Music
The Philly Music Scene
New York's gone totally yuppie and Los Angeles was never that hip anyway, so what's the independent music scene to do?
Kicking it up a notch
Considering the recent success of Brooklyn-based indie rockers the French Kicks, it's hard to believe that only a few years back they were playing a gig to drunk kids at an unnamed Philly frat house.
Flying Coach
In the wake of Ashlee Simpson's lip-synch debacle on SNL nearly two years ago, Kelefa Sanneh wrote a diatribe against its most strident critics in The New York Times. "The Rap Against Rockism" asked "Could it really be a coincidence that rockist complaints often pit straight white men against the rest of the world?" (A rockist, of course, being a subscriber to the creed of authenticity and a strict guitars-drums-bass worldview.) In other words, is "alternative rock," in all its monikers, yet another white boys' club defined by its own exclusivity? Coachella, a documentary on the six-year-old Indio, California music festival of the same name, incessantly begs such questions by refusing to play to its strengths.
It's Gettin' Heavy
Much of the hype surrounding the Flaming Lips' long-in-the-works 12th album jumped on frontman Wayne Coyne's murmurs about "more guitars." The Oklahoma City veterans' last two albums, 1999's brilliant The Soft Bulletin and 2002's kinda brilliant Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, eschewed the band's tattered punk threads for heady, orchestrated prog.
Philly's main men
Who: Philadelphia's own Man Man Genre: Experimental melodic mayhem Sounds like: If Frank Zappa and Tom Waits had a child out of wedlock Songs to download: "10 lb.
Starring a Band with an Asterisk
Their music has been dubbed new-wave, pop-punk and various combinations thereof, but stellastarr* just likes to call it "rock." Between watching soft-core porns and touring to promote their album, Harmonies for the Haunted, stellastarr*'s pretty busy these days. Street: How would you define your music?
Putting the Woo Back into Wu-tang
Real thugs never die. Unfortunately, they also have trouble staying creative. Ghostface Killah's newest album, Fishscale, is yet another record to emerge from Wu-Tang's prolific machinery.
MTV BMOC
Dov Kogen began singing and writing songs at the ripe age of three, when he took the tune of Jewish hymn "Adon Olam" and set it to the one-word lyric "guitar." "I didn't actually play guitar back then," the psychology major and music minor says, "so I sort of strummed my aunt's 30-year-old classical guitar," which he would actually learn to play in the fourth grade.
O welcome back, karen O
With the wild success of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs's debut album Fever to Tell, the musical trio from New York set a remarkably high standard for itself.
The Grateful Dead meets Picasso
Originally J. Leto and his brother's side project, 30 Seconds to Mars has recently gained a reputation in its own right.
Indie rock that you can happily gyrate to
It is not often that a band produces something truly unique. Almost every successful indie group today somehow derives its sound from Morrissey or Bowie or even Byrne.
A Penn band you actually want to hear
Penn's very own the Pale Nimbus knows something is missing from this university's campus. And so do their fans.
Turn the stereo up
Since their 1991 debut, Stereolab has functioned as one of the most influential -- if under the radar -- bands of the pseudo-pop electronica circuit.
Philly Rockers Fight for Visibility
"The last time we were out on tour was two or three years ago. We've actually just been recording this album, and watching the children.
Not all british rock stars are created equal
Hopping the pond makes for strange bedfellows. Though the Subways had an early U.S. breakthrough this fall on that great cultural arbiter, The O.C., a February release date has lumped their debut with the latest wave of British musical exports.
Processed cheese
Richard Cheese The Sunny Side of the Moon: The Best of Richard Cheese If this is your first listen to Richard Cheese, be forewarned: too much Cheese may result in massive indigestion, and upchuck reflexes may ensue.
Almost Stars
Several years ago, three members of the orchestral pop band Stars smoked pot in New York's Central Park and were arrested by an undercover cop.
Battle of the Music Fests
This past week, the line-ups for two important music festivals were announced. Hippie Bonnarooites cursed its indie line-up, while Coachella fans were equally disappointed by its list of bands.
Texas rockers drift onto the scene
Straddling the state line between Texas and Arkansas is a little city called Texarkana, home of the only U.S.
