Metro Pulse

D.J. Morrison is a lovely, fluid guitarist, and he demonstrates his skill all over his new CD, Beautiful World. From gentle acoustic picking to bluesy electric-slide interludes and smooth, stinging leads, Morrison shows that he has the makings of a genuine local guitar hero. Full story »

Knoxville funk/pop/R&B powerhouse Dishwater Blonde got back from a short tour with the like-minded St. Louis band the Fundamental Elements just in time for a set at WDVX’s Blue Plate Special earlier this week and a show at Barley’s this weekend. Lead singer and guitarist Davis Mitchell takes a few minutes to let us in on what he’s been listening to recently. Full story »

This past spring, Dan Chertoff, the son of Cyndi Lauper and Joan Osborne producer Rick Chertoff, contacted the band after stumbling across their MySpace page. Chertoff was a senior in New York University’s Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music and wanted to use the band for his senior project. He invited them up to New York for a recording session, where Winstrom, Robinson, guitarist Ben Oyler, and drummer Matt Honkonen laid down four tracks. Chertoff, who’s graduated and now working A&R for a small independent label, brought the four back to New York last month for another session at a second studio, General Studios, owned by George “The General” Fullan. There they taped seven more songs for what’s shaping up to be the follow-up to last year’s Vidalia. Full story »

Since we’re discussing the themes of her new album Another Country, it seems appropriate that Tift Merritt is speaking from the back of a tour van somewhere in the English countryside. The Houston-born, Carolina-bred singer/songwriter is making the trek from London to Sheffield with her five bandmates, and despite losing her cell phone signal twice, she sounds like a woman who loves where life has taken her. Full story »

The upcoming five-band show at Pilot Light on Friday, July 25—a benefit for the club—will probably be the last chance to see local rock band Woman on a Knoxville stage for a while. Singer Chris Lowe and guitarist Tyler Mucklow are both leaving the country for extended periods in the next couple of months—Mucklow to Mexico to study for two semesters, and Lowe to South Korea to teach English. The moves will bring to an end, at least temporarily, the band’s two-year run. Full story »

The Swedish duo Studio released one of the most quietly gratifying LPs of 2006 (the CD came out last year) with West Coast, a nearly flawless collection of original dub/post-rock/disco compositions. The only problem with West Coast was its hermetic perfection; the album’s deceptively complex rhythms and sophisticated, fully formed melodies nearly disappeared under the music’s languorous effortlessness. Full story »

Even at just 42 minutes, the third album from Brooklyn’s burliest band still feels undeniably big and, like, totally epic. Part of that is down to Made Out of Babies’ artful wall-of-sludge riffs and its powerhouse rhythm section; an even bigger part is singer Julie Christmas. Full story »

Singer/songwriter Jay Clark has begun laying tracks for his third CD at Eric Nowinski’s Rocksnob studio. He’s completed the first of three sessions, the third of which will probably fall in August. Full story »

You probably know Marc Ribot’s work, even if you don’t recognize his name. As a sideman, he’s appeared on albums by Tom Waits and Elvis Costello, and he was an understated star of the Robert Plant and Alison Krauss collaboration Raising Sand in 2007. Little of that adult-alternative session work, though, indicates Ribot’s freakier side. Full story »

There are a few variations of the name—Microkitty and Le Petit Tigre are a few—but there is only one DJ Mini-Tiger. Equipped with a vast vinyl collection culled from a cross-section of musical genres and a DIY approach to spinning records, Mini-Tiger is one of several local DJs currently making it easier to shake your rump in Knoxville. Full story »

There comes a time when every rock fan reaches a certain age (I think they call it “middle”) when he or she decides that every hot new band pretty much sucks. Perhaps it’s only a temporary condition, soon to be replaced by a renewed faith in the spirit of youthful rock ’n’ roll. But until then, our reasoning goes like this: “This [blog-acclaimed cult band] sounds exactly like the [’zine-acclaimed cult band] I used to listen to 20 years ago—but worse. So why bother?” Full story »

When jazz/fusion/funk/free-improv trio Medeski Martin & Wood played its earliest shows back in 1991, keyboardist John Medeski says, Knoxville was an oasis for improvisational artists of all stripes, a place where non-traditional jazz musicians could find willing audiences whose perceptions were unrestricted by traditional notions of the form. Full story »

All rock bands are thieves of one breed or another—from The Beatles and the Rolling Stones to whatever Johnny-come-lately happens to be on the cover of NME this week. It’s the smart ones, however, who cop to the offense, and Coldplay is no exception. Full story »

Fourteen years and millions of dollars have come and gone since Guns N’ Roses’ last disc, an amount of time so staggering that nothing new can be written about the album’s litany of delays and disasters. Amazingly enough, an end may finally be in sight. Full story »

Eye on the Scene: Jazz singer Sara Schwabe has been a reliable double-threat in Knoxville for years, first as part of the Actors Co-op company and, for the last five years, as the leader of Her Yankee Jass Band. But she’s leaving soon, heading to Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz., for the school’s MFA program in acting. Full story »