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Hacking pact

With big record companies willingly bucking technology, musicians and software types gathered in Cambridge to revolutionize the industry.
On an unheralded fall weekend right before Thanksgiving, a roomful of amateur hackers and Web rock stars gathered in East Cambridge for a historic convention that could dramatically reshape the way we get our music.

By CHRIS FARAONE | December 02, 2009

Treat of Versailles

Phoenix please themselves — and you
It's been a good year: their relentlessly catchy Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (V2) — whisked into the public ear this year atop Cadillacs via ad-ready singles like "1901" and "Lisztomania" — is about to cause some year-end listomania of its own. Since its release, they've been circling the globe playing to a steadily swelling audience.

By MICHAEL BRODEUR | December 02, 2009

The Big Hurt: Season's beatings

The Big Hurt holiday shopper
Taking advantage of your seasonal obligation to buy stuff for people, the music industry unleashes its annual torrent of giftable crap: holiday albums, greatest-hits packages, high-profile releases, deluxe reissues.

By DAVID THORPE | December 04, 2009

Main man of Mattapan

From the curb to the club with Singapore Kane
Ask any group of teens on Blue Hill Ave how many of them rap and you'll get more affirmatives than you would surveying kids at Mass and Boylston for slap-bass skills. Allston might be a crab bucket of indie-rockers, and one in three JP residents is an abstract painter, but MCs in Boston's black communities have more competition than nail salons in Dudley Square.

By CHRIS FARAONE | December 01, 2009

Three on the floor

Friendly Fires find life after hardcore
Their homonymous debut album in tow, Friendly Fires made news last July when they were shortlisted for the 2009 Mercury Prize, the English-music-industry accolade that brings with it £20,000 to one native artist or group.

By REYAN ALI | December 01, 2009

Getting the story

Gary Giddins and Scott DeVeaux sing jazz's many strains
Full-length written histories of jazz can be a slog. Especially since "the story of jazz" (as critic Marshall Stearns titled his 1956 tome) only gets longer and more complicated. Personally, on these prose-narrative trips along the New Orleans–New York axis of musical development, I usually bog down somewhere outside Chicago.

By JON GARELICK | December 01, 2009

Free Tix: Phoenix plays for the Phoenix!

Yes, the band Phoenix is playing a double-secret concert for us on Friday. Win tix now on Facebook!
Yes, the band Phoenix is playing a double-secret concert for us on Friday. Win tix now on Facebook!

By PHOENIX STAFF | November 30, 2009

Tale of the tapes

Pacey Foster tells the story of Boston hip-hop
Soon after music-minded UMass-Boston management professor Pacey Foster signed on to write a Boston chapter for the most comprehensive hip-hop tome ever compiled, his mission brought him to rural Maine, where it has long been speculated that the Hub rhyme scene's Holy Grail is safely stored.

By CHRIS FARAONE | November 25, 2009

Sing your life

The Happiness Project speaks volumes
Charles Spearin's Happiness Project — to be performed this Friday at the Middle East Downstairs as part of a trio of Torontonian acts — was originally just that: a project.

By MICHAEL BRODEUR | November 24, 2009

Bio beware

Elvis Perkins clears up his cloudy ballads
Elvis Perkins has got a backstory on him.

By REYAN ALI | November 24, 2009

The Big Hurt: Faces refaced

Also Spears speared, Hook hacked
Faces refaced, Spears speared, Hook hacked

By DAVID THORPE | November 24, 2009

New attitude

The Big Pink accentuate the positive
The rock career of UK upstarts the Big Pink has been one of finding, at the intersection of sheer bloody noise and haunting melodies, the commonality of hate and love.

By DANIEL BROCKMAN | November 24, 2009

Photos: History of Boston hip-hop

A photo tour through Boston's hip-hop history
A collection of the Boston hip-hop community's earliest works, courtesy of Pacey Foster

By PHOENIX STAFF | November 27, 2009

Take it to the limit

The minimal maximalism of Fuck Buttons
When asked to describe their own music, most bands get it horribly wrong. UK electro-noisesters Fuck Buttons, however, are not most bands.

By DANIEL BROCKMAN | November 18, 2009

The end that could have been

Three missed Aerosmith break-up opportunities
For a few wonderful days, it seemed that Aerosmith were finally kaput.

By DAVID THORPE | November 18, 2009

Group effort

Don't call Mark Lind's Unloved a solo project
If you're inclined to play punk rock, chances are you've got a self-esteem problem. It's not an æsthetic that attracts the well-adjusted. Exhibit A: Mark Lind. As bassist and frontman of the Ducky Boys, he's opened for Rancid, U.S. Bombs, and Flogging Molly.

By BARRY THOMPSON | November 19, 2009

Do over

The Feelies pick up their legacy
I tried hard to be born earlier, but it didn't work. As a result, I've had to contend with an irritatingly positioned cultural blind spot (roughly 1976–1986) that currently occupies all that open space once filled with childhood memories.

By MICHAEL BRODEUR | November 18, 2009

Mixed media

Ran Blake's Pawnbroker, Sofia Koutsovitis's pan-American roots
Film noir has been a running theme in composer/pianist Ran Blake's work since the beginning of his career — his very first album, The Newest Sound Around (RCA, 1962), with singer Jeanne Lee, began with David Raskin's theme to Otto Preminger's Laura .

By JON GARELICK | November 18, 2009

Dirty old men

The Jesus Lizard return to rewreck rock
"We were kind of just . . . normal guys who liked to . . . enjoy stuff."

By DANIEL BROCKMAN | November 12, 2009

Sweet sorrow

A farewell to Pants Yell!
Everybody loves a tidy ending. Episodes of Seinfeld , fireworks finales, a sturdy hem at the base of a pant leg — these things give us faith that the designer knew what he was doing.

By MATT PARISH | November 11, 2009