> >UPDATE: As a commenter notes, The Dismemberment Plan tickets for the second show, Friday, April 27 are on sale NOW. Go, friends, go! > > Best birthday present ever? Hmmm. Submitted for your approval: How about booking the Thievery Corporation? To play the birthday boy’s living room? Well played, ma’am. Well played. [The Upstate Life] > > Why isn’t Butterstick playing in the snow like his parents? Maybe it’s because he doesn’t want to…

We know that rock ‘n’ roll has now been around long enough to be the subject of serious academic study. We can accept college level classes devoted to the cultural impact of punk, the influence of the artistic fringe on the work of the Velvet Underground, and the inventive and complex harmonies in the collected work of the Beatles. But doesn’t there have to be a line somewhere? What I really want to know is…

Really, we should all be mad about Pink Mountaintops. Because they’re Canadian. And they’re doing down-and-dirty, makin’-it-behind-the-bleachers rock ‘n roll, a genre that we should theoretically own, hands down. And worse than that, they’re doing it well. I mean, as if Canada had not already asserted its indie rock dominance, now they come trouncing on home territory. Yet, it’s just really hard to be mad at a man with questionably short shorts and Jesus-hair crooning…

Last night, Cordero alternated between brooding, Latin ballads and alt-country punk for a handful of people backstage at the Black Cat. Cordero’s charismatic, hybrid sound could have converted skeptics into fans, particularly those who gravitate toward the genres that include Calexico and X’s side project, the Knitters. Unfortunately for the band and the audience, walking into the Black Cat backstage was like a psych class experiment. Since there were maybe fifteen people there for the…