And the winners are: Now that you’ve read the official awards results, you should probably get to seeing the winning acts onstage, right? Quite a few have gigs this weekend, so enough with the witty introductions; here’s a handy DOMA winner list for your nighttime enjoyment. Boys Named Sue: Friday,…
“Won’t need no shadow man runnin’ the government/Won’t need no stinkin’ war!” From the first lines of “After the Garden,” the first track on Living With War, it’s clear that we’re dealing with a Neil Young we haven’t heard from in some time–angry, loud and ferociously vital, old age and…
Confusion? Naw. The point on this 14-track slammer by the Denton-born, Austin-based Gamblers is as clear as a middle-finger salute with one fist and a roundhouse from the other. With producer Andrew “Mudrock” Murdock tightening and buffing the sound up from the somewhat more anarchic crackle of their last two…
Like a janitor carting off hunks of the obsolete office equipment he’s always rhapsodizing over, bearded central-Californian techno-mystic Jason Lytle has finally pulled the plug on Grandaddy, the shaggy dream-pop combo he’s led since 1992. Just Like the Fambly Cat, the band’s fourth full-length, will be its last. As final…
Don’t dismiss Sunset Rubdown as a side project to Wolf Parade and Frog Eyes. Lead singer Spencer Krug’s other two bands are better-known among the indie-rock cognoscenti, but if this album’s any indication, Krug thinks it should be the other way around. While Shut Up has a basement-recording ambience to…
The best thing about Essex Green? It’s always summer on its songs, and you’re 15 and in love for the first time all over again. Cannibal Sea, the third full-length from this Brooklyn trio of Sasha Bell, Chris Ziter and Jeff Baron, is wall-to-wall angelic harmonies, jangling guitars, bubbling synths…
Glancing at the names, one might surmise this is a psycho-core cannibal-metal sickfest. Not quite, as Blood on the Wall is surprisingly more of a raw, quirky, Pixies/Pavement-influenced offering who are fine in their own right. But opener Psychic Ills is the real prize here, featuring hypnotic bass grooves, tasty…
If the guys in Spock’s Beard had gone to my high school, there is no doubt they would have received severe and painful admonishment for being the proverbial “band geeks.” Taking their name from the Star Trek episode where Captain Kirk and crew inhabit a parallel universe and do battle…
The comparisons to Dido and Joss Stone that surround KT Tunstall are inevitable. She’s British and pretty, she sings wonderfully and she was successful right out of the gate, but similarities to her countrywomen end there. Whereas Dido and Stone are content to mine one stylistic vein, Tunstall has dynamited…
Despite her fair skin and mostly bright disposition, dark is an apt word for Kristy Kruger. As the Dallas songwriter talks about her burgeoning career in local music, one that has been a long time coming, she has to pause to shield the sun coming in through a store window…
When he was 30, Mark E. Smith, iconoclastic front man for the Fall, wrote “Living Too Late,” an odd reflection on mortality where he sang of crows’ feet ingrained on his face. Now almost 50, one of rock’s most original and recognizable voices sees no reason to reflect or dwell…
When I picked up The Pete Best Band’s Live at the Adelphi, the hipster at the cash register smirked behind his foggy glasses. Having once been a record clerk myself, I knew what the clerk was thinking: “This sad sack must be one of those Beatlesheads, actually buying a record…
In April 2003, I attended my first-ever Dallas Observer Music Awards. I’d just begun freelancing for the paper weeks earlier, a bewildered 21-year-old who lucked into a VIP ticket for the ceremony, and the party was my Dallas-rock equivalent of “Mean” Joe Greene tossing me a jersey. Members of my…
Daddy knows best: The Polyphonic Spree’s friendship with California’s Grandaddy is no secret; the bands released a special split 7-inch in 2003, and Grandaddy front man Jason Lytle has given the Spree plenty of nice quotes for press clippings over the years (along with a T-shirt that he designed for…
It’s a shame that Pearl Jam is a great album. Not because there’s anything wrong with Pearl Jam tugging their huevos out of their pants, whose waistlines increasingly edge upward on the quintet’s 30-something bodies, and putting together a pop-rock album with fire and vigor. The first three songs, particularly…
In the past, New Orleans’ Terius Gray, who’s more than 30 but still Juvenile, has cared more about coochie than about current events; “Back That Azz Up” doesn’t exactly qualify as a political statement. It’s little wonder, then, that “Get Ya Hustle On,” a Reality Check track about the Hurricane…
Japan’s musical underground has long been fascinated with sublime destruction. The country’s denizens have produced an ample catalog of huge, enveloping sounds in the genres of rock, noise and metal since the early ’70s, and contemporary metal gods Boris fit smack dab in the middle of this continuum. With its…
A couple of months ago, People Under the Stairs leaked music on the Internet. But instead of getting an advance copy of Stepfather, downloaders were subjected to an Andy Kaufman-style recital of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 18th-century poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Humor has always been the cornerstone of…
Last Name: Keenan First Name: Maynard Position You Are Applying For: Jizz Mopper Why You’re a Perfect Fit at Happy Endings Adult Video: I really should just attach a copy of my latest album, 10,000 Days. On this album, I prove to everyone that my band, Tool, is the ultimate…
Why be ashamed? There’s a bum rap to be had for liking Eisley, the young Tyler band that straddles that treacherous line between pop-sweet sheen and influence-stirring experimentation, but that willingness to dabble shouldn’t leave both music-loving extremes in the cold. I’d love for self-conscious hipsters to proclaim that they…
The title of this Scottish post-rock outfit’s new Mr. Beast is indicative of both their predilection for raw amplifier noise and their skewed sense of humor. Unfortunately, the album doesn’t quite live up to its excellent name: Though they’re still more interesting than their more celebrated Icelandic peers in Sigur…
All hail the trout mask replicas of the new bearded age! For the Sunburned Hand of the Man are the New Weird America! Or something like that. All we know is, when these wicked-strange Bostonians roll into town, there might be masks, rainsticks and shambolic neo-beatnik absurdism, but there will…
