Both of these acts belong in a rock-and-roll museum–Bono’s fly specs and Liam’s eyebrow, preserved in amber behind Plexiglas (most of Oasis’ riffs are already sealed and on display, under the Beatles’ exhibit). They belong to another era, a time when it was possible to be a superstar for more…
By the time this goes to print, we’ll have a new president. For the sake of pop music, let’s hope that my requisite college-girl vote for Ralph Nader serves to place George W. Bush in office and get a band such as Rainer Maria out of sight. The Madison, Wis.,…
Though their résumés read differently–ex-shoegazers from England at one end, erstwhile alt-country bard from Massachusetts on the other–both Mojave 3 and Joe Pernice have found an auburn redemption in the strummy elixir of Big Star-styled pop. Excuses for Travellers, ex-Slowdive front man Neil Halstead’s third album of lazy, free-floating rehab-core,…
Bobby Glenn Calverley would have turned 46 next month, on December 29, but there will be no birthday party. Instead, on November 5 at Bar of Soap, there will be a wake: Last week, Bobby died of liver failure. At 2 a.m. on October 23, the doctors at Baylor University…
Call me lazy, shiftless, whatever you want. You’re right. For once, God almighty, you’re right. These records should have been reviewed before now, before the bands that made them moved onto something else. So, save your letters. You don’t agree with my feelings about these eight records, write about that…
You gotta hand it to Matt Gunter; the kid’s persistent. After working with Jeff Liles and his HEIRESS-aesthetic Records label on the Static Orange project–a double-disc set of local groups that was available free with the purchase of any other local album at area record stores–Gunter jumped right back into…
“I’m sick of looking at the inside of space stations/Time for Deltron to take a vacation,” rhymes Deltron Zero, exasperated and desperate for a breath of fresh blunt. Who can blame him? He, the Cantankerous Captain Aptos, and Skiznod the Boy Wonder have been cooped up in a flying saucer…
I have seen the future of pop music, and its name is Robbie Williams. …is I guess what we’re supposed to say after wading through this 50-minute valentine from Williams to himself, but Lordy, how it do fall flat. It might be taken as parody, I suppose, a kind of…
Melt-Banana; 90 Day Men, Black Heart Procession: Although everyone is talking about Chicago these days, if you’re looking for the best in American rock, a better starting point would be Tokyo, home of Melt-Banana, an act that exceeds the expectations of any devotee of noisy, grinding, chaotic, post-hardcore. Their newest…
Tom Tom Club: I’ve always had a thing for smart people making dumb music. Not like Weird Al Yankovic (smart person making smart music) or Britney Spears (smart mom making dumb daughter make dumb music), but like Devo, where half the show is finding out where the show starts. Or…
Thoughts of birds and whatever cloud my brain. I can see some through the window, which I guess explains it, but mostly I’m thinking that Iceland, I bet, looks nothing like Texas. The birds are getting to my brain through my ears, and they’re getting there through my headphones, which…
Ask anyone involved in the underground rock scene what the future portends, and there’s a good chance they’ll sing the praises of emo, post-rock, post-hardcore, or whatever names happen to be in vogue at the moment. Call it what you will, indie rock–and all of its outgrowths–has proved its staying…
Death Cab for Cutie are welcoming winter with open arms. Witness: Within the last few months, singer Ben Gibbard got hit by a car while riding his bike. Guitarist Chris Walla broke his foot. Bassist Nick Harmer was blinded for a few days when a cable whipped him in the…
“It’s like my mind is this constant movie,” Damien Jurado says on the phone from his home in Seattle, a few hours before he heads to work at a local daycare. “My mind is always developing certain characters. It’s just like any other writer; you get these ideas, like little…
The alternative venue at the moment is the Elbow Room on Gaston Avenue, just on the cusp of Deep Ellum, previously thought to be little more than a beer-and-billiards joint–a good hang, but not much more. For the past few months, however, it’s been the center of Dallas’ burgeoning instrumental…
Now that Radiohead’s Kid A has topped the pops, it’s tempting to proclaim the long musical drought at an end; for one moment, at least, art-rock has mounted the charge and proudly planted its flag, right into (Milli Va)Nelly’s ski vest. Never mind that Kid A is only half of…
What will ultimately save Bratmobile from the riot girl ghetto of early ’90s commercial nostalgia can be summed up in one word: balls. While their original peers were shrill and dogmatic, Bratmobile was too immediate in learning not to give a fuck. The three-woman band–formed in Eugene, Oregon, lead by…
Back in the day, rappers never dedicated songs to their favorite guns, never rapped about beating fools up, and never even cursed on their records. Now, Dilated Peoples are out to bring hip-hop back to its simpler, less aggro roots. Though the music on The Platform doesn’t sound particularly old…
We all know the story, even if we haven’t seen the movie. There’s no more classic tale in rock of both an artist’s and a woman’s survival than Tina Turner’s, and it’s more than a little satisfying that when all is said and done, it looks like mean old Ike’s…
Bob and Sally Ackerman are sterling examples of Hometown Syndrome. The greatest husband-wife duo since Mickey and Sylvia, this local Dallas duo has built an audience a hundred times bigger in Europe than in its own back yard. They play up their Texas origins every summer in France, Switzerland, Germany…
This is a superb album by a songwriter who chooses to sit out the rat race of performing and the club circuit. Sandy Knox sounds too good not to be onstage. Soulful and heartbreaking, even when she gets weepy, this tough chick lays her life out on the line. You…
Doug Sulpy and Ray Schweighardt’s book Get Back: The Unauthorized Chronicle of the Beatles’ Let it Be Disaster contains the sort of minutiae that gives a hard-on to the hard-core. The 332-page book, published last year, is less a narrative than an autopsy constructed from bootlegged outtakes made during the…
