Caroline Dingwall has her game face on. Perched before the piano in a mirrored practice room, the 12-year-old’s intent gaze hides her inexperience as a performer. She stretches her fingers gently across the keys, playing the opening notes to John Lennon’s “Imagine.” You’d be forgiven if you suppress a cringe:…
Coolest primaries ever: The Dallas Observer Music Awards are coming in May, which means we need to get started with the nominations…uh…right now. Just like last year, you guys get to tell us who you think deserves to make the final DOMA ballot. Go to this link www.dallasobserver.com/musicawards/nom2006 right now…
Not that long ago, Jack Ingram was an SMU college kid with a guitar, a major Robert Earl Keen jones and a Tuesday night gig every week at Adair’s. Starting there in the early ’90s, he drew the blueprint for countless other collegiate types to follow in his wake and…
Flogging Molly’s “Screaming at the Wailing Wall” may be the best real punk song in half a decade. A blazing rush often accompanies the best political rants and “Screaming,” from the band’s latest album Within a Mile of Home, is no exception. With nods to the Sex Pistols and the…
“If I could make enough with this band to buy a house, some beer and a dog, I’d be happy,” says Jake Webster, drummer of the Cut*Off, Cowtown’s fascinatingly languid conglomeration of ’60s garage/psychedelia and ’90s grunge leftovers. The quartet, together since 2002, got their name from the fact that,…
For this week’s American debut of the Arctic Monkeys, bullshit deflectors have been readied in droves. And for good reason: The debut’s hype, British record-breaking sales figures and critical raves are getting more attention than the actual songs in question, a fact that demands an immediate red flag (yet, strangely,…
Guess you had to be there, at Town Hall in New York City last July, though from the sounds of it, not so much. Thomas Bartlett, writing last summer on Salon, sent his own postcard lamenting how his beloved band went “all chamber/acoustic refined/ wimpy,” resulting in music that came…
Women of the future, prepare to shake your hips. There’s a blast of fresh air coming from the Windy City, and it’s coming straight from the roaring amps and tightly wound voices of Chicago band the M’s. Future Women, the group’s second album, is chock-full of reasons to do the…
It’s not like John Easdale hadn’t gotten offers before, but this day in early 2004 it was different. After being subjected to a full-court press by the crew of VH1’s Bands Reunited, this time the retired Dramarama frontman decided to unretire. Time for one of the most overlooked bands of…
A star-studded indie-folk revue designed for people who consider themselves above both stars and revues, the Undertow Orchestra brings together four well-regarded sad-sack singer-songwriters for an evening of collaborations and interpretations. Dave Bazan should be in a particularly gloomy mood: Last month he announced the dissolution of his long-running outfit…
Amarillo native Kevin Fowler may look like a generic country bumpkin, and sometimes his music is just a brain cell above hayseed, but looks do indeed prove slightly deceiving in his case. Fowler’s recent Loose, Loud & Crazy revels in just about every conceivable redneck cliché; half the songs are…
“First of all, fuck Bush, that’s the all, that’s the end of it.” With the first line of his latest CD, Audition, Minnesota’s P.O.S. wastes no time putting on his verbal brass knuckles, and everything he brings to the hip-hop game on this impressive LP is what both mainstream and…
After a seven-year hiatus, Chicago’s Smoking Popes reunited and recorded the live album At Metro in November 2005. A gloriously loud and unsurprisingly sloppy reunion in front of an inebriated and rowdy lot of Midwesterners, the show featured most of the band’s best tunes, highlighting their unique fusion of punk…
Anyone who ventured down to Deep Ellum Friday night saw an unlikely sight: Mayor Laura Miller, club- and restaurant-hopping like a sorority girl the night after final exams. In tow were her 15-year-old daughter Alex and Alex’s boyfriend, along with revered Deep Ellum icon John “Beard” Brewer and restaurateur Peter…
If the theme of 2006’s party is art damage, then Test Icicles–originally called Balls, in case you’ve missed the sketchy wordplay–provide the soundtrack. But party rock was once about partying, while this might not be about anything. To wit, the Icicles’ declaration “Yeah yeah, bitches don’t own me/I sold my…
Inevitably linked to the semi-legendary Dream Syndicate, Steve Wynn has spent the better part of two decades running away from the legacy of his first band. Always a great tunesmith, but one with a nagging, clichéd sentimentality, Wynn’s early solo releases were filled with then-trendy guest appearances and overwhelming production…
How can an Elliott Smith tribute album go wrong? The guy was practically deified before his apparent suicide in 2003, and the exaltation has only continued since. But such homage presents a dilemma: Adding too much of a new twist to Smith’s songs (say, a death metal “Pitseleh”) might seem…
Norman, Oklahoma’s Starlight Mints are a perfect example of why bigger isn’t better. Beginning in 2000 as a seven-piece, complete with orchestra, the inevitable (and hometown) comparison was the Flaming Lips. The Mints seemed content with such an association, creating dubiously weird “pop” that was about as manageable as a…
Like Trent Reznor after him, Sisters of Mercy’s Andrew Eldritch has never lived up to the purported extremism of his image. Beneath the shadowy visage of Arctic vocals, soundscape-y arrangements and morbid obsessions, his rotating British band is just a rock group and a pop-rock group at that. That goes…
Mary Sims (aka Dinah Cancer) formed this cheesy gothic punk quartet in the early ’80s. Best remembered for the “Partytime” single that was featured in the campy film classic Return of the Living Dead, 45 Grave appeared to have packed it in by 1985. A spirited live CD seemed to…
Years ago, a charming fellow named Michael Timmins called from Toronto about this EP his band, the Cowboy Junkies, had self-released called The Trinity Sessions. When he followed up to ask what I thought, and my answer was “very good, liked it but didn’t knock my dick in the dirt,”…
As far as crazy parties go, I’ve seen my fair share of glowsticks, but in the summer of ’99, I found myself on the side of a mountain outside Los Angeles, where I was one of 15,000 people witnessing one of the greatest sets of music ever. Sure, a few…
