Tag: G. Love + Special Sauce

After a dozen years of keeping us waiting, Mariachi El Bronx returns horns a-blazin’.

It’s unseasonably warm, not like you’d be able to walk around in a T-shirt, but definitely not the type of weather you’d expect of the Grand Valley in February. It makes a perfect setting for The Barr Brothers and their urgent machinations. I remembered to get my hat, not that I need it.

Joanna Sternberg is an open book, and you can’t keep from turning the pages.

Things started out normally, with a cover and an excellent new single from Waxahatchee, but took a turn for the unexpected when the highly-anticipated Cat Empire set went missing. Was it skipped over on the player accidentally? Had I forgotten to make a copy to bring to the station? Could I download it from the backup at home? After a couple of sets of troubleshooting, it turned out I had named the file incorrectly. These are the hazards you encounter as a live-in-the-studio DJ, kids.

Music all about your special someone and / or a newborn human.

Hailing from the southwest of France, The Llamps build on a sound that's equal parts New York City grit, San Francisco psychedelia, and spaghetti Western twang, which makes for a pan-global main dish.

Uwe Schmidt has had an extensive career, recording under many names as electronic musicians do, but it's his work as Señor Coconut (and now as Atom™), where he deconstructs familiar songs into something Kraftwerk would play if hired to play a quinceañera, that brings me this very particular weird glee.

I will let you in on a secret weakness: a band like The Rare Occasions can seize control of my playlist just by showing up with a surplus of pop hooks and grade AAA harmonies.

You know I have a weakness for pitch-perfect harmonies and razor-sharp hooks, and The Rare Occasions deliver both in voluminous quantities. Also noteworthy tonight is back to back tracks from The Who Sell Out, only one of which is performed by The Who!

When your arrangements are razor-sharp, your moods mercurial and psychedelic, and your melodies constantly off-kilter, you’re probably a Dutch band like Certain Animals.