Search Results for: New Aesthetic

There’s a certain serendipity to Paramore’s opening slot on the upcoming and much-anticipated No Doubt return tour. Fans of the latter might remember the video for “Don’t Speak,” where No Doubt’s three male members look daggers at bejeweled frontwoman Gwen Stefani as they’re cropped out of a magazine shoot. A similar thing might have happened over the last two years to Paramore. The young Tennessee pop-punk quintet vaulted into the charts on the strength of such buoyant singles as “Misery Business,” the “Twilight” soundtrack cut “Decode” and their platinum-selling 2007 sophomore album “Riot!” But Paramore’s ochre-haired spitfire singer, 20-year-old Hayley… Read more »

One night in the late 1990s, Conan O’Brien was hanging out in a Detroit bowling alley after shooting a remote segment with Ted Nugent (”I rode around in the woods with him, we had a guitar duel and then fired guns,” he recalls). “I have this vague memory of these really cool kids coming over and hanging out with us,” he says. “I knew nothing about them or what they did.” A few years later, O’Brien learned he had met Jack and Meg White that day when he popped into a Saturday Night Live rehearsal to check out the White… Read more »

The first time Arcade Fire performed in Paris, Mathieu Saura stood outside the venue with his girlfriend, holding up a sign that read, “Please, we want to come to the show.” The band’s bassist, Richard Reed Perry, got them in, and ever since, Saura might as well have not left. Under the name Vincent Moon, he’s gone from a fan begging for tickets to an in-demand filmmaker who has revolutionized music video. His films are stripped down, intimate videotaped performances – shot in one take, often of an act simply strolling down a street or playing in a parking lot.… Read more »

“PRETTY. ODD.,” the eagerly awaited sophomore album from Decaydance/Fueled By Ramen recording group Panic At The Disco, has made a stellar debut on this week’s SoundScan/Billboard 200 album chart. The critically acclaimed collection enters in the #2 spot with sales of 139,000. “PRETTY. ODD.” — which follows the Las Vegas-based band’s RIAA platinum-certified 2005 debut, “A FEVER YOU CAN’T SWEAT OUT” — debuted at #1 on SoundScan’s “Current Alternative Albums” chart and #2 on the “Digital Albums” chart. In addition, “PRETTY. ODD.” debuted at #2 in the UK, Canada, and Mexico, with top 10 debuts in New Zealand, Austria, and… Read more »

‘It will be quite awhile before there’s another My Chemical Romance album,’ front man says at Comic-Con 2007. My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way has always loved comic books. His first job, in high school, was at a local comic book shop in New Jersey. He didn’t actually collect a paycheck each week – his compensation came in the form of free comic books. He idolized the likes of Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Frank Miller and Grant Morrison. Long before the band was formed, Way attended the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he majored in illustration and cartooning.… Read more »

Recently, Maureen Callahan wrote a piece for the New York Post about Crush Management, the NYC cadre that shepherds the careers of Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, the Academy Is … , Boys Like Girls and Armor for Sleep (or, as Callahan puts it, “basically any band that a 13-year-old girl with a blog and a Hot Topic habit obsesses over”). Aside from providing readers with some genuinely bananas quotes from songwriter/ rock-and-roll vampire Butch Walker about credibility (especially considering this is on his résumé), the article is excellent primarily because it floats the hypothesis that the artists… Read more »

Rage Against The Machine played its first show in seven years last night (April 29) to close the 2007 edition of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in Indio, Calif. The foursome tore into staples like “Testify,” “Bulls on Parade,” “People of the Sun” and “Guerrilla Radio” to one of the largest main stage crowds in the event’s history. Guitarist Tom Morello was in particularly blazing form on “Know Your Enemy,” and the band grooved in lockstep throughout, as if no time had passed since it was last active. Rage has thus far only scheduled four other shows in… Read more »

Matt Skiba, lead singer and guitarist for Chicago punk purists Alkaline Trio, feels that there are a lot of misconceptions out there regarding Satanism, and, as a longtime member of Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan, can tell you that it’s not all fire, brimstone and threats of eternal damnation. Really, the faith’s simply about theatrics, how to comport yourself when you’re out and about (for instance, one of the church’s Ten Commandment-like mandates forbids followers from bothering others in open territory, but “if someone bothers you, ask him to stop – if he does not stop, destroy him”) and maintaining… Read more »

Los Angeles – Don’t tell Hot Hot Heat keyboardist/vocalist Steve Bays that press coverage doesn’t matter: The reviews for “Make Up the Breakdown,” the band’s 2003 effort for Seattle-based Sub Pop Records, had a direct influence on the act’s major-label debut. “People said we sounded like Dexys Midnight Runners, so I went out and bought a Dexys Midnight Runners album,” Bays says. What he heard resulted in the current single “Goodnight Goodnight.” The song, which Bays describes as a cross between OutKast’s Andre 3000 and early Beatles, takes a keyboard-laced dancehall groove into a chorus that downshifts the song. The… Read more »

Mike Patton probably owns a Blackberry. The former Faith No More and Mr. Bungle frontman has always juggled his many musical whims like the finest project manager, but in 2005 his personal digital assistants might need their own personal assistants. The 37-year-old musician has recruited Oakland, California, DJ crew the X-ecutioners for his latest project, General Patton Vs. the X-ecutioners. Released February 22, Vs. is a characteristically varied affair, featuring the general’s vocal acrobatics, skittish needle-dropping and quick cut-and-paste genre changes. And, like a growing number of musical collaborations, most notably the Postal Service, the songs were all completed via… Read more »