Beck's long-awaited (unless you're immortal, in which case two years is the blink of an eye) followup to The Information has graduated from bastard-child whisper to full-fledged respectable today, as we finally get a name and release date on the Danger Mouse produced album. Modern Guilt will hit streets on July 8th, unless you live across the pond (those lucky Euros get to spend their euros a day earlier). According to Beck's camp, "Musically, the album's ten tracks vacillate between...
(This is Part 2 of our Live 105 2008 BFD Coverage. View Part 1 HERE.) From the moment the very proper-sounding Flogging Molly took the stage, it seemed like only a matter of time before a full-on mosh pit erupted. Looking like a reserved folk group in nice hats and jackets, and toting three guitars, a banjo and a violin, the seven-piece issued the first strains of “(No More) Paddy’s Lament” and already beer and water bottles were tossed into...
Some bands come readymade. That statement sounds like a slight, because critics have used the term as a synonym for ‘prefabricated,’ but in some cases, it can be complimentary. Bands like AC/DC, Green Day, Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Social Distortion appear on the public radar fully formed, with everything they’re shooting for in place and are just looking for a time—not a place—from which to begin and move forward. While small variations in personnel may occur that slightly...
On Saturday, June 7, the cool kids from all over the Bay—tan dudes with tattooed chests, punk chicks with pink hair, boys and girls sporting green Flogging Molly tees, and families with tiny tots—all converged on Mountain View’s Shoreline Amphitheatre for one reason: to rock. BFD, the Bay Area alternative radio station Live 105’s annual all-day shindig, brought out the crowds as well as some...
There would be no Jolly Rancher chews for Chuck Inglish last Tuesday night at The Independent in San Francisco. Mikey Rocks, the other part of the Chicago based duo, The Cool Kids, simply wouldn’t let him eat the sweets. There were too many rhymes to be laid down, and a mouth full of candy could have hurt the lyrical swagger that these two possess. Apparently, it’s not easy being fly. Before commandeering the stage from the L.A.-based trio, Pacific Division,...
This Is Not The World, the third record from post-punk devotees The Futureheads, finds them not so much moving forward or backward as sitting still and reducing their sound to something more easily digestible. Think of it this way: If 2004's The Futureheads and 2006's News and Tributes are a steak dinner, This Is Not The World is a steak dinner pill to be eaten on board the space shuttle. This isn't at all an insult. Rather, the band simply...
As Minneapolis-based rockers Tapes ‘N Tapes—Josh Grier (guitar, vocals), Jeremy Hanson (drums), Matt Kretzmann (keyboards), and Erik Appelwick (bass guitar)—released their acclaimed sophomore album, Walk It Off, it was inevitable that a U.S. tour would follow. They played First Avenue in their hometown on April 10 and weaved their way across this country with stops in New York, Philly, Atlanta, Los Angeles (Where Ground Control caught them with White Denim) and finished up in Denver, CO. There are a few...
On a personal note, it needs to be said that I sat on The Ting Tings’ debut for a little over a week, listening to it repeatedly, trying to figure out what I liked about it and how I was going to review it. Then it occurred to me; at the dawn of the Eighties, punk bands discovered what fun it was to make people dance, and so groups like the Talking Heads and Blondie softened up and jumped into...
It almost feels like sacrilege to say it, but more than most of the “new underground” bands that surfaced in the post-Nirvana maelstrom that suddenly found so many acts with readymade credibility (bands as far flung as The Flaming Lips, Constantines and Beck were all ranking members of this crew), few seemed to need the presence of a major label so badly as The Dandy Warhols. Always flaunting a significant pop jones and boasting a mercurial writing palette along with...
Who would have thought that going home again would be the catalyst that Sloan needed to experience a rebirth? Having recently resurrected their own label, Murderecords, and rejoined its roster for the first time in sixteen years, Sloan established carte blanche for themselves to follow up 30-track monster Never Hear The End Of It from 2006. Rather than attempting to go even bigger though, for their first album back the band chose to cut Parallel Play in their Toronto rehearsal...