It may be hard to remember now but there was a time when Jane’s Addiction was the Guns N’ Roses of alt-rock, or maybe Guns N’ Roses were the Jane’s Addiction of metal. Either way, the Berlin wall between alternative and metal came tumbling down and there was no putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. Jane’s made it safe to wed soulful weirdness with total heaviosity and for a time — let’s say 1987, the year Nothing’s Shocking came out, to 1994, the year Kurt Cobain crucified himself with a shotgun — all seemed somehow right in the world. […]

The xx, Music Hall @ Snug Harbor Cultural Center, last night by JONATHAN VALANIA

Artwork by JAMES ORMISTON Kristen Hersh is a renaissance woman – singer, rocker, writer, mother, photographer, storyteller, business woman and chronicler of lost ballads. The last few years have produced Crooked, one of her best solo albums and her fascinating head trip of a memoir Rat Girl – a year in the life of an edgy teen on the dual cusps of indie-rock stardom and motherhood. A musical chameleon and one of the most underrated guitar players of the last 20 years, Hersh is equally at home interpreting old time murder ballads, performing solo folky-stylee or fronting one of two […]

BY ZIVIT SHLANK When properly employed, the configuration of bass, guitar and tabla can produce a curiously exotic and intoxicating aura. New York-based acoustic trio Surface To Air is one such purveyor of said mystique. The sounds formed by Rohin Khemani (percussion), Jonti Siman (bass) and Jonathan Goldberg (guitar) are rooted in a world jazz improv context, while infusing spare, minimalist textures that evoke the spirit of East Indian music. However, there is no g?yaki or solos to be found; these guys pride themselves on constructing music that’s collaborative and organic. Having played separately in a variety of settings and […]

  As per Wikipedia: “El-P (originally known as El Producto, born Jaime Meline, March 2, 1975) is an American hip hop artist and entrepreneur from Brooklyn, New York City. Originally a member of Company Flow, El-P has been a major driving force in alternative hip hop for over a decade. As a rapper, El-P’s style can be characterized by his dense, aggressive, and verbose attacks, which include notable use of metaphor, science fiction and fantasy themes and references, and associative word play. Critic Steve Huey describes him as “one of the most technically gifted MCs of his time, spitting out […]

  With a dulcet baritone perched somewhere between the subwoofer-shaking pipes of Mark Lanegan and Leonard Cohen , Sean Rowe commands the kind of gravitas usually associated with fiery-eyed Old Testament prophets or mud-caked Delta bluesmen whenever he opens his mouth. An avowed naturalist who has done monsths-long survivalist stints in the wilderness living off nothing but his wits and fortitude and the fat of the land, Rowe also vibes a certain Thoreau-ian mien that only serves to reinforce his cred as a rough-hewn, antiquarian folkie that can reduce noisy bars to pin-drop silence with nothing more than an acoustic […]

The Flaming Lips perform at The Firefly Music Festival on July 22nd in Dover.