Music
Wolf Eyes: Trashing Eardrums in Red Hook
By Matthew OzgaWolf Eyes, a Michigan-based trio, are the current stars of the noise scene. They’ve made major fans in Sonic Youth, who have invited them on tour; they’ve played high-profile gigs at the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in 2004 and 2006; and they’re even signed to a record label you’ve heard of (Sub Pop, the label that made Nirvana famous and vice-versa.) They are, perhaps, the deepest musically of all the current noise bands. Their latest album, Human Animal, has all the requisite moments of brutality you’d expect; listening to the title track through headphones is like rolling down a jagged mountainside in a flaming barrel.
Eyeballing the Future: The Residents Turn Thirty-Five, We Think
By Jim KnipfelThe Residents don’t do things like normal people. Normal people wouldn’t, say, form a band in order to remain anonymous, make a fourteen-hour movie about one-armed midgets, or stage a live show intentionally designed to upset and baffle the audience. It’s not that they’re trying to be weird—that’s just the way they are.
Califone: Roots for the Twenty-First Century
By Katy HenriksenTim Rutili of Califone is used to being asked about the band’s uniquely American sensibility. Roots, after all, play a major part in their sound—their new album is titled Roots & Crowns. But these roots aren’t just American; the album title is actually an allusion to a novel by Robertson Davies, a Canadian writer with a long white beard and an aversion to word processors.
A Pre-History of Live Experimental Music in Brooklyn
By Al MargolisThe New York Times has just published a piece about the renaissance of rock clubs in New York City in the post-CBGB era, citing Brooklyn as “the biggest growth area.” Well, twenty years ago there may have been musicians living in Brooklyn, but you certainly couldn’t get anyone to come into Brooklyn to see music. How do I know? We tried.
A Paradox of Interests: CMJ ’06
By Chelsea WernerHeadquartered at Lincoln Center, College Music Journal’s twenty-sixth annual festival offers a melange of a thousand musical acts of all genres hailing from anywhere between Tokyo and Texas, many dressed for the Halloween holiday wearing fake mustaches or rigged-up representations of Snakes on a Plane.
A Southern Mouth: Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers Hit the Road Screamin
By Sarah Ruth Jacobs“True insanity doesn’t need to be maintained,” says Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers’s frontman Colonel J. D. Wilkes on touring their new album, Pandelerium.
“Because We Said So”
By Grant Moser and Scott DamellAdam Green is a darling of the hipster post-art scene and is the man behind the cult hit “Jessica”—a tongue-in-cheek ballad to Jessica Simpson. Somewhere along the way he decided that the public wanted a whole album of music like that. Bad idea.
The Double: _Loose in the Area_
I know this older guy who follows new bands but instantly dismisses 99% of them. When he heard one hotly hyped recent CD, he deadpanned, “I’m glad these young men have found something to do with their excess energy.” But last year, when the naysayer heard the Double’s impressive debut, Palm Fronds, he nodded affirmatively and actually uttered the words, “These guys are good.” If the Brooklyn-based quartet can impress this grouch, it’s clear they’re onto something.
