Blessed with exquisite musical taste and an enviably large record collection, Four Tet (British producer Kieran Hebden) has maximized those assets over four increasingly accomplished albums while incidentally becoming the foremost proponent of “folktronica.” Four Tet’s mastery of the laptop and sampler culminates on Everything Ecstatic, a strange yet beguiling…
Fred Eaglesmith writes a lot of car songs for a guy who’s not named Springsteen. Then again, after a decade plying his noirish brand of country-folk at more than 300 venues a year, it makes sense. Eaglesmith’s songs are tailor-made for a late night on the interstate, owing as much…
Like its Sub Pop labelmates The Shins, San Francisco’s Rogue Wave weaves enough inverted-world details into its tuneful guitar-pop on zippy debut Out of the Shadow. You’ll keep turning the songs over, wondering why something so obvious sounds so fresh, but the glockenspiel tinkles, warped-guitar whine and bird whistles add…
In 2003, Briton Sally Crewe released what has become my favorite guilty-pleasure album of the aughts. The pop-rock tunes about cars and boys on debut album Drive It Like You Stole It are cut to the bone so thinly that even Lindsay Lohan seems chubby in comparison. Similarities to Spoon’s…
Kansas City-reared jazz singer Karrin Allyson isn’t quite as pop as some of her better-selling peers. Rather, she leans toward artists like Diana Krall–Allyson prefers to twist a melody in an unexpected direction rather than caress its well-worn edges à la Norah Jones. Still, she makes for a fine interpreter…
With their smooth soundscapes, as tasteful and well-tended as a Japanese garden, Shanghai 5 seems like a band comfortable in the background. After all, their normal haunts are lounge and jazz venues. Their sound is a pretty fixture that regularly adorns sophisticated evenings at Sambuca and the Dallas Museum of…
When the reception to her phone returns, Neko Case shouts, “Wow, a worm ranch!” The indie-country chanteuse and New Pornographers collaborator gasps at the sight through a tour bus window and puts her interview on hold to take it in. “It’s a huge building. I didn’t know these existed.” Her…
California’s Robert Deeble is a critical fave who actually warrants the accolades. His last record, Thirteen Stories, is the ideal record for emotionally downtrodden folk who still worship at the altar of Nick Drake. Though he’s almost too well-read for his own good, Deeble overcomes his literary pretensions to create…
Keane never thought this day would come. For the past two years, Coldplay fans dealt with the long wait for third album X&Y by listening to Keane, the British trio that delivers heartsick pop about looking at the sky, wishing a lover were near, feeling sorry for oneself, et al…
Look out, Dallas! Ryan Adams is on his way to town. The troubled troubadour is slated to play Gypsy Tea Room on June 17, and early reports of his current tour say his antics are still up to his Replacements-like standard: disaster one night, sublime wonder the next. Shades of…
About a year ago, a press release caught my attention. “Bob Schneider performs an intimate concert at Bend yoga studio.” I had one question: Are you serious? The thought of the famously damaged Austin rocker strumming shoeless on a bamboo floor was like a Spinal Tap booking. What was next–Bob…
My first week on the job, I received a cold call from an aspiring gospel singer in Irving named Patrick Bradshaw. I was new; I picked up the phone. “Why hello, Mizz Hepola.” He was polite as a Sunday sermon. “I recently sent you a CD, and I wondered if…
Phone rings at Caitlin Cary’s, and it’s Ryan Adams, her bandmate from ’90s country revivalists Whiskeytown. He starts gushing about his new album, Cold Roses: “It’s like the old days,” he says, and Cary congratulates him for returning to the rootsy sound that made him (and fiddle player Cary) popular…
With the Pink Zep comparisons a year behind them now, local ex-pats Secret Machines can get on with the business of revealing their true selves…with songs by Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and Berry Gordy Jr.? Seriously? You’d be forgiven for missing the joke, since there isn’t one on this six-track…
Even with heavy-metal genes, electronically enhanced vocals and a fashion-punk backing band, Kelly Osbourne couldn’t rock. Her debut disc, Shut Up, filled with powerless ballads and mild outbursts, stocks more bargain bins than Tony Martin-era Black Sabbath. As if inspired by Pink’s M!ssundaztood, Osbourne asked former 4 Non Blondes’ Linda…
With Hysterical Stars, Head of Femur finally has the budget to make the record that fits the scope and imagination hinted at on its debut album, 2003’s Ringodom or Proctor. The band’s sound has always been intricate, with brass sections hiding in every corner and tempo changes popping up throughout…
The 1960s might be dead in this Liverpool quartet’s world, but the late ’70s and early ’80s are alive and kicking on its self-titled debut, which evokes the sound of the Clash driving its train in vain into the Specials’ ghost town. The Dead 60s are yet another stylish post-post-punk…
“That was a song we wrote in the winter of 2002,” says Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke in the midst of a fitful, mostly mumbled explanation of how his song “Like Eating Glass” evolved. “It was kind of…” He stops, then starts again. “I’d heard a remix version of the Smiths’…
In 1996, Pinkerton was an utter failure. Rolling Stone dismissed the lyrics to Weezer’s sophomore album as “juvenile” and “aimless” and the music as “corny.” Copyright issues with the cover art forced Geffen Records to limit the album’s promotion. Meanwhile, radio and MTV didn’t give the raw, plaintive rock songs…
Here’s a question: Which local band has the biggest draw? Or another: Do people see local music as much as they used to? These are the kinds of things you and I can talk about for hours as we drain a pint or seven. Theories abound on this topic. My…
Three stages, 22 bands, more than eight hours of live music–Saturday night’s benefit for Cory Helms, recently diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, was more like a festival than a concert. Organizer Tania Rivas anticipates the event will end up raising between $4,000 and $5,000 for Helms’ family, and it was one…
Dependable isn’t the worst thing a rock band could be. Every generation needs its R.E.M., a band consistently putting out albums that, while rarely genre-shattering, are nonetheless likable, listenable, dependable. For now, at least, Coldplay is that band. X&Y showcases musicians who have found their sound, and they’re stickin’ to…
