When they first hit the scene two decades ago, who could have guessed these half-grown adolescents would one day become rap elders? With their bratty rhymes and Wiffle bats, Adam Horowitz (King Adrock), Mike Diamond (Mike D) and Adam Yauch (MCA) were the unlikeliest genre survivors. And yet, while Arrested…
A few months ago, a colleague began ranting about the current administration. He was so mad, so fed up and frustrated that all the anger boiled into his face and fists. “So what are you gonna do about it?” I asked. “For one thing,” he said, “I’m gonna vote.” These…
This week marks the two-year anniversary of Cindy Chaffin’s TexasGigs.com. Last week marked the second time her musician-friendly site has been voted by Observer readers as the city’s Best Blog. Which means it’s time to say a few words about Chaffin, surely one of the city’s most enthusiastic local music…
Three years doesn’t seem like a long time between records, but kids today–sorry, that’s who buys Jimmy Eat World albums–don’t have that much patience. The high-school sophomore who fell for Jimmy Eat World’s 2001 breakthrough, Bleed American, is now a college freshman falling for, I don’t know, the Shins. The…
Reformed after a 10-year hiatus, San Francisco’s mope-rock kings have retooled for a new generation of manic-depressives. Gone are the country/punk influences that made early releases California and Engine so vital. Instead, lead moaner Mark Eitzel has brought along the song stylist baggage that cluttered up his spotty solo efforts…
The first seconds of Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus could’ve gone so wrong: Banging guitar wails and gospel choir harmonies blast off at high volume as Nick Cave howls, “Get ready for love!” It reads like overblown VH1-ready fare, but after the boredom of Nocturama and the loss of founding…
These two discs–one fronted by a third of That Dog, the other by half of Yaz–share in common only their fondness for other people’s songs; of the 23 between them only two are originals, and they’re on the Haden-Frisell disc, the more novel of the two collections, anyway. Frisell, the…
Want to impress a naïve date in Dallas? Take her to a Lord Henry appearance and convince her you’re at a secret, unadvertised Strokes show. No hyperbole: LH copies the Strokes so blatantly they should mail royalty checks. Singer/guitarist Clinton Piper was a bit nasal with his Julian Casablancas impersonation,…
As his day job, John Vanderslice runs San Francisco’s Tiny Telephone recording studio, which features a Neve 5316 console, “the city’s most comfortable couch” and the staggering ability to boast that Erase Errata and Cex have spent time there. By night (or perhaps late afternoon), Vanderslice makes compelling indie-rock records…
Rilo Kiley’s new album More Adventurous doesn’t have the unexpected punch of 2002’s The Execution of All Things, but they’re not the new kids anymore. The quartet’s been in every music magazine and played here half a dozen times, and More Adventurous reflects that maturity, incorporating strings, samples and new…
This Monday, my Smile wait will finally end. Ever since I discovered the beauty of Pet Sounds, I’ve been obsessed with the lost album that was to follow, and my rough recreation of the original Smile LP, made up of bootleg tapes, never really sated my hopes for the real…
“Rebel Yell” was never as rebellious and was never, ever yelled as ferociously as by Dillinger Escape Plan’s Greg Puciato. Blood streaming down his face after getting bashed in the noggin with a guitar, Puciato tore Billy Idol several new orifices with the help of his Dillinger Escape Plan mates…
They laughed then–roared, actually, till they ran out of breath–and probably will now. He expects nothing less, because rare is the punch line who doesn’t remain the punching bag, at least until the glowing eulogies set the record straight far too late. But he is 73 now–Jesus Christ, Captain Kirk…
Finally, on the seventh day after his passing, for the first time during the three months I had been in Los Angeles, the skies cracked open and a real rain rinsed the ashes off everything. On my way to work I drove by the sidewalk memorial and saw kids pouring…
I listen to Elliott Smith often but almost always alone. Back when I did these sorts of things, I would write late into the night with Either/Or on repeat, a dwindling pack of cigarettes beside the computer. His songs became the wallpaper of my solitary 3 a.m. –songs told in…
The Falkon falls: In a passionate letter posted last week on MySpace.com, Falkon vocalist Mwanza Dover announced he will be moving to New York and that the band’s last show will be in December. “Well you did it Dallas. The Falkon is about to be dead,” the letter reads. “Thanks…
Elvis Costello’s never shied away from making genre records–there is a country one (Almost Blue), a fake-classical one (The Juliet Letters), an easy-listening one (Painted From Memory, with Burt Bacharach), even a crappy piano-bar one (last year’s North). Remarkably, he has shied away from sounding like a dilettante; his enthusiasm…
Once again the Mosquitos prove themselves to be today’s version of Getz, Jobim and Gilberto. Their sassy samba is as perfect for car drives with the windows down as it is for chi-chi cocktail parties. Brazilian singer Juju Stulbach is still as captivating as she was on the band’s self-titled…
At first vaguely reminiscent of Duncan Sheik and Ben Folds, Paul Brill shakes off such god-awful comparisons and blissfully heads into Sparklehorse, Robyn Hitchcock and even Aphex Twin territory on New Pagan Love Song, a beautiful set of strikingly unpopular-sounding pop. Odd plunking of banjo and double bass collide with…
The Booker T. Washington high school kids in Spector 45 don’t need to be graded on a curve. The quartet’s EP release Girls, Cars & Rock n’ Roll is wise beyond the band’s almost 18 months together. The boys call themselves greaser punks and cite influences from the founding fathers…
Split the Difference, the fourth album by trippy English roots-rockers Gomez, doesn’t feature much in the way of songs. Holed up in the studio with master producer Tchad Blake (of Los Lobos side project Latin Playboys), they seemed to have placed a bigger emphasis on texture than tune, tricking out…
Unquestionably the reunion story of the year–unless Siegfried & Roy pull one out before Christmas–the return of the Pixies will, if we’re lucky, convince Black Francis, Kim Deal, Joey Santiago and David Lovering to put their heads together and write new songs that don’t suck, picking up where the sorely…
