Of Note
No one wants to see a show where everyone onstage is standing motionless behind a keyboard. For years, electronic-music acts have struggled with different ways to address this — with varying levels of success. They’ve …
Tucson is a place of dust and red squatty rocks and ancient cacti and retirees playing golf and a desert heat in the summer so intense that buying a tank of gas becomes a spiritual …
From the first downbeat of a Mike Doughty , you know you’re in for something crafty and powerful and maybe a little strange. He’s a flawless modern craftsman, and that encourages a listener to embrace …
I don’t want to say that Damien Jurado is somber. Let’s just say that he’s the kind of guy who writes lyrics like “Happy birthday, John/ Where has your sweetheart gone?/ She left today with …
Robert Fisher, the man behind the Willard Grant Conspiracy, has a deep voice and a talent for dark but sophisticated lyrics. His music is usually categorized as Americana, but it can just as easily slip …
Dynamite Walls first crossed my radar in 2007, after the band, while on tour, unknowingly spent a night in a rented home that had once been the site of a mass murder. That same year …
Even though they’re from Colombia and do not sing a word of English, Aterciopelados (which translates as “the Velvety Ones”) are straight out of the rock-and-roll playbook of the America of the late 1960s. With …
Anya Marina, little-girlish, standing waiflike and rib-thin on Jimmy Kimmel’s electric-blue stage is somewhere in between her alter ego Miss Halfway and her metamorphosis into a full-blooded rocker chick. The song she is performing — …
A few months ago, when Facebook was in the throes of a “25 Things About Myself” chain-letter epidemic, my friend Andria sent me a list of 15 albums that changed her life. Andria moved to …
The New Yorker recently ran a brief profile of Lily Allen, mostly covering the same old ground (daughter of semifamous parents grows up to be singer-songwriter specializing in blunt but effective tales of everygirl sexual …
Branford Marsalis is a year older than his trumpet-playing brother Wynton. Critics first took notice of Branford during his tenure with Art Blakey. Later, Branford toured with Sting, won Grammy awards, and upped the hip …