Derrick Carter likes his anonymity. But there are only so many places that a beefy, bald dude can hide, even when he’s not spinning house music at clubs around the world. Not that D.C. hasn’t tried. He hails from Chicago, but when he isn’t traipsing across this country, he’s doing the expat thing in Europe — his Classic Recordings…
April is going to kill me. Writing a review of a band for which a friend — April, in this case — is a self-proclaimed “superfan” can be a treacherous endeavor. Anything less than a fawning description of the intimate religious experience you had listening to the album — during which you had two orgasms and one surreal conversation with…
In these days of slowly waning post-election bitterness, it’s tempting to view Knoxville, Tennessee’s Half-Handed Cloud as part of some vast, red-state conspiracy to ensnare nondevout hipsters. Prime mover and multi-instrumentalist John Ringhofer’s biblical imagery is rendered nearly subliminal by the tuneful, interwoven songs it spikes. Thy Is a Word and Feet Need Lamps is what the Microphones might sound…
50 Foot Wave is essentially Throwing Muses with a different drummer and a punkier, more direct approach. The band packs a raw, shredded-throat wallop on its full-length debut, Golden Ocean. No more sudden, artsy detours and swooping instrumentals — it’s bruise time. Years of touring solo and with the Muses have ground guitarist Kristin Hersh’s voice down to a grated,…
I don’t want to hype, but Diplo’s remix of “Amazon” is the achievement of our times, a rope-skip banger that makes errrebody in the club go batshit sideways, and after coughing up Arular — the full-length that remix ain’t on — most civilizations would lie down and die, ’cause there’s no room in heaven for anything M.I.A.’s not saying. Our…
Whether you’ll find a place in your heart for Regina Spektor will depend in large part on your reaction to her voice — a compelling compound of immigrant street brat, operatic Björk, and histrionic P.J. Harvey. Riding fits of imitation classical piano, Spektor somehow coaxes smiles from the decidedly smileless by exploiting the malleability of the English language. Indignant, accented…
Kansas City’s Irish have endured their own troubles lately, what with a shortened St. Pat’s parade, an Irish heritage museum still searching for a home and festivals destined not just to invoke but to become bogs. The Young Dubliners, based in that well-known bastion of the Ancient Order of Hibernians known as Los Angeles, are well aware of our Irish…
Whereas most rappers make a name for themselves by slaying competitors in free-style rhyme battles, MC Chris came up through strange circumstances — voicing a cartoon spider. Fans of the Cartoon Network’s cult favorite Adult Swim series should know MC Chris for lending his hyperobnoxious voice to Hesh on Sealab 2021 and various characters on Aqua Teen Hunger Force, including…
Blues brothers Cody and Luther Dickinson and bassist Chris Chew — the full-tilt Memphis power trio North Mississippi Allstars — have grown from precocious upstarts to full-on blues rockers over the past nine years. The evolution can be charted on three top-notch studio albums (featuring legends like R.L. Burnside and Otha Turner), a handful of Grammy nods and countless days…
Country music is in the shitter right now, but George Strait is still here like Prudential, still holding it down and keeping it real after all these years. Never one for the outlaw poses, pinup tactics or misplaced nostalgia of most successful country acts, Strait has always traveled the road’s middle with tunes that aren’t afraid to show some heart….
Being in a family band is tough, but the brothers Followill, along with first cousin Matthew, have taken the quick success of Kings of Leon in stride. After the double-platinum success of the 2003 debut, Youth and Young Manhood (which generated higher expectations for the newly released Aha Shake Heartbreak), how could life get any better? How about an invitation…
Ashlee Simpson sucks. A Yahoo search for that phrase generates 135,000 hits. In the December 30 issue of the Pitch, I contributed to that chorus, writing that she had “dyed blandness black.” I revised my opinion after witnessing Simpson’s cracked caterwauling during the Orange Bowl halftime show in early January. Simpson’s performance failed to impress college football fans, who booed…
It’s a Thursday night at Dave’s Stagecoach Inn — the Westport dive that’s as likely to host a fashion-mulleted hipster as a toothless welder — and all eyes are on the jukebox. John Yuelkenbeck, part-time bartender and proprietor of the undisputed best jukebox in town, begins posting clues every hour that will eventually lead — by some occult series of…
The Brick is packed. Not that it requires a Herculean effort to fill the small downtown indie-rock enclave with people. If you build it and stock it with cheap beer, they will come. Throw in some karaoke, maybe a trivia night, perhaps some live music, and the place will reach capacity. But tonight is different. The second anniversary party for…
Though the immediacy of the first loping chords of “I Will Dare” might suggest otherwise, it’s been nearly a decade and a half since Paul Westerberg last fronted the mythically sloppy, booze-fueled Replacements. Which is longer than he was even in the group. Yup, Westerberg has been on his own for a while, but after recording his last three albums…
In 1973, when 81-year-old recluse Henry Darger died, his landlords opened his apartment door to discover a treasure trove of artistic expression: 300 paintings, some more than 10 feet long; a 15,000-page illustrated novel (titled In the Realms of the Unreal); a 5,000-page autobiography; and thousands of pages of notes, journals and source material — not to mention countless books,…
When was the last time you lost yourself in a Shakespeare film? It’s a testament to the success of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, the sharp and brooding new version directed by Michael Radford (Il Postino), that we leave the theater without concern for the production. Instead, the response is to the play and to the movie’s reading…
Through the looking glass: Regarding Bryan Noonan’s “Shots in the Dark” (February 17): Someone says the man punched out a Jeep side window? Hmmm. Front and rear window glass is laminated safety glass and can be damaged if you are strong enough and hit it hard enough, so maybe a real bruiser can crack it — but not penetrate it….
Jimmy the Fetus Hey, kids, Jimmy the Fetus here, your guide to moral values in the Midwest, helping everyone see that what we learned in Sunday school really matters. Dear Jimmy: I don’t like being the jealous type, but I’m on the road for business a lot, and I have a sinking feeling that my wife might be fooling around…
While the Strip was on a brief vacation, sunning its meaty goodness half a world away, loyal readers kept us abreast of the hometown news by e-mail. That’s how we first learned about one of the most embarrassing episodes for this town’s major daily newspaper. If you missed it, we don’t blame you. The Kansas City Star didn’t draw much…
The Kansas City Chiefs say Arrowhead Stadium needs $320 million for renovations, and the team is offering to cover a third of the cost. But thanks to a generous National Football League loan program and other enticements, team owner Lamar Hunt may pay next to nothing for the tricked-out stadium he covets. A February 18 Kansas City Star story described…
Ernest Jackson remembers readingto his class for 30 seconds last fall. The freshmen in Strategic Reading were on a chapter called “Going for It!” in Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul. That day’s passage was “The Boy Who Talked With Dolphins,” about a kid named Jeff who feels rejected by his peers. Jeff finds his first friend in a dolphin…
