If done right, listening to music can be more than just noise. It can be a way to hack your emotions, bringing out those you need and driving away those you’d prefer to send packing. And after the Tragic Events of November 8, there were a lot of emotions that

As a critic, I’m rarely shy about my predispositions. I like my music loud, underground, and firmly rooted in modernity. Tradition is well and good in a general sense, but as life reflects art, musical pinings for the days of segregation, feudalism, rampant polio and 35-year-average lifespans are far less

Growing up in the Nintendo and Depeche Mode ruled ’80s certainly started me down the path, but the stellar soundtrack to Stranger Things on Netflix, has plunged me deep into a reborn synthesizer fever. And that can be a rough affliction to have here in string band obsessed So-O. There

Phoenix band Group Hug? could use some work on its messaging. For starters, there’s that dasdardly question mark in its name. What’s that all about? Then there’s the name of its new EP, released on August 31: A Collection of Demos, a title that makes it seems more like a

Real talk: this reporter has been waiting for this review for awhile. Not to write it necessarily, but to have the album to write it about. Impulse Control first crossed almost two years ago. I loved their live sets, but their existing recordings were thin, and sad-sounding. But on Thursday,

  As an Ashland resident, it’s been a tough couple weeks in the local music scene. Still reeling from the closure of Club 66, another occasional music spot, Public House, decided to call it quits after a visit from the royalty mafia demanding money, and Hilltop Music decided to pack

Mike Patton is certainly most famous as frontman for bands like Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, and Fantomas. But he’s a prolific and versatile dabbler, and true Patton devotees will often point not to his chart-topping hits, but to the cast of gloriously bizarre deep cuts on his dozens of

In the last issue of The Messenger, this reporter wrote about how the vitality of Ashland’s music scene has taken a massive nosedive recently, while the scene in Grants Pass is on the upswing. That article was about the lack of venues, and how that restricts stylistic diversity, but the

“I was raised on video games, superheroes and sports. It was only fitting that I call myself Dude Skywalker,” Medford rapper Dude Skywalker says on the bio section of his Facebook. His new album, F#ck You Peacefully, follows suit, opening with a sampled rant from one Jeff “his Dudeness” Lebowski,

On The River South’s website, the band says that people tell them they sound like Van Morrison, to which they reportedly say, “actually we sound like The River South.” Despite that canned answer, Van Morrison is definitely an influence you can hear in the band’s recently released self-titled debut EP.