Search Results for "Glenn Kenny"

The French name to the contrary, Mikel Rouse originally formed his trio in Kansas City, relocating it to New York in 1979. As a singer, Rouse shows promise, but Etudes borrows far too much from early Talking Heads to be accused of originality and is rhythmically monotonous to boot. Following a Belgian LP release, Tirez…

One of the simpler pleasures of the noisy-post-new-wave thang, the Velvet Monkeys don’t attach any highbrow pretensions to their love of cheesy pop clamor. Whatever irony their work possesses is strictly an afterthought. In the band’s earliest incarnation, leader Don Fleming (vocals/guitar) wrote songs with time-honored trash themes (“Let’s go to the drive-in tonight”) and…

Some of those prone to facile analogies have compared this latter-day power trio led by guitarist Dave Rick (an early member of Yo La Tengo and a frequent participant in Bongwater and B.A.L.L. before joining King Missile fulltime in 1990) to Hüsker Dü and the Minutemen, but New York’s Phantom Tollbooth was more like a…

Everything you really need to know about B.A.L.L. is that Bird contains a smirking cover of George Harrison’s “Bangla Desh.” This dual swipe at rock star pomposity and sacred cow causes pretty much defines the B.A.L.L. worldview. How funny you find the joke depends on how resonant the whole post-Beatles era of rock self-importance was…

Boston’s promising (but ultimately unsuccessful) seven-person Human Sexual Response (including four vocalists!) explored sexual identities, both physical and mental, on Figure 14, as on the wonderful “What Does Sex Mean to Me?” Elsewhere, there’s a healthy irreverence towards the famous and the neurotic, with sex never quite out of the picture. Leanings in the direction…

Lindsay, an American who grew up in Brazil, came to New York in the mid-’70s intent on becoming an artist. Only later did he adopt music as his medium and develop a unique percussive style of singing and playing guitar — generally around the beat, seldom on it — and no melodies, thank you. His…

This Cleveland quartet won’t get anywhere on its clothes sense. The goofy garb displayed on record covers (drummer Steve-O’s wardrobe is particularly egregious) constantly undercuts the seriousness of purpose in their music, but maybe that’s the idea. Regardless, they’re one of the strongest rock bands around, with an ace double-guitar attack that can satisfy the…

After the Housemartins disbanded, bassist Norman Cook returned to his original career as a DJ and became one of England’s most successful remixers; that led him to form Beats International, less a group than a conglomeration of singers, musicians and, most important, samples. The music tracks on Let Them Eat Bingo are constructed almost entirely…

The aesthetic dilemma presented by intentionally offensive and/or consciously anti-musical groups is probably best settled by a critical rumble in the alley. There’s certainly no rational way to discuss the potential merits of a record like this Washington, DC aim-to-offend quartet’s four-song 7-inch debut (Feel Good About Your Body) or the eight-song 12-inch Groovy Hate…

George Clinton will never lose the respect of the children of the P, not so long as hip-hoppers continue sampling such Rosetta Stones of funk as “Atomic Dog,” “Flashlight” and “One Nation Under a Groove.” Actually, that isn’t the point at all: his unassailable stature as the primary architect of booty-moving funk is as solid…

Radical Southern California avant-garde diva Galás, the caterwauling post-opera vocalist, keyboardist, composer and political activist capable of the most unnerving vocal terror this side of grindcore movies, first unleashed herself on The Litanies of Satan, not a heavy-metal prayer but rather a vocal adaptation of a poem by Charles Baudelaire. Using many electronic modifications (many…

Play the Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray” at half-speed — go ahead, do it — and you’ve got Swans plus a sense of humor and the possibility that, if you just adjust the speed control, everything will get good. Take away the sense of humor and the speed control, and you’ve got Swans. In all probability,…

This four-man troupe of Manchester synthesists and sampler wizzes (who take their name from the Roland drum machine that can be heard in countless contemporary records) made its rep with “Pacific,” a soprano-sax-led instrumental dance groove that led to an unfortunate coinage, new age house. The mixture of Enoesque ambience and a solid beat proved…

Recorded in 1975, Having a Philosophical Investigation With the Electric Eels is one lost recording by a legendary band that actually lives up to its hype. Cleveland’s Electric Eels bridge the gap between Trout Mask Replica-era Beefheart/Love It to Death-era Alice Cooper and punk rock proper. It would certainly be safe to say that there…

The excellent retro-rock that fills the Lime Spiders’ aptly titled Cave Comes Alive! album gleefully plunders various ’60s punk vaults. Rather than imitating any specific genre, this quartet from Sydney, Australia synthesizes an original version of that musical era with searing guitars, Tony Bambach’s exceptional bass work, occasional churning organ, raveup drumming and Mick Blood’s…

A.R.Kane, the London duo of Alex (Ayuli) and Rudy (Tambala), helped usher in two significant musical movements in England. The 12-inch dance single “Pump Up the Volume,” a 1987 collaboration with members of Colourbox in the ad hoc group M/A/R/R/S, introduced the scratching and sampling aesthetic of American hip-hop and house music to the British…

“Your hair on cars/your arms detach/your eyes fly by/your torso in wax.” With those immortal words Mars caterwauled into the hearts of noise lovers everywhere, marking the quartet’s four-song appearance on No New York with an absolutely total lack of musical ability. (All the other bands on the Eno-produced compilation contained at least one member…

Rock is a young person’s game, but extreme literate weirdness is best left to those who’ve been around the block enough times to know where the real bizarre shit can be dug up. Red Crayola first surfaced on Texas’ International Artists label during the psychedelic ’60s. Barbecued Texas original Mayo Thompson (guitar, vocals) would remain…

After disbanding England’s ironically poppy — and, at home, wildly popular — Housemartins in 1988, frontman Paul Heaton wasted little time in maintaining the Hull band’s chart momentum with the less jangly but similarly double-edged Beautiful South. (Another ex-member, Norman Cook, launched Beats International and subsequently became a massive star as Fatboy Slim.) Though the…