Best Album of the Year Zac Crain: Kanye West, The College Dropout. The only rapper “with a Benz and a backpack” satisfies both his bling-bling and basement-tape constituencies with a confessional record that gives voice to his contradictory need for more fame and more faith. Sarah Hepola: Green Day, American…
Britney got married (twice!). Ashlee was caught lip-synching. ODB died. Congress continued to wring its hands about the legality of downloads, which flourished anyway. Conservative groups condemned sex in popular culture, while Usher’s sultry Confessions shot to No. 1. A major label signed a guy who can’t sing, can’t dance…
God Save the Scene Hip-hop is in the midst of its own punk-rock revolution Like rock before it, hip-hop has easily won a cultural acceptance once unthinkable, and our reward is a parade of Jadakisses and G-Unit solo projects, preaching empty and ultimately safe rebellion in the same way Boston…
Let’s skip the chit-chat. Here are the top 10 local albums of 2004: 1. Sorta, Little Bay “I love life, but it’s sad,” Sorta vocalist/guitarist Trey Johnson once told me. “And if my songs have a theme, it would be: How are you going to function in life, knowing that…
You’ll find the Dallas Observer staff’s year-end list a few pages over, but enough about us. What albums in 2004 did local musicians pick as their favorites? We asked 10 for their take on the year in music. Eric Michener, Fishboy Brian Wilson, Smile (Nonesuch): Mr. Wilson started his greatest…
For now, it’s easy enough to judge these two bands by their past deeds: two whimsical, wonderful EPs (Laughing City and Marvelous Things) for Eisley, and one seven-song set (The Sound of Splitting Atoms) by Radiant* that’s more than the sum of its Coldplay-ful parts. Which, it should be noted,…
Britney got married. Ashlee was caught lip-synching. ODB died. Congress continued to wring its hands about the legality of downloads, which flourished anyway. Conservative groups condemned sex in popular culture, while Usher’s sultry Confessions shot to No. 1. A major label signed a guy who can’t sing, can’t dance and…
Ever find yourself missing the word “alternative as a concept, a signifier, a lifestyle? Nowadays, any dudes-with-guitars collective either has to do the Creed butt-rock thing, the whine-incessantly-about-your-ex-girlfriends emo thing, or the get-beat-up-incessantly-by-your-ex-girlfriends indie-rock thing. It’s harder and harder to find the best aspects of each combined: the fist-pumping intensity…
It’s difficult to survey the hip-hop of 2004, more bloated and self-referential than ever, and not imagine the mythical AOR wasteland of the mid-’70s. Like rock before it, hip-hop has easily won a cultural acceptance once unthinkable, and our reward is a parade of Jadakisses and G-Unit solo projects, preaching…
In 2004, the line between indie and mainstream rock disintegrated even faster than Britney Spears’s quickie Vegas marriage. Vinyl obsessives mingled with white-hat-wearing fratheads at Modest Mouse shows, Taking Back Sunday debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard charts, and Death Cab for Cutie earned O.C.-sanctioned buzz and a major-label…
For hipsters, the coolest things are to be found twenty years ago, the most dreadful things ten years ago. So starting a few years back, we were deluged with ’80s electro and synth-pop, and we pretended to forget jungle ever existed. Electroclash, the first naive sortie by dance music into…
Writing a recommendation for an Old 97’s show is a little like coming out strong for oxygen. And if I know my hardcore 97’s crowd, there’s nothing I can tell you about the hip-shaking, sweat-flinging, beer-swilling singalong that will be the New Year’s Eve show that you don’t already know…
Local music didn’t take its true form for me until the year 2000. I’d heard great bands and great albums around here for years, but until I found Everything You Thought Was Right Was Wrong Today, I naïvely assumed local bands were less significant than bigger indie bands around the…
Sure, there are lots of options for midnight toasts–chi-chi shindigs, hotel soirees and so on. But wouldn’t it be better to just get sweaty and knock back a beer or four at a full-on Texas rock show? While The BB’s Buried in Your Black Heart may not be the CD…
Here’s a New Year’s shindig suitable for the whole family–Hank Williams, Hank Williams Jr. and Hank III, that is. Speedtrucker, Slick 57, The Dogkickers and Spector 45 have it all covered: Senior’s honky-tonk roots, Junior’s outlaw spirit and The Third’s punk-rock rearing. Expect the soul and twang of country with…
Last year around Christmas, my parents and I sat down with a few glasses of wine and a stack of the year’s most popular music. The idea was to see what impression these songs would make on my folks–die-hard classical music fans who get all their pop culture from Good…
Some of the nearly 40 holiday discs critiqued below are naughty. Some are nice. And some are as toxic as Aunt Matilda’s fruitcake. As usual, plenty of celebrities are looking to pad their bank accounts via Christmas recordings, and few appear to have broken a sweat while making them. Jessica…
By now, if you were at all interested in “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott–either as a fan of Pantera and/or Damageplan, or simply from a newshound’s perspective–you’ve no doubt read something about the guitar hero’s public memorial at the Arlington Convention Center on December 14. I’ve read some of those stories, too…
It feels real nice to deliver the news that a veteran band that has influenced hundreds of acts during its tenure has released its final album, and that the album sounds every bit as good as the records it was releasing 10 years ago. Luna’s Rendezvous, its swan song (the…
Remembered as much for being a vital part of Wilco as for being unceremoniously dumped by Jeff Tweedy in the documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, Jay Bennett has gone from feast to famine as quickly as anyone in recent memory. The Beloved Enemy, his second solo effort…
It’s been a banner year for Sam Beam, thanks largely to his band Iron & Wine’s touching musical cameo in Garden State. The attention resulted in serious sales for his latest album, Our Endless Numbered Days, which proves fans can never get too much of a sensitive singer and his…
If anyone else had recorded Speak, critics would regard the album as a credible hybrid of electro-throb, rocker-chick attitude and Top 40 ear candy. But because it’s recorded by Lindsay Lohan–she of the Disneyfied acting résumé, habitual tabloid appearances and barely legal status–many will dismiss it as nothing more than…
