// Category Archive for: Music

New Video: Redd Kross, “Uglier”

By Less Lee Moore

Photo © Arlie Carstens/Incase

Redd Kross has never followed fashion (that’d be a joke). Instead, they’ve always existed in some parallel, alternate universe, doing their own thang.

For proof of this phenomenon, check out this new video of them looking natty and rocking in Room 205, performing “Uglier” from their incandescent 2012 release, Researching The Blues (review).

For more Redd Kross, check out their website and go see them on tour! If you missed out on your chance to get Researching The Blues on vinyl, it’s back for a limited time from Merge Records.

Tour Dates:
Apr 3: The Earl; Atlanta GA
Apr 4: Kings Barcade; Raleigh NC
Apr 5: Black Cat; Washington DC
Apr 6: Santo’s Party House (early show) ; New York NY
Apr 7: Kung Fu Necktie; Philadelphia PA
Apr 10: Il Motore; Montreal QC
Apr 11: Horseshoe Tavern; Toronto ON
Apr 12: Lager House; Detroit, MI on sale March 20
Apr 13: Empty Bottle; Chicago IL
Apr 14: Cactus Club; Milwaukee WI

Canadian Music Week Film Fest Review: The History of Future Folk

By Less Lee Moore

Despite being set in modern times, The History of Future Folk feels like a movie from 30 years ago. Recall, if you will, when niches weren’t quite so niche-y, and a movie could include comedy, drama, romance, science fiction, and/or suspense without being a rom com, a dramedy, or a sci-mance (I just made that last one up).

It’s a shame that self-congratulatory cynicism has also infected the cinematic realm, particularly when it comes to criticism or just people blabbing on the Internet. The History of Future Folk is a movie that is sweet, charming, funny, and exciting, but not corny or cloying. You could take your mom to see it and neither of you would be embarrassed. It’s genuinely warmhearted and enjoyable, which is a rarity these days.

(more…)

Music Review: Old Man Markley, Down Side Up

By Paul Casey

Old Man Markley’s second album, Down Side Up, is certainly more Bluegrass than Punk. The tempo is up there but the vocal approach is quite apart from, say, The Dropkick Murphys’ mixture of traditional and hard rock influences, or indeed Shane MacGowan’s Johnny Rotten sneer pushed through the balladry of Luke Kelly. While their first album Guts n’ Teeth does have some of the growl and shout and knock back pirate chant quality to it, there are more similarities with how The Decemberists or Okkervil River approach Traditional music. Even when the lyrics get colorful and the band gets fired up, the vocals remain gently emotive. Even live, they retain much of this quality. From viewing footage of their live act, it is clear that they are a tight outfit. As a delicious stew of influences, they recall the flavor of Hot Buttered Rum.

(more…)

Music Review: Shooter Jennings, The Other Life

By Emily Carney

As I sit in my apartment on a quiet Sunday morning, the Tampa Bay area is still reeling from the effects of a Kenny Chesney concert. It even merited an article in our local paper, the Tampa Bay Times. While I’m glad these fans raised a bit of G-rated hell and enjoyed some country music, some of us enjoy the grittier sounds of the son of one of the canon’s finest, Shooter Jennings. On his new release The Other Life, Waylon’s son proves himself to be worthy of his dad’s crown.

(more…)

Canadian Music Week Film Fest Review: AIN’T IN IT FOR MY HEALTH: A FILM ABOUT LEVON HELM

By Less Lee Moore

If you are a fan of The Band, then you already know that drugs and money are a bad combination. Ain’t In It For My Health doesn’t dwell on the troubled legacy of the group, but it doesn’t shy away from it, either. However, this is a film about survival, and the exceptional life of Levon Helm, drummer, singer, songwriter, father, friend, and legend.

Filmmaker Jacob Hatley shot the footage for Ain’t In It For My Health throughout 2007 and 2008. It encompasses Helm’s 2008 Grammy nomination for Dirt Farmer, the recording of Electric Dirt, his contributions to The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams, and the birth of his grandchild and namesake, Lavon. (Helm was christened as Lavon, but became known as Levon when no one in Ronnie Hawkins’ band could correctly pronounce his name.)

(more…)

Music Review: Suede, Bloodsports

By Less Lee Moore

Is it bird song?
Or is it just the car alarms
Making us feel so young?
Savage like the dawn.
—Suede, “Fault Lines”

My love for Suede stretches back to the summer of 1993, when I first saw the videos for “Metal Mickey” and “The Drowners.” Suede looked, sounded, felt like a band you could fall in love with. I was fortunate enough to see them live in New Orleans in October 1993. After that, my fandom was eternal.

(more…)

SXSW 2013: Alt Latino Showcase with Café Tacvba, Bajofondo, Molotov

By Chelsea Spear

Café Tacvba

Are you in Austin for South By Southwest? Are you a fan of Latin alternative? If so, you’re in for a treat. The NPR podcast Alt Latino is sponsoring a showcase on March 14 at Auditorium Shores. Three of the brightest bands in the rock en español firmament will be playing—the experimental rock quartet Café Tacvba, politically-informed rap/rock ragers Molotov, and dance-pop supergroup Bajofondo.

(more…)

Music Review: Alasdair Roberts & Friends, A Wonder Working Stone

By Hanna

A Wonder Working Stone is being hailed as Alasdair Roberts‘s best work so far. Though he can sum it up in one word per song himself, it’s not that easy to capture in a short review. This is partly because it is so varied, and partly because it’s so complex that description becomes difficult.

In a way it’s a definitive album, combining characteristic elements of Alasdair Roberts’s style with new influences, and a cast of highly skilled musicians. There is an atmosphere of creative friendship in the album, especially in the extended sequences of various songs played together.

(more…)

Music Review: Girls Names, The New Life

By Less Lee Moore

I’m running out of ways to describe new bands as deft reinterpreters of the legacy of post-punk music. Belfast’s Girls Names is no exception, but The New Life, their new album, is still exceptionally good.

Those who try to recreate the sound of the late ’70s/early ’80s goldmine of great music often fall victim to throwing in everything that defined the era in an attempt to be as on-the-nose as possible: synths, drum machines, hand claps, samples, gospel choirs, and horn sections. Less is more, and Girls Names know how to do a lot with a little.

(more…)

Music Review: David Bowie, The Next Day

By Cait Brennan

It takes a giant set of stones to deface, obliterate really, the cover to “Heroes”, the 1977 album that is often regarded as David Bowie’s masterpiece. You wouldn’t do it for a remix record, let alone a new album that heralds your return to music after a decade as far away from the music world as you can get, on this side of the dirt at least. You wouldn’t pay some guy a ton of money to just scratch out the album title and paper over the face with some words on a blank slate.

But then David Bowie has always been that blank slate. The Next Day equals “The Next Thing,” the tantalizing, elusive thing Bowie has restlessly, relentlessly pursued since the day he first imagined his pilfered name in lights. New sounds, new poses, new ideas, borrowed and digested and inhabited and discarded, with the artificial cool and sublimated panic of a man trying desperately to stay one step ahead of the law, sick inside with the feeling that any second, he’ll be exposed as a fraud, a con man, a cut-rate Tabarin in a rented clown suit that’s four days past due and damaged beyond hope of getting back the deposit. We mustn’t ever tell him that it’s all in his head, that he’s real and he’s good and that he’s saved us, the ones that he’s saved.

But now, no new pose, no fashion, no fame, just a blank slate, a screen on which to project your own version of the dream. Is this the end of The Prisoner then, where Bowie rips the monkey mask off the madman he’s chased, only to find his own true face underneath?

Oops, should have said “spoiler alert.”

(more…)