Tagged: hot

Ten years ago, Yeah Yeah Yeahs gave a relatively stale music scene a much-needed kick in the backside with their debut album  Fever to Tell . Their brand of artsy garage punk was desperately needed, and a decade later, the band has evolved their sound but retained a raucous spirit. What fans may not know is the irresistibly raw, sensual sound obscures a hidden treasure map of sorts. After extensive research and puzzle solving, Consequence of Sound has cracked the code of  Fever to Tell  and pieced together a secret travel guide to the band's hometown. 01. "Rich" [...]

While on tour together with their primary acts, Pixies guitarist Kim Deal and Tanya Donelly of Throwing Muses forged the idea of forming a side group. Calling themselves The Breeders and adding bassist Josephine Wiggs and temporary drummer Shannon Doughton, Deal and Donelly recorded the band’s debut full-length, Pod , fleshing out demo tracks the two had previously presented to the label 4AD. Its follow-up, the four-track Safari EP , saw the addition of Jim MacPherson on drums and Kim’s twin sister, Kelley, on second guitar. It also saw the departure of Donelly, who went on [...]

With just under a minute remaining on “Entertainment” , the first track and lead single off Phoenix' s latest album Bankrupt! , we arrive at the bridge. The bridge consists of one long syllable, “ohhh”, set loose above synthesizers and a metronomic bass beat. Given the track’s structure and golden Hollywood pop gloss feel, this moment should absolutely be the big and catchy shout-along climax to an already big and catchy single – and for a second, it sounds like it will be. But then it starts to drunkenly amble up and down on an arbitrary rhythm, [...]

Welcome to another installment of Stress Position, where we test a writer's patience and insanity by forcing them to listen to an album they hate for 12 hours straight. Let the carnage begin. For the debut of this column, I chose metal , which was #1 on my musical black list. Technically, that's accurate from the standpoint of specific genres. But for my true musical bane, which makes my (now slightly diminished) hatred of metal look like the romance between Jackie O and JFK, I have to go with... [...]

Tonight, Ft. Lauderdale’s downtown nightlife will host the inaugural  Block x Blog Music Festival  brought to you by  Consequence of Sound ,  Subculture , and 3-J Hospitality. This one-night, landmark event celebrates the 8-bit analog culture through the city’s thriving local arts scene spread over three premier venues all under one roof: Revolution Live ,  Green Room , and  America’s Backyard . Brooklyn DFA royalty  Holy Ghost!  will headline the event with a festival bill rounded out by the best of the best in local talent including the Jacuzzi Boys, Krisp, Lil Daggers, Millionyoung, Ex Norwegian, TeePee, Plains, Suede Dudes, [...]

In this week's edition of Dusting 'Em Off, Editor-in-Chief Michael Roffman and Associate Editor Sarah Grant look back on 20 years of listening to Aerosmith' s Get a Grip . The two not only share wistful memories, but also try to dig deep and explain why it went on to become the Boston veterans' best-selling studio album worldwide. So, grab a Fresca, blast the album below, then shut up and dance. Michael Roffman:  True story: This was the first album I ever bought with my own money. In [...]

There’s a quote often attributed to Picasso about the autonomy of a painting: “A painter only has one language," which your art school friend drops a whole lot to shield criticism from his new conceptual exhibit. Leave it to Wayne Coyne to call bullshit on a widely accepted pearl of wisdom from the most prolific painter of the 21st century. Coyne tactfully obliterated this notion last week when he live-tweeted The Terror with compact interpretations of his own lyrics and behind-the-scenes nuggets. Here’s one typical, confounding example in tweet no. 15, on The Terror ’s third track [...]

After having their music in  Sophia Coppola movies and following a stint as Air’s backing band, Phoenix broke through to the mainstream with 2009’s colossal Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix . Lead-singer Thomas Mars married Coppola, and the band set their return for April 23rd with Bankrupt! . Now that they’ve got Coachella under their belt, they’ve officially reached headliner status. But it’s taken the band over a decade to climb to the top tier, so we looked back at 20 songs that got them here. [...]

At last, Daft Punk have officially shared the first track from their upcoming album Random Access Memories . We got our first taste of "Get Lucky" last weekend at Coachella , then again on Saturday Night Live , and yesterday a number of radio stations premiered the song's radio edit . Now, the radio edit is available to download through iTunes . The funky disco track features Pharrell Williams on vocals and Chic's Nile Rodgers on rhythm guitar. If you missed any (or all) of the Daft [...]

Charlotte Aitchison, better known the world over as Charli XCX , doesn’t seem to be hiding much. In fact, I’m not sure she knows how. Sure, she tends to change the subject a lot. About a month ahead of the release of her long-in-the-works debut full-length,  True Romance , we spoke on the nature of “true romance,” a slight political kerfuffle with one of her videos, and who she hopes to inspire. An excitable 20-year-old about to accomplish one of her life’s goals (putting out that album) deserves some kind of license to meander across [...]

Correction : You now listening to Daft Punk’s new single right now - or, at least something that "sounds pretty damn close." Earlier today, Edmonton radio station Sonic 102.9 posted an extended version of "Get Lucky", which features previously unheard vocals from Pharrell and new instrumentation. The track was pulled shortly thereafter, but now as Dancing Astronaut points out, a Dutch radio station just aired the same version on their airwaves. The DJ refers to the song as a "radio edit". Take a listen to the radio rip at Dancing Astronaut . Daft [...]

Karen O is at the end of her rope. “Free yourself. That leash is long, long, long,” the Yeah Yeah Yeahs singer chants on “Buried Alive”, a late-album surprise on the band’s fourth studio LP, Mosquito . It’s a statement that implies she’s been given so much slack on the line it’s easy to forget she’s tethered at all. Repeating the line in a moment of delicacy, it becomes her mantra, a placid reminder that the 13-year-old band she fronts can never rest on its laurels. There’s always another shackle to break in this hypercritical musical climate, [...]

A biology class dissection is normally an easy, albeit squeamish, process to get through. The animal is long dead, and all you have to do is just slice, slide, open, and extract the organs and limbs you’ve been instructed to remove. But what if you make that first puncture and the fetal pig slips off the table, bouncing off the ground and ricocheting off the wall. You reach down to pick it up, only to discover you can’t get a good grip as it keeps sliding out of your grasp, bouncing once more. To make matters stranger, upon closer inspection [...]

Outside Lands has revealed the lineup for this year's festival, which will take place August 9th-11th at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, California. Paul McCartney, Nine Inch Nails, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Phoenix, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and The National top this year's bill, appearing alongside Vampire Weekend, D'Angelo, Kaskade, Pretty Lights, Jurassic 5, Willie Nelson, Hall and Oates, and Grizzly Bear. Other notables acts include Band of Horses, The Tallest Man on Earth, Gary Clark Jr., Kurt Vile and the Violators, Dawes, Yeasayer, Young the Giant, Foals, Youth Lagoon, Jessie Ware, Wavves, Chromatics, Smith [...]

With The Thermals ' 2006 masterpiece, The Body, The Blood, The Machine , frontman Hutch Harris sang about a dystopian United States ruled by a fascist Christian government. But it wouldn't be the last time the band would deal with a specific theme. As joyous as it often sounded,  Now We Can See  was a meditation on death, and  Personal Life  was an obtuse dissection of relationships.  Desperate Ground , due out April 16th on Saddle Creek Records, could easily take place in the same world as  TBTBTM , stranding [...]

As the late great George Harrison taught us, “all things must pass.” Though the ex-Beatle was mainly referring to cloudbursts, sunsets, and the finality of life itself, this nugget of bedrock wisdom rings no less true for our pilgrimage to Coachella’ s exuberant fusion of gluttonous music consumption and skimpy neon ensembles. Sunday saw festivalgoers sporting looser fitting, more modest attire, and the generally mellow mood was a well-earned change of pace following Friday’s frantic nerves and Saturday’s purposeful navigating. But something about our excesses this past weekend must have angered the rock deities. As night descended, [...]

Considering the fact that he hasn’t played drums live since 1996, it is astounding at how many people today, when they hear the names Steven Drozd and The Flaming Lips , respond with something along the lines of, “He’s the drummer right?” When he first joined The Flaming Lips in the fall of 1991, it was as the band’s drummer, but Drozd’s role almost immediately expanded to include playing keyboards and guitars, as well as eventually arranging much of the group’s material. As a member of the Lips, Drozd will be the first to admit that he's part of [...]

As ticketholders shuffled onto the grounds for Day 2, it was apparent that the newfound and hard-earned wisdom following Friday’s rookie mistakes drove a slew of essential tweaks and adjustments. Some blessed out patrons sporting cringe-inducing red welts lathered on the SPF 50 (it’s the desert folks, get it together - strike one), while others opted to schlep canvas bags this time around after shivering for five hours when the sun vanished on Friday (yeah, strike two). On Saturday, Coachella became America's unofficial Glastonbury by doubling in size and hosting three headlining caliber artists to simultaneously [...]

Thumpty-dump, thumpty-dump, thumpty-dump!  Weaving through dense traffic on I-10, blazing past the gargantuan Cabazon dinosaurs and billboards championing musicians of all flavors (from the XX to Ghost BC), speeding by battalions of wind turbines is the greying asphalt that leads to Indio, CA - aka, the "out there" world of Coachella Music and Arts Festival . It's a wild sight once you're there: Ticketholders - fresh off the freeway from office cubicles and lecture halls - sport pasty complexions and keen, darting eyes. The air's filled with overheard chatter about the schedule, what kind of cute outfits everyone's packed, and whether [...]

On Thursday night, 802s pop diva Cyndi Lauper performed at a White House function honoring "Memphis Soul." After Lauper's cover of Otis Redding's "Try A Little Tenderness," Congressman Steve Cohen fired off a harmless tweet to congratulate the recording artist on her set. "Great night, couldn't believe how hot u were," the Tennessee Democrat tweeted. "See you again next Tuesday. Try a little tenderness." A harmless enough message for a bachelor in any profession if you ask me, but Cohen began to draw media attention only after he deleted the tweet, causing the deleted tweet aggregate Politwoops to [...]