Archive: 2025

Stepping up to a casino table is like entering a stage where every chip, card, and glance plays into a quiet choreography of psychology, skill, and showmanship. Behind the glitz and rattle of dice lies a deeper design, one built on human cues, strategic rhythm, and immersive detail that turns every game into a layered […]

Continuing our spotlight on Phoenix’s very own Sun City Girls, as evidenced by yesterday’s Manic Monday selection, it’s probably fair to say the band wasn’t the most accessible group in the land during their heyday. But that, of course, was the inherent beauty of Sun City Girls, and what enabled them to create such wildly […]

late night drive home (yes, spelled all lower-case), is the kind of band you’ve always wanted to see succeed. The young three-piece creates empathetic, enduring music that carries itself with an air of youthful poetics, quickly separating the El Paso-bred rockers from the rest of the burgeoning scene. What started as an earnest effort to […]

Missouri-based folksinger Willi Carlisle is the living embodiment of Kris Kristofferson’s famous lines – “He’s a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction.” Carlisle’s appeal is his ability to write deeply incisive, provocative, and socially relevant songs without being preachy, while taking a few lighthearted detours through these eleven songs on Winged Victory.  Carlisle is […]

It’s rare that an album title so accurately reflects the songs within it. But Life Behind Bars is one of those titles. The collection of songs here gives heartfelt dialogue to The Vandoliers’ frontwoman Jenni Rose’s journey through addiction and gender dysphoria, culminating in her decision earlier this year to publicly come out and live […]

New York City’s Geese announces ‘The Getting Killed Tour’ that will see the band headline shows across North America this fall. This tour is the biggest headline run of the band’s career yet, launching in Burlington, Vermont, on October 10th and concluding with a hometown show at Brooklyn Paramount on November 21st. Presale tickets and VIP […]

The Lemonheads have officially announced their first album of all-new original material in almost two decades, Love Chant, arriving via Fire Records on Friday, October 24. Pre-orders/pre-saves are available now. Recorded at São Paulo’s A9 Áudio with producer Apollo Nove (Rita Lee, Bebel Gilberto, Seu Jorge), Love Chant marks the welcome return of a justifiably legendary rock ‘n’ roll band, with founding […]

Queens of the Stone Age will hit the road this fall on The Catacombs Tour — a limited series of very special one-night-only evenings at a curated selection of North America’s most historic theaters.   The conception of The Catacombs Tour was inspired in large part by the band members’ collective experience during the creation of […]

There’s a confident musical swagger from the first few emotional notes of Claire Morales’ new single “Champion” that reminds ears of Cat Power at her most vivacious. “Champion” appears on Morales’ self-released upcoming album, Lost in the Desert, due out August 19th and charts a solitary, female journey through the sands—told both as a full-length […]

“When I fall, I fall hard. Sometimes that means I play out a whole relationship in my mind, and sabotage it before it ever takes root,” says Lyal Strickland about his track “O Arkansas” off his new live six-song EP Ghost Light at the Gillioz. Recorded live at the historic Gillioz Theatre in Springfield, Missouri, […]

With the passing of last week’s summer solstice, it seems like a fitting time to spotlight one of the most delightfully deranged sunbaked bands of all time: Sun City Girls.  For those not familiar with the band, they came up in Phoenix’s underground indie scene during the 80s, distinguishing themselves from their other more punky […]

On June 16th, Pixies took the stage at the Van Buren in downtown Phoenix to perform a 29-song two-album show, composed of live versions of both Bossanova (1990) and Trompe Le Monde (1991). The venue was at capacity, and the setlist included over 30 songs, but it was only the first night of their Phoenix […]

It is reaching a blistering heat here at the Ye Ol’ Caustic Saloon, and we are welcoming everyone in for a tall, cold glass of fresh new releases. As we enter what feels like an apocalyptic heatwave, with torrential storms erupting out of the bright blue summer sky, the outside world pushes and pulls us […]

To see James McMurtry live is to witness one of the finest American songwriters at work. Lucky for us, the 63-year-old Texan troubadour is still a road dog, criss-crossing the country for much of the year while somehow still maintaining a fairly consistent and now legendary residency at the fabled Continental Club in Austin. If […]

The third and final entry in the so-called “Ditch Trilogy” of albums Neil Young released following the major success of 1972’s Harvest, Tonight’s The Night, sounds like the most abrasive of them all, five decades later. If the 1973 live album, Time Fades Away, which featured all unreleased material, epitomized the Canadian rock icon’s difficulty in handling the acclaim of […]

Bulgarian Cartrader is the genre-blurring music project of Daniel Stoyanov — a Sofia-born, South Germany-raised artist with a voice as distinctive as his backstory. From humble beginnings playing wedding gigs, Stoyanov carved out a name for himself in the music industry as a sought-after studio vocalist. His talents took him all the way to the […]

Known on both sides of the Atlantic for his baroque, poetic approach to songwriting, Fortunato Durutti Marinetti returns with Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter—his most sweeping, absurd, and emotionally acute statement to date. Calling it Poetic Jazz Rock—at once a private joke and an honest descriptor—the Toronto-via-Turin cantautore (Italian for singer-songwriter) delivers an album of maximalist […]

Almost exactly a year ago, Lukas Nelson and his band, Promise of the Real, a 15-year-old collective, announced an indefinite hiatus to pursue different artistic endeavors. Now arrives Nelson’s first solo offering, American Romance, an album that looks to shift perspectives and recalibrate Nelson as a solo artist.  Nelson takes center stage as his understated […]