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Modern Skirts' keyboardy rock is Peach State-bred
on 11/20/09 at 9:00 am | The most famous bands that emerged from Athens, Ga., in the 1970s and 1980s defied the conventions of Southern rock. Then again, influential members of the B-52's and R.E.M. didn't grow up in the South. The B-52's' Fred Schneider and Kate Pierson grew up in New Jersey. R.E.M.'s Peter Buck was originally from California. Even Michael Stipe, who was born in Decatur, Ga., spent his childhood traveling the world with his military family. |
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Whitney Mann's rural roots inspire country songs
on 11/13/09 at 9:00 am | Whitney Mann grew up the daughter of a grain farmer in tiny Camden, Mich., a town with a population of 500 lodged between the Saint Joseph River and the Indiana state line. In Camden, one school building houses all students, kindergarten through high school. The post office and the community park are the sum of all local landmarks. |
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Julian Casablancas: Phrazes for the Young
on 11/13/09 at 9:00 am | Here's the best thing about mp3s: They've reestablished the song as the preeminent musical form. Pop music began its slow decline soon after CDs killed the 45. There was no way to buy a song, no way for three minutes of music to stand on their own anymore. And it took the implosion of the recording industry to change all that. |
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Weezer: Raditude
on 11/13/09 at 9:00 am | The problem with Weezer has always been: What is there to love after the novelty wears off? On Raditude, Rivers Cuomo and company embrace the angst of geek love right away. |
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Pop Explosion!
on 11/08/09 at 9:00 am | The music of Madison was transformed this decade in ways that mirrored broader changes in the identity of the city itself. Our media changed. Wide and thick newspapers became a relic of the past. Broadcast radio changed its business model to become a mostly prerecorded medium. CD sales fell and record stores closed. The city and its musicians connected in a new digital world. We downloaded songs on our iPods. We bought and sold our stuff on Craigslist. We loaded our profiles onto MySpace and found friends on Facebook and Twitter. |
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The Sounds' tenacity yields success
on 11/06/09 at 9:00 am | The Sounds didn't just wait patiently for success. They've earned it through years of long, hard touring that most rock bands would never endure. |
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Madison Pop Explosion: We will never forget...
on 11/06/09 at 9:00 am | Underwear parties. The Imperial Palace. The Sunspot van. Luther's Blues. Rock Star Gomeroke. The Junkers. The old New Loft. The King Club. Jane Wiedlin. Kiki's house shows. Pooley's. |
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Madison Pop Explosion: National events and music trends that shaped the local scene
on 11/06/09 at 9:00 am | At the beginning of this decade, local radio was mostly live and staffed 'round the clock. By the decade's end, broadcast radio was almost exclusively prerecorded outside of drive-time hours. With few music-loving DJs or music directors left to navigate our local airwaves, radio was no longer a taste-making medium for new music. |
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Madison Pop Explosion: The 10 people who most influenced the direction of Madison music in the 2000s
on 11/06/09 at 9:00 am | After O'Cayz Corral burned on Jan. 1, 2001, Cathy Dethmers spent more than three years planning a replacement. When she opened the High Noon Saloon in 2004, the venue instantly defined the Madison club scene. The large, well-appointed room became a haven for indie-rock touring bands, and Dethmers kept her commitment to booking local shows, too. |
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Madison Pop Explosion: The 10 most influential Madison acts of the 2000s
on 11/06/09 at 9:00 am | Carl Johns brought all the sensibilities of indie rock to Madison music, first through NoahJohn, then through Charlemagne. His impressionistic pop-rock meandered from acoustic folk to psychedelic rock, and national music websites like Pitchfork took notice. |
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Madison Pop Explosion: The '00s were a revolution in Madison music
on 11/06/09 at 9:00 am | The music of Madison was transformed this decade in ways that mirrored broader changes in the identity of the city itself. |
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Alison Margaret links jazz improvisation with activism
on 10/30/09 at 9:00 am | Alison Margaret's arms are adorned with as many tattoos as the punk and metal musicians who play at venues like the Annex or the Frequency. But Margaret leads a jazz quartet backed by a soothing vibraphone and a stately upright bass. She gigs at places where wine and fine dining are in vogue, the Brink Lounge and Restaurant Magnus. |
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Brother Ali: Us
on 10/30/09 at 9:00 am | Across 16 tracks, this Minneapolis rapper laments the double lives of gays, racial minorities and children of divorce. He professes his love for his family and his God. He even brags a little about being a bad motherfucker. |
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Built to Spill: There Is No Enemy
on 10/30/09 at 9:00 am | There's no shortage of indie rock circulating in 2009. Most of it is dense, impressionistic and gently psychedelic. That's not the road Built to Spill travel on their seventh full-length CD. Tracks such as "Life's a Dream" put the brakes on the tempo while maintaining the salience of verse-chorus-verse songwriting. |
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Gigs gone haywire
on 10/30/09 at 9:00 am | Experienced Madison musicians have been put on the spot on stage more than once. They've learned the art of thinking on their feet (and on their stage pedals) to survive haywire engagements with common sense and a little luck. |
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David Bazan breaks up with Christianity
on 10/23/09 at 9:00 am | David Bazan was attending a Bible college in Seattle when he formed Pedro the Lion in 1995. Fourteen years later he's released a solo album that documents his breakup with Christianity. |
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His & Her Vanities cross the finish line
on 10/16/09 at 9:00 am | This Saturday, Oct. 17, His & Her Vanities will release their third album, The Mighty Lunge, with a show at the Frequency. The CD, five years in the making, is a collection of eight well-honed indie-pop songs that showcase the Riemers' perfectionist approach to making music. "At the end it was like, 'We've got to get it done this year or it's never going to come out,'" says Terrin. |
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Lou Barlow dreams of a perfect fusion
on 10/09/09 at 9:00 am | Lou Barlow's music straddles the line between noisy alternative and softer acoustic rock. The dichotomy shaped his previous bands, Sebadoh and Folk Implosion, and informs his new solo album, Goodnight Unknown. |
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The Argus goes underground
on 10/02/09 at 9:00 am | When Rick Brahmer and Gwen Cassis bought the Argus in 2007 and started booking local bands for midweek shows, they had a plan. "We wanted to support local music by giving younger audiences an affordable option for a night out," says Brahmer. |
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Jimmy Voegeli to play at World Dairy Expo
on 10/02/09 at 9:00 am | It's World Dairy Expo Week in Madison. That wouldn't be music news if it weren't for Jimmy Voegeli. |
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Hockey: Mind Chaos
on 10/02/09 at 9:00 am | "Indie" has become a throwaway term if, as some online music zines are doing, it's applied to Hockey. Not only is this Portland dance band signed to a major label, their songs are as accessible as modern rock gets. |
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Noisettes: Wild Young Hearts
on 10/02/09 at 9:00 am | This London-based band melds rock, soul and blues into songs coated with disco-pop production sheen. |
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The Limousines: Very Busy People
on 10/02/09 at 9:00 am | The Limousines don't mince words in their biting social criticism of shallow materialism. Backed by very catchy synth, this San Francisco Bay Area duo sing about getting fat and drunk and masturbating to "pixelated videos of strangers fucking themselves." |
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Michael Franti sings about the one thing we know
on 09/25/09 at 9:00 am | In his music, which melds hip-hop, reggae and rock sounds, Franti explores the simple ways people do that: They make friends. They make art and music. They love. |
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Forward Music Festival 2009 builds on musical themes
on 09/18/09 at 9:00 am | Every Madison band I talked to back then bemoaned the lack of places to play. Remarkably, more than a decade later, Madison is now host to a premier music festival that gives a couple of dozen local acts a chance to share the stage with regional and national talent. |
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Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
on 09/18/09 at 9:00 am | This 10-piece folk-rock band from Los Angeles recalls a time when music was about magic carpet rides, green tambourines and putting your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee. |
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The xx: xx
on 09/18/09 at 9:00 am | The four members of the xx dress in black, stand in a single-file line and perform expressionless in most of their YouTube videos. |
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10 must-see concerts by Madison bands
on 09/11/09 at 9:00 am | This 10-week local music fall planner touches on the spectrum of Madison sounds, from hip-hop to indie, from folk to metal. |
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Matt and Kim ride the electro-dance tide
on 09/11/09 at 9:00 am | 2009 is 1977 all over again in pop music. In the late 1970s, James Taylor, Jackson Browne and Carole King suddenly acquiesced to the Bee Gees, KC & the Sunshine Band and Abba. Now, the influence of indie-folk, best expressed this decade by Sufjan Stevens, the Decemberists and Death Cab for Cutie, is increasingly overshadowed by synth-drenched electro-dance pop that's embracing the song structures of indie rock. |
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What is a Snake on the Lake?
on 09/04/09 at 9:00 am | I have one burning question as I take the elevator up to the fourth-floor studio of UW-Madison's student radio station, WSUM, on the west end of the Lucky apartment building. What does Snake on the Lake mean? |
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