The blues come in many styles and colors, fitting many different moods. Last weekend’s Old Capitol Blues & BBQ downtown music party was a good representation of the rowdy electric blues born in the bars of Chicago. If you liked that sound, look for more of the same this week. Joe Moss was weaned on […]
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Every track a money shot
Although no one can define it, most of us know pornography when we see it, and we do not approve. Never mind that we’re consuming it in record quantities; we still freak out at the sight of a wayward nipple. It’s strange that something as ubiquitous as porn has so few champions — and such […]
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Robert Lloyd says hello
According to the group’s Web site, St. Louis-based Field of Grey wants “to bring the rock back to radio and make people think about the world surrounding them with their thought-provoking lyrics.” Working toward those lofty goals, the band has been busting its collective butt, playing gigs all over the place and preparing for upcoming […]
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Rescued from obscurity
Flamin’ Groovies Shake Some Action (DBK Works) Was there ever a phrase more redolent of rock than “shake some action”? In the annals of horndog eloquence, it’s up there with “Who put the bomp in the bompalompalomp?” and “Tutti frutti oh rootie” — pure Dionysian nonsense, the urgent articulation of the inarticulate speech of the […]
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A life sentence, by choice
It’s hard to tell if James Intveld would rather be making movies or playing music until you realize it’s all the same to the California native. Getting a chance to be heard and be seen is all part of forging a life in the unpredictable entertainment world. “It’s been 25 years of struggling and I’m […]
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A glimpse into a cosmos
There’s a fine line between “concept” and “gimmick,” and Sufjan Stevens straddles it admirably on Illinois, his fifth album and the second installment of his Fifty States project. Invoking Carl Sandburg as his muse, Stevens commemorates the Prairie State and a motley assemblage of former residents, including Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, Frank Lloyd Wright, […]
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I believe in Bilyeu
You know how thrilling it is to discover something new and exciting but, as soon as you mention it to someone, you hear, “Oh yeah, that’s been around for years — where you been?” When I first heard Mark Bilyeu’s new album, First One Free, I couldn’t wait to tell my well-informed music friends all […]
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Lizz Wright gets it right
Lizz Wright isn’t the first jazz singer to embrace gospel, blues, folk, and rock, nor is she the first jazz singer to tell interviewers that she’s not really a jazz singer. In fact, the phenomenal success of Norah Jones’ debut, Come Away With Me, shows thatmild heterodoxy has become, if not conventional, at least lucrative. […]
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Yoakam proves he’s the real deal
Dwight Yoakam is a purist and a reactionary, but that doesn’t make him any less of a rebel. Despite his old-school Bakersfield twang and unabashed reverence for golden-era honky-tonkers Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, Yoakam has never been a retro act, nor has he ever stooped to hokey parody or knee-jerk stylistic detours. When he […]
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Something funny happened on the way to the comedy club
“(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?” — the Nick Lowe-penned New Wave classic popularized by Elvis Costello circa 1982 — was meant as a jab at punks picking on the happy hippie culture of the ’60s. The song title takes on a whole new meaning when area comics Mark Morfey, Ken Junior, Greg […]
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Flying high with the Bottle Rockets
It’s been more than a decade since Brian Henneman first broke onto the national scene with the Bottle Rockets, his alt-country band from Festus, Mo. Through the years the group has survived record-label shuffles, band-member switches, and many other pitfalls of the music business. “We’re the last ones standing of those roots-rock bands from back […]
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A bit of a pill
According to the press release for The World Is Saved, Stina Nordenstam’s sixth CD, “This is some of the most hopeful music Stina Nordenstam has ever recorded.” In a breathtaking feat of pretentiousness, the flackery is formatted as free verse, concluding with these cringe-inducing, grammar-flouting lines: “Listening to her music, reading her lyrics/Stina Nordenstam dares to […]
