Everyone's a Critic
I remember walking through the airport a week after Taylor Hicks won the fifth season of American Idol and seeing his face on the cover of every magazine. He had hit the big time after …
Recently nominated in the “Best Rock Album” category by the SDMA for debut Of Monarchs and Beggars, Dirty Sweet deliver the goods again with follow-up American Spiritual. “You've Been Warned” is a country strummer with …
Rather than premiering their new album, Weezer chose to remind the crowd that amassed for their free performance at the Del Mar racetrack just how good their old stuff is. They played a hit-heavy set …
Besides 'tweens, who's going to heart the precious, Petit Prince-like line drawings speckling the cover and insert? At first, an audio scrapbook to one's youth...from a late-20-something...seems an odd, perchance navel-obsessed construct. And at the …
In a word: soapy. That's Giuseppi Logan's saxophone tone in one word, although soap, when you think on it, can do so much. His intonation, indeed, squirts away from notes like a bar of Irish …
Addressing her audience at the Belly Up, singer-guitarist Andrea Echeverri asked, "Do you prefer English or Spanish?" "Espanol!" came the unanimous reply. Many dedicated fans of her Colombian band Aterciopelados ("The Velvety Ones"), had traveled …
Toby Keith's new single is entitled “Trailerhood,” an ode to life in a mobile-home park. But if you attended his 2010 tour stop at Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre and still weren't convinced that the country singer …
The Awakening EP, the newest release from Anti Citizens, comes with all the underground hip-hop bells and whistles that you could ask for from the duo. Grandiose dystopian beats ("Blackout," "2012 Armageddon"), impressive double-time lyrical …
“The Del Mar Racetrack is a nonsmoking venue” the announcer repeated as a crowd of several thousand gathered not so much for the horses as for the reggae show afterwards. Nevertheless, through a fogbank of …
When grunge was king, Stone Temple Pilots was the Rodney Dangerfield of the genre. Critics gave them little respect, deriding the group as bandwagoners trying to sound like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, [insert …
"It's DNA," YellowFever drummer Adam Jones says fresh out of the van after a hot drive from Phoenix into "sweater weather" as Roxy Jones howls a mic check at Soda Bar. The Austin-based tropical malady …
Cinderella brought their brand of blues-infused glam-rock to San Diego to the delight of a room full of hardcore ’80s metal fans at Viejas Casino. They remain today one of the few "hair bands" still …
San Diego–based rocker Del Currie (formerly of Fono) is back with a new project, but the results suggest that Zoo Seven is actually Fono part deux, because Lifesaver sounds similar to its predecessors. Currie still …
Elana's bowing her fiddle faster than the speed of light; Whit Smith's right arm is producing rhythms so tight you could bounce a nickel off 'em; Jake Erwin's slapping, tapping, and barely touching his standup …
Mark Twain might be dazzled and confused by the smattering of electric instruments in Lovett's large band, but he'd recognize a tent show, for which about 1000 people sit waiting in stiff plastic chairs. Cobalt's …
Arcade Fire's aptitude for grand motifs accentuates the melancholy of suburban life on their latest. While The Funeral found Win Butler’s band carrying the weight of the world, followed by Neon Bible's introspective attempt to …