A Tool show is so much more of a visual experience than a Sonic one. I thought they sounded better on their albums but couldn’t take my eyes off the stage.

The musical mecca, that place where music crosses the line and is no longer secular, is and always will be New Orleans. And if there is a church where we go to hear the sermon, that place is Preservation Hall, with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band the preachers at the altar.

“Have balls bigger than any dude out there!” – Hairdresser on Fire (half of Rad Homiez).

BJ Leiderman wrote the themes for ‘Car Talk’, ‘Weekend Edition’, and ‘Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!’ He’s a Hampton Roads resident, and he’s playing the JCC in Virginia Beach this week.

After following them around for two years from Virginia to Ohio (and all the States between) for upwards of 26 shows, it’s going to be hard to go cold turkey. This is what it is to be staring at the face of performance withdrawals.

Solieri’s descent into wickedness, set against the backdrop of the Orchestra and Chorus singing and playing the timeless masterworks of Mozart, is brilliantly haunting in revealing a world that can be cruelly cold and hateful even as it is aesthetically beautiful.

I can tell you two things. One: get it, you won’t regret it. Two: Once you do, prepare to abandon whatever else you were into for a few days.

“They look too clean, too safe,” I complained to Lizzy. “I like them because they look like that but I bet that they’re not,” she said.

Perhaps it shouldn’t matter that it doesn’t best “Dear Science”, because at the end of the day TV on the Radio are still making quality music that stands above the majority of their peers.

A new Radiohead album is basically the hipster equivalent of Christmas morning.

The first song, a European Tango, was extremely sexy, and made obvious the chemistry between the four musicians.

There’s a bit of an evangelical aura about him, and his audience members at times could have been taken for zealous followers of the master of travail.

“They tell me I don’t know nothing about the blues but then I tell them they don’t know nothing about livin” – Marquise Knox

Plus, a chat with Liz about stage fright, jamming with Dave Matthews, and what she learned from Keith Richards.

The Decemberists’ new album, The King Is Dead, became available this week. Here’s our review of this anticipated release.

Hymn for Her tote around their instruments, their baby and dog, and pretty much everything else they own in a 1961 Airstream trailer while recording and performing live for audiences all over the States.

Clearly getting off on playing, you hear the heart and soul, grit and grime of a collection of individuals.

Oh, Norfolk, how I love to watch you dance.

We were treated by a commanding emcee and an irresistible clown to a set that was mostly killer, little filler.

No matter which shade of the ‘black rainbow’ spectrum you find yourself in, we can all agree that these guys aren’t phoning it in.

For as inane as that music is, as stupid and unnecessary as the Dead Milkmen were, they struck a deep, serious chord in the teflon age of Ronald Reagan for me in a way that Fugazi and Bad Brains never did.

As misunderstood as it is, real hip hop music is love. And a real hip hop show is a family reunion with people you’ve never met.

Three fans give their take on the Interpol show.

At about 101 degrees Fahrenheit in Virginia Beach on July 21, Warped Tour at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre was muggy madness. Vanesa caught up with some of the performers.

The identical Canadian twins are a pop virus: with enough exposure, it doesn’t matter whether you want to like them, you’re a goner.

She’s a namedropper and a starfucker, which is super sexy in the forbidden trashy kind of way. She doesn’t pretend nor apologize.

It’s been two days since I saw the Boston Brass performance at the Ferguson, and I’m still reflecting on how good a show it was.

Following a sudden thunderstorm, the African Children’s Choir concert brought light and life to the city, in the beautifully restored venue at the heart of Hampton Roads’ Harlem.

Tattoo made me feel closer to my country than I have in a really long time.

Hannah (local girl) and Jesse (NYC-area snob) have a conversation about last night’s show.

Chatroulette takes center stage at hilarious NorVa show.

Even sitting high above the ground in the Hampton Coliseum, I felt like I was in a futuristic, bass-thumping, digital masterpiece of a dance club.

The band: Oh so fiery. The crowd: Oh so cold.

They’re a band of nerdy, happy, hippie, indie pirates, and they don’t give a crap. They do what they do, whether we’re watching or not. And I respect that.

Escovedo is one of the premier songwriters of our times, fluent in a ridiculous range of genres. This is the guy who opened for the last Sex Pistols show in 1978. There are echoes of everything from Lou Reed to Townes Van Zandt to Roky Erickson in his work.

Writer Jim Morrison gives his top album picks of the year.

A local review of Today the Moon Tomorrow the Sun @ Hell’s Kitchen.

With videos from your new favorite, Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears; indie princes, Grizzly Bear; rockabilly goddess, Imelda May; and beautiful studio footage of The Boss himself.

Last Friday night, I saw R. Kelly perform his “Ladies Make Some Noise” tour at ODU’s The Ted. Now, I’m not a big R&B fan and don’t own any R. Kelly albums, but there’s something in this guy that can only be described as genius.

Women: Thievery Corporation is what you need to play if your boyfriend has sex with, shall we say, not as much graceful aplomb as you’d like.

When you see Stevie Wonder do that head thing, even at the age of 59, you see that 12-year-old playing “Fingertips” in black and white. He still flails his arms some and dances like a little kid with his eyes closed.

Motown aside, Detroit holds a reputation as a city of musical maniacs slashing against the predominant trends. It is the birthplace of techno and the Nug; where Iggy Pop and MC5 destroyed white rock, and Jack White rebuilt it in a similar fashion.
Why then is all the hip hop emerging from the rusting motor city so affirmingly consistent?

“Juno Had A Rough Day” is the title of the 84-second track that kicks off record/netlabel Error Broadcast’s indie collection. And indie is not quite a quirky clusterfuck on this album.
This is art pure and free.

The free internet release of Funk Man (the stimulus package) was a surprise, but a nice one. It isn’t a slapdash collection of odds ‘n sods thrown out there to maintain exposure. It’s not a mixtape.
Funk Man is subtler, as Del seems to have learned how to layer softer, fuzzier sounds into a more distinct whole.

The Knife’s Silent Shout was a manicured symphony of electronic light and sinister, hushed darkness; evoking the inexplicable discomfort of a David Lynch film. Karin Dreijer’s Fever Ray strips away some of the horror-show beat strobes and embellishes some of the silence with percussive instruments like a steadily anxious heartbeat.

Here is an album pulsing with well worn life and emotion that never sounds overproduced.

The Congolese musicians of Staff Benda Bilili have the kind of familiarity bred over years that makes proficiency sound offhand and casual.

There is nearly nothing bad and so much good about Royksopp’s Junior that it feels like it should be a better album.
Everything is quite good and bubbly…the album is like champagne, but it is debatable whether this is the good stuff or that pleasantly sweet 5-dollar obligatory New Year’s purchase.

After listening to the new Asobi Seksu album Hush, I wonder if somebody high up at Polyvinyl decided that 2009 must be the year for low-impact pop.

Like Hush, Dear John functions well in a shuffle, but effects a kind of numbing prettiness at album length.

Though Keelay & Zaire sound at an ear’s quick glance to be a quintessential West Coast production duo, many of the ingredients for their musical gumbo are SevenCities grown.

This is the ongoing exuberant collaboration between a few American rock dudes and a few Kenyan benga dudes. It makes for nice jumping music, and on their third album they have officially progressed beyond “fascinating experiment” to “superb band.”

What has changed for Doom in the last four years? Listening to Born Like This, not very much.

And this is a very good thing.

I have a difficult time imagining that Tombs is not the band Mike Hill has been hoping to start for the past decade.

This Brooklyn-based three-piece have just released one of the best metal albums I’ve heard in several years.

As the creative driving force beyond the immortal new jack trio Tony! Toni! Tone!, Raphael Saadiq gave neo-soul both its blueprint and definitive statement with House of Music.

Now, this album would need to be brilliant to bring me back around to the O-Rod school of thought and I have been officially re-converted. Nothing in this guys back catalog even remotely compares to the depth and genius of Old Money.

Assembled by mash-up pioneers 2 Many DJs, this seminal mix clashed one of the most important dance songs of the early ’80s, New Order’s “Blue Monday,” with one of the most important dance songs of the early aughts, Kylie’s “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head.”

If there’s a lullaby racket, Koushik could be running the game.

Dalek comes from Newark and they are utterly distinct. Though they loosely share some ground with other indie hip-hop outlets, particularly the dystopian Definitive Jux camp and the self-consciously strange Anticon tribe, Dalek have spent the decade perfecting a genre only they seem to make.

The term “shoegaze” may be at an apex of meaninglessness or universiality as it now encompasses everything from the more snoozy than ambient to the beyond post rock noisey. The appropriately titled Hush leans way more to the former.

You’ll find yourself banging your head to heavy and doom-laden riffs between epic climaxes and more serious and beautiful moments he weaves into the mix to keep these forty-odd minutes from getting stale.

GZA’s new release ProTools stacks up with Legend of the Liquid Sword as a post-classic highlight.

London Zoo is a pulverizing work from the jump, an aptly named number called “Angry.”

The album is littered with one word titles with the same impact and focus. “Skene” (weapon). “Insane.” “Fuckaz” (fuckers). “Warning.” “Judgement.” Palpable dread alternates with righteous fury in passages that are physically impossible to ignore.

There are still many Dillas out there without lupus who walk among us. Black Milk is one of them.

I’m not sure if Marnie Stern’s unfortunately titled album is unexpectedly frantic or unexpectedly harmonious.

There’s a time and a place for everything and Slow Burning Lights is sure to help you wind the party down, but it’s also sure drive you into a coma with its pulsing and far too steady beats laced with uninspired vocals.

Over a decade in the music biz, and The Sea and Cake haven’t done much to alter their frequently brilliant and influential sound.

Frusciante’s solo works have always been an inspired departure from his main gig as a Red Hot Chili Pepper and they’ve always managed to expand his mopey sound a little further with each venture.

Deerhoof has always been a really weird band and Offend Maggie doesn’t shy away from the bizarre noise freak-outs associated with the band’s unique repertoire. Nor does it stray from the bold shiny pop that has always contrasted the more inspired jam sessions.

Produced by musical globetrotter Damon Albarn and fitting snugly on Pitchfork’s top singles of 2008, nothing else on Welcome to Mali sounds much like it, but it creates an important first impression.

The album transports you to your first kiss or the first time you heard Janis Joplin or the Mamas and the Papas on your parents’ Magnavox.