Of Note
They were new last year: the San Pedro el Cortez band, home-based in Tijuana, where there is currently a resurgence of rock bands that follow different camps: shoegaze, psych, British mod, American garage. SPeC fit …
Colin Smith emails from London that when the Blood plays San Diego, they plan to open with “Megalomania.” That was the band’s first single, a short little blast that ridiculed the Pope. It almost sounds …
The video for “Into the Depths” by the Soft Moon is filmed in grainy black-and-white, with claustrophobia-inducing camera work. It shows a woman who keeps looking over her shoulder in fear as she runs through …
My phone conversation with Mountain Goats mastermind John Darnielle gets off to a bad start when I ask him about his love of black metal. He corrects me: he is a fan of death metal, …
My favorite Chris Robinson story takes place in a beach bar, back when the Black Crowes was playing small venues. Someone in the audience had bounced a lime wedge off his brother’s dome. He stopped …
If you had heard nothing about the Kopecky Family Band except their name, you would be forgiven for not having high hopes about this Nashville six-piece. It doesn’t help much to learn that none of …
Sean Mackin checks in by phone from Albuquerque to talk about the Yellowcard tour. “We’re killing time right now,” he says. “We’ll probably do some go-carting before sound check. Team-building activities. Stuff like that.” How …
We talk by phone, Nena Anderson and I, about her winter vegetable garden. She’s been working in her yard, getting ready for the coming cold front. A single mother, Anderson works as a designer, a …
Delicate Steve’s song “Redeemer,” from the new Positive Force, is an original, but it sounds like an oddball cover version of the instrumental theme song from some forgotten 1980s TV drama (I’m thinking Hill Street …
The song that transformed Boz Scaggs’s career is simple to the point of monotony. Except for the guitar break, there are two chords: an Em9 that resolves into a jazzy A13 over and over and …
A couple of weeks before the election, I looked up a Future of the Left video online, but before I could see it I had to sit through a campaign ad for Rep. Michele Bachmann. …
Sam Prekop checks in by phone from his home in Chicago. I gather he is rocking in the proverbial sense, meaning in an old-fashioned chair. Every so often, I hear the tell-tale creak of wood …
Punk is getting interesting again. This year, the Russian provocateurs in Pussy Riot proved that punk is still a polarizing political and cultural force. But, musically, punk is thrilling in a way it hasn’t been …
The octopus is an intelligent creature with some amazing abilities. It can squeeze its boneless body through tight spaces. It can crawl along the bottom of the ocean floor or suddenly switch on its built-in …
Two Cow Garage is exactly the sort of pun-ish band name that one might expect to emanate from the farm country of Ohio, which is where they are from. Other pop-culture writers bag them as …
Members of Calexico, who called themselves Spoke at first and put out an album of the same name in 1996, are, in truth, from Tucson. “To live here,” Arizona-based singer and Calexico collaborator Marianne Dissard …