After all these years, X still marks the spot. The seminal California punk band recently blazed trails nationwide on the “As the World Burns” tour with a reunited Henry Rollins Band, celebrating the re-mastered release of Los Angeles, as well as a reunion show filmed in the City of Angels…
While certainly overrated in rock ‘n’ roll, instrumental virtuosity gains a bit more credence in bluegrass and folk circles. San Francisco’s Stairwell Sisters features five women who attack an assortment of string instruments with a veracity that rivals some of rock’s most venerated fret-burners. Feet All Over the Floor, the…
The Lions’ search for the Blizzard of Ozz on their debut album, Volume One, is a psychedelic trip through dive bars and crack houses where only the almighty riff survives. The Austin-based foursome recorded the seven-song sphinx at The Den, earning their namesake as Kings of the Jungle. “Metal Heavy…
Two of the hit men responsible for Seattle’s renowned Murder City Devils will suffer an awkward reunion at the Tea Room. Drummer Coady Willis is now responsible for one-half of Big Business’ ear-shattering enterprise and one-fourth of the Melvins’ monolithic drone metal, while bassist Derek Fudesco went on to form…
Before sky, sun and moon, there were the Melvins. These primal Northwest lumberjacks have been laying out their eccentric, riffy slabs since the dawn of man (actually since debut Gluey Porch Treatments, circa 1987). Unfazed by trends, wars or Seattle suicides, the now-frosty-fro’d King Buzzo and Dale Crover have simply…
For Jim James, the lumberjack-bearded singer and guitarist for My Morning Jacket, everything sounds better coated in a thick layer of reverb. The familiar echo of his resonating vocals wraps around the listener, creating an ethereal warmth like Southern Comfort to the soul. It goes down even smoother live, for…
A few weeks ago, I attended a “salon”-type public gathering at the Nasher Sculpture Center, hosted by The Dallas Morning News and paneled by the DMN’s “Mr. Dallas” and the managing partner of Suite, Matthew Giese. The idea behind this little get-together was to discuss Dallas nightlife. Basically, the entire…
W.W.J.J.D.—What Would Joan Jett Do? The question at hand appears on the T-shirt of a young guitarist for the all-female punk rock group the Applicators during yet another late-night, sweat-filled practice session in a small storage center in South Austin. For her, and countless others around the world, Joan Jett…
Erik Thompson was once a real wild fucker. When he first arrived on Denton’s doorstep in 1991 he came sporting a mischievous grin and a roguish gleam in his eyes. You could tell right away he was trouble—relatively harmless, but trouble nonetheless. Fifteen years later, escaping permanent capture or total…
Since arriving on the music scene as a young teen in 1954 as a featured singer with country legend Hank Thompson, Wanda Jackson has blazed a trail that women in the music business are still following today. In 1955, when rock and roll was in its infancy, Jackson was the…
Given his eternal front-pew presence in the Mother Church of True Country Music, Alan Jackson’s delivery of an album that evokes such adjectives as “crossover” and even “progressive” might seem like heresy. Yet it’s his fealty to the genuine country spirit, ironically, that makes Like Red on a Rose such…
The last of the original Lemonheads, Evan Dando has been through a lot in the last decade or so after becoming yet another casualty to the “next Kurt Cobain” hype machine. He got clean, got married, released a widely underappreciated solo effort (Baby I’m Bored) and even fronted the MC5…
The “thinking-man’s metal” tag that hangs on Isis seems bad for business, but guitarist/vocalist Aaron Turner and his comrades don’t appear to mind. After all, the jacket of their new CD includes the quote “Nothing is true, everything is permitted” that inspired the album’s title, as well as a quasi-footnote…
To make their swinging parties even more happening, ’60s fetishists the Lollipop Shoppe came up with the perfect shiny accessory for their groovy thrift-store dresses and go-go boots: a compilation CD. Lollipop gal DJ TigerBee, aka The Shapes’ singer/bassist Patricia Rodriguez, recruited some of her favorite retro-rock acts—all Texan except…
After fumbling a few chords and forgetting more than a few words, a weary and weathered Kris Kristofferson paused briefly during his performance at a New West Records day party during SXSW 2006. He then humbly mumbled, “Just imagine this beautiful thing that sounds as good as Bob Dylan.” The…
White Ghost Shivers may sound like the house band at an old speakeasy, but they shred like a Brazilian speed-metal festival. Effortlessly leaping from western swing and bluegrass jazz stomps to calypso ballads and vaudevillian hamming, the Austin octet follows in the footsteps of fellow Capitol City residents the Asylum…
Is “happy hard-core” on its way out? We can only hope, but first we will need a few good angry men such as These Arms Are Snakes. As part of the emergent clan of art-laden hard-core groups like those found on the Hydrahead label, this Seattle troupe believes in texture…
Among the bands to explode from the Bright Eyes-anchored Omaha indie-pop scene in recent years was Tilly and the Wall. To those who haven’t enjoyed the treat of listening to the sweet melodies and guy-gal vocals of 2004’s Wild Like Children (the first release from Conor Oberst’s Team Love label)…
Yes, today’s young country can also sometimes rock without it sounding silly and forced, and few acts in that realm do it with as much punch and polish as these two. Dierks Bentley leans far enough outside the Nashville tried-and-true to eschew a cowboy-hat topper and play an electric six-string…
The laws of music journalism state that when a precociously good new band comes along, one must harp on the members’ ages. So, OK, blah blah blah, the four members of Nashville’s Be Your Own Pet are all teenagers, the oldest just barely legal. Great—now that’s out of the way…
Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck were not in London in March 2003, when Dixie Chick Natalie Maines told a Shepherd’s Bush Empire audience, “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.” The filmmakers wanted to be there—they had begged to be there, in…
The beauty of Regina Spektor is in her balance, between high and low art, classical and popular music, the profoundly poetic and the utterly mundane. This idyllic synthesis is what makes the Moscow-born Jewish singer-songwriter both as graspable as the street-savvy girl next door that parties with the Strokes and…
