The Birds This crossdressed pantsing of Hitchcock’s classic gives us Late Night at its best … and worst. When the troupe members shake together Hollywood satire, chintzy drag glamour and bitchy wit in a cocktail of a half-dozen set pieces, the show’s a heady gas. Too often, however, this Birds substitutes showy pop references for actual jokes and relies heavily…
Blood Work When she was 7 months old, the daughter of Taiwanese artist Jawshing Arthur Liou was diagnosed with leukemia. Liou went on to document her struggle with the disease through the impressionistic images in these three video and sound installations. In “CBC” (an acronym for “complete blood count”), dreamy, soft-focus snowflakes fall while tiny people appear to run between…
In Nicole Holofcener’s first feature, 1996’s Walking and Talking, the writer-director warmly portrayed an adult female friendship, nudging at emotional issues without resorting to shtick or melodrama. Five years later, Holofcener’s Lovely and Amazing attempted to do the same for a family of women, with wildly different results: Virtually every character was superficial, narcissistic, petulant, depressed or all of the…
Wanna knock the prez? Let’s make a show … preferably on television. Paul Weitz’s new satire, American Dreamz, imagines the Bush regime as an episode in the history of American entertainment and American Idol as the quintessence of U.S. democracy. So what else is new? The vision of America as a vast, ratings-driven amateur hour is not without promise,…
Sometimes, as a food writer, I feel as though I’m traveling through another dimension — a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a world of meals both delicious and inedible, of soothing service and power-mad hostesses. There are times that I want to slow down and eat only saltine crackers and fresh fruit,…
I’m sick of boring Hollywood gossip. Brad and Angelina? Jennifer and Vince? Eminem’s latest marital discord? Who cares? A more entertaining diversion is the latest news from Bollywood, where the media got into a frenzy last week over sexy Saif Ali Khan’s emergency appendectomy! (This just in: He will be able to complete his latest movie. Whew!) That story…
Is it us, or does the phrase release party conjure up all sorts of naughty images? In any case, that’s what we hoped to find at Review Magazine’s issue release party at Balanca’s Pyro Room. Review — the highfalutin’, artsy-fartsy glossy that’s a wee bit incomprehensible to philistines like us — started throwing these shindigs a couple of months…
Well, who woulda thunk it — the Hangout is actually becoming a bona fide hangout. Chalk that up to the joint’s cool DJ events, especially those that lean toward the hip-hop and breakbeat side of the spectrum. Case in point is Fourmation, which goes down every Friday at the Broadway bar and brings a revolving lineup of broke-ass-beat DJs….
The Dark Circles are independent as hell. The band’s keyboardist is Anodyne Records owner John Hulston, who took his band to South by Southwest, even though it’s not technically on Anodyne. No one complained. This eight-song debut was recorded and mixed by Brodie Rush (Be/Non, Brodioke), who isn’t exactly the scene’s go-to engineer (yet?). The Dark Circles’ existence, thus far,…
The Loon is right, and not the bird, either. And I see the high-jump kings with roadside stirrups on when I come back to meet the bear, explains singer Josh Grier on “In Houston.” Crumple up lyrics like these with guitar that ranges between riffy fuzz and crystal ambience; synth that runs from fake xylophone to machine squelch; big, smacky…
Why bother with a compilation that resequences songs from albums that work best as whole albums? Sure, the whole second disc consists of rarities and three new songs plus an entire program of videos, but fans of masterworks such as Mezzanine and 100th Window will have to ask themselves why they would submit to having those songs presented out of…
New York producer and MC Von Pea kicks off the full-length debut from the hip-hop trio Tanya Morgan by saying, “The last time Brooklyn and Cincinnati got together, a classic was made. We’ve got some big shoes to fill.” The reference is to Talib Kweli and Hi-Tek’s 2002 release, Reflection Eternal. Big shoes, indeed, and for the most part, Moonlighting…
Art rock connotes pretension, but Davan’s variety of the genre displays the band’s keenness for an avant-garde, intricate musicality with a sense of humor that saves its sound from being like that snotty gallery type who refuses to drink the box wine. Live, some songs move languidly, focusing on harmonized vocals sung over discordant keyboards. But before you can order…
Watermelon Slim and his hard-drivin’ proletariat, the Workers, slam down blues for all of us paycheck-to-paycheck people. His latest CD deals with “Hard Times” and “Hard Labor,” and one of the best tunes, “Check Writing Woman,” describes rocketing across Oklahoma using money he doesn’t have to cover checks his woman has been bouncing. The hardscrabble Slim (Bill Homans on his…
Even for an indie band, Mellowdrone is sexy. And so is its music. Following the grand tradition of Boston and Whitesnake (though the similarity stops here), this band comes from the musical genius of a single mind, that of Jonathan Bates, a guitar prodigy who dropped out of music school at age 20 to fire up Mellowdrone in Los Angeles….
One of the most expansive-sounding trios in indie rock, Minmae started as Sean Brooks’ lo-fi singer-songwriter project. After adding fellow Portland, Oregon, musicians Josh Kempa and Christopher Calvert, Brooks began supplementing his folksy melodies with psychedelic swirls and sci-fi synthesizers. Minmae’s May 9 release, its eighth full-length record in as many years, opens with a largely instrumental epic that devotes…
Their fans are called “WIGheads,” suggesting a sea of rabid sports enthusiasts in rainbow Afros. But there’s nothing jock-rock about West Indian Girl’s trippy, multilayered indie sound. Co-founders Robert James and Francis Ten first met in Detroit, eventually defecting to sunny California to craft one track that would embody WIG’s aesthetic. According to the band’s bio, “Dream” was so impressive…
Ironhead was born of tragedy. The band formed in 2003, less than two years after Johnny Sonic’s father died in a motorcycle accident, and the name is not only a tribute to the guitarist’s dad but to his death. This metal trio plays a high-intensity form of rock that evokes beat-up Trans Ams and Ted Nugent concert T-shirts. These guys…
St. Louis is Tennessee Williams territory, home to sweaty muscles, humidity and discomfort — not necessarily the place music fans would go to search for rye-and-cigarettes noir music from a mysterious, teasing, vaguely dangerous chanteuse. Yet downriver native Chloe Day whispers tunes laden with enough layered secrets, addictions and percussive slinkiness for both updated Raymond Chandler adaptations and creepy indie…
Forget Harry Potter. England’s biggest export these days is Arctic Monkeys. With an early online buzz, the indie-rock foursome’s debut went triple platinum in no time, breaking records and reconfirming the Web’s impact on today’s music marketplace. The group isn’t squandering its moment in the sun, either. In the next few weeks, we’ll see a new DVD as well as…
Death can bring an artist the validation that eluded him during his lifetime. If there’s a silver lining to Nikki Sudden’s recent death, that’s it. The British singer and guitarist died March 26, after a show in New York. He was 49. Born Nicholas Godfrey, Sudden formed the Swell Maps with his younger brother, Epic Soundtracks (aka Paul Godfrey), in…
Sure, the Killers, the Bravery, Franz Ferdinand and half the bands breaking today are riding the new new-wave wave. And, hell, maybe the Sounds are doing that, too. But their deliriously catchy and undeniably fun mix of ’80s pop (think the Go-Go’s), Blondie, New Order and even the Ramones makes the Swedish band’s sophomore effort, Dying to Say This to…
Thomas McIntosh’s mother wouldn’t let him have a bicycle. It was Kansas City, Kansas, in the 1970s, and she’d heard about some bad things that had happened to a couple of kids who’d gone out bike riding. She gave her son music instead. Mrs. McIntosh may have deprived the country of a Tour de France winner, but in forbidding young…
Raise a glass to MC Naeem Juwan Hanks. “I had a shot last night in Baltimore called ‘the bird’ that was dedicated to the oriole, and I think it’s the best comparison to the Spank Rock collaboration,” says the man known as Cool Disco Spank Rock (aka Spankro) by phone from Philadelphia. “It’s a combination of things — orange on…
