Don’t expect a whole lot of subtlety from the Forty-Fives. After all, this is a band that references its mindset in its name and lays out its intentions in the title of its latest album. The Stones, the Kinks, the Yardbirds, and the Pretty Things are among those referenced here…
We want to say fuck Bush and fuck Kerry!” Stic.man, one-half of dead prez, cried out to scattered applause. It was Saturday afternoon, June 19, the fourth and final day of the National Hip-Hop Political Convention (NHHPC), and most of the delegates — mainly college-age students from around the nation…
If you have set foot near any drum and bass dance floor within the past two years, then you have undoubtedly grooved to the speaker-rumbling bass sounds of Twisted Individual. Since going from a virtual unknown on the major drum and bass circuit to being voted best producer by long-running…
It’s barely 11:30 p.m. on a recent Monday night and Carmel Ophir is practically panicking. The promoter is worried about the body count at Back Door Bamby, and tonight’s special act is about to start spinning. On the bill is a ten-year-old DJ named Lil Monster. No joke, I thought…
Target Nevada Do you worship the Devil? Are you looking for the appropriate soundtrack to accompany your inner desire to maim someone? Then why not consider the original Target Nevada? In an unfriendly city filled with synthesizers, booty music, and straight-edge kids scared of beer-chugging bands, Target Nevada carved out…
He may be the offspring and namesake of a onetime country music icon, but calling Bobby Bare, Jr.’s music country is a severe misnomer. His latest band, the Young Criminals’ Starvation League, abandons all claims to country, Americana or otherwise, save a smattering of steel guitar and his own woeful…
On Goodie Mob’s first release since 1999, One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show, T-Mo, Khujo, and Big Gipp are out to prove that the absence of Cee-Lo won’t stop them from making dope music. The trio are at their best on the somber but potent “God I Wanna Live,” where…
Detroit Deli (A Taste of Detroit) sounds like the latest in a series of diminishing returns for Slum Village. Once considered a leader of the hip-hop vanguard for its acid, chopped-up raps and Jay Dee’s sylphlike beats, the group has been decimated in recent years: Jay Dee departed for a…
Detroit’s venerable house hero Kenny “Moodymann” Dixon, Jr., returns with his fifth long player to date, and it’s what we’ve come to expect from the enigmatic artist: Sensuous, emotive, and deep soul of the highest order. Moodymann’s brand of house practically birthed a subgenre of dance music. Dirty loops of…
You can tell that the Thievery Corporation has a colorful musical palette by listening to its original compositions. The duo’s new mixed collection, The Outernational Sound, gives insight into just how far their tastes go. The album includes selections by recognizable names such as Thunderball and Karminsky Experience, both of…
A.K.A. Heavenly is the word that best describes the all-grrl pop-punk band A.K.A. Capitalizing on their sexuality and the name recognition of vocalist/guitarist Lori Garroti’s almost-famous brother, Joey G. (a member of the Crumbs’ side project, the Basicks), the band has made a pretty impressive impact on the scene, though…
You’ve heard it before: a huge, airy, electronic beat that crashes against your ears while massaging them with plaintive, heartbreakingly soft melodies. It seemingly raises and lowers with every song, taking you on a journey of peaks and valleys, and speaking to you truths and reconciliations. It is a sound…
Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, sufferer of migraines and mental disorders, who was recently discharged from rehab for an addiction to painkillers after 2002’s I Am Trying to Break Your Heart — a documentary about the making of his band’s last album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot — revealed him to be both a…
Antibalas’s latest album, Who Is This America?, finds this seventeen-piece ensemble from Brooklyn making lemonade out of the bitterest lemons, whether it’s misogynistic urban culture or stilted U.S. foreign policy. While a bit more overtly political than 2002’s Talkatif, Antibalas offers a bright, danceable sound, even at its most impassioned…
To be later identified as the elusive missing link connecting the primordial water themes of its first full-length, the maddeningly soothing Beaches and Canyons, with some as-yet-unrealized career-defining mutation, Black Dice’s Creature Comforts instinctively wanders off onto a small patch of adventure island dominated by the mating calls of overly…
Ozomatli kicks off its latest multicultural party with “Believe,” an energetic track that takes flight with the soaring sound of the Prague Symphony, a flurry of Arab percussion courtesy of sintir (a bass/lute hybrid) player Hassan Hakmoun, and a sizzling wah-wah guitar line from Raul Pacheco that would fit neatly…
There is a place on South Beach where you can go once you’ve had enough of the other clubs’ hassles, attitude, and twelve-dollar drinks. It’s a charming little joint, half dive bar, half hot spot, and entirely predicated on giving you a big buzz. Here, playing all kinds of tunes…
Three pretty little Latin girls growing up in the United States watch all the variety shows on Spanish-language television and dream of appearing on Sabado Gigante like Gloria Estefan, or on Siempre en Domingo like Paulina Rubio and Thalia in their Timbiriche days. The message is clear: Go to Miami,…
It’s kind of hard to get through the shield Nuyorican pop superstar Robi Dräco Rosa uses to protect himself from questions about his shifting public persona over the past two decades. “Who knows? Who cares?” spits Rosa. Using “perception” as a key word, he methodically disses all kinds of speculations…
Take a visit to just about anywhere in the English-speaking Caribbean, from the Bahamas in the north to the Virgin Islands in the south, and you’ll hear it blasting from tinny speakers on public buses and in local shops. Its lilt is unmistakably calypso, but the pulsing, rabbit-paced, drumbeat-manic sound…
When former President Ronald Reagan passed away on early Saturday afternoon, June 5, after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease, his death meant more than the demise of one of America’s staunchest cold warriors, a conservative who polarized the country with his views even as he won many liberal-thinking citizens…
After a six-year hiatus, the Beastie Boys return with To the Five Boroughs and position themselves alternately as pop-culture bottom feeders and political pedants. While anti-Bush screeds “That’s It That’s All” and “Time to Build” come across as heavy-handed, the terse “Open Letter to NYC” does manage to channel that…
