Spirits were high as The Noise Tour, featuring There For Tomorrow, We Are The In Crowd, and Mayday Parade, kicked off its first show at The Nutty Irishman in Farmingdale, NY.
You’ll usually find R.E.M. playing arenas and esteemed concert halls. But this week, the rock hall of famers were among the acts trying to catch a break and artists looking to build their audience at the sprawling South by Southwest music festival. The multiplatinum rockers played Stubbs BBQ shortly after midnight Wednesday before an energetic crowd of a couple thousand, marking the first time they’ve played the annual extravaganza in their nearly three-decade career. But it’s hardly a downgrade: Playing a showcase at SXSW has often been a way for a veteran act to make a big splash with a… Read more »
From the creative well of Kris Anaya comes An Angle’s third offering, The Truth Is That You Are Alive, out June 12th on Drive-Thru Records. An Angle has two previous full-lengths on Drive-Thru, We Can Breathe Under Alcohol (2005) and …And Take It With A Grain of Salt (2004). Anaya and An Angle have gone through several sonic transformations and the journey continues with The Truth, a rock album with pop influxes like the catchy bounce of “I’m Alright” and the lead single and forthcoming video, “Oh! Oh! Oh! Trouble!” Anaya gets gritty in the sexy blues bump of “C’mon… Read more »
What do you do if you’ve been touring the world for the past decade and, at 25, you’re having what amounts to your first midlife crisis? If you are coming off a very public breakup with your longtime movie-star girlfriend? If you are headline news at home, but just another face in the crowd in your adopted hometown of New York? If you’re Ben Lee, you write an album of existential pop songs and call it Awake Is the New Sleep (February 22) and enjoy how you’ve turned heartbreak and the search for life’s big answers into the strongest album… Read more »
With the recent trend of films based upon successful Marvel comics, the use of today’s most popular modern rock acts for the comic-flick soundtrack has become almost cliche. The use of catchy yet mildly dramatic rock hits to accompany the depressing emotions often felt by the superheroes has already been played out with both Spiderman soundtracks as well as in movies like The Punisher and Daredevil. As Jennifer Garner returns to the big screen as the heroic Elektra, director Rob Bowman (Reign Of Fire and The X-Files) opted to stick to the original template. Elektra The Album, which is set… Read more »
New York – At 7:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, hundreds of thousands of revelers had already begun packing into Times Square, chanting and posing for photos (many would also later don questionable hats). And though it was still early, it was just as hectic high above it all in the MTV studios: a frantic mix of cables, cameras and controlled catastrophes. It was the final rehearsal for MTV’s “Iced Out New Year’s,” and lights had to be arranged, lines rehearsed and the set decorated. The celebrities were all safely in their dressing rooms, tables and tables of sushi had… Read more »
Since Simple Plan’s new album Still Not Getting Any… showed up in stores last week a single question has been plaguing the collective hearts and sad poetry of teenage girls across the country: what exactly isn’t this Montreal-based, pop-punk five-piece getting? Respect? Rock credibility? Happiness? Special friends of the vaginal persuasion? It’s hard to tell since you’d think they’d be on cloud nine after their debut album was certified platinum and shot them into the realm of disenchanted youth superstars. Well, it’s no secret that the band’s unrelenting flow of bouncing, pop melodies, which include just enough angst to pass… Read more »
A Static Lullaby are a California-based hard rock band that are hard to categorize. Sometimes fitting into in the emo or punk category and dabbling with shrill screams and metal guitars, the group’s influences are equally based in hardcore and emotional melodic music, teetering o n the brink of brutality while acknowledging their sensitive side. We’re not even going to try to pigeon-hole them – you’ll have to go see them for yourselves. And luckily, if you live between London, Ontario and Vancouver, BC, you’ll have your chance over the next couple of weeks. ASL will appeal to fans of… Read more »
