Conspiracy theorists, ready your blogs: I believe the government has unleashed this week’s Hurricane Relief: Come Together Now on the American public to convince us to stop sending aid to Louisiana. This two-disc benefit album is the musical equivalent of 9/11, each disc an unforgivable falling tower of smoldering wreckage…
What is Dallas hip-hop like? Depending on where you hung out this weekend, your answer to that question could go in one of two directions–positive and exciting, or scary as hell. You would have reached the latter conclusion if you were standing anywhere near Club Hush on Friday night around…
The hip-hop of everyday life is rare these days–that is, unless your “everydays” are spent hustling, bullet-dodging and achieving mythic sex. For the rest of us, an unpretentious record like Feeding Einstein is just the prescription. This Brooklyn-based collaboration by MC Baje One and DJ Snafu is full of funky,…
Former Meat Puppets leader Curt Kirkwood has spent much of his post-Puppet time in semi-retirement, occasionally venturing out into his adopted home of Austin to thrill small audiences with his impressive guitarwork and charmingly muddled vocals. But after a brief (and pointless) attempt to resurrect the Meat Puppets with Texans…
Kate Bush’s latest arrives loaded with topical anticipation. The overdue follow-up to The Red Shoes, Aerial is the English dream-folk singer’s first album in more than a decade, a period in which her Mystical Art Woman persona was adapted to great commercial ends by Tori Amos, Sarah McLachlan and other…
I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank the Sony music group for its short-lived, ill-fated foray into digital copy protection. Though public outcry and class action lawsuits have forced the Nipponese entertainment behemoth to discontinue discs pre-infected with heinous spyware, my review copy of Santana’s latest was…
Thanks a lot, Jet, the Vines and the Hives. You had to go and burn the country out on garage rock a year before the Strange Boys recorded the most incendiary, exciting Nuggets-appreciative music to come out of Texas, if not the entire freaking United States, in a long time…
Jeremy Word has already done enough for Dallas as Kid Icarus, a local DJ whose eclectic sets of techy hard-house have earned acclaim both locally and abroad. But his role in ringleading big-name dance events in Dallas is perhaps even more vital to the scene, and his booking group, Prototype…
Leaving town to visit family on Thanksgiving? If so, you should rethink hanging out with Aunt Ethel, because this week finds Dallas gravy-deep in can’t-miss concerts–particularly the ones plugged in B-Sides (page 67). But best of all, hands-down, has to be the Earlies, the 11-member trans-Atlantic supergroup that has overwhelmed…
The conventional wisdom on A Bigger Bang is that it finds the Rolling Stones getting back in touch with their scrappy band-in-a-room roots, that they’re once again making the kind of no-frills rock that originally seduced the world while the Beatles were busy charming parents and variety-show hosts. But this…
O spasmolytic scions of math metal, listen and listen well: Stop-on-a-dime, ADD-driven thrash-skronk doesn’t get heavier or more intense than the Dillinger Escape Plan. Their latest, Miss Machine, may have driven them out of the underground just a tad, having even appeared live on the nu-school Headbangers Ball on MTV2,…
Sweden is one of those longitudinal oddities, where everlasting sun and everlasting night box back and forth in tune with the seasons, and the country’s biggest music acts have a similar double nature. The Cardigans sounded like fluff and sang about wrist-slashing, and the Hives sound like daggers and sing…
The following is an excerpt from the book All Over The Map: True Heroes of Texas Music (UT Press), which will be released on Friday, November 18, at AllGood Café from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. There, the Dallas Observer’s Robert Wilonsky will host a Q & A session, and…
When you’re My Morning Jacket, and two of your long-standing members decide they want off the ride for good, you try to soldier on. Worse, the near-breakup comes after three achingly beautiful albums, a half-decade of paying your dues and tours at increasingly large venues for growing crowds, and it…
“Introspection!” Such is guitarist Huw Bunford’s pithy reply to a question about the theme of Love Kraft, the new album by his band, Wales’ Super Furry Animals. A bit later, discussing the album’s surf-rockish instrumental, Bunford will add, pretty much apropos of nothing, “Don’t fear bird flu!” For an expert…
Does the bad news for Deep Ellum ever stop? The official problems–Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings by the Entertainment Collective (owners of Gypsy Tea Room and Trees) and the Curtain Club–haven’t done much to help the not-so-official problems in the downtown music district. Parking is more difficult than ever, local music…
Summer time: Colleyville’s Bryce Avary, better known to screaming emo fans across the world as The Rocket Summer, needs your help. The one-guy-who-plays-everything band that makes Conor Oberst look like a geezer in comparison headlines a concert at The Door on Friday, November 18, but before heading back on the…
Proof that Madonna’s handlers have given up on her: Nobody stepped in and slapped the gap-toothed smile off her face when she insisted on rhyming the words “York” and “dork.” Well, at least she isn’t trying to sound smart this time. On Confessions on a Dance Floor, Madonna makes progress…
The unforgiving and unsentimental damn him as the Dim Beatle, the Dull Beatle, the Dung Beatle; he’s no John or George, after all, magical, mythical martyrs who always appeared to be sharpening the edge Paul dulled at every turn. Of course, such scorn is occasionally warranted; for every “Maybe I’m…
How strange–in a musical climate that gives a new Neil Diamond CD all the promotion in the world, the newly released soul-throwback I Believe To My Soul is already collecting dust. Maybe it’s just that this music doesn’t yell, “Look at me, I’m important!” but these 13 grooveful tunes are…
Let’s get this one out of the way: On Thursday, the Drams didn’t play a single Slobberbone song. In fact, during the group’s first full-blown, 19-date national tour a few weeks ago, the three former Slobberbone members (along with Budapest One’s songwriting duo of Keith Killoren and Chad Stockslager) didn’t…
The best rock show of the week starts early at the Cavern, when Detroit’s Hard Lessons open the night like a Pabst. Agostino Visocchi’s guitars and howls are loud and foaming, but the synthesizers and cooing vocals from organ player Korin Cox make the trio’s garage-infused bite go down smoothly…
