Andrew Lentz

Photo by J. Hubbard Five teens from upstate New Jersey decided they would give punk a make-over. It was about eight years ago, and punk had already undergone several face-lifts, but the fellas in what would become the Dillinger Escape Plan had a different idea: reduce the genre to its......

Photo by Brian Tamborello The Shins are generating much heat. You need only look at these shaggy popsters’ inclusion on scads of year-end Top 10 lists. Or notice that they’re doing press in London over the weekend. Or consider the near impossibility of getting singer James Mercer on his cell......

Photo by Niclas Stenholm MANDO DIAO, LAO at the Troubadour, November 24 Lao’s high-energy set was surprisingly tight for an emo-hardcore-post-grunge amalgam. Or, at the very least, the band had what it took to get the body moving, thanks to the way bassist Adam Paul’s downward pick-thrusts locked in with......

Photos by Wild Don Lewis AMON TOBIN, JOHN TEJADA, DNTEL at the Henry Fonda Theater, September 26 If no one’s in the venue, does Dntel make a sound? Seriously, though, this kid’s experimental textures were wasted on the five or six people who bothered to show up on time at......

In a pop-music world where image is all, the Dandy Warhols are fortunate to possess a stratospheric level of coolness. But these four’s uniform good looks, runway-worthy ensembles, heaven-sent melodies and platinum sales in the U.K. still aren’t enough to make them feel like the rock stars they deserve to......

Photos by Wild Don Lewis GANGSTARR, C-RAYZ WALZ, EL-P, 4th AVENUE JONES, PLANET ASIA at the Henry Fonda Theater, August 30 While Los Angeles’ flagship hip-hop station Power 106 is hardly a mainstay of forward-thinking rap, there’s no doubt that on its Wake Up Show, DJs Sway and King Tech......

VANS WARPED TOUR at Cal State Long Beach, July 11 A worthwhile experiment would be to blindfold an attendee of the ’03 Vans Warped Tour and walk the test subject from stage to stage during performances: He or she might well think it was the same band playing. Whether you’re......

CUBIST, TIPPER, ANON at the Hollywood Athletic Club, June 27 In what felt like an oasis of intelligence along Sunset Boulevard’s high school cruising zone, the Hollywood Athletic Club played host to a staggering array of laptop experimentation. These artists weren’t mixing other DJs’ stuff as at most club nights,......

THE RAPTURE, MOVING UNITS at El Rey, May 15 Anyone who doesn’t think the face of pop has changed dramatically must have missed the Faint shows last month or any of the packed Monday nights during Moving Units’ Spaceland residency. Which is to say, rock is the new dance. Not......

Jordan Blilie should feel honored. According to a hyperventilating bit of overseas press, his band, the Blood Brothers, is at the vanguard of a new heavy-music movement called Screamo. “We abhor it,” says Blilie, one-half of the Seattle quintet’s two-man vox engine, in regard to the buzzword. “We’ve been seeing......