How did Celtic rockabilly queen Imelda May keep her “Love Tattoo” debut and the upcoming “Mayhem” follow-up sound simultaneously contemporary and retro-rollicking?“I wanted to keep it that way so it’s up to date,” says the singer, who first came to stateside attention at last year’s Grammy Awards, singing Mary Ford’s part on “How High The Moon” alongside her mentor, Jeff Beck.
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As we mentioned here earlier, Guster’s Joe Pisapia had good reason for begging off the band’s current tour.
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Speaking of strange recording locales, how does a gymnasium located within the sacred confines of an actual church grab you? Weird, huh? But that’s where Jim James and his band My Morning Jacket chose to track their upcoming “Circuital” set, their sixth, in their hometown of Louisville, Ky. The record was produced by James himself, along with Tucker Martine. And they’re doing something equally unusual to promote it.MMJ are launching a countdown to the album’s April 12 release, something truly for the fans.
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It’s a fact — James Allan, the frontman for Scottish alt-rockers Glasvegas — sings in a burr so bramble-thick, you practically need a lyric sheet to decipher it. And his songs crackle with the flame of working-class Glasgow — anthemic rabble-rousers that carry the torch of homeland forebears like Big Country. So what did the man do for his long-awaited sophomore release?
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Hugh Cornwell was a bit older than most of his punk rock peers when he first launched his UK combo The Stranglers in 1977 with the trailblazing “Rattus Norvegicus.” By 1990 he had left the band, and although he tracked six solo albums, starred in several BBC TV shows and even penned two tell-all autobiographies — “Inside Information” and “A Multitude of Sins” — he hadn’t become the household name his impressive résumé warranted. But that could soon change. Because now, at 61, the man is entering a renaissance period, his busiest yet.
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Jamie Sutherland was attending Scotland’s esteemed University of St. Andrews a few years ago, thinking his future was set. But he hadn’t counted on the ennui his courses would inspire.“It really didn’t feel like it was going anywhere,” says the singer, who was playing in campus combos at the time. “If you’ve ever studied philosophy, you’ll realize that it’s possibly the most pointless thing you could ever do with your life, apart from becoming a lawyer. So that was when I hatched my devious plan.”
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Adam Young firmly believes that “Fireflies” — his hit single as Owl City that was No. 1 in 24 countries — was a fairly universal term around the world. “Although I have met a person, I think it was in Texas, who actually thought that fireflies and/or lightning bugs were mythical creatures, like unicorns,” he chuckles. “So I had to actually persuade them that no, I grew up in Iowa, and they’re everywhere.” How does he feel about the song’s success?
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You certainly have to hand it to Bauhaus bad boy Peter Murphy — the guy sure knows how to make an entrance. For instance, who can forget his riveting performance of the UK outfit’s signature “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” from inside a suspended nightclub cage in the ’83 vampire classic “The Hunger”?
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Calgary-born, Montreal-based guitarist Taylor Smith is only 21. But he has lived an artistic lifetime to arrive at “Native Speaker,” the new Kanine Records debut of his ethereal quartet Braids. Initially launched as a backing combo for waifish vocalist Raphaelle Standell-Preston when she entered the Calgary Folk Festival’s songwriting contest, the group became a collective that made folk-pop and then dance-pop before radically changing due to its members’ strong creative drives.
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For most of her career, up-and-coming Canadian rocker Serena Ryder has had her gravel-throated growl of a singing voice compared, quite favorably, with that of the legendary Melissa Etheridge. And as they say, when in Rome. ... Ryder is currently opening Etheridge’s tour up north, and the light bulb obviously clicked on for the two guitar slingers some time recently: Why not record an actual duet?
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You know you’ve entered some sort of stratospheric rock pantheon when the ultra-hip Vans company makes not only official tennis shoes promoting your band, but trucker caps as well.
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Just like Springsteen — who suddenly releases a new album with almost zero advance notice — folk-pop maestro Paul Simon rarely telegraphs his punches. And the man has been so busy with his charities — like The Children’s Health Fund, which he co-founded, and which has to date provided over two million doctor/patient visits to poor and indigent kids around the states — that folks might have forgotten all the songwriting genius he exhibited on classics like “Graceland.”
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For the past few months, word has been leaking out to us from other artists who were there, on the premises at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in Britain, when the sessions went down, and the word has been unusually good.
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It’s with great pleasure that we announce the return of another one of our favorite artists, Britain’s brainy folk-punker Frank Turner, who’s almost single-handedly keeping the Billy Bragg flame alive in this decade. Fresh from his recent NME nomination for Best Solo Artist, the politically minded chap will be issuing “England Keep My Bones” — the follow-up to his breakthrough “Poetry Of The Deed” set — via Epitaph on June 7.
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Is it possible to have a fun, over-the-top evening and feel absolutely no guilt whatsoever about it the next morning? Indeed it is, if you choose to check out a special upcoming Primus concert on Friday, May 18, at an unusually intimate venue — The Catalyst in Santa Cruz.
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