As a title, It’s About Time — Ruby Velle & the Soulphonic’s 2012 debut — is polysemantic: an announcement of the band as a sharp young voice and an acknowledgement of good timing.
Author: Patrick Wall
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For JD McPherson, making old-school rock is a labor of love
JD McPherson — who plays The Grey Eagle on Saturday, Feb. 21 — instills his music with the same visceral danger that marked the earliest rock music cuts. And he honors those midcentury sounds with impeccable precision. Just don’t call it retro.
The Kruger Brothers’ music, from the Alps to the Appalachians
As a child, Jens Kruger of Wilkesboro mountain-music trio The Kruger Brothers was so fascinated with the music of Earl Scruggs and Bill Monroe that he taught himself how to play banjo on a broken instrument, nailing the strings to the peg board. “I like the sound of the banjo,” he says. “For me, mentally, it’s […]
5 questions with Allah-Las
California is important to psych-garage band Allah-Las. The Los Angeles quartet formed while its members — drummer Matthew Correia, bassist Spencer Dunham, and guitarists Miles Michaud and Pedrum Siadatian — were working at the city’s famous Amoeba Records. But it’s not a mere matter of geography. The attitude and the sonic history of the Sunshine State […]
5 (or more) questions with The Budos Band
On its first three records, Brooklyn’s nine-member Budos Band has teased soul, funk and Afrobeat into its sweltering instrumental music, which slotted perfectly with similar-minded bands on the vaunted Daptone Records. But on its fourth and newest record, Burnt Offering, The Budos Band gets heavy, alchemizing ’70s psychedelic rock and proto-metal into its unique, horn-driven […]
The War on Drugs talks gear, songwriting and Asheville as a second home
It was gear that brought singer-songwriter and guitarist Adam Granduciel to Echo Mountain Recording Studios, one of five studios in five different states where he recorded The War on Drugs’ latest effort, Lost in the Dream. (The band also recorded parts of 2011’s Slave Ambient there.) Granduciel wanted to use Echo Mountain’s Fairchild 670 stereo […]
Big Freedia, Queen of bounce, plays New Mountain on Sept. 30
It’s just after noon on the final day of 2013’s South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. The fatigue that the marathon music festival inflicts is readily evident in a grand ballroom in Austin’s labyrinthine convention center. A small crowd has gathered to watch New Orleans rapper Big Freedia (pronounced FREE-duh) perform a daytime set, but their […]
Long may he reign: Reigning Sound’s Greg Cartwright reflects on a decade in North Carolina
Greg Cartwright had long been a pillar of the Memphis, Tenn., music scene and an éminence grise in the still-thriving garage-rock revival. Jack White and Dan Auerbach name him as an influence and inspiration; the late Jay Reatard counted him as a friend and mentor. But back in 2004, Cartwright didn’t have a lot tying him […]
Lip service: Black Lips’ own brand of maturity
By the time they hit the stage at The Orange Peel on Saturday, July 19, Black Lips’ reputation will have preceded them. After all, as the hook from the lead single of March’s Underneath the Rainbow says, “Them boys are wild / Back in the wood.” Since erupting from the comfortable Atlanta suburb Dunwoody — not […]
Young at heart: Old 97’s grew up. Then they got Messed Up
Halfway through our conversation, the phone line goes dead, and Old 97’s bassist Murry Hammond is cut off midsentence while answering a question about the writing process of Most Messed Up, the band’s 10th full-length record in its 21 years.
Reigning men
“Tomorrow’s Hits” is the band’s fifth record in as many years, discounting 2013’s gap-filling alternate-takes collection Campfire Songs. And the band is as hard-working as it is prolific, stringing together a seemingly infinite number of tour dates. The Men’s current tour, a month-long jaunt, comes to The Mothlight on Thursday, May 1.