Just as the trio was hitting its stride with its best album, 1990’s Sunburn, the Blake Babies greeted the new decade by breaking up. Singer/bassist Juliana Hatfield lit out for the big time, picking up a guitar and staking out turf as the Sassy-generation spokeswoman for adolescent angst — a niche particularly well-suited to the…
Atlanta’s Drivin’ n’ Cryin’ (also Drivin-N-Cryin; more recently, drivin n cryin) isn’t an easy band to classify. The group delves into folk and bluegrass as easily as it kicks out gritty guitar rock. Singer/guitarist Kevn Kinney’s thoughtful (if occasionally melodramatic) lyrics contribute a romantic working-class everyman sensibility that rarely seems forced. It’s Lynyrd Skynyrd and…
With Private Revolution, one-man-pop-orchestra Karl Wallinger proved that his post-Waterboys soirée was a place to be. He recorded the album at home, singing playing guitar and using samples to create a refreshingly unique musical backdrop that probably owes more to the psychedelic-era Beatles than any one other source, yet never actually sounds like them. The…
When they were just high-school students riding the desegregation bus from South Central Los Angeles to the San Fernando Valley, the members of Fishbone were collectively hooked by the Funkadelic song “Who Says a Funk Band Can’t Play Rock” and the bold endorsement of musical genre- blending the title implies. It became their manifesto; early…
Amid the sudden surge of serious young women solo artists that gripped the record industry in the early ’90s, Melissa Ferrick was hardly ignored, but her gripping and honest music was unjustly overlooked. Classically trained (she was a violin prodigy and later attended the Berklee School of Music on a trumpet scholarship), Ferrick took up…
There are two parts to the story of Wig, a band that’s been around since 1989 but has only put out two records. The quartet formed in Ann Arbor, Michigan, blending genres (rock, punk and hip-hop) in the same manner as townmates Big Chief and coastal kindred spirits the Beastie Boys and Jane’s Addiction. Wig’s…
Chris Whitley learned to play guitar while living in a log cabin in Vermont; the first album he bought was the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Smash Hits. That disparity helps to make sense of the stunning sweep of musical extremes Whitley made throughout the ’90s and the first half of the ’00s. The Houston native moved…
History will record Jesus Jones as a one-hit wonder (1991’s “Right Here, Right Now”), a shoe-in for the inevitable ’90s retrospectives to come. The truth is that the London quintet started in an interesting place and went downhill from there, ultimately buried by frontman Mike Edwards’ over-reaching sonic ambitions. Infatuated with American hip-hop, New York…
John Mellencamp’s excursion into mandolin, fiddles and hammer dulcimer aside, there was no notable roots rock movement afoot in 1986 when BoDeans (not to be confused with Britain’s Bodines) emerged from Waukesha, Wisconsin. The quartet’s earnest sound was fresh not trendy, with captivating harmonies by guitarists Kurt Neumann and Sammy Llanas. (Bassist Bob Griffin is…
One of the unforeseen pop music movements of the late ’80s was a passel of bands that decided to do something about the absence of improvisatory jamming, a feature that had faded out of rock’s mainstream along with summer festivals after the mid-’70s. This generation of groups found a spiritual forebear in the Grateful Dead,…
Luka Bloom is a traveler, a nomad. It’s no accident the Irish singer/songwriter’s three albums have names inspired by geography or vehicles; they reflect the songs, which are linked by their sense of place and motion. Of course, Bloom has been a traveling kind of guy. Born Barry Moore — the younger brother of Irish…
Sean Kelly, the frontman and chief songwriter of this Boulder, Colorado, group, has a high-pitched, plaintive voice that recalls Sting. For better or worse, it’s made the Police a stylistic touchstone the Samples haven’t been able to shake; the early albums’ frequent excursions into Caribbean rhythms only lend credence to the comparisons. There are far…
Seldom is releasing a live album the best career advice to offer a fledgling band, but Big Head Todd and the Monsters is an exception. A Colorado member of the improvisation-loving H.O.R.D.E. community, this three-piece fully realizes itself only in concert, where its indulgences are actually strengths. Todd Park Mohr is a tasteful guitarist who…
With a grungey guitar attack and sludgy sonics, Big Chief’s early records sound like prototypical ’90s Seattle — except the band is from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Formed by members of several popular local groups (Laughing Hyenas, Necros, McDonalds, Posse From Hell), Big Chief embraced a wide swath of hard-rock influences, ranging from righteous homeboys the…
A founding member of Metallica, Megadeth leader Dave Mustaine hails from a generation of headbangers unafraid to list the Sex Pistols and the Dead Boys as influences alongside Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. When he was booted out of Metallica — over power struggles and a growing (but since overcome) drug problem — the singer/guitarist…
Early in 1995, Denver native Jill Sobule emerged as a fresh new voice on the pop scene, singing about kissing a girl. Provocative, sure, but then Sobule was no newcomer. She had kicked around the club and coffeehouse circuit for years, and had already put out one album. But few heard the Todd Rundgren-produced Things…
“Seems like I’ve been here before/Seems so familiar” howls Tool singer Maynard James Keenan howls at the beginning of Opiate, and he’s right. The Los Angeles quartet had to win its success by cutting through a thicket of Metallica, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden and Rollins Band. While initially part of the pack, Tool’s moshable metal…
Any band that finds its name in a Monty Python sketch deserves a point or two for taste — but that’s about all Toad the Wet Sprocket had going for it early on. The Santa Barbara, California quartet met in high school; singer/guitarist Glen Phillips, three years his bandmates’ junior, took a proficiency exam to…
The Dave Matthews Band stands apart from the myriad neo-hippie jamsters populating rock’n’roll’s H.O.R.D.E. wing. Unlike most of its spiritual compatriots, the DMB doesn’t center its sound on blues licks or electric guitar workouts. Matthews, a South African expatriate who spent time in New York before moving to Charlottesville, Virginia, set out to make acoustic…
On her debut album, Sophie Ballantine Hawkins commands “Let’s fill the world with desire.” On her second, she proclaims herself “the wild woman at your door.” Consider her a kind of boho Madonna; Hawkins was raised in a sophisticated Manhattan household and began pursuing music in earnest as an adolescent. She studied jazz, as well…
