Huffing and puffing, Casey Wescott, keyboardist for Seattle’s Fleet Foxes, makes it to the phone just minutes after sound check. Judging by his lack of breath, preparing for a show in Glasgow, Scotland, appears to be quite the job. Winded and apologetic, Wescott is eager to talk about his band…
Sports teams have, for some time now, willingly pimped their reputation out to anybody for a buck—cough, American Airlines Center, cough—and now, it seems, rock stars are lining up to show they’re just as big a group of whores (just in case you didn’t think so to begin with). It…
Sigur Rós’s latest is positively festooned with danger signs: first album to be mainly recorded outside its home base of Iceland; first to feature a track sung in English; and the first co-produced by a big-shot dial-twister (Flood, of Depeche Mode fame). Somehow, though, this series of seemingly suspect compromises…
This debut from Cleburne rapper Scott “the only cracker better than Ritz” Johnson showcases the work of a skilled lyricist, but its bloated 23 tracks (intro, outro, tiresome skits, plus a hidden track) will give your stereo’s “next” button a workout. Kicking off the disc is the chorus-free “The Truth,”…
When a rapper like David Banner decides to name an upcoming album The Greatest Story Ever Told, you’re not gonna split hairs with the dude—at least not to his face. Like the mortal whose fury turned him into television’s Incredible Hulk, this bulky Banner also uses his temper to fuel…
Dethklok started out as a joke and became the biggest death-metal band in the history of Billboard’s album chart. The show from which the band launched, Cartoon Network’s Metalocalypse, premiered in 2006 with a simple but esoteric premise: What if the planet’s most popular band was an extreme-metal group that…
As tripped out as Curt and Cris Kirkwood were in the early ’80s, when the Meat Puppets were still a crazed psychedelic thrash-spazz band, there was another pair of brothers in Phoenix who were even weirder and ultimately more musically multidimensional. Sun City Girls’ Alan Bishop (singer-bassist) and Richard Bishop…
N.E.R.D.’s third album is the compact-disc equivalent of an ad campaign trying to appeal to the Red Bull/BlackBerry generation. “We gotta make it passionate,” you can almost hear Pharrell telling the guys in the studio. “And retro! And political! You know, some really fucked-up crazy awesome nuts shit!” And so…
Music’s certainly seen its share of odd-couple collaborators, from David Bowie and Bing Crosby to Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue. But no pairing has felt so strangely natural—or been quite so successful—as the one of Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant and bluegrass icon Alison Krauss. Having met while performing together…
With our DOMA ballot online and ripe for your votin’, we figured we’d give you some help: a daily breakdown of each category’s nominees. Best Song – “Slow Southern Home” by Doug Burr – “Julianne” by The Crash That Took Me – “Parking Lot Nights” by Ghosthustler – “Maths” by…
The opening–and perhaps crowning–jewel on Burr’s Best Album-nominated On Promenade, “Slow Southern Home” is all about setting the scene for Burr’s storytelling. And, yeah, it works. To the point where you think you’re sitting on your front porch when you listen. Check it out after the jump. –Pete Freedman…
No other song on The Crash That Took Me’s Best Album-nominated disc, Orchestrated Kaleidescopes, better exemplifies the sound of this collective of music scene vets than “Julianne.” That sound? Big. Beautiful, too. Check it out after the jump. –Pete Freedman…
Ghosthustler’s “Parking Lot Nights” is the song that launched a thousand blog posts and, in turn, morphed this little, now-disbanded Denton-based trio into something of an overnight sensation. So there’s that. This, too: The video for “Parking Lot Nights” isn’t just good–it’s great. Listen to the song after the jump…
Like fellow Best Song nominees Doug Burr and The Crash That Took Me, Record Hop’s also up for a win in this year’s Best Album category, thanks to the success of its self-titled release. “Maths,” the second song on the disc, is a nice example of the loud, frenzied and…
Dove Hunter’s debut release, The Southern Unknown, wasn’t released in time for our nominees to hear it and give it Best Album consideration. But “The Sparrow Spooked The Crow,” one of the album’s songs, is well-known around these parts anyway, thanks to its constant presence on the band’s Myspace page…
Just came across an interesting Myspace bulletin from The Fieros (formerly The Valentines), who recently left town for the bright lights of New York City. First, the band mentions that it’ll be heading out on a California swing later this month to showcase its tunes and shop them around a…
Doug Burr (Brian Harkin) In this week’s paper, Dave Sims uses his North of the Dial column to discuss the recording process for Doug Burr’s upcoming psalms-inspired effort. And on this past Saturday night at AllGood Cafe, Burr (and friends) went ahead and performed the results from those sessions. But…
Denton noisemakers Zanzibar Snails got quite a nice write-up in The Wire, a U.K. magazine specializing in avant garde music. In his review of their Krakkatowiak 3” CD on Mayyrh, Byron Coley called the band “one of the region’s more interesting units” (heh) and compared its sound to The Dead…
With our DOMA ballot online and ripe for your votin’, we figured we’d give you some help: a daily breakdown of each category’s nominees. Best Funk/R&B Act Bobby Patterson Shibboleth Erykah Badu Carmen Rodgers Cas Haley So…Erykah Badu and the Pips? Maybe. But that doesn’t mean Ms. Badu’s competition should…
Soulja Boy: Loves the Yums. Robert’s posted a handful of newsier, music-related items onto Unfair Park already in this short week (hog!). So, in case you missed ’em, here’s a run-down: – In honor of my truly stellar review of the Centro-matic/The Kadane Brothers/The Theater Fire show on Saturday night,…
Sean Kirkpatrick, keyboard player for The Paper Chase, frontman for his own eponymous side project and DOMA XX Best Instrumentalist nominee, has two free downloads up for grabs on his Myspace page. There’s also a gloomy new song from Kirkpatrick up on the page (but just for streaming) called “Losing…
The Boston Phoenix, a weekly I truly enjoy and grew up reading, might’ve overstepped its bounds with this one: In celebration of July 4th, the paper decided to go ahead and name each state’s greatest band of all time, the greatest solo artist of all time, and the best current…
