It’s only fitting that Dallas’ favorite yoga studio cum music venue presents this rather yin/yang bill, a two-man survey of the best of local songwriting. The über-prolific Johnson of Centro-Matic, South San Gabriel and solo renown offers a bit more darkness while Fort Worth wunderkind Herring serves up the light,…
This Brooklyn quartet’s name conjures images of the elegantly wasted neo-garage acts of NewYork yore: Can’t you see the Strokes untucking their custom-tailored shirts to look dirty on purpose? In fact, DOP plays sprawling neo-shoegaze fuzz-pop anthems that recall Yo La Tengo or Mercury Rev before they began trying to…
Pop-culture logic dictates that Ben Watt should probably be making out with Scary Spice on the British version of The Surreal Life at this point. Rather, he has made the improbable transition from a quasi-celeb of the last decade to a respected underground house jock and producer in this one…
How did Diplo, a dinosaur-loving, M.I.A.-supporting, crunk-spinning white kid from Florida, become the hottest party DJ in Philadelphia (if not the world)? It sure as hell isn’t through answering questions with complete sentences. You can’t blame the superstar producer/remixer/label head/indie music darling for being busy, especially during his current tour…
It’s no secret that Pink has a beef with the pop tarts whose genre she inhabits–Britney Spears is practically her arch-nemesis–but on her latest album I’m Not Dead’s first single, “Stupid Girls,” she goes even further, throwing punches at every other Sunset Strip paparazzi whore you’ve read about in Us…
It’s only hours before the anticipated start of the “No, Seriously…Where’d Our Careers Go? 2022 Tour.” Of the three acts that were to join me at the Dallas Taco-Bucks-Hut Bistro for appetizers, only Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie and Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes have shown up. Death…
Mainstream culture, as it is with most other hot hip-hop trends, was embarrassingly late in discovering the bombast and distinctive synthesizers of Lil Jon. His 2001 major-label debut, Put Yo Hood Up, definitely wasn’t the first example of crunk, a style of booming drawl-rap pumped up by house beats and…
More like full circle and now halfway back for this Fort Worth-based returnee from the battle between real and ridiculous up in Nashville. Dodd’s two previous, Pearl Snaps and Stronger Proof, found him bucking Music City conventions and waving a Lone Star banner of independence. Now he sounds too often…
As part of the big three Minneapolis godsends of the ’80s (along with Hüsker Dü and the Replacements), Soul Asylum, despite significantly higher sales figures, always played third fiddle in that triumvirate. Once they became big stars via “Runaway Train,” lead singer and pretty boy Dave Pirner always seemed a…
Cut Chemist’s The Audience’s Listening could be from a time capsule buried in 1998, when epic instrumental albums like Return of the DJ and Q-Bert’ s Wave Twisters were all the rage. And that’s a good thing. Unfairly maligned in recent years as the province of bedroom geeks disconnected from…
nspired by seeing the Ramones at CBGBs, noted composer Rhys Chatham was one of the first to see the value of the electrified guitar in a neo-classical setting. His early ’80s work, including most of what’s included on this impressive reissue, was a bracingly loud, textured assault that influenced a…
The man onstage at revered Denton country bar Dan’s Silverleaf is absolutely petrified. He’s clutching a piece of paper like he wants to tear it in half, and his arms and legs are shaking: a strange sight during a heat wave. Every other Tuesday is the Porch at Dan’s, an…
The evening’s theme was fitting, as it was easy to get lost digging through the bands and DJs at the latest installation of the Lost Generation concert series. Local blues-noisers Jack With One Eye rattled any recollection of whereabouts with a barrage of fuzz and crunch. During a particularly memorable…
So, let’s see…first Edie Brickell and the New Bos play Club Dada. Then, on July 25, Nick Brisco and Chris Claridy of Fever in the Funkhouse get a gig at the resurrected Deep Ellum mainstay. And now, on Sunday, it’s–no, really–Ten Hands, which, last I looked, broke up in 1995…
In the late ’80s and early ’90s, Kevin Welch, much like his friend Steve Earle, never fit any major-label marketing scheme. Lost between rock and country before Uncle Tupelo ushered in the Americana alternative, Welch has now found surprising success touring and recording deep-rooted acoustic blues with Keiran Kane. The…
Fans of Beulah still stinging from their break-up two years ago would be wise to check out the pairing of Golden Bear and the Channel, two Austin groups that share that band’s killer songcraft and So-Cal pop sensibilities. Five members pull double duty between the two, with Golden Bear recalling…
Former members of the now-defunct Elephant 6 psych-pop collective, Portland’s Minders play likable, laid-back indie-jangle jams that adhere more closely to the British Invasion template than stuff by E6 weirdos like the Olivia Tremor Control. Makes sense, as frontman Martyn Leaper is an English expat. On It’s a Bright Guilty…
After 25 years and nearly as many albums, these Aussies remain largely and sadly underappreciated, though on the radio playing in Thom Yorke’s head they’re top of the pops. For many, 1988 single “Under the Milky Way” remains the main reference. At their best on album and stage, the Church…
Oh the places a mix tape can take you. From homemade mixes to DJing private parties for artist Keith Haring, Junior Vasquez pushed aside his dreams of working in fashion to become the big daddy of DJ culture. Vasquez, who makes his Dallas debut Saturday night, gained fast popularity in…
“I look like Fred Durst in this fucking hat,” says Jakob Sereno, lead singer of the Uncontrollable Urge, as he tosses the offending cap to drummer Chris Galbraith. Sereno fidgets in his chair as he listens to a newly recorded track in a studio in northwest Dallas. Excited by the…
Peregrine, the monumental sixth effort from Kansas’ Appleseed Cast, represents not only a stylistic shift from their regrettable emo past but a grander development that borders on transcendent. Eclectic hardly describes the proceedings as electronica mixes surprisingly well with their more usual guitar-driven fare, all in the service of a…
Christian rock is booming right now, in both the commercial and the creative senses of the word (or perhaps the Word). As former Spin scribe Andrew Beaujon writes in his revealing new book, Body Piercing Saved My Life, the community (if a multibillion-dollar industry can be considered a community) is…
