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Music Features

Better late than ever

Refuse Resist are enough to make a grown man try
The eternal argument over what is and is not punk rock has been run into the ground for so long, it’s become a cliché — and clichés are so not punk.

By BARRY THOMPSON | February 09, 2010

Steampunk and Lima Beans

Darcy James Argue's Secret Society and the Bert Seager Trio
The hook for Darcy James Argue's Secret Society — who come to the Regattabar Thursday the 25th — is that they're a "steampunk big band."

By JON GARELICK | February 09, 2010

The Big Hurt: Dispatches from Splitsville

FOB fall out; Scorpions subsist; Tyler frightens shoppers
Ladies and gentlemen, the unthinkable has happened: Fall Out Boy have split up.

By DAVID THORPE | February 09, 2010

Tokyo's Polysics cannot play music in calmness
Japanese acts attempting to interface with Western audiences often do so from behind a veil of inscrutability. Never mind that Japanese artists emerge from an alternate J-rock history that seldom intersects with ours. Tokyo's enduring Polysics have bridged this gap by expressing themselves as plainly as possible: with screaming, bouncing, eyeball-popping pogo pop so spastic that it breaks the language barrier.

By DANIEL BROCKMAN | February 09, 2010

A sister act

In addition to their bio, Tegan and Sara also have songs
High-fives all around: together we made Tegan and Sara rule.

By MICHAEL BRODEUR | February 09, 2010

Real talk

Stephin Merritt and Magnetic Fields consider Realism
"If you're not writing about yourself, you can say anything you want, and it will probably be more revealing of your personality than if you're writing openly about your own life."

By MICHAEL BRODEUR | February 03, 2010

Choir power

Ladysmith Black Mambazo raise their voices
The Romantic notion of artistic merit is that one must plumb the depths of despair to emerge with great work — and that the finest triumphs are often born of the direst misery.

By DANIEL BROCKMAN | February 02, 2010

The Big Hurt: Everybody hurting

Warning: Scorpions content
The music industry's response to the Haiti disaster has been pretty great, since it's given some huge names a chance to complete the vital circuit between the public's heartstrings and their wallets.

By DAVID THORPE | February 02, 2010

V66 revisited

A new film looks fondly back on 'the poor man's MTV'
A new film looks fondly back on 'the poor man's MTV'

By MICHAEL BRODEUR | February 08, 2010

Oddballs

After 40 years, the Residents ditch the script
Even if they had closed up shop 15 years ago, the Residents would go down as some of rock's most prolific pranksters. They aped the Beatles on their 1974 debut, Meet the Residents , tormented short attention spans with 40-minute songs on 1980's The Commercial Album , and skewered standards by everyone from James Brown to John Philip Sousa along the way.

By MATT PARISH | February 02, 2010

The Big Hurt: Billboard Top Hip-Hop and R and B songs

Who charted?
This week, a jolly traipse through one of Billboard 's most artistically fecund charts: "Top Hip-Hop and R&B Songs." What wonders await?

By DAVID THORPE | January 26, 2010

Blackshaw's good vibrations

James Blackshaw keeps his ears (and strings) open
Blackshaw's low-key career has evolved as organically as one of his songs: at 28, the Londoner has amassed a body of instrumental guitar music that defies tidy categorization. What he does isn't really folk, jazz, or new age — and it's far too accessible to be mistaken for avant-garde.

By DANIEL BROCKMAN | January 26, 2010

Ethiopiqued

Debo Band go from the Western Front to East Africa
Last spring, Danny Mekonnen and Jonah Rapino led Boston's fledgling Ethiopian pop group Debo Band straight to Addis Ababa. They played a local festival, made friends with nightclub owners, and found an Ethiopian Airlines deal for a free trip down the coast to Tanzania.

By MATT PARISH | January 26, 2010

Delta blues

Nneka brings Nigeria's plight to light
Nneka, who comes to the Middle East next Thursday, sounds a lot different on the phone from what you hear in her songs. She speaks softly, allowing stretches of silence to throw her thoughts into harsh relief. On record, she's all business.

By MICHAEL BRODEUR | January 27, 2010

Interview: Ozzy Osbourne

The belles lettrist tells all
Long before he bit the heads off bats and doves, Ozzy Osbourne worked in a cheerless abattoir in the hardscrabble Aston section of Birmingham, England, where for 18 months he held such titles as "cow killer," "tripe hanger," "hoof puller," and "pig stunner."

By LANCE GOULD | January 29, 2010

No identity crisis

Nando Michelin and Matt Steckler know who they are
If great art and great artists are supposed to contain multitudes, then in music, at least, pianists have the edge: 10 fingers theoretically capable of 10 different simultaneous paths for the music to take. Of course, it's not that simple.

By JON GARELICK | February 08, 2010

The resistible rise of Andrew Fenlon

Idol Threat Dept.
By the time I get Andrew Fenlon on the phone — two days after the airing of his now-notoriously contentious American Idol audition — the world around us has already split into three factions: those who loathe him, those who love him, and those who need a reminder: who is Andrew Fenlon?

By MICHAEL BRODEUR | January 20, 2010

5 for '10

New locals to love right away
I love baby bands, and I hope the ones I mention here don't mind my calling them that.

By MICHAEL BRODEUR | January 22, 2010

Man at work

Statik Selektah is so busy, it bugs him out
It's easy to manufacture illusions of rap stardom. Any MySpace whiteboy with a few grand can fill a mixtape with big cameos, and for a little more, guests will even shout his name out. But though such pay-for-spray practices have kept established artists eating they've also compromised the organic dynamics that once pushed the genre forward.

By CHRIS FARAONE | January 20, 2010

Old-time bangers

The Carolina Chocolate Drops hit the red zone
The one element needed when revitalizing a neglected canon? Verve. Ever since the Carolina Chocolate Drops hit the trad-acoustic scene a few years ago, they've kept this notion front and center.

By JIM MACNIE | January 19, 2010