Falling Into Jazz
Lizz Wright never wanted to be a jazz singer. She got her start in church and was studying choral and classical music when secular music stepped in. “I only started singing jazz a couple of years ago,” she says. “I’m still searching for my own voice and my own ideas. I’m still open to different…
Tin Huey, with the Bizarros and the Kristoffer Carter Show
The art freaks should be out in force when Tin Huey “reforms” for shows in Akron and Cleveland. God knows what stuff sax squawkmeister Ralph Carney, guitarist Chris Butler, and keyboardist Harvey Gold will play. It could include the Monkees, Tommy James & the Shondells, material from Butler’s Waitresses period, tastes of Carney’s solo eccentricity,…
Where the Heart Isn’t
It used to be that the only Korean films to be seen in the U.S. were somber art-house films such as Jeong Ji-Yeong’s White Badge or veteran Im Kwon-Taek’s Chunhyang and Sopyonje. But as South Korea has developed a more technically sophisticated commercial film industry, these have been joined by such hard-edged, crowd-pleasing action flicks…
Yo La Tengo, with Portastatic and Chris Butler
“Even if I could articulate it, I think I would feel too self-conscious to tell you which moments of our own brilliance make me pat myself on the back,” Yo La Tengo bassist James McNew says humbly of his favorite moments on his band’s latest LP, Summer Sun. “I think earlier in the process is…
Fight Club
Among Anger Management’s copious flaws is the fact that its premise doesn’t wash. Adam Sandler’s Dave Buznik, a designer of catalogs for overweight-cat clothing, isn’t really angry at all; he’s just a self-loathing, introverted mess, whose insecurities date back to a crowded street party in Brooklyn, circa 1978, when he was about to kiss a…
Everclear, with the Exies and Authority Zero
Art Alexakis isn’t a happy guy. He’s the poet laureate of falling apart, and Everclear’s latest album, Slow Motion Daydream, is no exception. But while the bandleader’s hymns to broken souls, disintegrating situations, and a world gone wrong tread a narrow lyrical path, he nevertheless is uniquely effective at conveying that sense of alienation, despondency,…
Nowhere Ma’am
An Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film and winner of five Golden Lola Awards (the German Oscars), Nowhere in Africa recounts the true story of a Jewish family who fled Nazi Germany in 1938 and found refuge in Kenya. Although beautifully shot and acted, the film is hampered by an unsympathetic lead character,…
Califone, with Brokeback
Okay, it’s official: Tim Rutili has earned a spot in urban-hillbilly heaven. Over five years, Rutili and his band, Califone, have outdone themselves, crafting a hallucinatory, moonshiny sort of folk music that pilfers from Americana’s attic without ever feeling like a period piece. What sets singer-guitarist Rutili — and his other ex-Red Red Meat pal,…
Paint-by-Numbers
Pssst! Hey, you wanna see a completely naked man and woman onstage? Yeah, for real! “Totally nude,” like the signs on strip clubs say. There’s just one catch: You gotta listen as they sit and talk about art and love and pregnancy and stuff. After that, they put on their clothes again. But for a…
Autechre
After Autechre’s Sean Booth and Rob Brown issued Confield in 2001, many fans wondered if the British duo had lost its mind in a labyrinth of software plug-ins and hallucinogens. That disc and its follow-up, 2002’s Gantz Graf, set new standards in antisocial digital-sound splatter. These releases also polarized the electronic music community. The scuttlebutt:…
Free Willy
It’s no news flash that we’re living in a CliffsNotes world, where devilishly complex subjects are being trimmed, squeezed, and processed so that approved viewpoints can be chugged down like a strawberry Slurpie. That’s why Fox News would have you believe there are only two acceptable opinions about the Iraq war: You either love everything…
Godsmack
With riffs as thick as their skulls, Godsmack is a band of unabashed metal meatheads. Which doesn’t necessarily invalidate their music; like Jean-Claude Van Damme films, there’s something to be said for mindless kicks. But after three albums of crushing, monster-truck rock, Godsmack’s Dirt-simple approach is growing exceedingly monotonous. Initially dismissed by critics as an…
Made With Love
Maybe all you want out of your pop music is a few minutes of escape, a radio-friendly respite from the heavy humdrum of your workaday existence. Maybe you likes to hang with 50 Cent, who survived a few gunshots (and doesn’t let you forget it) to party another day; or maybe you go for a…
Various Artists
Except for Hollywood, Nashville — more than any other town in the world — loves honoring people. Now, Ol’ Hoss Waylon Jennings wouldn’t approve of that. As a charter member of the “Outlaw” movement in country music, he chafed against the dictatorial ways of the Nashville recording mill, insisting on doing it his way or…
Suited to a Tea
Scratch the surface of Modern Woman, and you’re likely to uncover an old-fashioned girl — a closet romantic whose secret fantasies involve roses, moonlight, and afternoon tea, with those tiny crustless sandwiches. Probably it’s in the DNA. Whatever the cause, our own unending quest for a proper ladies’ tea sent us to Lake County recently,…
Lightning Bolt
Lightning Bolt is often hit by writers with hard-ass hyperbole that makes them sound like experimetal terrorists. But the Providence bass/drums duo is merely the scariest fish in the art-punk pond, not a full-fledged member of the noise-core subculture. Now, that’s not to say Wonderful Rainbow doesn’t contain the elemental force of noise-core. Bassist Brian…
The Feast Within
Before you rush out to Agostino’s, a family-owned and -operated Italian restaurant in Brooklyn, a little dining-related values clarification may be in order. Ask yourself, for instance, how important an atmospheric interior and plush appointments are to your dining pleasure. If the answer is very important, proceed with caution: Despite being notably clean and tidy,…
The Majesticons
Mike Ladd is hip-hop’s Baz Luhrmann and its Alvin Toffler. A maniacally brainy thirtysomething lyricist-producer, Ladd fashions Luhrmannesque opera from a crude mash of classic material and current media, then embeds ’em with modern philosophical meaning à la Toffler. With a conceptual trilogy on the mythic battle between the indie Infesticons and the jiggy Majesticons…
A Burning Sensation
Because heavily tattooed rocker types don’t normally sing about flowers, falling stars, and antique wedding dresses, A.F.I. is the most emboldened band to hit the punk scene in quite a while. Or maybe not. “We’re not a punk band, and we don’t consider ourselves a punk band,” clarifies A.F.I. guitarist Jade Puget from his home…
13 Faces
Two things distinguish 13 Faces from the internationally acclaimed metal-crossover bands like it: The Cleveland quartet hasn’t signed paperwork attaching it to a big label’s PR machine (yet). And 13 Faces is better than most of those who have. The band’s full-length debut, These Bloody Hands, pulses with all the bloodletting power of the high-body-count…
What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?
A Mercedes E-Class, the kind you see in all the hip-hop videos, pulls up to the Ponderosa at Southgate and bystanders stare. What else would you expect M.C. Brains to be driving? After all, Brains’ gold-certified single “Oochie Coochie” made him the first major-label rapper out of Cleveland. Made him a fat knot as well.…
Girl, Interrupted
By any measure, Avril Lavigne had a great 2002. She sold millions of copies of Let Go, a clearly Canadian collection of mildly peeved kiss-offs that goes down like Alanis’s little pills without the jagged edges. Her slightly warped tours with a spiky-haired sk8er boi band drew capacity crowds largely composed of punky teenage girls,…
Rambler 454
Rambler 454 is a trio of grease-stained, beer-buzzed pickup truck jockeys who make the cast of The Drew Carey Show look like didactic poets — and they’re obviously proud of it. Tim Brennan, the manager, calls their music “drinking man’s rock and roll.” Yeah, the references to lager-swilling are everywhere — like the story about…
Extending the Branch
Music teachers across Greater Cleveland are reporting huge increases in girls signing up for lessons on typically male-dominated instruments, like drums and bass. Sodja Music in Richmond Heights notes a 20 percent increase. Dave McCamey, owner of Berea Music, had two female guitar students two years ago; today he has 35. Chalk it up to…
The Smart Bomb
It was September 28, 2001, and indie hip-hop’s most jocked crew, the Def Jux collective, had taken over Seattle’s I-Spy club for the night. As with most underground hip-hop shows, an odd, cloistered feeling hung over the performances, which felt as if they were happening in a bubble that’d been sealed off from the rest…
That Dog Don’t Hunt
It’s Friday afternoon in Public Square, and a young man with homemade orange hair takes the stage. He is surrounded by largely college-age protesters, most with welcoming smiles, some with scarves covering their faces, aping the latest in Gaza Strip dissident fashion. Ringing the square are refugees from the nearby cubicle farms, kids headed to…
The Psych Ward
“We can’t have just anybody in here,” warns multi-instrumentalist Ben Gmetro, surveying the shadowy Lakewood practice space-cum-studio that’s home to four tight-knit bands, all of which share the same eight members. Piled high with amps and guitars, illuminated by white Christmas lights, and lined with Syd Barrett and Mercury Rev posters, the room is something…
Letters to the Editor
It’s not romance, it’s rape: “Authority Problem” [March 12] was an opportunity to accurately describe one example of a pervasive problem in our society: sexual assault. Unfortunately, Kevin Hoffman missed the mark. The power imbalance between a prison guard and an inmate does not allow for an equal relationship, period. It’s a third-degree felony. When…
Catching Falling Stars
Before he found the Musicians’ Assistance Program, Scott Weiland had more relapses than J. Lo’s had husbands. But the L.A.-based substance-abuse recovery program straightened out the Stone Temple Pilots frontman (along with some 16,000 other rockerss, among them Dr. John and the Red Hot Chili Peppers), and now it hopes to do the same for…
The SAT for Tots
A gaggle of toddlers kneels around a toy house, rearranging its tiny furniture and supplying voices for its plastic family. Across the classroom, two girls giggle as they stack letter blocks. A boy wearing headphones bobs along to the recorded narration of the animal book in his lap. The happy vibe in the Head Start…
Asylum Street Spankers, with Adam Brodky
Could it be that the Asylum Street Spankers have turned the other cheek? The 10-piece, all-acoustic band’s latest full-length CD, My Favorite Record, is practically mainstream compared to the troupe’s earlier work. Its predecessor, Spanker Madness, was an irreverent look at drug use and the war on drugs, which guaranteed the Spankers would never share…
Far From Heaven
Stephen Collins, star of the WB’s hit family series 7th Heaven, just released his self-titled debut album. Filled with oldies like “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” and “Hello, Mary Lou,” the album — at the very least — adds “recording artist” to his growing résumé. “Before I was an actor, I played in rock bands,”…
David Murray & the Gwo-Ka Masters
With a voice marked by a strident sense of drama and emotion, saxophonist David Murray creates dynamic and incendiary improvisations that have often been likened to the work of avant-garde iconoclast Albert Ayler. Since first taking New York by storm in 1975, Murray has stood apart from the crowd, with technical proficiency that allows him…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, April 10 Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker isn’t quite the mindfuck that his masterpiece Solaris is, but it’s pretty close. Ostensibly the story of a guide (the titular Stalker) who leads a writer and a scientist on a journey into the forbidden Zone (a post-apocalyptic wilderness), Tarkovsky’s futuristic 1979 film tackles such weighty issues as desire,…
