Don’t bother asking Lisa Kekaula and Bob Vennum about the “return of rock and roll” currently being celebrated by the mainstream music press. The married co-founders of the Riverside, California-based Bellrays–who have been blasting away a soulful blend of rock and roll since 1991–will simply inform you that you’re quite…
Nothing to do Wednesday night? Patient enough for a post-punk marathon that’ll likely stretch into early Thursday? Then eat dinner early and head to Trees for a five-band bill with more to offer than most. California’s the Jealous Sound kicks things off, touring in advance of a new album it…
Too old and jaded for the Sunny Day Real Estate reunion Wednesday night at Trees? Don’t fret: The Scene Creamers, the latest band from elaborately attired D.C. agitators Ian Svenonius and Michelle Mae, will be at Rubber Gloves on Friday night, holding it down for indie rockers who prefer clever…
A few months ago, we started hearing rumors. As we do. Happens all the time and, usually, nothing much comes of it. At least not the version of the story that comes across our desk: By the time we hear something, it’s gone through at least three or four people,…
It’s not easy being young and black, even if you happen to be rich and famous. Sometimes, it’s even worse if you’re rich and famous. Because that’s when people notice you. People who want you to be something you’re not. People who think you’re something you’re not. People like, say,…
I grew up in West, Texas, a small Czech town about an hour south of Dallas. Five miles up Interstate 35 is Abbott, an even smaller Czech town where Willie Nelson was born and raised. Barely enough people lived there to qualify for a ZIP code. When I was old…
Amid the current bombardment of young pop-star wannabes–I mean artists–there’s finally one who is everything they aren’t: real and really good. Enter Ben Kweller, a barely legal singer-songwriter-piano player-guitarist-whatever else it takes to put something a little different out there. While most prepubescent boys were spending their days using video…
Former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr’s first solo album opens with the droning, midtempo psychedelia of “Last Ride,” and the album doesn’t stray far from this vein–pleasant, electronic-tinged classic rock, unsurprising and delivered with dexterity. The gratifying shock is Marr’s voice, which is workmanlike in the best possible sense, alternately streetwise…
Looking for crisp, tuneful pop-punk action that doubles as a statement of your support for the ol’ stars and bars? Look no further than the self-titled major-label debut by the All-American Rejects, a band of Oklahoma-based music nerds with heads full of alt-rock guitar fuzz, second-string Weezer choruses and enough…
He’s still groovin’ along (Back Out Here Again and the in-concert EP Live at the Longhorn Ballroom, both just self-released on Proud, which says it all), and even though The Legendary Bobby P.’s new blues don’t snooze, since the Soul 73 jock’s still ratcheted up to 11 on a scale…
The Notwist underwent an abrupt stylistic shift sometime in the mid-’90s, somewhere in Germany; their abrasive punk songs suddenly became a more pacified, drum-machined something else. We’re in a whole new decade now and it’s still hard to describe. But any way you cut it, Neon Golden abounds with blip-intensive…
“All journalists and critics are ants at the picnic,” Henry Rollins declares from the offices of his vanity publishing company, 2.13.61, in Los Angeles. “I’m not curious to see what you write about me. Not curious about any review about anything I do. I don’t care. And I defy you…
The Aquarian Institute in Berkeley is located in a modest two-story home with a white picket fence. It is the place of business of one Allen David Young, Ph.D, a man who, among other things, is known from time to time to converse with souls who have passed away. This…
The D.O.C. had his comeback set up just right. Starting over with a new label (his own, Silverback Records) and a talented crew of local MCs (6Two, U.p.t.i.g.h.t., Cadillac Seville), he recorded a new album and titled it Deuce, because he considered it his real second album, his official follow-up…
You’re never free, not really, not if you are Chan Marshall, otherwise known as Cat Power. Not if you’re covered in the fragments of a shattered relationship; Marshall wants to be a “Good Woman,” so she leaves her good man, who just happens to be Eddie Vedder. Not if you’re…
If you haven’t figured it out by now–and how could you miss it, given the sudden ubiquity of The Band Warners Paid Twice to Release Once–Wilco’s best selling point is its front man’s nostalgia for an era when “pop” meant AM free-form, not FM formula; Jeff Tweedy thinks he’s still…
Get Rich or Die Tryin’, the first full-length from rapper 50 Cent, isn’t so much a debut as an entry wound. Having been shot nine times, 50 Cent is plenty familiar with the latter. But despite all the spent rounds, death and suffering that serve as this album’s very marrow,…
Plenty of post-emo hand-wringing in town this week, beginning Thursday night at Rubber Gloves in Denton with an appearance by Chicago brainiacs Milemarker, on tour in support of a recent Jade Tree EP, Satanic Versus. The band, led in part by bassist Al Burian, author of the terrific Burn Collector…
Bryce Avary twists in his seat after every question, staring down at the cell phone he’s cupping in his hands as though it will give him the answer if he watches it long enough. Can’t really blame him for hoping someone will give him the answers. He’s been trying to…
The mystery begins the first time you hear the flowing gospel of Washington Phillips, whose entire recorded output consists of 18 tracks recorded in Dallas from 1927-1929. His sacred porch songs, bathed in a celestial haze of notes from a strange instrument identified as a dolceola, sing out the existence…
We’re not big fans of Valentine’s Day. OK, so we despise it with all the hate we can churn out of our tiny black heart, which rests comfortably just above our tinier, blacker lungs. (In laymen’s terms, our lungs look like miniature boxing gloves. Like the kind you’d find on,…
If The Fine Art of Self Destruction sounds like the title of a Ryan Adams record, there’s a reason: He produced it. Jesse Malin used to front D-list glam-punks D Generation, but Fine Art is his solo bow as the kind of hard-living, hard-loving alt-country hunk Adams has reminded us…
