Pop Quiz: Robyn

Pop Quiz: Robyn

Aidin Vaziri | Retreating to her native Sweden after scoring a huge international hit with 1997's "Show Me Love," former teen sensation Robyn has spent the past decade doing everything in her power to avoid being like Britney Spears. She turned down a tour with the Backstreet Boys, ditched the majors to start her own label and found new inspiration in childhood heroes like the Notorious B.I.G. and Snoop Dogg. Now 29, the freshly shorn singer returns with a thumping self-titled album - her fourth - packed with Space Age love songs like "Robotboy" and "Konichiwa Bitches."


Robyn
Q: What do you tell your barber?
A: I tell him I want to look like a boy.
Q: What kind of a boy?
A: You know, like the old-school Spanish, like, in the '40s with really simple men's cuts?
Q: Do I need to borrow a time machine to see what you're talking about?
A: Yeah, maybe. I've had the same hairdresser since '96.
Q: He must work really hard. In some ways he should be making more money than you.
A: I know. In some ways he should.
Q: Do you have to bring in an isosceles triangle every time you get it cut?
A: No. He was trained by hardcore old Spanish ladies. He's a super well-trained hairdresser. Continue reading.

Brandi Shearer: Road Worrier

Brandi Shearer: Road Worrier

She's a road worrier: We caught up with Brandi Shearer as she was packing her bags in anticipation of the Amoeba Music Spring Tour, which will take the San Francisco singer-songwriter across the country with Kate Walsh and Quincy Coleman. "I'm racked with nerves," Shearer said at her Potrero Hill home. "Three days before going out, I'm wondering if I should've been a veterinarian." She needn't worry. A torch singer with a blues-inflected voice that has drawn comparisons to everyone from Norah Jones to Janis Joplin, she's made an album, "Close to Dark," that has won all kinds of rave reviews. Shearer's already thinking about the next one, which she plans to record with producer Craig Street (Lizz Wright, John Legend). "I want it to be a lot more visceral - a lot more blood and guts," she said. Fans will get a taste of the new material live when the tour reaches Cafe Du Nord Thursday. "I love playing live," she said. "There's no substitute for it. It's my reward for all the planning and packing and booking cars. The payoff is that 45 minutes I get to be onstage, provided I don't have some kind of wardrobe malfunction or something." Continue reading.

Reviews: Duffy, Death Cab For Cutie

Reviews: Duffy, Death Cab For Cutie

Duffy 'Rockferry': Aidin Vaziri | So what if, as it has been frequently suggested by the British press, a bunch of record-company scientists sat around saying, "Now that Amy Winehouse has totally gone coconuts, how can we invent someone younger, prettier and less likely to head-butt random strangers on the street but still make us a billion dollars by singing like an exact cross between Ronnie Spector and Dusty Springfield?" Duffy, left, has made an uncommonly beautiful album, loaded with love and melancholy and genuine 22-year-old yearning. With a hand from former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler, the gorgeous Welsh singer slathers her bruised-violet voice on a set of songs that float on an ocean of strings, brushed rhythms and heavenly Motown-style harmonies. It's hard to pick one - or even seven - favorites, but jittery single "Mercy" aside, the late-night heartbreakers like "Stepping Stone" and "Warwick Avenue" are just about as good as this whole retro-soul thing is going to get.

Death Cab For Cutie 'Narrow Stairs': Aidin Vaziri | "My old clothes don't fit like they once did/ So they hang like ghosts of the people I've been," Ben Gibbard sings here. It's probably best not to read too much into that line, but more than a few longtime Death Cab for Cutie fans will be ready to sling it back at the Seattle band, which in recent years has left the warm-fuzzy confines of the indie world to score love scenes on "The O.C.," sign with the majors and headline arena shows. The quartet's latest leaves the fragile charm of seminal early releases "The Photo Album" and "Transatlanticism" even further behind, turning up the guitars and attempting to disguise Gibbard's reedy voice. But droning songs like "Bixby Canyon Bridge" and "Cath" sound as if they're trying too hard. The best track, "I Will Possess Your Heart," is preceded by a wordless four-minute intro, which makes the whole thing feel hilariously pompous.

Pop Quiz: Clay Aiken

Pop Quiz: Clay Aiken

Aidin Vaziri | We realize that Clay Aiken is not everyone's favorite "American Idol" runner-up. But the 29-year-old North Carolina native is the only one who sells millions of records, stars in a major Broadway show, gets to sell stuff on QVC, runs a foundation for children with disabilities and inspires fans to make homemade T-shirts that read "Clay shakes my ovaries a thousand different ways." This week, Aiken releases "On My Way Here," his first album of original material since his 2003 double-platinum debut, "Measure of a Man." We spoke to him by phone from New York a few days before he wrapped up his five-month stint in the Tony award-winning musical comedy "Spamalot."

Clay Aiken
Q: Why do so many people hate you?
A: I have no idea why they hate me, and I sure don't have any idea why they love me. I'm completely clueless all the way around. In some ways, I'm sure, to a lot of people I represent that dorky kid in high school and middle school that everybody thought was a loser. And now there are plenty of people in the world who are bitter because that dorky kid became successful and they did not. It's kind of threatening when that nerdy guy you've been making fun of for all those years has somehow become famous.
Q: You've obviously given this some thought.
A: I've been thinking about it for a long time.
Q: Does it make you sad?
A: Ah, I don't care. Whatever. I've been around people who are too cool for me for almost 30 years now. I don't know. I don't think I'm very threatening, but I do threaten the notion that you must be good-looking and athletic and cool in order to be successful. I kind of screwed that up for some people who thought they were going to fly by. Continue reading.

Reviews: Madonna, Craig David

Reviews: Madonna, Craig David

Madonna 'Hard Candy': Aidin Vaziri | She never ceases to amaze. After we witnessed the cheapo shampoo commercials, the trying-too-hard S&M cover art and her waxlike appearance at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony (left), the odds were pretty good that Madonna's 11th studio album would head straight for the Amazon clearance store. After all, just last year Duran Duran roped in Justin Timberlake and Timbaland in the hopes of giving its fatigued synth-pop sound a shot of virtual Botox, and the group hasn't been heard from since. At 49, the Material Mom does her fellow '80s megastars one better by employing those guys, plus Pharrell Williams and Kanye West. If only she had a track from Tony Kanal, "Hard Candy" would pretty much be a Gwen Stefani album, built around seamless club-ready tracks such as "Give It 2 Me," "Heartbeat" and the lushly produced "Incredible." Less contrived than "Confessions on a Dance Floor," this album has dispensed with the tightly controlled experimental grooves of the past decade in favor of a straight-up dance record that brilliantly allows a group of high-end producers to pull Madonna and her vapid lyrics into the new millennium. It certainly makes for her most fun release in ages, if not her most age-appropriate. On the thumping "Give It 2 Me," she declares, "Don't stop me now, don't need to catch my breath/ I can go on and on." It's entirely possible she actually means it this time.

Craig David 'Trust Me': Aidin Vaziri | Remember Craig David? Nearly a decade after the slick British pop phenom failed to crack America with a debut album stuffed with holographic R&B hits such as "Fill Me In" and "7 Days," he returns defeated. His fourth album doesn't so much fizz with the liquid two-step rhythms and Spanish guitars of his early years but instead shuffles along on the back of tired ideas. Eleven years after P. Diddy sampled the song for "Been Around the World," David rediscovers the thump of David Bowie's "Let's Dance" single for the album's centerpiece, "Hot Stuff." The rest falls evenly between horn-heavy club fodder ("6 of 1 Thing") and heavily cliched midtempo ballads ("Don't Play With Our Love," "Awkward") that make Leona Lewis sound like Black Flag.

Vetiver Looks Back

Vetiver Looks Back

Vetiver does covers CD, 'Thing of the Past': Let's face it: Lots of indie-rock acts have made less-than-riveting covers albums in recent years. But with "A Thing of the Past," San Francisco's Vetiver may potentially have one to eclipse the rest, combining the band's languid folk rock with a compelling cross section of source material from songwriters including Townes Van Zandt, Hawkwind, Loudon Wainwright III, Iain Matthews and Norman "Spirit in the Sky" Greenbaum. It's probably because the band never intended to make a covers album in the first place. "After the last record I did, I put a band together to tour," Vetiver front man Andy Cabic says. "Since we had never recorded together, and I didn't have anything ready to go, I just thought doing something like this would be a good way to get something out this year." Continue reading.

Live Review: Shelby Lynne at the Fillmore, 05/01/08

Live Review: Shelby Lynne at the Fillmore, 05/01/08

Music review: Whole lot of love from Lynne: Aidin Vaziri | Playing the Fillmore can have a strange effect on people. On Thursday, Shelby Lynne seemed genuinely overwhelmed by all the history lining the walls of the room. "We've never been in here before, so I'm really, really happy to be here right now," the 39-year-old country-soul siren said. It made sense. Her music is deeply steeped in rock 'n' roll history, pulling equally from Al Green, Hank Williams, Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley and Tammy Wynette. So it was OK that she kept telling the audience how thrilled she was to be there, even when she got a little carried away and gushed, "I'm a Fillmore virgin!" Continue reading.