Rough week at work? Kids (or parents) yelling at you? Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind break your brain? Head to Gypsy Tea Room on Monday night, where these two singer/songwriters will be gingerly strumming their acoustic guitars and trying to soothe their own bottomless aches–but in a nice sort…
Liars guitarist Aaron Hemphill has a bone to pick. No, not with Spin, which called the band’s second record, They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, “unlistenable.” And not with the folks who have walked out of the band’s recent shows–them he has no problem with. It’s just that people have…
On Tuesday, April 13, at the Gypsy Tea Room, we’ll announce the winners of the 2004 Dallas Observer Music Awards. It will be the end of a long road, one that began late last November. I’ll never forget my words on that day. “Screw you. I’m not doing some effing…
It’s so easy to laugh at metalheads, because it’s so hard for us metalheads to laugh at ourselves. You’d think a genre that came of age in a codpiece, that once rocked bangs high enough to imperil aircraft would inherently have a well-developed sense of humor. But alas, headbangers are…
Last week, the Good Records Web site carried the following notice: “For four years we have had the pleasure to meet many of you on our journey to a new adventure in listening. We have been proud to bring our vision of a record store to the people of Dallas…
These scruffy Scottish lads understand that the gentle, Belle & Sebastian-like folk-pop on their first two albums tends to be a bigger hit with critics than with folks who actually purchase CDs at record stores. So for Final Straw, their hit-at-home third, they’ve muscled up their sound so it lands…
“Float On,” the latest single by Modest Mouse, is so exciting that it could be the indie-rock answer to OutKast’s “Hey Ya!” Catchy, playful guitar lines lift cheery lyrics into this danceable contender for song of the year, complete with the happiest shout-along to ever grace a Modest Mouse song…
A CD not to think about but to groove on and on and on. King of the stoned age Josh Homme, kickin’ it behind the drum kit on this side project’s side project, wouldn’t have it any other way. If his Queens of the Stone Age exists for the pothead…
Time is the best measure of an artwork’s success: Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in 1853 and became a cause célèbre; Moby Dick sank without a trace two years before that, but we all know which is on the syllabus these days. Perhaps it’s still too soon to tell, really,…
I’m part of a small group of music fans holding out hope that someday, 10,000 Hz Legend will be recognized as the overlooked masterpiece that it so obviously is. The second proper album by chilled-out French keyboard maestros Air, Legend is a darker, weirder piece of work than the duo’s…
Some of us remember when rap music sounded and looked dangerous, when even grade-school kids could hear those old Rick Rubin beats and Busy Bee rhymes and say, “What the hell is this?” The dinosaurs who roamed that earth were former gang bangers and hoods from the nastiest, funkiest, most…
“This goes out to you, Denton!” yelled Fishboy drummer Winston Slapbracelet, leaping from his kit and stabbing one drumstick into the ground. “You! You! You!” he repeated with each thrust, pummeling the dirt into a wet, grassy clump. It was 1 p.m., and WakeUp ’04 was off to a wonderfully…
First, the bewilderment: Another Who best-of? That’s nine by my unscientific count, including 2002’s MCA-released double-disc Ultimate Collection, which, apparently, wasn’t. Then and Now! contains a scant 20 tracks, exactly half from the 1960s; only one from the 1980s, “You Better You Bet,” which wasn’t even the best song on…
A person has to be fairly out-there to be too wacky for the Beta Band, the Scottish group prone to wearing flowing togas while crafting psychedelia fit for a pastoral bank holiday. Yet Gordon Anderson, a.k.a. the Lone Pigeon, a.k.a. one of the Beta Band’s founders, left the group because…
The Theater Fire’s eponymous, full-length debut is like an old record found at the bottom of a flea-market stack, jacket yellowed at the corners, vinyl scuffed with wear and smelling of mystery. It’s hard not to compare this Fort Worth septet–that’s right, seven people–to something archaic. There is mandolin, banjo,…
In the 1980s, a teenage metalhead’s wet dream was the almighty package tour, where groupings like Poison/Ratt and Mötley Crüe/Whitesnake roamed arenas to overload fans with lighter anthems, raucous chords and pyrotechnics galore. Unsurprisingly, hair metal’s modern mainstream counterpart–the nebulously defined “pop-punk” bands–carries the hairspray torch proudly when it comes…
So far, the 21st century hasn’t seen much of his Purple Highness. His echoes fill the radio waves–just listen to Andre 3000’s Speakerboxxx. But while his esteemed ’80s peers stumbled into the new century–Madonna and her children’s stories, stories of Michael Jackson and his children–Prince stayed well shrouded. His last…
“Screw the Hives–Texas has the Gamblers!” yelled the girl beside me. It was early Sunday morning (or maybe late Saturday night), and Denton’s Riverboat Gamblers were tearing up the club–literally. Lead singer Mike Wiebe tried to rip a Foster’s beer sign from the wall. He wrapped himself around a pole…
Until 2003, springtime in Denton had meant the same thing for music fans. Come one Saturday each April, the streets at the northeast corner of the UNT campus would be blocked off, and The Delta Lodge, a rebel frat with no official ties to the local institutions of higher learning,…
“You’re kidding. They’re really from Dallas?” asked a surprised bystander at the Polyphonic Spree show. The Spree’s heritage is always a surprise to Austinites, who generally believe they’ve cornered the market on cool and who associate Big D with cheerleaders and chain stores instead of good music. But Dallas’ music…
Blonde Redhead, the low-key juggernaut of no-wave, has put out three works (beginning with 1997’s Fake Can Be Just As Good) that were wonderfully whole and edgy. Once introduced to their anxious melodies and shrill vocals, your return was pretty much guaranteed. But there is reason to fear Misery Is…
Sarah Harmer’s 2000 release, You Were Here, was the stuff of which VH1 dreams are made, but dreams never really came true on the charts. Perhaps that’s why she has followed the diverse, catchy and inventive nature of her last album with All of Our Names, an album not befitting…
