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DANIEL BROCKMAN

Latest Articles

Interview: Glenn Danzig

The horror-punk legend on Deth Red Sabaoth , comics, and vast global conspiracies
There was a moment, while I was on hold on the phone as Glenn Danzig was being summoned by his publicist, where I was a tad intimidated. And not just because I was about to talk about one of the more legendary and divisive figures in the history of punk and metal.

By: DANIEL BROCKMAN | June 21, 2010

Into the weird

Welcome to our many small worlds
No, it's not your imagination: things are getting smaller. Or at least, it seems that way in the funhouse-mirror world of modern music, where the semi-demise of the major-label factory has colluded with the anti-star obsession of the underground to produce a chasing of microgenres into mazes of musical self-selection.

By: DANIEL BROCKMAN | June 10, 2010

Reality bites

The singular surrealism of Robyn Hitchcock
At some point or another, the greatest artists are pegged as oddballs, weirdos, freaks. Being a great artist does mean going out on a limb.

By: DANIEL BROCKMAN | June 04, 2010

Master crafters

The National come back from the drawing board
In a perfect world, a great moment in music would come accompanied by a sense of grace, as if it had traveled far and long to reach you here and now. In short: great art is often the product of a lot of work — and work isn’t all that exciting.

By: DANIEL BROCKMAN | May 28, 2010

Thieves Like Us | Again and Again

Shelflife (2010)
When today’s musical magpies look back to the ’80s to steal the sonic shiny items that catch their ears’ fancy, they gravitate toward the Day-Glo sheen of that era’s false promise and anthemic vacuousness. Thieves Like Us, however, are not that breed of pilferer.

By: DANIEL BROCKMAN | May 26, 2010

Ronnie James Dio (1942 - 2010)

Live free or rock
As he lay in a Texas hospital bed in March, being treated for the disease to which he would eventually succumb, Ronald James Padavona, better known to the world as heavy-metal legend Ronnie James Dio, gave an interview to a local TV station. “Cancer? I’ll kick the hell out of you,” he declared, before throwing the devil horns.

By: DANIEL BROCKMAN | May 21, 2010

Crystal Castles | Crystal Castles (2010)

Fiction (2010)
The battlefield of ’00s electro-tantrum spazz-ravers is littered with the corpses of those who burned too brightly at the outset and, in the process, burned out any interest in a sustained career of noisemaking.

By: DANIEL BROCKMAN | May 19, 2010

The future of brutal

Metal, refined and redefined by Krallice
“I’d like you to clarify a bit more exactly what you mean by ‘go off the rails.’ ” I’m speaking to Nick McMaster, bassist for Krallice — I hesitate to say “interviewing,” because moments like this, where he’s asking me for clarification, make it hard to say who is the interviewer and who is the subject.

By: DANIEL BROCKMAN | May 21, 2010

High fidelity

Sonic Boom’s Spectrum are worth the trip
“It’s a complicated subject,” says Peter Kember — a man more commonly known by his pseudonym, Sonic Boom — on the relationship between music and drugs.

By: DANIEL BROCKMAN | May 17, 2010

Review: Public Image Ltd. at Royale

PiL, live at Royale, May 7, 2010
Terrifying, ridiculous, glorious

By: DANIEL BROCKMAN | May 14, 2010

Broken Social Scene | Forgiveness Rock Record

Arts & Crafts (2010)
Recent “loudness wars” notwithstanding, dynamics in music have very little to do with actual volume.

By: DANIEL BROCKMAN | May 04, 2010

Review: The Church at the Somerville Armory

The Church, live at the Armory in Somerville, April 21, 2010
The night's entertainment was, as they say, high concept: on the eve of their 30th anniversary, Aussie new wave lifers The Church played 23 songs, one from each of their albums, in reverse chronological order, beginning with last year's Untitled #23 and ending with 1980's self-titled debut (in the U.S., it was eventually released as Of Skins and Heart).

By: DANIEL BROCKMAN | April 26, 2010

Molten metal

Expanding definitions at the New England Metal and Hardcore Fest
Let’s cut to the chase — metal is back. And not just as a popular musical style, but as a subculture, freely seeping into the mainstream in a variety of strange ways, from the bullet belts you see on a dance floor to the devil horns being thrown by everybody and your uncle’s band.

By: DANIEL BROCKMAN | April 23, 2010

MGMT | Congratulations

Columbia (2010)
Listening to the new MGMT album requires similar preparations to those for a prolonged psychedelic experience.

By: DANIEL BROCKMAN | April 07, 2010

White Wizzard | Over The Top

Earache (2010)
White Wizzard circa 2010 may be a complete fraud to some.

By: DANIEL BROCKMAN | March 30, 2010

This bird can sing

The voice of Florence and the Machine carries to the States
For any artist, there comes a time when you must assess just what it is you have to offer the world.

By: DANIEL BROCKMAN | March 30, 2010

Goldfrapp | Head First

Mute (2010)
The case can be made that artists like Goldfrapp function like pop music’s doormat, showing artists the way to commercial success while not necessarily passing the threshold themselves.

By: DANIEL BROCKMAN | March 23, 2010

Not teens, not dreams

Beach House avoid the literal
“The abstract has been very good to us.” I am communicating via e-mail with the two members of Baltimore’s dreamy pop choir Beach House, and to be honest, I don’t know which one of them made that statement.

By: DANIEL BROCKMAN | March 23, 2010

Boys meet girls

The four most crucial post-punk boy-girl duos of the '80s
Much of the press tumult over Beach House has focused on how the duo’s idiosyncratic musical style folds into a surging wave of like-minded indie artists eschewing rock histrionics for a gentler path to the hearts of music listeners.

By: DANIEL BROCKMAN | March 24, 2010

Continental drift

Flying the friendly skies of Air
It's fitting that when I finally get Jean-Benoît Dunckel on the phone, he's just stepped off a plane.

By: DANIEL BROCKMAN | March 16, 2010

Review: Jay-Z at TD Garden

Jay-Z, live at TD Garden, March 11, 2010
There was something about the way Jay-Z hyped the crowd up at the start of show opener "Run This Town" that was not only emblematic of his performance style, but of his general appeal as a performer -- a key to his likability.

By: DANIEL BROCKMAN | March 22, 2010