Texas doesn’t have a ton of natives with Grammys on their shelves–especially not 50+ year-olds who are still turning heads with their tasteful guitar chops. But that’s what you can expect from Eric Johnson, a man whose ear is so well-trained he can tell when a roadie puts the wrong…
Here’s a cultural riddle: Take an icon of a major pop movement and pretend the movement never happened: Ice Cube without gangsta rap, Ken Kesey without LSD, John Lydon without punk. What’s left? Would we ever even have heard of these guys? Like Lydon, Joe Strummer rose with punk and…
As VH1 recently informed us, “All reality is not created equal.” Apparently, reality involving celebrities is far more entertaining, and reality that exploits the vast archive of pop music is best of all. Numerous TV shows of the latter type have turned up this summer, and though none of them…
Let the Falcon soar: Two weeks ago, we reported that Golden Falcons drummer Jared Jackson became a long-distance member of the mind-blowing Dallas band after moving to Austin for grad school. Well, add guitarist Joshua Weber to the flown-the-coop-for-college list, as he splits town next week to start graduate classes…
Holopaw’s songs are a lot like the clouds on the cover of their newest album, Quit +/or Fight–beautiful, delicate and seemingly apt to float away at any time. Led by whisper-quiet singer John Orth, who also contributed to Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock’s Ugly Casanova project, Holopaw specializes in bleary-eyed…
In the five year gap since MP4: Days Since a Lost Time Accident, Michael Penn has kept busy producing albums for Liz Phair and wife Aimee Mann and scoring a movie or two. He’s also apparently reminisced about the decade before his birth, as the setting of his awkwardly titled…
Now here’s an interesting cross-section of American indie-hood. Yes, the Oxford Collapse are from Brooklyn, and yes, they are dancy enough to name-drop electro-clashy Williamsburg alongside the nuevo No Wave of the Rapture and Les Savy Fav. Luckily, that background is immaterial to the crux of this taut trio and…
Everyone goes through a phase where they wish they’d lived in the ’60s. You know, the world roils outside, but in the bedroom, the record player is turned up to the latest thing–musical bliss. Well, guess what? We’ve got soldiers slogging through a dead-end war, and now we’ve got Dungen,…
Standing out in the Dallas rap game is already difficult enough, but for local artist Cainam, a bad break at the Gypsy Tea Room didn’t help matters. Sound trouble and a half-empty crowd meant he lost the hype built up by other performers at Saturday’s oddly-named Final Friday hip-hop concert…
Dance Disaster Movement is one of the countless “post-punk-funk” bands in recent years that blazes a new trail in the swallowing forest that is Rock Influence. Yeah, they’re a MySpace peer of The Faint or !!! and reach for a Gang of Four-meets-DNA balance of synthesizer schizophrenia, but revisionism isn’t…
Ten years after leaving Thee Headcoatees behind for her first solo album, British garage-rock queen Holly Golightly seduces Dallas with songs that stretch beyond her roots in three-chord rock. Why, she’s a critic’s Wal-Mart, with country, jazz, a bit of folk and some acoustic blues numbers that stick your heart…
Just when it seemed Chicago’s Pelican had reached a creative impasse, they took the strong, if weird, step forward that an album titled The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw might imply. These four atmospheric riff-meisters have found a home on progressive hardcore stronghold Hydrahead Records, creeping ever…
Last week, when New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer released documents that linked record label Sony/BMG to a payola scandal, I got excited. Yes, it’s sickening to think about a record label secretly bribing hundreds of radio stations to control airplay (which is illegal if the paid sponsorship isn’t identified…
Last time I saw Hayes Carll, he could have easily been mistaken for a homeless guy who somehow wandered onstage. Even some of his most ardent female fans were heard wishing a shower and shave upon him. Yet a lack of decorum is exactly what makes Carll’s music so right…
From the look on Kris Wheat’s face, he’s been waiting for someone to finally say the words out loud: “The Secret Machines.” He reacts immediately. “I’ll bad blood some shit at those assholes.” The rest of Day of the Double Agent laughs nervously, but Wheat’s not joking. The New York…
Chloe Sevigny, wearing a maid’s outfit, cleans a hotel room in the new Smog video. Her right eye is bandaged. She’s vacuuming. A television’s on in the room, and a newscaster speaks over images of explosions. Sevigny moves in a mournful daze as the clean-cut anchor–played by Smog’s sole member,…
In the hip-hop world, Houston and New York are among the bigger scenes known for mixtapes–CD-Rs in which rappers perform over unlicensed samples to get their name out and make a quick buck. So at last May’s Conspiracy Radio Music Awards, recognizing the best in Dallas rap, I was intrigued…
Good news: This week, Good Records made a formal announcement that surprised no one: They love Pilotdrift. Before, that fondness was hardly unofficial, as the local indie record store pimped the hell out of the Texarkana synth-rock band’s self-released debut, Iter Facere, and hooked the group up with a sweet…
Make no mistake–Grey DeLisle loves the hell out of Dolly Parton, and as female country artists go, it’s hard to find a better model to follow. Like Parton, DeLisle has a voice as pure and fragile as a mountain stream, and her story-based songs are equal parts lovin’, lustin’ and…
Bob Mould’s latest album, Body of Song, comes with a blurb advertising the disc as a “return to his signature guitar sound.” Though there’s some honesty to the PR, as he plays the ol’ six-string on every track, take it with a grain of salt, because the album doesn’t sound…
Besides the White Stripes, the Volebeats might be the best band the Motor City has to offer. Like the Jayhawks drenched in reverb, they make classic folk-rock that’s part Everly Brothers harmonies and part Byrdsian 12-string jangle. Firm believers in quality over quantity, the Volebeats have released only six proper…
When a rock star blames his dad for something, it’s usually pretty bad. You know, scarring-horror-that-created-the-dark-place-in-my-heart-from-which-oozes-the-anger-and-hurt-that-fuel-my-songwriting-and-need-for-attention bad. On Friday at the Double Wide, though, Fort Worth’s Collin Herring only blamed his father for forgetting the merch table’s CDs. The elder Herring, Ben Roi, certainly couldn’t be faulted for his mesmerizing…
