Longtime devotees of Lucinda Williams have two things to be excited about regarding her forthcoming album, Little Honey: (1) She has rekindled the rock-and-roll flame missing from 2007’s West, and (2) she’s calling out Amy Winehouse and Ryan Adams with the song “Little Rock Star.” The 55-year-old songwriter has earned the right to speak her mind, whether it involves self-absorbed…
Beginning as a fairly straightforward second-wave black metal band and drawing comparisons with all the usual suspects — Darkthrone, Burzum, et al. — Nachtmystium has since become one of the most integral purveyors of USBM. Interestingly, the Chicago band achieved its creds by sometimes not being very black metal at all. The sweltering psychedelia on 2006’s Instinct: Decay broke the…
After two solo live albums and two memorable solo visits to Kansas City in the past few years, it’s easy to forget Jackson Browne’s versatility as a musician, which might be boiled down to one key characteristic: He’s a great listener. On his new album, Time the Conqueror, and on its tour, he features background vocalists Chavonne Morris and Alethea…
David Byrne needs no introduction — even if the 56-year-old’s interest in digital technology and futuristic marketing strategies bring him more notoriety than his music does these days. Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, the ex-Talking Heads vocalist’s first collaboration with Brian Eno since 1981’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, was initially available only at Everythingthathappens.com. The record…
Like Pavement or Will Oldham, Blitzen Trapper’s first three albums have been occasionally brilliant but oft-erratic collections. That ailment is resoundingly cured on the group’s new album, Furr, which ditches the lo-fi experiments of yore in favor of a more sure-footed presentation. Opener “Sleepytime in the Western World” could have been a hit for Leon Russell; other tracks respectfully evoke…
The Abracadabras’ debut begins inauspiciously, with two party-rocking tracks that seem like soundtrack auditions for the lost direct-to-video Wayne’s World 3: Garth Rides Alone. But once this Kansas City band stops hurling cheese and gets down to real songs, what follows is excellent. The nasal bleat of frontman John Nixon gives laddish swagger to the doo-woppy “Are We Going Down?”…
The typical Oliver Stone sensory bombardment may be less frenzied in W., but in revisiting the early ’00s by way of the late ’60s, this psycho-historical portrait of George W. Bush has all the queasy appeal of a strychnine-laced acid flashback. Hideous re-creations of the shock-and-awful recent past merge with the formative years and early career of the disastrous current…
With Election Day fast approaching, it’s hard not to get caught up in the dark side of politics. Jared Paul, a Rhode Island journalist and renowned slam poet, was among the hundreds of protesters arrested for rioting during last month’s Republican National Convention. To help raise awareness and funds to offset court costs, his fellow statesman Sage Francis is lending…
Oversized houses with multi-car garages and elegant landscaping line the quiet residential streets near Tuileries Plaza in Kansas City’s Northland. They are the kinds of suburban mansions that you expect to see outfitted with top-of-the-line electronics, backyard swimming pools and koi ponds. One such plush monster of a house has all that, but it also has something you wouldn’t expect:…
At the turn of the 21st century, few predicted the overwhelming influence that Canadians would have on music in the coming years. With apologies to the Arcade Fire, indie-rock supergroup Broken Social Scene is the leader of that movement. Composed of a revolving cast of some 19 (or so) members of Toronto’s boundary-pushing music community, the collective combines the varied…
Call it a coincidence: An inexpensive chain restaurant that I almost never think about came up twice in conversations last week. The first time was when a stockbroker — who once had been a regular at Capital Grille — told me that his income had taken such a plunge, he was going to have to start eating at Ryan’s Grill,…
Supposedly, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. In the case of J.L. Stephenson — son of Loyd Stephenson, one of the twin brothers who founded the iconic Stephenson’s Old Apple Farm Restaurant — the apple has fallen quite a distance. The younger Stephenson, who goes by the name Steve, made headlines last month when he took over a…
From the abandoned Eastern Penitentiary Historic Site in Philadelphia to the prison yards of Abu Ghraib, Richard Ross photographs areas of containment that governments use to imprison, teach, restrain, question and even execute their people. Ross is perhaps best known for his Museology series of mounted animals at natural history museums and from the famous Deyrolle Taxidermy Shop in Paris….
Update: I should have mentioned in the following review that, under a one-time arrangement with the Coterie, I attended the last preview rather than the traditional opening night. After this review ran, the Coterie’s artistic director wrote to say that, by opening night, the lack of “resistance” that I had complained about in the stabbing scenes had been addressed. Now,…
Marc Conklin gazes out the courtroom’s third-story window, at the American flags flapping in the fall breeze. Conklin, the 43-year-old chief administrative officer of the Kansas City Board of Public Utilities, glances down at North Seventh Street to the entrance of the Wyandotte County Courthouse. An hour earlier, a judge unsealed two 57-count indictments alleging that Conklin and Rodney L….
Don Bell likes to mix business, politics and religiosity. Bell, an Olathe homebuilder, bought a Kansas bank in 1989 after receiving what he has called a divine revelation. In 2005, the bank, Security Savings, reported $850 million in assets. As Bell put it, in a written history of his success, the bank and its growth were “a modern-day miracle.” Bell…
Dear Mexican: A group of very young soldiers in the Mexican Army was being chased through the Chapultepec Castle by U.S. Marines. At the end of the chase, the Mexicans realized that they were trapped on a balcony; instead of dying on bayonets, they wrapped themselves in Mexican flags and leapt to their deaths off the balcony. Now these boys…
Best Of Kansas City 2008, October 2 Anchor Ma’am Thanks for naming me Best Morning News Anchor this year — what a surprise! I try and have fun and be myself on the desk. If not, I’d go crazy with all the murder and mayhem stories we read. Tell the writer that he or she sure made me blush! You…
By OWEN MORRIS Kelly Urich is the afternoon host on Mix 93.3 FM and an advocate for laser hair removal. As Urich tells us, “I’m hard core into cycling and rather than shave my legs, I got them treated. For Valentine’s Day I had my butt treated live on the air and it was quite an experience, although the nurse…
By RICHARD GINTOWT In his ongoing quest to rewrite the book of spectacle, Flaming Lips bandleader Wayne Coyne has blasted boomboxes in parking garages, crowd-surfed in a giant hamster ball, obliterated the Oklahoma confetti supply and worn out more white suits than Puff Daddy. Last Halloween he out-insaned his own insanity by gathering a horde of hundreds in downtown Oklahoma…
David Cook, on behalf of Clay Aiken, thanks for this album cover. You look GORGEOUS, and also sexy-angry, like you might pull out your willie at any moment and thrash us to a glorious, welt-covered mess. Congrats, too, on your hit single, “Light On,” which you had Chris Cornell and a guy who’s worked with Puddle of Mudd and Hinder…
