Any writer who dares suggest that Mike Skinner, the Brit behind The Streets, is something less than a primitive genius would undoubtedly get the frigid-shoulder treatment at a critics’ roundtable. Reviewers on both sides of the pond worked themselves into a lather over Original Pirate Material, Skinner’s 2002 full-length debut,…
I’d been meaning to catch Theatre Fire’s live show for months, but stuff kept coming up. You know, laundry, house renovations. That one night, I really did have to work early the next day. When I arrived at Club Dada on Saturday night, I chugged a beer and hoped that…
There are good bands that write well-crafted songs and play them capably, even managing to inject their heads and hearts into the process. And that’s fine. More than you could reasonably expect from drums and wires. More than most of their colleagues can muster. Then there are the great bands,…
No matter what part of town you’re driving in, you will hear the same thing at every stoplight: the flesh-trembling drone of a nearby bass system. Whether it’s Highland Park or South Dallas, Eminem or OutKast, rap music blasts out of cars everywhere. Rap’s current mass appeal–not only the sound,…
I’m driving to Arlington to visit my friend for the last time. Tomorrow she will die, which is something I’ve been trying not to think about since I heard the diagnosis a year ago. But things have gotten worse fast, and now the magnificent woman I once knew is sinking…
“Clap your hands all you sexy people!” Prince told the audience. And people, we were not sexy. We were geeks through and through, slapping high fives and dancing with the finesse of a tipsy 5-year-old, whooping with every familiar riff. And yet, the beautiful thing about Prince was that it…
Have you seen the Austin City Limits Festival lineup? Bam, someone grew up fast. This year’s roster includes such beloved indie acts as the Pixies, Wilco, Modest Mouse, Neko Case and My Morning Jacket, along with such marquee names as Pat Green, Dashboard Confessional and Sheryl Crow. The festival is…
After a six-year hiatus, the Beastie Boys return with To the 5 Boroughs and alternately position themselves as pop-culture bottom feeders and political pedants. While anti-Bush screeds “That’s It That’s All” and “Time to Build” come across as heavy-handed, the terse “Open Letter to NYC” does manage to channel that…
The best you can say of the third solo record from Brian Wilson–third, that is, after one bootlegged fiasco and one ditched “comeback”–is that it doesn’t further diminish his legacy. It is what it is, which is to say it strains to suggest in spots what he once was so…
The Magnetic Fields’ i is no 69 Love Songs. Keep that in mind, and you’ll enjoy it more. Like that magnificent three-disc album, i is a concept record with 14 songs whose titles begin with the letter “I.” Front man Stephin Merritt relishes this kind of challenge and restraint, which…
With its neon liner notes, choppy guitar hooks, synth noise and “Fuck. Art. Let’s fuck” attitude, Pink Grease’s debut EP, All Over You, was as trendy as a star tattoo, but it still managed to conjure the smutty, chaotic intent of the new-new wave movement. Comparatively, this anticipated full-length is…
A Dallas native who recently returned to the area after living in California for the past three years, Havergal–the one-man band of Ryan Murphy–is also returning to record stores with a sophomore effort that treasures sparseness and repetition over traditional structures. The Bright Eyes-esque highlight “Drowned Men” runs on a…
Erykah Badu’s Black Forest Theater is flat-out happening. I’m not just talking about the gorgeous renovated South Dallas movie theater (1920 Martin Luther King Blvd.)–with better sound and lighting (and attitude) than most any spot in Deep Ellum–but the music. Let’s start with Common Folk, second on Wednesday night’s bill…
As usual, it’s a pretty good time for a visit from Patti Smith, the punk poetess with a song for every cultural and geopolitical shake-up the world can throw at itself. Trampin’, her ninth album, finds Smith musing on war and peace and its avatars; if it gets a little…
If you’ve ever daydreamed that Ben Folds would hook up with the guys from Weezer to record an album (and, really, who hasn’t?), then boy do I have a band for you: Piebald! Don’t let the third-wave ska-style name throw you off–they’re a peppy, punky, piano-flecked foursome from Boston that’s…
Perma-spiked Fredericksen’s best known for his role as second guitarist in California punk heavies Rancid, but tonight he hits town to preview stuff from next month’s Viking, the second album he’s made with his aptly handled Bastards. Expect sound and fury, with an occasional fistful of righteousness. Show up early…
A friend of mine refers to all electronic music as “techno.” Doesn’t matter what style of electronic music–drum-and-bass, jungle, house, down-tempo. To him, “it’s all fucking techno, man.” And with a little encouragement, he’ll launch into a rant that includes dead-on onomatopoeia of what techno sounds like: Sst. Umph. Sst…
No one’s really sure how Bobby Weaver got in or what, exactly, he’s doing on the couch. Well, besides sleeping. But here he is, sprawled out in the living room of John Congleton’s house just off Northwest Highway, 6-foot-something of beard, boots and black clothing. The three other members of…
Aileen Cavalieri, my 83-year-old half-Italian grandmother, is about to wet her slacks. She’s fluttering her bejeweled hands in front of her face, making an “ooooow” sound that can only be described as a senior citizen’s rendering of the Beatlemania squeal. Our position in the shadeless third-row bench seats of the…
“It is with great sadness that we share this news with you today,” read the notice posted at www.jibeonline.com. “Joe has decided to leave to pursue other interests. Therefore, we regret to announce that the upcoming shows have been cancelled, and this chapter of our lives that is Jibe has…
In anticipation of last week’s Crossroads Guitar Festival, The Dallas Morning News offered an exhaustive history of the electric guitar. Here at the Dallas Observer we don’t know, like, facts, but we sure have theories. To celebrate the Prince concert on June 11, we offer this thoroughly incomplete history of…
The Fall are as great as your friends and NME say they are, but TRNFLPFCOTC–as in The Real New Fall LP (Formerly Country on the Click)–may be their first offering that you won’t have to just pretend to like. An uneven, punk-flavored past says that accessibility fits The Fall like…
