Self-deprecating rappers are rarer than shout-outs to Vanilla Ice. Most hip-hoppers have a pathological need to present themselves as invulnerable and supremely masterful. Atmosphere MC Slug (Sean Daley) would rather turn his drunken encounters with women, uncool Minneapolis upbringing and tour misadventures into witty, poignant verses. This approach has snagged Atmosphere a chunk of the emo demographic. (Note the group’s…
On its brand-new Hope Is a Thing With Feathers, Trailer Bride refines its spooky-ooky tendencies (always both its strength and its limitation) while maturing into a band that can out-X X and sinking into the kind of gleeful musical gloom perfected by Geraldine Fibbers. The band has broadened its range, comfortably tackling honky-tonk, country blues and even a rock song…
OK, 2003 is the “Year of the Blues,” and October is the National Federation of the Blind’s “Meet the Blind” month. There’s probably no better way to celebrate the synergy than to attend this benefit concert, with proceeds going to the NFB. The brainchild of Little Buster, who lost his sight at the age of six yet learned to master…
Fifteen Minutes Fast played a few shows in Kansas City before relocating to Tempe, Arizona, but scenesters who caught the group’s original incarnation might find its sound, if not its faces, difficult to recognize. This quintet draws from such beloved defunct area acts as Lushbox and TV Fifty, with drummer Jeff Kritzstein standing out as the only member without KC…
Nada Surf introduced itself to most listeners with its fluke 1996 hit “Popular,” a dead-on satire of the sadistic teenage caste system that spurred sales of its Ric Ocasek-produced debut, High/Low. For the most part, the public stopped paying attention then, as did the group’s former label, Elektra, which passed on a domestic release for Low’s follow-up, The Proximity Effect….
Any band that’s named after a Smiths song can’t be half bad. OK, I take that back — Handsome Devil sucks ass, but Pretty Girls Make Graves rocks. The group copped its moniker from Morrissey (who swiped it from Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums), but its music has little to do with navel-gazing Britpop. Fortunately, this Seattle quintet also ignores…
Choosing a Bonzo Dog Band song title as a band name is a bold gambit, anachronistic, obscurant and stubbornly anti-commercial. Yet Washington state group Death Cab for Cutie (the Bonzos’ song was “Death Cab for a Cutie”; was the same album’s “Piggy Bank Love” already taken?) has consistently exhibited a strong instinct for the modern, the plain and the commercial,…
The infamous fracturing of At the Drive-In just as it neared the mainstream’s cusp spawned Mars Volta, whose full-length concept album De-Loused in the Comatorium pulses with Felliniesque noise and jarring time signatures. Vocalist Cedrick Bixler’s awe-inspiring approximations of Geddy Lee and Freddy Mercury crash into Omar Rodriguez’s sci-fi meltdowns, which are shaped by the guitarist’s collection of 100-plus effects…
It’s no wonder that local rock musicians resent DJs. Not only do sinister spinners steal their club gigs; they can actually get an audience to dance — or at least move around. Looking out over their audiences from onstage, though, bands usually have to settle for ironic devil’s-horn thrusts and faux headbanging, gimmicky gestures that reveal no real fan appreciation….
The slurry affront comes from the back, somewhere near the bar, stopping both the band and the audience dead in their tracks: “Go back to England, you fake motherfucker!” Holly Golightly is a few songs into a ninety-minute set at the Subterranean, a two-tiered nightclub in Chicago’s bustling Bucktown district, when the brickbat is hurled her way. It’s only the…
There’s more than one memorable way to scream in a song. There’s the artfully abrasive method — a full-throated screech with enough primal intensity to make Edvard Munch stop and stare. There’s the discordant and painfully deranged animal cry: Think of a confused Jim Morrison wailing at his most repulsively graphic demons in purple microdot-enhanced widescreen. There’s the chilling but…
Out of Time, in which we are to believe 48-year-old Denzel Washington and 32-year-old Sanaa Lathan were high school sweethearts, demands that its audience ignore all manner of other implausibilities. Foremost among them is the behavior of Washington’s Matt Whitlock, chief of police in a tiny coastal town just outside Miami, who does stupid things for questionable people, nearly ruining…
Director Richard Linklater’s School of Rock imagines, sort of, what might have become of voluble rock snob Barry the morning after his grand finale in Stephen Frears’ adaptation of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity — after his Marvin Gaye impersonation had faded and been forgotten in the daylight hours, after he quit his gig at the record store to pursue…
Cop a feel: Regarding Victor Zinn’s letter “Cop to It” (September 25): Cops feel they know what’s right for everyone. But they don’t know what’s right for themselves! I’m a single man. Sometimes a guy wants to get laid. But he doesn’t want to deal with games and rejection. Yet most men inevitably pay for sex. One way is illegal….
Perhaps it’s just as well that the fast-starting Chiefs hijacked the Royals’ short-lived hold on the city’s sports fans. The overachieving third-place squad still ranks among this baseball season’s most compelling stories, and Tony Peña’s upbeat managerial methods definitely gave the team the confidence it needed to dominate spring training and the April schedule. But September’s sorry showing suggests that…
On September 20, Kansas City Star readers were greeted with an unsettling sight on the newspaper’s front page: yet another rendition of “Precious Doe,” the unidentified victim of a homicide more than two years old. This time, the decapitated child was rendered in a sickly, gray-colored, clay bust. The police investigation into the gruesome crime continues to go nowhere. But…
It’s Friday night at Lakeside Speedway. Aaron Daniel, his girlfriend, his stepdad and a couple of friends from high school are standing around on the grassy bank of the reserved tailgating area, just behind Turn 1. The parking lot is filled with pickup trucks bearing both NASCAR and Confederate flag stickers. Light from uncovered bulbs atop wooden poles reflects…
