Tegan & Sara The Con (Vapor/Sire) The musical output of Canadian twins inevitably carries with it a vaguely alien air. One can just imagine Tegan & Sara in Montreal and Vancouver, respectively, engaging in some seizure-like sibling communication and spontaneously birthing The Con. Nothing so medievally weird happened, of course,…
Mary J. Blige July 19, 2007 Hard Rock Live Better Than: Any lip-synching factory-made pop tart we can think of The Review: Last night Mary J. Blige turned the Seminole Hard Rock into the Seminole Hard Soul. Rockin a one-piece black jumpsuit and some killer heels, she started the show…
Jackie Guerrido Premios Juventud 2007 July 19, 2007 BankUnited Center, University of Miami Better than: Staying home, I guess. Univision spent the last several months leading up to last night’s 2007 Premios Juventud playing it up as one that would stand-alone for years to come. Nice try but the Spanish-language…
The Rocket Summer Do You Feel Island Records The Rocket Summer’s major label debut, Do You Feel, rings similar to their two previous full-length albums. Bryce Avary, the band’s songwriter, singer, and instrumentalist has perfected his sound with this release. The Rocket Summer got its start back in 1999, when…
Vans Warped Tour July 21st, 2007 Bicentennial Park 11:00 a.m. Warped Tour is celebrating its 13th birthday this year. The main stages have been appropriately renamed to “Lucky” and “13” for the occasion. South Florida did hit some bad luck, though, with bands such as Alkaline Trio, Mxpx, and Valencia…
Bad Brains Build a Nation (Oscilloscope/Megaforce) By Saby Reyes-Kulkarni With musicians, like athletes, it’s always disheartening to watch them hang around long enough to see their abilities break down. Bad Brains fans, long beset by the band’s notorious instability, have every reason to expect that a present-day reunion album can…
Just announced: Joel Meinholz, head of the supercool party promotions/whatever company IAmYourVillain, has just booked the legendary Beat Junkie J-Rocc to perform this Sunday at the Chocolate Sundays at Purdy Lounge. (IAmYourVillain is also responsible for the chilled-out, hip-hoppy, skateboarderish, anything-goes vibe of fun parties like Take Out Tuesday at…
Anyone who thought Putumayo World Music hit its prime during the early-Nineties Birkenstock revival and organic Color Me Cotton clothing line for aging hippies has another groove coming. The label has never ceased to pump out a steady world beat, and these days it’s gettin’ downright funky. Artists from Iceland…
Oski, frontman for the band the Oski Foundation and freestyling host of The Rock Thursdays at Tobacco Road, hates party promoters. “And band managers,” he adds bitterly as he shares what he claims is his most published quote. “I hate them because I’m not a promoter. I’m an artist.” In…
The thumping sound and poignant verses of “Pobre Diabla,” the ear-pleasing harmony of “Lloran las Rosas,” the lyrical poetry of “Mi Corazoncito”: Musically diverse though they may be, Don Omar, Christian Castro, and Aventura, the respective singers of those tunes, will find themselves under the same roof in Coral Gables…
The sounds that Miami’s Skymall, a.k.a. Ed Prence, makes are the musical equivalent of Tourette’s syndrome, and that’s meant as big praise. Frenetic beats, nasty bass, and offbeat sampling might be hallmarks of the area’s electronic underbelly, but Skymall’s volume goes to 11. His single and EP releases are scarce…
Death comes to Churchill’s this Saturday in the skinny form of South Florida’s hottest extreme/death/thrash-metal acts. Miami-based headliner Wykked Wytch has been making records for 10 years. Powered by the caterwauling vocals of Kittie-sound-alike Ipek, the band tempers its extreme metal sound with a fetish for theatrics that recalls King…
The Vans Warped Tour, that all-day extravaganza of punkish rock bands, extreme sports, and alternative youth lifestyle branding, turns lucky 13 this summer. In celebration, the sprawling, multistage, all-day affair has grown even larger. The band lineup alone features something like 55-plus names. And then there are all the vendor…
Over the course of the band’s 25-year career, the thrash-metal pioneers of Slayer have been accused of inspiring murder and necrophilia (check out www.elysemarie.org). They’ve covered “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” for the Less than Zero movie soundtrack. And just last year they won a Grammy for the song “Eyes of the Insane,” off their…
It was 4:40 p.m. when the telephone in my cubicle rang. “You will have 15 minutes,” said the publicist on the other end of the line. A moment passed, and then another voice: “Hello? This is Marilyn Manson.” Although Manson, born Brian Warner, grew up in Ohio, South Florida is…
Interpol’s major-label debut, Our Love to Admire, isn’t as monochromatic (or monotonous) as its previous two albums. “Pioneer to the Falls” is arguably the richest song the the band has ever recorded, a track that channels the stormy textures of the Cure’s Pornography. Death-march piano and woodwinds add countermelodies, a…
Remix collections based on legendary artists or record labels are often dicey propositions concocted to introduce a younger generation to a classic sound in a form that listeners are expected to somehow find more palatable. Sometimes these offerings aren’t well-thought-out and go a long way toward damaging the legacy of…
In the summer of 2005, when Billy Corgan took out a full-page ad in the Chicago Tribune to announce the reformation of the Smashing Pumpkins, few would have guessed we would get Zwan instead. But perhaps it was just wishful thinking on our part. After all, this reincarnation of the…
Groovebox Symphony @ Studio A You may (or very well may not) remember those glow stick lit nights in the late 90s at Malibu Grand Prix, where the air smelled of Vics and organic electronic mixes begged the body to groove. For many of these Full Moon ravers, candy or…
Mala Rodriguez looking muy mala The way she holds the voice recorder reveals that some of her fingernails are painted teal. Her middle fingernail sports this color completely, while ring finger is split vertically: half teal, half bare. That’s Mala for you, the reigning queen of Spain’s hip-hop scene. She’s…
At first glance, it´s easy to consider Matisyahu as a novelty act within reggae music. The tall, slender, and heavily bearded Jewish crooner seems about as far as you can get from Jamaica, and, in appearance, he´s unlike anyone else who´s ever made a living as a reggae singer. But…
Morrissey July 14, 2007 Mizner Park Ampitheatre Photo by Jeffrey Delannoy Better Than: For Morrissey fans: everything besides sex. But then again, considering that Mozzer is famously “asexual,” for some diehard fans even that may not be the case… The Review: There is a famous Baroque sculpture in the Cornaro…
