Why can’t all country be this good? This small Nashville-based label has collected 12 relatively obscure Texas artists who turn in excellent acoustic performances highlighting the things that made rural music great in the first place. No crossover potential, no ignorant fake patriotism, no spotlights or dance routines, just honest…
Four words that might sum up the career and output of temperamental British “art punks” Wire: “We don’t do requests.” Those were the sentiments of bassist Graham Lewis right before an encore at this 1979 show caught here on DVD (with an accompanying CD), the band’s only full performance of…
Halloween officially began when Sparkle Pussy Barbie took the Club Clearview stage. Their bizarre, carnival-style take on Big Black’s industrial rock scared passers-by en route to the dance room next door, and those who stuck around quickly learned that Deathray Davies members Mike Middleton and Kevin Ingle brought nothing DRD-like…
Higher-pitched and more deafening than an army of small poodles, the quintet known as the Blood Brothers fires off shrapnel-like noise that singes the ears. Their passionate, demented, ranting hardcore is surely not for average folk, though the band’s latest record, Crimes, is much more palatable than past efforts that…
What next for the Delgados? The Carpenters-vs.-Flaming Lips grandeur of last year’s Hate already lies on the top shelf next to the very best their Glasgow, Scotland, scene brethren Belle & Sebastian, Mogwai, Arab Strap and Snow Patrol have to offer. Alun Woodward and the all-powerful Emma Pollock just shrugged…
Kentucky’s VHS or Beta are perhaps the least likely of the new dance-rock scene’s emergent stars: They’re from Kentucky, for starters, a locale far outside the normal orbit of New York’s hipster elite. They’ve also cultivated a devoted following among jam-band types attracted to their improvisational, noodle-happy live show. And,…
Many bands sing about love. The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players sing about eggs. They also sing about cheese fondue, fast-food chains, old ladies, public executions, board meetings, company reports and trips to Japan. But wait, it gets weirder. The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players, unlike the Ramones, are a real family…
Here’s a challenge to workhorse producer/sideman/composer Jon Brion: For your next film-score gig, take on something by Wes Craven, or Antoine Fuqua, or the guy who directed Seed of Chucky–basically any movie that isn’t a talky, middlebrow think piece about the wondrous fragility of the human condition. Thanks to his…
At last a tribute compilation on which friends and family outnumber enemies and strangers, but not by much. At least the Pixies lay claim to “Ain’t That Pretty at All,” which is more than Adam Sandler can say for his hokey-jokey rendering of “Werewolves of London,” which nearly ruins the…
The Pointy Shoe Factory’s new album takes off like a sinister steam engine. The guitar and bass create a train rhythm, with ooohhh-ing vocals, spazzy saxophone sounds and demonic screams riding the rails to the end of the line on this seven-minute, 38-second silent film soundtrack appropriately titled “The Horror…
When Tahiti actually raps on his debut EP, The Birth of Whack, he sounds like a seasoned old-school pro. His delivery is tough, yet light; witty, yet straight-up. The Dallas MC spits syllables like a machine gun one second, only to goof off in laid-back fashion the next. Best are…
The people who turned out for the Pixies’ first Dallas-area gig in more than a decade were nothing short of orgasmic in their response. I thought the woman behind me was making some sort of amateur skin flick, such was her heated reaction to the band’s every note. But I…
Football was never the game for the West Texas boys in Explosions in the Sky. They were more the shy, skinny artist types, spending more time staring into space than cheering on their hometown Midland bruisers. Yet things have come full circle for these current Austin residents and avowed film…
I don’t mean to make light of his hardship, but breaking up with Claire Danes might turn out to be a good thing for former Australian teen-pop pin-up Ben Lee: On a new split seven-inch released by his new label Ten Fingers (at present an imprint of the super-hip Hollywood…
When I saw Pretty Girls Make Graves last March, the Seattle band looked dead. The then-recent loss of guitarist Nathan Thelen took a huge chunk out of the synth-driven post-punk group, as singer Andrea Zollo walked around the stage like she had lead in her shoes, and guitarist Jay Clark…
The British post-punk act Mclusky has learned a lot from Steve Albini, the Chicago noise-rock provocateur who recorded the group’s last two albums. For one, they’ve picked up where Albini’s on-again/off-again power trio Shellac regularly leave off, layering steel-wool guitar fuzz over architecturally precise bass-and-drums grooves as heavy as an…
I went on vacation three weeks ago. It was a spontaneous trip. My best friend, Kevin, was about to head off to England for a year, so on a Friday morning I decided to hop a plane to Southern California, take the following week off and go climb a mountain…
It was late after the concert when it happened. The sell-out crowd at Wembley Stadium had thinned, and I was lingering near the entrance when someone bumped into me. “Oops, sorry, love,” said a distinctly British voice. “John Taylor!” I blurted nervously. Suddenly, I could taste my own heart pounding…
On November 1, 1994, the Old 97’s released Hitchhike to Rhome. Recorded at Dallas’ Crystal Clear Sound, Hitchhike was a solid little debut, a series of melodic misadventures about being young and stupid and full of somethin’ awful, whether that be heartbreak or Old Crow. The album quickly sold out…
There are four well-known indicators that you are famous: being caught lip-synching on Saturday Night Live, “dating” Tom Cruise, hiring Johnny Cochrane as your lawyer and, last but not least, having a major product named after you. Bless his soul, Reverend Horton Heat has achieved No. 4. In January, Gretsch…
Michael Moore timed the release of his Fahrenheit 9/11 DVD to hit stores in the weeks leading up to the November 2 election so he could theoretically make a difference in the result. Though the impact of Shake the Sheets, Ted Leo + The Pharmacists’ follow-up to 2003’s Hearts of…
“There’s a section right after the beginning part where a Casio’s playing quite fast and then a piano and a drum kit come in and they play this very hectic, cartoony-sounding thing. And eventually, a couple pianos and an organ come in to play this big chromatic scale going up…
