Music
With South By Southwest safely in the rearview, the country is officially in full-on concert mode. Bands are continuing their tours out of Austin, making their way up the west coast, and eventually landing in our neck of the woods. Adding to the music overload is the recent announcement that
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Recently, a band called Skinny Puppy sued the U.S. government for playing their music at Guantanamo Bay. The price? $666,000. The crime was to use Skinny Puppy's music as a form of torture. We've heard many stories of these practices, over the years, of various bands (Metallica, Van Halen and
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Huntsville, Alabama, band Nightmare Boyzzz win points for not sounding anything like what their name might suggest. This is a band that is built of brittle sugar, constantly threatened at every turn with crumbling. While the riffs are firmly in the garage rock vein of bands such as the Black
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There was a moment in my conversation with Jima, frontman of Seattle band the Purrs, when I expressed how inadequate it is to simply call the Purrs a psychedelic indie rock band. While that might be ultimately accurate, it just doesn't quite do justice to what the band does. Let's
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For me, summertime means lazy afternoons lying on the dock or bumming sailboat rides on Commencement Bay. So when my craving for liquid refreshment overflowed one recent evening, I gathered a few members of the League of Liberal Libations and headed to Salty’s at Redondo Beach for some waterfront atmosphere,
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Babes is a band that frequently crosses the wires of love and desire. Online, they don't have much of a presence, beyond vague websites and unoccupied Twitter pages. They have a hotline: (470) BABES-77. One gets the impression that you could call any time for intimate connections.
Music
The complicated interplay and opposition of sex and love is a subject that's been explored extensively in pop music - sometimes explicitly, sometimes subconsciously. Jarvis Cocker made a career out of exploring the destructive and redemptive qualities that sex can inject into a relationship. In "She Fucks Me," Ween take
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"Whether they admit it or not, everyone's got a bit of a heel fetish." So proposes the bio of Seattle glam-power-poppers the Heels. For a band as preoccupied with aesthetics (sound-wise and clothing-wise), it's easy to see why they'd think that. Further, on their Joan Jett-esque anthem, "Fetish," they name-check
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Chicago fuzz merchants the Funs bringing a chugging, lo-fi bravado to your more standard garage rock. Fittingly, given the recent passing of Gary Burger, the Fuzz at times recall the motorik drive of proto-punk weirdos the Monks (whom Burger fronted). Even with the buzzy noise that surrounds the Funs' music,
Music
Growing up, I was always exposed to classic rock. Listening to 97.3 KBSG, in particular, was my jam. As a child, you just sort of naturally assume that your parents like the same thing. I later found out, though, that oldies radio was a compromise for my parents - my
Music
There's a real commitment every time, as an artist, you need to go out and perform, whether it be in Europe or whether it be in the United States," says Michael ONeill from a park bench in Malibu. "It's 36 hours to Austin, 36 hours to Nashville, and it's a
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If the band name doesn't tip it off enough to you, I don't know what to say. They're called Deadkill. What do you think they play? Chillwave? (On a side note, I would love it if there was an explosion of dream-pop acts with misleadingly aggressive names. "Have you heard
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When you start out, as an artist, it's far from uncommon to imitate your heroes. The Rolling Stones wanted to be old blues musicians, scores of angry comedians in the '90s strived to capture Bill Hicks' magic, and Paul Thomas Anderson's early films had the lifeblood of Martin Scorsese surging
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Experimentation for experimentation's sake can be a fun tunnel to explore, but the ability to rein oneself in is a valuable one to have. Following every whim is too easy, which is why I'll always give enormous amounts of credit to people that can write a solid three-minute pop song.
Critics' Picks
[BEDROOM POP] + FRI, MARCH 7 Near as I can tell from what little music is available of Coma Figura, one might describe them as a sort of Foxygen or Titus Andronicus for the bedroom pop set. These are bands that mash together influences and jumble them up into something that
Music
If the punk movement was about tearing down the bloated, cliched foundation of popular music, then post-punk was the beginning of the steady rebuilding process. Like all manner of nebulous music terms, post-punk has come to mean a variety of different things to different people. Bands grouped into the post-punk
