs have enough of Byrne's trademark quirky rhythms and phrasing to give his fans a handle, and others...
Mark Knopfler seems to have two desires on this, his seventh solo album: to write some solid songs to add to his already impressive catalog and to relax and have some fun playing the blues. While these two desires are not really in conflict, they often find separate expressions. That may be the reason why Privateering is a double CD set; that gives him plenty of space to explore both inclinations. The song progression flows, more or less, from the...
There are a number of notable sophomore albums which manage to have greater mojo than their predecessors. These aren’t merely good follow-up efforts after a flop of a first album. It’s the sequel which is released in the shadow of a very strong, critically-acclaimed initial album and manages to surpass the debut. Expectations are always high in these cases. Was it a fluke? Have fickle tastes changed such that a band has worn out their welcome? Is the message or...