Collecting dust isn't a CD's purpose. In hopes of finding a worthy album to review, I snagged a stash occupying space in the Alligator office.
British trance-rocker and Spiritualized frontman Jason Pierce nearly died in 2005 because of - get this - pneumonia. Go figure. When you've had addiction problems with heroin, landing in the accident and emergency (A&E) ward because of respiratory complications is kind of like tiptoeing through a minefield only to contract tetanus from a rusty nail. Irony aside, the near-death experience yielded "Songs in A&E," a rock 'n' roll record that could very easily be confused for an electric requiem.
His birth name is Shawn Dalton, but even his mother affectionately calls him "Glyph."
The show that revived Paula Abdul's career and hooked audiences for six seasons has lost its grip on American viewers. Though the show still tops the ratings list, the success of "American Idol" is fading.
Goodbyes are tough.
The next few months are the prime time for music lovers to catch a great show. And if you're looking to see one good concert this year, go see Kanye West's Glow in the Dark Tour. This show was surrounded by a halo of hype from the get-go. It received stellar reviews all around, and when Entertainment Weekly gave the show a B+, it got an earful from Kanye who responded on his blog, "What's a B+ mean? I'm an extremist. It's either pass or fail! A+ or F-!"
Matt Pond called me in a whisper aboard his tour bus Saturday afternoon.
For some, summer means no school, endless hours of basking in the sun, and milking your parents for money before you go back to "adult duties" in the fall. For me, though, it means paying absurdly high prices on Ticketmaster to see some of pop music's biggest acts perform extravagant sets in not-ideal-for-live-music venues, like NBA arenas. To help you decide what to check out this summer, here are few of my picks.
It is not every day that you walk into your first period class as an aspiring musician and walk out with a manager, but that is exactly what happened for members of the Florida pop group Mark & James.
Anton Newcombe isn't your run-of-the-mill cult figure.
I'm tired.
You have probably never heard of Estelle, but you will shortly.
Blame it on the blogs. Blame it on the fickle keyboard elitists who promised us that Tapes 'n Tapes was the second coming of Pavement, the perfectly refined seed of Frank Black and Kim Deal, the revolution that would reclaim the Minneapolis post-punk high ground long abandoned by the Replacements.
The mission seemed simple enough: In an age of torrent files and Hype Machine, I set out to see if there was any music left uncorrupted by the ongoing wars between corporate America and 20-something hipsters downloading off or blogs or the "OC" soundtrack series.
Rushed to release several weeks early due to bootlegging, Gnarls Barkley's "The Odd Couple" is anything but rushed.
Nightmare of You is not a hardcore band (however misleading their name may be), it is not a pop-punk band and the members are not fighting against their roots.
After the Raconteurs got burned a few years back for proclaiming to NME that "Broken Boy Soldiers" would be their answer to Nirvana's "Nevermind," they apparently decided to dial down the hype machine.
We're really judgmental.
First, the rationalization.
Sitting in the veritable '60s opium den that is the Avenue office, we hazily looked around the room.
Solutions by The State News
