Naming your band after that strange liquid which fills the streets of the Quarter is a dicey proposition—“Gravy” is a funky, homegrown name for a funky collegiate collective, but the French Quarter version of gravy is half beer, half dumpster water, and half piss. (That actually adds up if you’ve ever stepped in it.) Gravy [...]
The next great white rapper is a puppet. Well, at least when it comes to the Dirty South, where local native Lil’ Doogie—a real man, brah—has just dropped one of the more satisfying New Orleans rap records of the year. Working with fellow West Banker Ballzack, the former Douglas Fontaine is representin’ out that Marrero [...]
The idea of every Southerner’s favorite jam band releasing an album of reggae covers, dub remixes, and alternate versions may seem bizarre, but only if you’ve been a fairweather Mule fan of late, missing their live cover of Al Green’s forgotten album track “I’m a Ram” and skipping over their own “Unring the Bell” off [...]
One look at this native’s MySpace page will confirm what you can hear in her voice on this, her debut CD: she appreciates the obliquely cutting poesy of Tori Amos, the deathly conversational phrasing Joni Mitchell is famous for, and the obsessively confessional tone of Fiona Apple (not to mention her love for moody, pillowy [...]
San Francisco guitarist Jimmy Leslie’s music has a jazzy hippie aesthetic on top and a funky New Orleans heart underneath, so it’s only natural that he record the rhythm tracks here with Galactic’s backbeat of Stanton Moore and Robert Mercurio, and then lays his own classic-rock inspired songcraft over the top back home. The dozen [...]
The Sons of William are heavily into tradition—yes, they really are two brothers fathered by a Bill who taught them music, accompanied on this debut by several pianists and bassists. But this Houma duo are even more serious about musical genealogy, specifically, the place where the secondary and tertiary branches of the Beatles’ stylistic tree [...]
You can tell a lot about a band from its official bio. Sometimes more than you might have wished. “The Fantastic Ooze are prepared for battle, leading an army of disgruntled and disillusioned music fans on a quest to rescue contemporary music from the doldrums of reality.” Hmm. Although they’re tongue-in-cheek about it to a [...]
As one of the original musical satellites orbiting around the Continental Drifters—later to become the subdudes—Gary Hirstius knows his roots music. As a detective, he also knows human nature. But if you were expecting some sort of morose post-Katrina song cycle from his fourth solo disc, a searing indictment of the government’s blah blah blah [...]
The name Adam Levy probably doesn’t ring an immediate bell in your brain, but you could be forgiven. He’s not even a household name among jazz guitar aficionados, but this part-time New Orleanian combines the best of Bill Frisell and Larry Carlton in his patient, chiming, yet exploratory melodics. If those names don’t mean jack [...]
