Things haven’t boded well for Encore, Slim Shady’s first full-length since 2002’s gajillion-selling The Eminem Show. D-12’s genuinely awful summer single “My Band” was eclipsed in wretchedness by Encore’s first offering, “Just Lose It,” a formulaic and unfunny ditty with a video that took aim at the easiest targets in…
Two years ago, you couldn’t turn a corner without running into a garage-rock band. Any group that came close to a “garage” description jumped on the bandwagon, but while those bands fell after the fad bottomed out, Memphis’ Lost Sounds remained hidden, and released three albums of what’s better described…
Blissful amateurism can produce calamity or genius. Quite often, it does both. Kevin House is a British/Canadian songwriter equally adept at carnival freakishness and tender (if morose) acoustic folk. His Gutter Pastoral offers a genuine connection between Nick Drake and Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous. Weird and unnerving, the 11 cuts are…
Every review of Dogs Die in Hot Cars invariably mentions two things: 1) This Scottish quintet is the worst-named band since Butt Trumpet, and 2) its debut album, Please Describe Yourself, sounds a hell of a lot like a lost XTC record. This second point is particularly vexing–how does lead…
What’s a rapper to do when he opens a hip-hop concert to only eight people? In the case of Crossing Ellum’s King, he offers the small crowd free champagne in Styrofoam cups. Though a kind gesture, it was hardly necessary, as King’s charisma and delivery didn’t require a drop of…
Though I can’t be alone in wishing the Hives had used the mainstream appeal they won with Veni Vidi Vicious to write songs with the Matrix or do a duet with Lindsay Lohan or get Andre 3000 in for a collabo, the Swedish garage-rockers didn’t do any of those things…
Just listing the bands of these two percussionists would run this blurb over its allotted word count. But there’s at least room to mention the time they spent together in Billy Goat and Ten Hands–two of Dallas’ most original funk/rock/jam/whatever bands. Dillon’s also the driving force behind Hairy Apes BMX…
Looking for an awe-inspiring concert but can’t wait for AC/DC to burn through town with a 500-foot-tall inflatable devil? Perhaps a change of gears in the form of Junior Brown will suit your tastes. No, the country legend doesn’t tour with pyrotechnics, but he does play his half guitar, half…
Here’s a creative indie-rock triple bill worth rescheduling an evening dedicated to reading old Pitchfork reviews. Headlining locals the pAper chAse you already know; God Bless Your Black Heart, the Dallas band’s Kill Rock Stars debut, finds front man John Congleton perfecting his Nick Cave-for-the-Dickies-set steez; agitated Slint fans, this…
With the release of 2001’s Survivor, Beyoncé Knowles, Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams proved once and for all that they are the world’s best R&B supergroup, a triumvirate of strength, talent and beauty. Three years and a few solo records later, they return with Destiny Fulfilled, an 11-entry diary about…
On their 1999 debut, So…How’s Your Girl?, the faux-stylish studs in Handsome Boy Modeling School (aka super producers Prince Paul and Dan “the Automator” Nakamura) emptied their imaginations and Rolodexes, creating an alternate musical universe with room for everyone from Mike D to Father Guido Sarducci. Yet while the follow-up,…
Yanni DiFranco, Megaforce Five and the Weapons of Mass Destruction, The Pink Bullets, Wombstone Pizza, The Kim Jong Illness. That’s not a list of code names for the next American military operation, but rather the bands that played the sixth installment of Rock Lottery. Confused? Here’s the summary: Last Saturday,…
With this long-awaited box set of rarities, a ’90s underground rocker who died en route to musical greatness will finally be immortalized. But the similarities between Kurt Cobain and Mark Sandman end there: The Boston indie music legend took his cues not from Mudhoney and The Pixies but from the…
Wet From Birth, the latest album by Nebraskan electro-goth pin-ups the Faint, doesn’t feature the reappropriated ’80s synth-pop melodies 2001’s Danse Macabre did. Instead, it finds the band exploring the endless possibilities of studio texture, which can portend a night of no-fun noodling onstage; luckily the band’s live show remains…
Sondre Lerche has the pop sensibility of someone composing in the 1960s, not a young man who’s been alive barely two decades and admits to an obsession with A-Ha. His songs sound like they come from a musician weaned on Tin Pan Alley and rock and roll, both influences funneled…
Call me a cheap bastard, but I usually have no qualms about illegally padding my music collection by downloading MP3s. Still, I’m not made of stone. When a ragingly good band finds its way into my hard drive, my guilt catches up, and my wallet comes flying out of my…
It’s Friday night in Manhattan, and though the line snaking down Broadway between West 52nd and 53rd might appear to be for tonight’s performance of Bombay Dreams, this crowd isn’t exactly Andrew Lloyd Weber’s demographic. There are a handful of bemused-looking parent types, but they’re wildly outnumbered by young women…
From the looks of it, Saturday night’s Rock Lottery in Denton could have been held a week before the election, not the week after. Matthew Barnhart, former Little Grizzly member and co-owner of the Echo Lab, fronted his band wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Bush and the words…
Late last Wednesday afternoon, a call came to the office from a rapper named Dow Jones: He was performing that night at the Starck Club on McKinney Avenue. Oh, and also–he was opening up for Nas. Wait a minute: Did he just say Nas?!? Apparently the sharp-tongued New York City…
Curious career move, following your best album with your worst, though it could be blamed on expectation, too. What other explanation is there when the much-promised “rock-and-roll record” neither rocks nor rolls but merely drifts from song to song in search of a memorable melody to anchor it? The best…
L.A.’s Earlimart sounds like a lightweight version of Californian psych-pop bards Grandaddy, which is not an official slight. Grandaddy guitarist Jim Fairchild is a new addition to the band, and he and front man Aaron Espinoza co-produced Treble & Tremble, Earlimart’s new album. The disc’s title is way apt: tinny…
“I’m gonna die one day staring at the dressing room walls.” –Old 97’s, “Dressing Room Walls” Christy Darlington grew up a small kid, a shy kid, who loved music probably more than anything–the grunt of Angus Young’s guitar, the velvet baritone of Morrissey. There was only one problem: He couldn’t…
