Atlanta’s Family Force Five creates a dubious first impression at best. Much like the mustached, pudgy crooner Har Mar Superstar, the act could be a colossal ironic joke the rest of us might not be getting. After all, the slogan of this group of five pasty-white hipsters with emo-style haircuts…
It is the curse of the blues musician, the tragic twist of fate that seems to haunt every player since Robert Johnson was said to have sold his soul to the Devil at the crossroads in exchange for musical immortality. The Crossroads Curse is rumored to have struck Lynyrd Skynyrd,…
Trumpeter Hugh Masekela is the one South African musician almost everybody has heard of. His American profile received a big boost when he was a member of Paul Simon’s traveling Graceland extravaganza, but he’s had a strong international presence since he fled apartheid in 1960. His blend of jazz, township…
One of the better things happening in town right now is the emergence of Wynwood’s Stop Miami bar. Stop offers a solid array of delicious and not-so-easy-to-find wines/beers at relatively affordable prices, as well as Asian, Spanish, and Middle Eastern gourmet finger foods. This coincides with the resurfacing of one…
Like Christopher Lee’s Dracula in the classic Hammer horror films from the early Sixties, speed metal cannot be killed off. Every time we think it’s finally dead and done, a new band comes along and resurrects the art of the endless guitar riff. Power trio High on Fire is the…
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist who, when young, earned a living playing in taverns frequented by prostitutes. He was later introduced to the great manic-depressive composer/pianist/writer Robert Schumann, who hailed Brahms a genius in an article titled “Neue Bahnen” (“New Paths”) in a German music publication. Brahms…
Do you like loud things? Then you’ll love the Oakland-based hard-rock quintet Watch Them Die. With enough tattoos to ensure they’ll never return to office work, the bandmates are stopping in Miami as part of the tour to promote their very aggressive new album, Bastard Son. Influenced by groups like…
Quirky New Hope, Pennsylvania duo Ween can’t be put into any sort of musical genre box or category. So don’t even try, big-booty bitch. Over the past two decades, Gene and Dean Ween (Aaron Freeman and Mickey Melchiondo) have kept their devoted fans amused with music only a fifteen-year-old boy…
It seems like there’s some unwritten law dictating that all great American jazz performers must migrate to Paris in order to be appreciated back home. Dee Dee Bridgewater is no exception. During her self-imposed exile in France, Bridgewater’s great voice finally found its place as a great interpreter. Her majestic…
Angst. Anger. Apathy. Issues. That’s what you get from L.A.’s Get Set Go. A self-professed slacker, singer Mike TV fesses up that he’s a loser, unworthy of rock-star reverence. The new album, Ordinary World, is buttressed by self-effacing irony, insecurity, and ineptness. Bereft of cash, girls, ambition, and purpose, he…
British indie-rock quartet Editors is constantly compared to Joy Division and Interpol, and justifiably so. But what the group lacks in innovation it makes up for in absorbing anthems that remind us why the New Wave revival happened in the first place. Editors’ debut album, The Back Room, blasts vigorous…
The geeky Motion City Soundtrack is often called punk because of its label Epitaph’s punk-heavy roster. Truth be told, the band is just about as punk as similar-sounding Jimmy Eats World, and, well, that’s just not very punk at all. The Mark Hoppus-produced Commit This to Memory followed up the…
Why see a tribute band when you can see the real thing? Well, when the real thing is U2, and nosebleed tickets go for about $85 each, a good tribute band goes a long way, which might explain the growing popularity of acts such as UV. An obsessive fan’s dream…
Calla’s 2001 album Scavengers was rife with highly atmospheric music and speculative lyrics. The band itself and guitarist Aurelio Valle’s songwriting were clearly maturing: After a few years of delivering obscure tracks, Calla had compiled some crafty and intelligent pop tunes for that disc. The band formed in Texas in…
Electroclash was simply too retro for its own good. Why listen to Fischerspooner’s carbon copy of “Blue Monday” when the original was still around? Then Princess Superstar along with DJ Alex Technique formed the DJs Are Not Rock Stars collective. The duo learned the elusive art of beatmatching and quickly…
Part beatnik, part Ben Folds, Brendan O’Hara is quickly becoming one of South Florida’s most interesting musical commodities. Backed by the Humble Ones trio — drummer, bassist, and keyboardist — O’Hara fuses hip-hop, jazz, folk, and saloon-style swing into something soothingly familiar and cleverly offbeat. A self-described “good ole Irish…
The flak that religiously oriented music gets from secular camps generally lies within the parameters of acceptance and “mass appeal.” So it is strikingly refreshing when a rambunctious teenager discovers the meaning of his parents’ G-d in the wilderness and sets out to mix that with his past rebellions. Matisyahu’s…
Since striking its own multithread trajectory off of the early Nineties breakbeat hardcore sound, drum ‘n’ bass has swung back and forth in popular opinion. There have been times when its hyperkinetic breakbeats and penchant for speaker- and tweaker-punishing malevolence have been labeled too insular, and other times when its…
Though it’s true that jazz thrives on forward-looking innovation, the best progress comes from artists who are as aware of their predecessors as their peers. In the eleven years since its inception, the Berlin-based collective Jazzanova has pushed the envelope as often as it has licked it and sent love…
Something like an Amazonian leprechaun, Curumin is a mythical jungle troublemaker in the guise of a feral child. His favorite tactic is misdirection; with his feet facing backward, poachers never know exactly which way he is heading. The same can be said for Luciano Nakata Albuquerque, the multitalented Brazilian wunderkind…
When the Rub — a Brooklyn DJ crew comprising DJ Eleven, DJ Cosmo Baker, and DJ Ayres — performs at the new Wynwood venue Bullfrog Eatz on Friday, the dance-ready patron in attendance can expect a few of the usual suspects (Miami bass, Baltimore club, rock, rip-hop, New Wave, electro,…
Juan Luis Guerra’s band, 4.40, takes its name from the universal tuning pattern of the A note, 4.40 hertz. The name was chosen, by Guerra’s brother José Gilberto, as a reference to their obsession with staying in perfect tune. This musical fixation led Guerra and 4.40’s bandmates, all natives of…
