Habitat: 01.21.2012
A good bit of natural uncertainty seems to surround new local trio Habitat, who for a time only played intermittently between each member’s full-time band schedule and who have yet to formally record even one original song for public consumption. Through most interpretations, the band is nothing more than a side project: guitarist Andrew Landry [...]
Cass McCombs: 01.17.2012
Though Alt-Country has exponentially grown in popularity over the last several decades, it has rarely seen artists capable of pushing its boundaries while remaining decidedly within them. Even the very avant leanings of Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, generally regarded as the sub-genre’s creative apex, has been accused of representing more the preternatural evolution and singular [...]
Lovey Dovies: 12.05.2011
In music circles, “hiatus” can be a really nasty term. More informative than the realization that a local band hasn’t played a gig in while but somehow also more discomforting that a formal breakup announcement, hiatuses would represent an awful purgatory if they didn’t usually imply much worse. Those of the “unofficial” kind often become [...]
Brass Bed: 11.11.2011
You’d think that with their admirable success over the past three years, Brass Bed would be just a little complacent with themselves. However, even after having had the pleasure of sharing the stage with the likes of indie big wigs The Walkmen and releasing last year’s shimmering chamber pop epic, Melt White, the on-stage demeanor [...]
Big Rock Candy Mountain: 11.02.2011
Although they’ve been off of the local live circuit for a few months, it should be no surprise to anyone that the members of Big Rock Candy Mountain have had no trouble picking up where they left off. Michael Girardot is a constantly-working artist, splitting time between his front man duties for BRCM and keyboard [...]
Rotary Downs + Caddywhompus: 10.29.2011
Camaraderie between a mature rock band and a younger noise duo may seem unlikely in this fast paced and cliquish era of alternative music, but Rotary Downs – local champions of unkillable working man’s indie rock – and Caddywhompus – constantly breaking new experimental ground – have recently forged such a platonic relationship, one that [...]
Voodoo Music Experience, Day 3: 10.30.2011
By now, all music blogs and culture magazines are abuzz about Los Angeles-based rap collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, whose set at the Le Ritual Voodoo main stage on the final day of Voodoo was at once electrifying and unnerving. After the group showered photographers with water and unloaded a slew of [...]
Voodoo Music Experience, Day 2: 10.29.2011
To say that Gordon Gano, lead singer of the hugely influential Violent Femmes, has completely eschewed the lazy exclusivist aspect of being an artistic icon of post punk and an originator alternative rock would be a monumental understatement. Though you could have found him collaborating with icons like John Cale, Lou Reed, PJ Harvey and [...]
Voodoo Music Experience, Day 1: 10.28.2011
Though it would probably be overstepping to grant Morphine the kind of singular distinction usually thrown at the likes of jazz fusion pioneer Miles Davis or Barryfest-endorsed darkly sarcastic American duo Steely Dan, it would be incredibly disingenuous not to acknowledge that this Boston-bred oddball of the 1990s – adept at melting fiery blues and [...]
