Much like the poet Walt Whitman, the blues contains multitudes. Seemingly a genre dedicated to searing guitar solos and feedback-drenched suffering, the blues also spans gentler acoustic moods. American bluesman Keb’ Mo’ (born Kevin Roosevelt Moore) has made this mellower branch of the blues family tree his home for…

Kamasi Washington performs at August Hall in San Francisco on Dec. 18, 2021. Sean Liming/STAFF. SAN FRANCISCO —Whale sounds are almost always the sign of a really good jazz show. When the horns take on an otherworldly, aquatic twang in the chaotic roar of the musical maelstrom, when the…

Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats, ‘The Future.’ Denver singer-songwriter Nathaniel Rateliff produced two of the most emotionally wrenching albums of the last decade in a two-year span. He followed Tearing at the Seams, the incredibly successful 2018 album with his backing band the Night Sweats, with his 2020…

Wilco performs at the Fox Theater in Oakland on Oct. 17, 2021. Karen Goldman/STAFF. OAKLAND — A light drizzle fell on Sunday night as Chicago rock group Wilco played the first of two nights at the Fox Theater. Many are hopeful the rain signaled an end to the long,…

Lee “Scratch” Perry, courtesy. Artist and producer Lee “Scratch” Perry, a reggae pioneer, inventor of dub music, whose use of recording techniques also made significant gains for hip-hop, dance and rock music, died Sunday at 85 in his home country of Jamaica. His passing, first reported by the Jamaican Observer,…

Jules Maxwell, courtesy Tony Wadham. Cathedrals serve a special purpose in culture to lift people from the mindless drudgery of their everyday lives and connect them to something bigger. Mosh pits serve the same purpose, but the calm of the cathedral delivers this transcendence without bruised ribs or losing…

Ray Bradbury once wrote, “You’ve got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down.” The famous science fiction author was talking about living life as a grand adventure, but the saying is true for any form of imaginative or improvisational art…

One of the craziest things epidemiologists do is called “gain of function” research. This is where scientists take deadly communicable diseases and poke them with enzymes (or something) to make these microscopic killers even more powerful. Then these hopefully not-mad scientists can learn more about the virus and maybe…

Imagine how rare it is that an artist influences the generation after him, but then has a career long enough and an open enough mind to be influenced by that younger generation himself. Funk icon George Clinton, who managed to learn something from all of the hip-hop artists who…

Less than a year after releasing his last solo album, On Sunset, Paul Weller is back with a follow-up. The former frontman for the legendary band The Jam once again arrives like an impeccably dressed guest at the soiree on Fat Pop (Volume 1). More than mere Britishness, Weller’s…