AltWeeklies Wire
Farm Aid’s Changing Crusadenew
The benefit concert celebrates its 25th anniversary in Milwaukee.
Shepherd Express |
Evan Rytlewski |
10-01-2010 |
Music
Tags: Farm Aid
To Sharon Jones, It’s Not Retronew
You can call Sharon Jones the hardest-working woman in show business. You can call her a stage sensation. Just don’t call her “retro.”
Shepherd Express |
L. Kent Wolgamott |
05-19-2010 |
Concerts
The Problem With Independent Hip-Hopnew
I’m reluctant to admit it, but I don’t listen to much independent or alternative hip-hop these days, or at least not nearly as much as I did in college, when Rhymesayers, Def Jux and Stones Throw records were as much a part of my diet as ramen noodles and macaroni and cheese.
Shepherd Express |
Evan Rytlewski |
03-12-2010 |
Music
Hayward Williams' Songs From a Long Winternew
Milwaukee’s harsh winters take a well-documented toll on us physically, numbing our limbs, wearing out our backs and testing our immune systems. They can be just as rough on us psychologically. Singer-songwriter Hayward Williams’ latest album was born of this annual seclusion.
Shepherd Express |
Evan Rytlewski |
02-26-2010 |
Reviews
Tags: Cotton Bell, Hayward Williams
Eric Blowtorch: The Jamaican Connectionnew
A prolific recording artist always willing to share the microphone with guest stars, Eric Blowtorch’s musical endeavors have been more a vocation in the traditional sense than a career. He has reached a new height on his latest album with his band the Welders, The Alphabet.
Shepherd Express |
David Luhrssen |
12-11-2009 |
Profiles & Interviews
Justin Townes Earle's Solitary Americananew
"I always refer to my music as an experiment in Southern American music," he explains. His third release, 2009's Midnight at the Movies, touches on a range of styles spanning country blues and rollicking honky-tonk to plaintive ballads and finger-picking rock.
Shepherd Express |
Harry Cherkinian |
08-21-2009 |
Profiles & Interviews
Lykke Li Offers Girlish Quirks and Contradictionsnew
Swedish dance-pop singer Lykke Li is a 23-year-old mystery ... she's capricious and full of contradictions, at once plucky and melancholy, sweet and standoffish. She delights in her eccentricities, and though she doesn't lie, per se, she usually doesn't volunteer the whole truth, either.
Shepherd Express |
Evan Rytlewski |
08-07-2009 |
Profiles & Interviews
Cyndi Lauper Talks LGBT Rights Ahead of Milwaukee PrideFestnew
The same fierce individualism that established Cyndi Lauper as one of the defining cultural sensations and fashion trendsetters of the 1980s kept her an icon in the gay community long after MTV retired her.
Shepherd Express |
Shepherd Express |
06-12-2009 |
Profiles & Interviews
Polyvinyl to Release Pele Rarities Compilationnew
Polyvinyl Records plans to pay tribute to one of its better fallen acts, Milwaukee's brain-twisting post-rock group, Pele, with a two-hour-plus compilation of rarities and reissues of the group's two full-length albums.
Shepherd Express |
Evan Rytlewski |
04-03-2009 |
Music
Slank's 'Anthem for the Broken Hearted'new
They've sold 15 million records in their native Indonesia, and now the five members of Slank invade America with their first English-language album. Far from a reference to the lovelorn, the title refers to the inhabitants of a homeland riddled with strife and corruption.
Shepherd Express |
Michael Popke |
02-13-2009 |
Reviews
The Nightwatchman Gives Tom Morello an Activist Outletnew
As much as Tom Morello enjoyed his stint with Audioslave, the post-Rage Against the Machine band he founded with Chris Cornell, Cornell's scorching, introspective arena-rock left Morello hungry for the activism of his previous band.
Shepherd Express |
Evan Rytlewski |
11-10-2008 |
Profiles & Interviews
The Elusive Parallelograms Go Back to the Futurenew
As more and more of their indie-rock brethren opt for a stripped-down approach to songwriting, an insistence on creating multilayered soundscapes allows the Elusive Parallelograms to distance themselves a bit from many of their contemporaries -- a development that the band seems to welcome.
Shepherd Express |
Michael Carriere |
10-17-2008 |
Profiles & Interviews
Burbank Cartel Seeks to Nurture the Milwaukee Scenenew
Without Translation, the new album from Milwaukee's Burbank Cartel, is the album I've been waiting for the band to make. It is an album that sounds remarkably modern, remarkably self-assured: It sounds like alternative rock should sound in the early 21st century.
Shepherd Express |
Michael Carriere |
10-10-2008 |
Profiles & Interviews
Deerhoof Leaves a Paper Trailnew
It was with some irony that the first taste of Deerhoof's latest work was a single released as sheet music well before a recorded version surfaced.
Shepherd Express |
Joe Uchill |
10-10-2008 |
Profiles & Interviews
Tags: Deerhoof, Offend Maggie
Peter Hammill on Surviving Prog-rocknew
Hammill first made a name for himself in the 1960s as the singer-songwriter for prog-rock innovators Van der Graaf Generator, and since that band broke up in the 1970s has gone on to record literally dozens of shape-shifting solo albums.
Shepherd Express |
Mark Krueger |
10-03-2008 |
Profiles & Interviews
Tags: Peter Hammill
