The funky blues guitarist they call the Wolfman only let opportunity pass him by once. One night in the early ’60s, Joe Tex, soul master and fixture of R&B scenes across the South, walked into a tiny club in Thibodeaux called the Sugar Bowl and found the teenage Walter Washington onstage with his group. So [...]
As Beck and Damon Albarn know too well, your celebrity fantasy girlfriend only becomes a proper muse when she leaves you. Knowing this, Death Cab for Cutie fans have been wringing their hands ever since lead singer and songwriter Ben Gibbard pledged his troth to former indie It Girl Zooey Deschanel. So we can write [...]
“This is our culture,” Mr. Ghetto says, calmly but defiantly, “just like Mardi Gras or jazz. Bounce is a major part of New Orleans and ain’t one better than the other.” Mr. Ghetto became an Internet sensation with his “Walmart” video, which included women in booty shorts shaking their asses in and around the discount [...]
[NSFW] Say what you will about the Internet; it has definitely sped up the process of dropping jaws. No longer do you need to murder a few family members or a song on American Idol to become notorious overnight. Such is the case with NOLA bounce artist Mr. Ghetto, who uploaded a little guerilla video [...]
It’s not surprising that Odoms Odometer—birth name Adam Bourgeois, better known as the hand and the voice of Lil’ Doogie, New Orleans’ most beloved puppet since Mr. Bingle—comes off on his debut solo disc much as he did with last year’s Doogie EP, Thoughts Of My Mind. Vocally, that is: lyrically, he now splits the [...]
Blame Bill Millar. Although the English music critic had used the term throughout the Sixties, “swamp-pop”—a label everyone agrees is his invention—became ingrained in musicological lore forever with his 1971 essay in Britain’s Record Mirror, “Swamp Pop—Music From Cajun Country.” It wasn’t until the term was reintroduced via fellow Englishman John Broven’s 1983 book South [...]
Is it possible to sell out by becoming a jam band? That’s the question unfortunately raised by acid-jazz saxman Topaz McGarrigle and his new quasi-supergroup of roots sidemen, Mudphonic. They make a big deal out of the diversity of their backgrounds—and musical miscegenation is always preferable to monotony—but the result is much less than the [...]
Indie arena rock? Well, why not? The five tunes on these locals’ debut EP swell to stadium size, yet could conceivably speak to an entire generation of post-emo, post-radio, post-everything millennials ready to demolish the old barriers keeping guitar/keyboard rock stagnant. These tunes sound like they were weaned on the energy and suburban ennui of [...]
Yes, everyone’s favorite industrial/swinger/comedy duo is back, and if you haven’t heard them, skip the opening track on this second disc. “Very Much” is a rare instance where the joke (flipping off everything and everyone, especially the music industry) isn’t strong enough to carry the homemade music. The title track is the real (eye)opener, with [...]
Albert Marino would certainly not be the first modern folkie to enter the music through the songs of John Lennon and work his way backward through Dylan and Cohen and Waits, but few who do keep their pop sensibilities along the way. Spooney (the go-by of this Austin-via-Bucharest singer/songwriter) is a damn sight sunnier than [...]
