Instrumental acts are always a tough sell, but an instrumental ensemble that fancies wrestling masks for stagewear has to be an A&R man’s worst nightmare. Los Straitjackets formed in the late 1980s, but it wasn’t until the Tarantinoization of pop culture a few years later that the SoCal quartet suddenly found itself in the cool-kids clique. Reviving the retro surf…
Anjali is a luscious, pouting diva who sings as if in a postcoital reverie over music as groovy and camp as Barbarella and sexier than a Jacuzzi full of Angelina Jolies. Damn, I’ve died and gone to cosmic-kitsch heaven. Once part of Voodoo Queens, this Anglo-Indian chanteuse has transformed herself into a loin-inflaming singer-producer who pushes all the right buttons….
In the diva-eat-diva world of pop music, Madonna’s recent weak attempts to replicate past sensational, sapphic tendencies left the door wide open for Pink to bulldoze her way into the take-no-shit spotlight. Featuring tunes produced by and cowritten with Rancid’s Tim Armstrong, Try This establishes the Philly homegirl as a musical innovator and trend forecaster in the same way the…
It’s difficult to take a guy seriously when he’s named Harmonica Ham. Then again, it’s hard to critically disembowel a guy named Harmonica Ham. Particularly when Hamilton “Ham” Kirkland’s latest album is made up mostly of cover tunes made sort of famous by the likes of Hank Williams and Junior Brown. OK, it’s not that hard. Turns out, Harmonica Ham…
Sometimes it ain’t what you say but how you say it. Case in point: the title track off Ghetto Pop Life, the freakishly good debut LP from oddball hip-hop producer Danger Mouse and his relatively obscure MC collaborator, Jemini. I got a bullet in the clip, so whatcha want? goes the opening verse. I got a lyric I can spit,…
With its grade-school colors and cartoonish landscapes, the album art for the Shins’ second full-length seems cribbed from a game of Candy Land. Was the graphic artist on an ether binge? If so, he may not have been the only one. For much of Chutes, the sloppy-poppy Albuquerque, New Mexico, quartet seems 100 feet high and rising, strumming out ’60s-tinged…
Lord, this boy’s good. Ted Leo’s quick, muscular guitar-pop is just the kind of rock-saving sound my younger self used to believe was bound to be huge any day now. It isn’t, of course, and that’s a goddamned shame. But that don’t mean it won’t feel colossal when the man rocks Lawrence. He bashes out great speedy tunes without seeming…
Face it: David Allan Coe is tougher than you. The tattooed Texan crooner of country classics such as “Truck Driving Man” and “Tennessee Whiskey” has a renegade’s background that wilts your résumé like a daisy before a flamethrower. You weren’t orphaned at nine. You didn’t go to reform school before your first wet dream. You didn’t kill a guy…
As a band formed with the same spontaneous spirit of a late-night New Orleans jam session — which isn’t too far from how its members actually came together — the Subdudes continue to be one of the more engaging acts to have emerged from the Crescent City over the past fifteen years. Back together and touring after hanging it up…
Q: Where does a 300-pound gorilla jam? A: Anywhere it wants. Former area percussionist and all-around slacker Mike Dillon (Garage a Trois, Malachy Papers, Les Claypool’s Frog Brigade, and at least another half-dozen bands, living and deceased) will make his latest swing through town with Hairy Apes BMX. Cut from the same swath of sonic experimentalism that has clothed groups…
Psychedelic, R&B-flavored garage-punk might seem like a pretty narrow niche, but by casting a net from Seattle to Philly, FuzzFest’s organizers have found enough purveyors of that flashback microgenre to justify a three-day extravaganza. Local luminaries include the Litigators, whose sweat-soaked shows rank among the region’s rowdiest revivals; Lust-R-Tones, who emphasize crystalline sound quality without sacrificing energy; and the Hefners…
Ska is not dead. It’s just in a vegetative state, can’t breathe without a ventilator and hasn’t had solid food in years. Less Than Jake is doing its part to keep the pulse beating, albeit faintly. The Florida-bred ska punks have gradually become more punk than ska as the pop-punk wave crested at its mainstream peak. But while the skunk…
Those wacky rock stars and their side projects. Apparently fighting foo and hoarding punk covers wasn’t enough to satiate Chris Shiflett. The guitarist for the Foo Fighters and Me First and the Gimme Gimmes had enough free time to become the lead singer for a third band, Jackson, a quartet Shiflett formed with his brother Scott (Face to Face) to…
Screw Howard Dean. You want young voters? We’ll give you young voters. Announcing the presidential candidacy of Chris Carrabba. The Dashboard Confessional frontman and professional tortured soul already possesses a freakish hold on impressionable young minds. And take a look at his cabinet: an army of bands such as Thrice, Thursday and Brand New leading the charge with the emo-pop-punk…
Ah yes, Stacy’s mom. She’s got it going on. And on. And on. And on. It’s difficult to expect radio to do anything less than wring every last drop of life from a catchy ditty like the Fountains of Wayne MILF fantasy “Stacy’s Mom.” Despite the song’s infinite spins, though, I’m still driving and chirping cheerfully along with some kid’s…
The Prairie Dogg finds the dirt on the Grand Caymans, Groundhog Day and who’s been naughty this year with guitarist Al Pitrelli of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. PD: Is the TSO ready to roll? AP: Absolutely. We’ve been ready since the last tour ended in January. Is Christmas still your favorite holiday? I imagine Easter or Flag Day would be more…
Genocide isn’t so bad. Don’t get me wrong, nothing puts a bummer on your party quite like shallow, unmarked graves in the front lawn and dismembered limbs strewn across the driveway. But some things are just as bad — mistakenly brushing your teeth with Vagisil, dropping the soap in the shower at Leavenworth, expecting barbecued chicken when you show up…
Damn artsy bands. Explosions in the Sky is often lumped with Mogwai, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Sigur Ros. This is partly because music critics must compare them to something, lest we shrivel and die, and partly because those three are the only instrumental prog-rock bands we know offhand. We’re supposed to gush about the complex aural tapestries, captivating sounds…
“Do it! Fuckin’ do it!” bellows an overheated fan from somewhere in the capacity crowd jammed into the Chicago annex of the House of Blues. The Shins’ frontman, James Mercer, smiles in mild bemusement, adjusts a string on his brick-red Gibson and launches into “Kissing the Lipless,” a track from his band’s second album, Chutes Too Narrow. The audience goes…
It took four years, but Dark Castle — Robert Zemeckis and Joel Silver’s horror division — has finally made something genuinely scary. Maybe, after the success of The Ring, Silver realized that one long-haired, soaking-wet little girl is scarier than a whole posse of latex-enhanced “rubberheads” (as a colleague charmingly calls them). Not that the psychological suspense flick Gothika is…
If you’re hankering for a movie about an awkward yet lovable outsider who wanders into a pastel mock-up of Middle America and cajoles the straights to get saucy, you’re in luck. It’s called Edward Scissorhands, and it’s been available on video for years. Renting it will keep you from having to endure Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat,…
Trigger happy: Maybe Tony Ortega thought he was being cute last week when the Pitch published his article “Half-Cocked” (KC Strip, November 6), where he implied that all Missourians who support concealed carry are lonely, racist hicks with small penises, but I found it rather ignorant. While I don’t own a gun, I am a strong supporter of concealed carry….
I’m a dog, and I’m hyper, and I like to dig and bark and roll around in stuff and, like, I’m a dog. And my friend the juicy steak that usually writes this column said I could … scratchscratchscratch … fill in this week because it noticed that every Saturday in some Johnson County editions, The Kansas City Star (hahahaha,…
It was one of the most notorious murders in Kansas history. In the spring of 1980, a Johnson County housewife contracted a hit on her stepson. Offering a new car and free motorcycle repair, Sueanne Hobson persuaded her seventeen-year-old son, James Crumm, and Crumm’s sixteen-year-old buddy Paul Sorrentino to pick up thirteen-year-old Christen Hobson from the family’s Overland Park condo…
