On the very morning of this interview with Albert Hammond Jr., one of the two guitarists in the Strokes, there appeared in The New York Times a review of that band’s March 1 performance at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City. The Times’ music critic Kelefa Sanneh opened the…
My dream version of spring break–less shirtlessness, more music and just as much drinking–is officially underway in Austin. I’ll talk about our city’s presence at the South by Southwest Music Festival in next week’s full review (and the impatient can find daily fest updates this week at Unfair Park, the…
Word to your motha: TexasGigs.com has been hosting some very cool local music content lately; in particular, ever since we pleaded with site founder Cindy Chaffin to hook her portable recording rig directly into concert soundboards, her bootlegs are sounding dramatically better. (Yes, we’re taking credit for it, even if…
Dallas has always had its fair share of DJ and production talent; with that in mind, it’s no small compliment to call Demarkus Lewis the hottest hometown house DJ/producer working the club circuit. With multiple releases on labels such as Moods & Grooves, Bluem, Roam and Alluv Recordings, Lewis has…
If you ever see a high school chemistry teacher kidnapped by a burly, drug-crazed sociopath and a conflicted seductress, and then you recognize the haunting guitars and echoing keyboards that complement the action, don’t panic. You’re not flipping out, though watching the movie Good Chemistry wouldn’t be considered “normal” behavior,…
No band in indie rock today has a more bad-ass name than this Austin quintet’s. Say it with relish: I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness. Makes you just wanna break up with somebody, doesn’t it? The bad-assness doesn’t stop at their name, either, like with that other noisy five-piece…
Something is wrong with society when the most impish bands of the ’90s start making resonant social statements. But on Under a Billion Suns, Mudhoney has proven itself even more vexed and pissed than Green Day or NOFX. Partly, it’s the sound: Oxidized slabs of guitar psychedelia evoke messy times…
Hank Williams’ grandson has a problem with Nashville. His two-disc Straight to Hell swipes at “pop country,” guys who “write those hit songs down at PolyGram” and women who need “more dick down on Music Row.” And that’s not even counting Hank III’s dismissal of Kid Rock: “He’s a Yank,…
While retro dilettantes remain stuck in the vintage boutiques, modeling anything that looks cute, Saturday Looks Good to Me has more than fashion on its mind. The band is dedicated to two specific ’60s crushes: spare, groovy soul and lilted, Bacharach-ish pop. Fred Thomas’ troupe of upper-Midwest indie stalwarts has…
Rarely does a band continue to adjust its vision in more creative ways than the Appleseed Cast. After growing out of the confining emo genre, this Kansas-based quartet continues to tackle innovative sounds and arrangements on their dense and satisfying new effort, Peregrine. Sporting yet another new drummer, the band…
R. Kelly must love it when media outlets poke fun at him. Lord knows I’ve reveled in the comedy afforded by both an alleged underage sexual encounter and an episodic soap-opera single (“Crapped in the Closet,” July 7, 2005), as have most people utterly baffled by how the Chicago native…
Brooklyn-based Rainer Maria used to be one of late-’90s emo’s most frustrating bands. They could make music that spoke powerfully and eloquently of the struggle to keep afloat in the overflowing waters of teenage romance, but they could also succumb to those waters and sound like the most hilariously overheated…
It’s a long way from Lubbock to Nashville, but Wade Bowen has made the trip with integrity and roots unharmed. His latest, Lost Hotel, is country with a bluesy, rebel spirit, rural music about simple concerns that is never condescending. “God Bless This Town,” the leadoff single, is a hit…
Ed Anderson leads this Illinois alt-country outfit with the same kind of weary optimism that Brent Best once did with the late, great Slobberbone. Featuring a cleaner sound but an equally drunken aesthetic, Backyard Tire Fire’s Bar Room Semantics is the little brother to Slobberbone’s Everything You Thought Was Right…
Brooklyn-based We Are Scientists are not scientists, even though they play the part of the geeky, lab-coat type; their complete lack of self-importance, in fact, makes their dance-punk rise above what their loftier peers churn out. Compare them to the Bravery or the Killers if you want–everyone else does–but they’re…
If you want your reunion tours full of spiritual enlightenment, regained perspective and mended relationships, go watch an Eagles DVD. You won’t get those qualities from the Toadies’ first concert since dissolving in 2001. In fact, you probably won’t get a reunion tour at all. The band’s final lineup–Vaden Todd…
Tae Quon, D’oh: Calls to AAT HQ are usually from annoying PR reps begging for their terrible emo-funk-fusion band to receive coverage, so it’s not often we get calls like this: “Hi, this is Tommy Quon. I wanted to talk to you about a few projects I’m working on, and…
On January 25, 2006, former Creed lead singer Scott Stapp spoke to the Dallas Observer, among other publications, in a conference call to promote his new solo album, The Great Divide, and an accompanying spring tour. In that chat, Stapp dismissed rumors and allegations about improper behavior reported in Rolling…
Bands with the most rabid, enduring followings hover on the periphery of the pop world. They maintain an alliance with obsessive music lovers and connect with their fans because they’re obsessive music lovers themselves. One such indie fave is Scottish band Belle and Sebastian, who projects an aesthetic somewhere between…
Mixing pop and politics, he asks me what the use is/I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses. –Billy Bragg, “Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards” Bragg answers his own query by packaging his artistic crisis in a funny, rollicking, singsong pop tune. But if Bragg struggled with mixing pop…
Every time writers gush about Neko Case, they pull out a list of classic country singers like Lynn, Parton and Cline, all of whom were always more famous for their voices than their words. In that respect, such comparisons miss the point–they nail her towering voice and country influences, but…
Listeners unacquainted with such late-’60s cult classics as Something Else and The Village Green Preservation Society might hear in Ray Davies’ music imitations of the many British pop acts who’ve imitated him. At several points throughout Other People’s Lives, the first solo studio album in the former Kinks frontman’s four-decade…
