Though it hasn't put the city on the national radar, there has been a crucial sea change here over the past two or three years: After a long period of neglect, Milwaukeeans have begun paying attention to their own music scene again. Newspapers and magazines large and small have started covering local music with fervent thoroughness, while Web sites and blogs are showering musicians with needed encouragement and promotion. Now, there is even more than one radio station open to airing local music, a modest accomplishment that nonetheless seemed infeasible as recently as 2005. In part because it finally has...

When they arrive in Milwaukee, treat them as visiting professors. After all, they're experts. The Crystal Method has performed 13 of the last 14 New Year's Eves, and they know more about throwing that year-end party than you could ever hope to. If you don't think you're having a good time at their Dec. 31 performance at the Rave, you are probably wrong. "We know people are coming out to have a good time," says Scott Kirkland, one half of the big-beat outfit. "We take it seriously...

Malachi guitarist Dathan Lythgoe is the first to describe his band as dark, sad and overwhelmingly pessimistic, but, he says, all that bleakness serves a greater purpose. "I think that it's a reminder that there's a lot of bad things in the world," Lythgoe says. "It's easy to just live your life every day in your little bubble, so it's good to just be reminded that there's a lot of strife in the world, and that you shouldn't forget that you're lucky to be where you are, living where you are-that other people in the world might not have...

Each April, singer Al Jarreau begins using a familiar greeting he knows will take him through the end of the year. "I love to say 'Merry Christmas' to the lady at the bank and the folks at the grocery store," says Jarreau, 68. "When you're in the music business, that's about when you start thinking about Christmas anyway, because soon you will be practicing if you're in a choir or recording if you're a professional. And then it will be Halloween and then it will be Thanksgiving and then Christmas will really be here." "Merry Christmas" was how...

Mac Lethal is a prick. Of course, that's kind of his appeal. A curmudgeonly white rapper with a waning hairline and a sad, protruding belly, Mac Lethal riffs like an incensed insult comedian about the many things that piss him off-Christians, vegans, scenesters, Ben Harper-filling the funny, irate rapper void left when Eminem lost his sense of humor. On 11:11, his debut record for the prestigious Rhymesayers label, Mac Lethal deems himself "a rapper who doesn't like rap," and though that isn't quite true, he voices the frustrations of everyone...

The music is the same, but the context is so much different. Juliana Hatfield's still-girlish voice has deepened with age, and gone is the whimsy of "Spin the Bottle." It has been replaced by something more raw and confessional, and ultimately that much more sad. If you listen closely to Hatfield's new album, buried in that chipper jangle pop, you can hear the time. In the minds of her fans, perhaps, Hatfield's only struggles over the past 15 years have been the adolescent foibles and satiric disasters in her lyrics. But in the last few months, Hatfield has revealed herself with the...

A lot has changed in the six years since The Etiquette released its only EP, very little of it in the band's favor. In 2002's bullish music market, labels were still feverishly signing bands, particularly garage-rock bands with names that started with "The." On the strength of Ages, a hyper-hooky EP that however accidentally coincided with the era's rock revival, The Etiquette captured the interest of music managers and promoters, and found support on college radio and at CMJ magazine. It was, in hindsight, a rare window of opportunity for the Milwaukee band, one that frontman Eugene III (he prefers to keep his last name private) admits he was slow to seize. "I think about it all the time," Eugene says. "We were...

Rise Against is used to being misunderstood. To begin with, the group is widely tagged as a political band, a label that bassist Joe Principe says is too limited for the lyrics that singer/guitarist Tim McIlrath writes. "I kind of like to say it's more like we're socially aware," Principe says. "Tim, the way he writes is very broad. He has political songs, because he writes all of the lyrics, and then he also has social songs and even songs about his personal relationships. That's why I don't think we like to be pigeonholed as a political band." Some even consider Rise Against a leftist or radical...

As much as Tom Morello enjoyed his stint with Audioslave, the post-Rage Against the Machine band he founded with Chris Cornell, Cornell’s scorching, introspective arena-rock left Morello hungry for the activism of his previous band. Since Cornell wasn’t providing him with the political material he craved, Morello began writing his own. Though styled after Woody Guthrie’s acoustic folk, the staid songs that Morello began to churn out with increasing speed were every bit as loaded as Rage’s thrashing screeds. But he knew he couldn’t perform them live under his own name without misleading concertgoers...

The 2004 presidential election and the prospect of twin George W. Bush terms mobilized not only the expected musician activists, bands like Pearl Jam and the Dixie Chicks, but also a new crop of recruits, performers that had never before immersed themselves in politics so deeply. Apolitical bands like No Doubt contributed to anti-Bush albums; for the first time in his career, Bruce Springsteen made an explicit endorsement, and even Eminem shelved his flippant shtick for a dire song rallying youth to vote Bush out of office...