Returning from a 16-year absence, Celtic Frost begins Monotheist with an invigorating two-song punch that hearkens back to the band’s classic thrash and simultaneously updates it. Initially, this sounds like the wiser, more powerful unit you’d expect, considering that leader Tom Warrior never stopped exploring his creativity or contemplating approaches to his band’s sound. But, as fans are well aware,…
Lyfe Jennings is a double rarity in today’s urban-music world. A great concert performer whose recordings tell only half his story, the Toledo, Ohio, native and former convict is also a loverman unafraid to wear his morals and his heart on the same sleeve. The best moments on Jennings’ outstanding sophomore album, The Phoenix, make both his peculiarities clear. “S.E.X.”…
Given that William Elliott Whitmore has toured with the likes of Clutch, uninitiated concertgoers who spot his name on a bill often expect a hardcore band whose moniker honors, say, its gym teacher. Whitmore springs his first surprise when he strides onstage alone, holding a banjo. The astonishment increases when he unleashes a whiskey-coarsened cry that suggests an ancient bluesman…
You know fall’s here when acoustic musicians start migrating south. The Hudsons, an Austin, Texas, trio, began the summer on the main stage at the Kerrville Folk Festival, then busked northward through the Canadian folk circuit. Their homeward gigs, though, have gradually found the band under more cigarette smoke, neon signs and, well, roofs. Musically, with two guitars and a…
Had Minnesota given birth to punk music, it might have sounded less like the Clash and a whole lot more like the Plastic Constellations, a ballsy group from Minneapolis whose shows have the kinetic energy of a whirling dervish on speed. The Constellations’ progressive sound and semi-epic lyrics about dragons, chain mail and natural disasters make for the perfect postpunk…
Iowa City native Matt Grimm hates a lot of things — HMOs, corporate music and sterile suburbia, for starters. (He shares both rage and a song title, “Kill the Poor,” with the Dead Kennedys.) Still, with echoes of his last band, the Hangdogs (potent but less angry roots rockers), still lingering, his protests march down dusty rural roads. Even…
Spawned from Canadian darling Godspeed You Black Emperor in 1999, the seven-member Silver Mt. Zion Orchestra and Tra La La Band is just now embarking on its first U.S. tour. Ringleader and Godspeed co-founder Efrim Menuck surrounds himself mostly with Godspeed players and incorporates similarly intricate arrangements, but with several stylistic differences, most notably the presence of words. The whole…
Cover songs can be a gamble. But after their brilliant tribute to Kate Bush, we’re willing to give the Futureheads the benefit of the doubt. The U.K. quartet recently released a nonalbum reinterpretation of David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” on a Q magazine compilation. To be futuristic, the group replaced the post-disco guitar and campy saxophone of the original with its…
Anyway, one of my assistants alerted me to the fact that a bunch of rock-and-roll bands have gotten together for something called the Family Values Tour. At first, I was encouraged to learn that there were musicians dedicated to promoting Judeo-Christian morality. But then I took a closer look at the artists on this tour. I was absolutely appalled. So…
The good news is that Overstep is not breaking up. The bad news, according to bassist Ben Ruth, is that drummer Alex Organ’s move to California makes playing together “a little more difficult.” But the band has been busy since The Bullring by the Sea, its acclaimed 2003 album, recording seven new songs before Organ’s departure. These pieces will form…
Last Thursday night, Davey¹s Uptown Ramblers Club was a crucible of sweat, screaming and bluegrass music. To some — and, normally, to me — that would sound like a depiction of hell straight out of a Far Side comic. But when one of the most compelling local music stories this year concerns a punk-bluegrass musician¹s battle with esophageal cancer, you…
This should be the best of times for Buddy Guy. Plenty of fans and reviewers agree that he’s the greatest bluesman aboveground, and his still-vital artistry remains an inspiration to his fellow performers. Last year, Guy was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by two of the blues’ most famous practitioners: B.B. King, a player he emulated…
Backwash, August 10 Good Owners Your article about pit bulls was very good. Since breeding is hard to determine, as your article mentions, my recommendation is that there should be no ban on any breeds. However, every dog should be registered, and the owner must have insurance to cover any harm caused by the animal. Any owner who can’t afford…
We may not be big on shelling out our hard-earned dough on poker, but we’re familiar with the bluff. There’s the I’m not hungover bluff and the I didn’t know he was your boyfriend bluff. That’s why we can identify with the failed bluff by St. Louisan Dan Nassif in the World Series of Poker. Dan had, oh, $12 million…
There was a time, believe it or not, when the opening of Mission Mall — sorry, Mission Center — was a big deal. This was before we drove north to Zona Rosa or west for Nebraska Furniture Mart. In fact, this was before we drove at all. Even though we don’t go to malls with a gaggle of girlfriends…
If there’s anything the Strip likes more than a cold drink at the end of a hot day on the grill, it’s reveling in the hypocrisy of you silly carnivores. Lately, the Strip’s been ponderin’ Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, a graduate professional school that’s turned out good and pure disciples of Jesus since the 1950s. The seminary perches on 200…
The Pitch summer road trip is now an official tradition. It started a couple of years ago when we grew restless as the city heated up and everyone else went on vacation. We took a day out of our routine and hit a street — Metcalf — in what became a revealing exploration of what we thought we knew. Last…
It was great to get away for the weekend, but I was so severly tonguelashed last night at Dave’s Stagecoach for missing the Embarrassment show Sunday that the trip almost seemed not worth it after all (just kidding, mom and dad!). Micah P. Hinson I had no noteworthy musical experiences in my hometown of Abilene, Texas — probably because there’s…
The Roman Numerals and Doris Henson rocked St. Louis Friday night. Riverfront Times music head Annie Zaleski was there to see it. Here’s her report: I often consider myself a Kansas city poseur. A crew and i drove in for the Gary Numan show at the Record Bar last week — a fabulous, fabulous show I might add, made doubly…
You know you love Tom. It’s a big weekend for local (and nonlocal, in some cases) music, and the most comprehensive coverage (aside from the Pitch of course) of what’s going on is just a click away, courtesy of our friends and guides at Sad Dog. And now, myself. Perhaps, as with many such situations, the Fates were the agents…
There’s a reason that sometimes, on Sundays, our emotions run an Elisabeth Kubler-Ross-inspired gamut: The start of another workweek can be a gruesome thing. We experience denial that we have to go back to work, then anger, then finally acceptance. Thankfully, the Raphael Hotel (325 Ward Parkway, 816-802-2152) feels our pain and numbs it with alcohol. On Revival Nights, Mondays…
Benito (Lions Gate) Cape of Good Hope (New Yorker) Clark Gable Collection, Volume 1 (Fox) Don’t Tell (Lions Gate) The Hard Corps (Sony) Hong Kong Phooey: The Complete Series (Turner) Hoot (New Line) James Stewart: The Signature Collection (Warner Bros.) Land of the Blind (Bauer) Lemming (Strand) L’Enfant (Sony) Machined (Lions Gate) Magilla Gorilla: The Complete Series (Turner) Rome: The…
Like a real war, Chromehounds involves long stretches of tedium, occasionally broken up by a few moments of sheer terror. After what feels like weeks of ponderous marching from point A to point B in your titular “Hound” — a walking tank — combat erupts. The fighting is fast and ferocious, and ends quickly. After the smoke clears, the march…
Apocalypse Now: The Complete Dossier (Paramount) It’s all here, more or less: the 1979 theatrical cut of Francis Ford Coppola’s harrowing and still-hypnotic Joseph Conrad-in-Vietnam adaptation, the 49-minutes-longer-but-feels-24-minutes-shorter 2001 Redux edition, Marlon Brando’s entire 17-minute “The Hollow Men” monologue, even more “lost” and deleted scenes (including a spooky-shocking one, in which monkeys control a boat upon which a corpse has…
