Recording since the mid-1950s, Andre Williams is no new sucker on the scene.  He topped the charts in ’57 with his singles “Bacon Fat” (later covered by the Cramps) and “Jail Bait,” developing a style that could be described as early rap — talking slow more than singing — mixed with a more traditional R&B vibe.  Working behind the scenes as well as onstage, Williams deftly stepped over the fine lines between funk and R&B, writing songs for Parliament and Funkadelic in the ’70s, as well as Stevie Wonder’s very first song, “Thank You for Loving Me“” and the classic “Shake a Tail Feather.”  But high times led to too-high times as Williams dealt with a crippling addiction that left him penniless and, briefly, homeless.

Striking back in 1998, Williams returned with a super-sleazy album, Silky, that featured oh-my-stars tracks like “Let Me Put It In” and a rougher, tougher backing band.  Yet Williams has never been one to stray far from the music he knows and loves.  Relentless and impossible to refuse, “The Black Godfather” has returned with this year’s Hoods and Shades, a record that feels as timeless as an old friend, if perhaps  a little less exciting than Williams’ more edgy material. Read the rest of this entry »

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Lovers of indie rock bands: the town of Bethlehem, PA is about to deliver your salvation.  The folks who bring us Musikfest every summer have recently expanded into a fully functional venue that offers year-round music, film, and arts/culture events, nestled into the stark structures that once built Bethlehem Steel.  And, at the end of March, the ArtsQuest Center on the SteelStacks Campus will debut its new concert series: Nowadays.

Nowadays focuses on musicians of the indie rock persuasion, and this year’s two-day quasi-festival boasts headliners Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., RJD2, Jukebox the Ghost, and We Are Scientists.  A total of 22 acts will be split into three stages within the building: one a common area near a row of gigantic windows that look out onto the often lit-up SteelStacks; another, the venue’s movie theater, complete with crazy-comfy seats; and lastly, the building’s built-for-it music venue, the Musikfest Cafe.  On the second and third floors of the building, the Musikfest Cafe has a great view of the stacks and an intimate, can-almost-touch-the-band vibe (seats included). Read the rest of this entry »

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Love folk music, Ja Rule, and guys that look like Harry Potter?  How do you feel about girls with breathy voices and dramatic cover songs?  If you’re into it all and ready to burst with adoration in this love season, check out modern folk trio Town Hall as they cover Ja Rule and Ashanti’s memorable hit, “Always On Time,” below. Read the rest of this entry »

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The candy’s on the shelves.  The commercials are on TV.  Pink is everywhere. The first of February has launched the pre-Valentine’s Day hype and hawking. Whether you’re stuck in a love haze or just trippin’ out, California’s hallucinogenic foursome with a killer name, Mwahaha, have all the psyched-out love you can handle this holiday.

The band recently released a collaged time capsule of a music video for a single off of their recent self-titled debut album, “Love.”  ”Love” looks like it would’ve felt right at home in the middle of Roger Corman’s classic acid movie, The Trip, in 1967 (which, by the way, you can now watch in full on youtube — mind the warning).

Get caught up in the feeling and check out Mwahaha’s “Love” video below. Read the rest of this entry »

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Jack White is done clowning around.    Almost a year to the day after the official end of the White Stripes — a year filled with diverse collaborations, endless speculations, and heartbreak – Jack has announced his impending solo album, Blunderbuss, a record that is ironically being touted as his “debut.”

It’s strange to think that a rock star who has become so iconic has yet to truly strike out on his own. But Jack has never had any trouble standing out from the crowd, especially when it was just a crowd of two.  With his Draconian look, unmistakable voice, and confident creative control, Jack White rose to the top of a merely twitching rock scene with the White Stripes, towering over hush-voiced, heavy-handed bandmate Meg, lauded by critics as if he were already a solo artist. Read the rest of this entry »

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Palmist Records’ sixth split release is grungy, gruesome, and growling…from both sides of the globe.  LA’s Growlers meet Leicester’s Thee Ludds for an oil-slicked slide through 60s garage rock, though both bands add their own spin and earn their own sides.

It’s rumored that Black Keys singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach will produce the Growlers’ next album, but while we wait for official confirmation, these five songs will sing us into submission.  The short but sticking “Graveyard’s Full” starts the side off with a sort of down-home, front-porch feel, mixed with creepy witticisms and the opposite of a sunny disposition.  A modern update on a tune that draws from early blues, “Graveyard’s Full” somehow also has a lilting, carnvial-esque vibe.  Check it out below: Read the rest of this entry »

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Chicago’s Wild Belle probably don’t listen to Sublime, but that just might be the secret to their sublime sound. Jammin’ without the slightest taste of irreverence, Wild Belle’s first single, “Keep You,” transcends ironic reggae, body-rockin’ sincerely to a shantytown shuffle.

The reggae feel of “Keep You” isn’t buried; it’s the jubilant edge to a song of slip-away sorrow, hazy, over-generalized, and real.  Add a horn section and some scattered space-age sounds (and an intro that at first reminded me of My Morning Jacket’s “Touch Me I’m Going to Scream Pt. 2″), and you have an undeniably catchy number that puts the sway in your hips and sweet lyrics on your lips.  Check out the new tune below: Read the rest of this entry »

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Sleepy-eyed redhead and bassist for the Brooklyn-based, Jersey-bred Vivian Girls, Katy Goodman re-dubbed herself La Sera last year and graduated from her girl group roots into a solo project that was often more slow, dreamy, and subtle than the garage-band sound of the Vivian Girls.  Emerging with a self-titled album full to the brim of breathy numbers like my favorite, “Devil Hearts Grow Gold,” Goodman proved she could keep her own beat, though the tune of her drummer proved to be not too unique.

Lost amid popular lo-fi retro-pop, Goodman seems ready to add a bit of grunge back into her girly tunes, especially if the first single off of her upcoming sophomore solo album, Sees the Light, is anything to go by.  Listen to “Please Be My Third Eye,” the fun, fully-fueled, freaky little love song, below: Read the rest of this entry »

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Possibly the Coolest Album Cover Ever

When or how my love for Sixto Rodriguez began is enveloped in a cool blue haze not dissimilar to the vaporous, encircling orb on the cover of the pysch-folk rocker’s debut, Cold Fact.  I was probably aimlessly cruising through Light in the Attic‘s offbeat reissues, thumbing past the confrontational garage punk of The Monks, the French seduction of Serge Gainsbourg, and my eternal favorite, the indescribable Betty Davis.  I’m sure that in this moment, I was slipping into a sepia-toned reverie, comfortable with my old friends, when the opening bass line of “Only Good for Conversation,” the second song off of Cold Fact, ripped my face in two.

“Only Good for Conversation” is the kind of little-known song that makes you want to dig back through the sands of time and unearth every piece of music ever created because WHAT IF SOMETHING AS GOOD AS THIS IS BURIED THERE?!?  Featuring a killer riff and a heaping spoonful of overflowing attitude, “Only Good for Conversation” calls out a cool woman with a fresh and undeniable boldness.  Rodriguez’s voice sounds clear and accented in that hollow yet all-encompassing way that only the 60s seemed to produce, layered on top of a thick fuzz.  Listen below: Read the rest of this entry »

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We were once “Born to Run” or “Born to Be Wild,” perhaps touched with a tinge of trapped wanderlust ala “Ramblin’ Man” but otherwise encouraged to cast aside the have-to hostility of fate in favor of reaching for all possibilities.  Both of these classic tracks inspire us to see life as open and free, fate as something that happens along the way, and our birthright as the ability to explore, escape, and embrace.  Earlier this year, Lady Gaga gleefully told us we were “Born This Way,” justified in all our oddities, exultant and open to each other.

But now, according to indie songstress-turned-overnight superstar Lana Del Rey, we’re “Born to Die.”  Del Rey recently released an incredibly cinematic video to accompany her new, dark single, the title track of her upcoming album, that buries the optimism of our previous “Born to”s under an all-consuming and fatalistic bad romance. Read the rest of this entry »

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Australian, all-female supergroup Seeker Lover Keeper are set to release their first, self-titled album next month, but while we wait, the band has cut a hilarious yet emotional video for their first single, “Even Though I’m a Woman,” starring Aden Young.

In the video, as Young’s mostly manly mouth forms around the girlish words and heartfelt lyrics of the song, what at first begins as a funny contrast ends as poignant and touching.  The song’s lyrics compare the narrator to a traveling salesman, and Aden seems to be the physical incarnation of this comparison, a much more believable slicked-back drifter than the cute voice that sings from between his lips.  Yet more than self-parody, Young’s constant eye contact and almost detached facial movements orchestrate a sort of painful exposition and unconvincingly hard exterior, easily bringing the tune past “pretty little love song” status, into something rooted in the rub between freedom and devotion and both the romanticism and oppression of distance.  Check out the video below: Read the rest of this entry »

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Australia’s Cloud Control may claim to rule the skies, but the band’s debut LP, released in the states this November, channels a much earthier sound.  Tribal without being stale or dark, pop without losing impact, and mainstream yet memorable, half-way through Bliss Release, when I hit the track “Gold Canary,” I finally put my finger on the nagging memory the album was calling to mind: Bliss Release is The Lion King of today’s music.

“Gold Canary,” in particular, with its nah-nah-oh-whey-oh vocal beat-keeping, brought L King to mind, though I wasn’t sure if it was merely for the song’s similarity to The Tokens’ “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” which the cartoon, of course, introduced to me at an impressionable age.  But as I kept listening to Bliss Release, I couldn’t help feeling that same soaring feeling that only the tale of an animated lion overcoming his own guilt and self-doubt had been able to instill in me before. Read the rest of this entry »

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Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward teamed up for A Very She & Him Christmas earlier this year, adding their record to my Christmas rotation of Elvis Presley’s Blue Christmas and A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector.  But their cover of “Baby It’s Cold Outside” fell short, speeding up the tempo and losing the lovely, snuggle-down feeling of the song.

Stepping up to the plate to replace this lackluster cover is Little Hurricane, another boy-girl duo, but more along the lines of The Kills or The White Stripes than cutesy-pootsy She & Him.  Though most of their tracks lean on heavy, fuzzed-out blues, San Diego’s Little Hurricane kept it plain and simple for their cover of “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” available as a free download below. Read the rest of this entry »

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Yesterday, Austin’s T Bird and The Breaks tore it up during a live Daytrotter session.  Playing tracks from their most recent independent release, the awesome Never Get Out of this Funk Alive, T Bird and The Breaks infused a heaping mess of steamin’ retro funk swagger into Daytrotter’s daily routine stream.  These Texans play what they like to call Chunk Music: “A form of twenty-first century American music consisting of equal parts funk, hip-hop, and rock and roll…more characterized by its rough sonic quality and energetic, visceral performance. Commonly served hot with a side of girls and brass.”

During their Daytrotter session, they played three pitch-perfect and super-fun Never Get Out tracks: the give-it-to-me-now “Your Nasty Love,” the James Brown-vibing “Put it On the Spot,” and a version of Shirley Ellis’ classic “The Clapping Song,” called “The Clap Hands Song.”  The Breaks cooed, ooed, and hit it outta the park like a pack of hall-of-fame back-up singers, while the band’s lead singer, Tim Crane, ran on pure soul power. Read the rest of this entry »

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Yesterday, Maryland’s New God released their debut full-length, Motorcar, through indie label The Royal Army Recording Company.  Packed with psychedelic pop and tinged with experimental electro, including a few sound collages, Motorcar is the product of five-plus years of recording and re-recording, making it a very tight, almost conceptual debut album.

Spanning the gauntlet of Strokes or Shins-style pop numbers like “On and Off” and “Drag the Lake” to the more jazzy vibe of “Governors Lap” and “To the Gallows With You,” New God incorporate incredibly diverse influences into a seamless and delectable debut. Read the rest of this entry »

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About to head out into the cold darkness that is BLACK FRIDAY 2011?  Hopefully you’re not headed into the gloom and doom of your local mall, but to PREX for some sweet Black Friday releases to stuff into a special someone’s stocking (or, ahem, your own stereo).  Either way, you’ll need a soundtrack to guide you through the chaos and maintain inner peace and happiness while your fellow shoppers tear out each others’ jugular for a chance at half-priced plastic.  Enter Penguin Prison.

Even their name already has everything you need: a reflection of the arctic chill found in fuming shoppers’ cold stares and the image of the world’s more lovable aspects hidden out of sight as the shopocalypse reigns its fiery fury.  But the nightmare ends there.  Push play on Penguin Prison’s new video for their hit single “Don’t F*ck With My Money” and the shimmering glory of old-school disco mixed with sunshine and hilarious swagger will rain down upon you.  And suddenly the urge to elbow that lady screaming over the last Twilight poster will leave you and another urge will replace it…The urge to dance! Read the rest of this entry »

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Hailing from overseas, the UK’s brand new singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Lianne La Havas recently released her debut five-song EP, Lost & Found.  Packed with pretty love songs from a pretty girl with a powerful voice and a delicious dose of adorable wit, La Havas’ debut EP landed her a spot on tour with staggeringly successful balladeer Bon Iver. Her debut dips deep into nearly nodding slow songs, but a few tracks open the door onto promising potential. Read the rest of this entry »

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San Francisco’s The Downer Party released a 7″ of new material earlier this week, Blue State.  Coming on the heels of the band’s successful Cities EP, Blue State combines lead singer Sierra Frost’s cute and cutting voice with a rough folk-meets-garage sound.

The album’s title track, “Blue State,” sings sweet until Frost hits a frustrating CSNY “love the one you’re with” sentiment, where the anger and hurt break through.  “The One South” starts less adorably, with a deep note, tough voice and images of a naked drunk.  Strong and sundry, “The One South” expands across sugared ah-ahs and ascending, dirty guitar chords. Read the rest of this entry »

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RACES, formerly known as Black Jesus, officially released their three-song digital EP, Big Broom, yesterday, complete with creepy-cute cover art oddly reminiscent of Mickey Mouse in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (or maybe that’s just me).  Produced to promote RACES’ first full-length, Year of the Witch, due out next year, two of the three songs are from that anticipated album, while another, “Hope & Gloom,” is exclusive to the EP.

Big Broom is the perfect tease.  The title track (click here to download, via Brooklyn Vegan) is thick with fuzzed-out, burning guitar licks matched to a clean sweep metaphor that finds beginnings dusty and endings clean.  Not weighted down by these thoughts, “Big Broom” focuses on the revitalizing feeling of a good sweeping.

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Chicago’s Brain Idea has been experiencing a rush of success since they formed through a combination of happy accident and convenience in the summer of 2009.  Brain Idea’s drummer, Grant Sunderland, 24, described the band’s relaxed beginnings: “I was playing guitar in this other band, and I would show up to the practice space early, and Ben and Joe were there and they’re jamming on a riff.  They don’t have a drummer, so I started playing drums for them.”

“Ben and I were also in a band together before that, which we were kind of subverting by playing our own jams on the side,” guitarist and vocalist Joe Wepperogh, 29, told PREX.  “Grant showed up and yeah, it just made sense.”

The trio began writing songs together, developing a full set by September of that year, and were met with startling opportunities almost the moment they stepped on stage. Read the rest of this entry »

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