SINGLES ONLY: A chat is long overdue concerning Nelly Furtado’s feverish new single “Promiscuous.” Remember Nelly? She unleashed the ballad “I’m Like a Bird” from the successful album Whoa, Nelly in 2000. It wasn’t a club hit, but plenty of waiting-room occupants bobbed their heads to it on the way to root canals. The Canadian […]
Music
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Bringing out the best
At least half of all marriages end in divorce, and the rate at which bands break up has to be even higher, so what are the odds that a husband-and-wife band could succeed in the long run? Whatever they are, Brett and Rennie Sparks are beating them. The Sparkses have been married for 18 years, […]
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No freaks – just folk
There’s a reason Vetiver gets lumped in with the freak-folk crowd, but it doesn’t have much to do with its music. Andy Cabic, the San Francisco-based collective’s only permanent member, plays guitar in Devendra Banhart’s touring band and even runs a label with him (Gnomonsong, home of Feathers and Jana Hunter). Vetiver’s 2004 debut found […]
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Vinyl Static
HIGH FIVES: Desk Vinyl Static is what the Dubya’s dad might call a “kinder, gentler music critic.” When the message floated in that Jurassic 5 was finally dropping the follow-up to Quality Control and Power in Numbers, this fan wanted to like “Work It Out,” the lead single, bad. The song kicks off in perfect […]
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Vinyl Static
JUNEBUG: Rip the month of May off your calendar quick — the painfully slow month for shows and new releases has finally been put to rest, and not fast enough. Can you say, “American Idol season 5 encores”? Glad that’s over. Sure, we had some memories, those tasty musical morsels such as Gnarls Barkley’s St. […]
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All in the family
What if the Manson Family had been less of a patriarchal death cult and more of a freeform collective? What if they’d shacked up in cool, reasonable Vermont instead of hotheaded California and collaborated on their own songs instead of parroting those of their rock-star-manqué leader? What if they’d spent more time ministering to their […]
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On our side again
Now that President George W. Bush’s approval ratings are stagnating around 30 percent, protest songs are fashionable again, with everyone from Pink to Pearl Jam clamoring to kick ol’ Dubya while he’s down. Sure, indie rockers such as Jay Farrar and Conor Oberst had already been there and done that, but big whoop: Most of […]
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Vinyl Static
O CANADA! Let me reintroduce you to a little country I like to call Canada, the place where draft dodgers used to go and where everybody gets to see a doctor. But there’s so much more to our neighbor to the north, which has become a hotbed of experimental rock. Music devotees know the sounds […]
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A big, big world
Susana Baca Traves’as (Luaka Bop) Travesías means “passages” in Spanish, and it’s an especially appropriate title for Susana Baca’s latest album, her fourth for Luaka Bop. Last August, after a trip to the Congo, the Afro-Peruvian singer and ethnomusicologist began a fellowship at Tulane University, in New Orleans, where she planned to study the music […]
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Vinyl Static
SHOWS A-GO-GO! Champaign-Urbana band Shipwreck ventures our way for a show at the Underground City Tavern on Saturday, May 20. If anyone can bring the rock, it’s Shipwreck. This year alone, the band has plans to release an ambitious four — count ’em, four — EPs, and if the 2005 release “Origin” is any indication, […]
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Vinyl Static
SHOWS-A-GO-GO! Is a party ever really over? The Smoking Popes certainly thought so when they recorded their final guitar-fueled romp, Party’s Over, in 1998, much to the disappointment of their legions of loyal punk minions. But nothing brings a band back together better than nostalgia. When Chicago booking institution Flower Booking turned 15 in 2005, […]
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The stuff that dreams are made of
When I was 5 or 6 years old, I believed that musicals were real. When the time was right, the people around me would burst into song, and we could finally stop worrying about what to say next because we’d all be in thrall to the music, borne aloft by an invisible orchestra. Our everyday […]
