The four young dudes in Explosions in the Sky are certifiable film freaks, and it shows through in their music, which is full of invisible plotlines and peppered with imagery. In fact, for the Austin instrumentalists, songwriting is something like amateur screenwriting: Come up with a couple of images that…
There’s nothing more unfortunate than seeing cool lady musicians struggle with obscurity (see: Kathy McCarty, Lucinda Williams), and nothing more inspiring than watching them relish it. Holly Golightly’s probably the greatest example we have of the latter category. Enigmatic, reclusive and the subject of many a rock legend–it’s rumored that…
It’s an odd thing when songwriters become cover artists; it stops being about what they’re saying and instead becomes an exercise in how they’re saying it, which is usually far less interesting an exercise. When a writer becomes an interpreter, and nothing more, it almost feels incidental–as though he or…
As computer-based music composers learn the ins and outs of their instrument, one startling reality shines above all others: Anything is possible. No sound is forbidden or unattainable (a crow’s-caw rhythm?), no orchestration too cost-prohibitive (a 275-violin synthetic string section?), no keyboard configuration unattainable (a 17-note chord?). With so much…
The D.O.C. has spoken openly and often about his desire to put Dallas hip-hop on the map. Which isn’t exactly a new goal: Area hip-hop acts have been placing calls to Rand McNally for at least a decade, and while some have come close (say, Mad Flava, maybe, or Nemesis),…
The phrase “didn’t go as it should” starts off “Long Fucks Up,” the first track on Failure Plus’ Care.Less.Now. And that says plenty about what’s happening here. Failure Plus is a Denton band that has played live few times; this is its first full-length release. But you’d never guess that…
Andy Richardson is 17 years old, a student at North Mesquite High School in Mesquite, a skinny kid just this side of geeky who plays guitar in a band just this side of punk rock called Dogs in Heat. He’s also a “buzzer,” one of a few hundred high school…
People involved in resistance movements often talk about “sunshine activists”: part-time revolutionaries whose acts of protest extend as far as their personal comfort can be maintained. Sunshine activists don’t just check the weather report before grabbing their banners and heading out to the march; they keep an even closer tab…
Backed by industry vet Terry McGill’s Dallas-based Major Money Entertainment, Psy2ko and Mic L. Moodswing–the self-styled “2002 version of Pac and B.I.G.”–are the latest locals to attempt a quadruple bypass of major-label heartaches, hustling to make a name for themselves (and Dallas hip-hop) with their own ink. It’s a point…
When we were at South by Southwest a couple of weeks ago, we ran into a few people who told us they’d had trouble getting electronic acts booked into the Dallas-Fort Worth area. While that may be true for some, as far as we can tell, there doesn’t seem to…
It’s getting harder and harder to tell the good Neil Young records from the bad ones; they’re all blending into the same backfiring buzz, differentiated only by the guitar he chooses to pick up and/or plug in. At this late date, all of it sounds like Rust Never Sleeps or…
How do you tell a diva from a D-cup? Less succinctly, what separates our buxom, banal American pop stars from the rest of the world’s icy femme fatales? Here we get Britney Spears thinking Pat Benatar sang “I Love Rock and Roll” and barfing up a bloodless cover to prove…
Took awhile to get around to this, and now I remember why: I liked this better when it was called Flickerstick’s Welcoming Home the Astronauts. Actually, take that back–I didn’t. Starting now, a five-year moratorium on bands listening to Radiohead’s The Bends and/or OK Computer. It’s doing more harm than…
The glass flew everywhere as the bystanders’ jaws dropped to the floor. It was vandalism, nihilism, primal punk rage and, most important, absolute desecration. Imagine: to smash Stevie Ray Vaughan’s guitar out of its display case at the new Hard Rock Café in Austin to try a quick plug ‘n’…
As is true with many of the new breed of male singer-songwriters currently populating the same cultural blip, there’s plenty on paper to immediately dislike about Atlanta-based musician John Mayer: his goody-goody sincerity, his polished presentation, his loosely handsome good looks. Much like his labelmate Pete Yorn, he reminds you…
The Faux Pas of Nelly Furtado: 1. Venturing into many musical genres yet mastering none, therefore fetishizing them. (Because of this, her weak hip-hop moves, normally an excusable offense, mark her as not just a lightweight, but also as a jerk.) 2. Showing boundless self-love and passing it off as…
Fugazi became something else besides a band long ago, and its appearances have since become more than a show. The most memorable scene in Jem Cohen’s documentary about the group, Instrument, isn’t from concert footage, but composed of interviews from a Georgia concert crowd. These are awkward and oddly touching,…
Ah, the Beta Band. Perhaps no other band making records right now so closely resembles the Bad News Bears as this perennially goofy Scottish quartet: On tour last summer with Radiohead playing arenas and outdoor amphitheaters the group would amble onstage before it even got dark, dressed as shamans or…
A lot of rock writers got excited about the Chicago band Local H’s 1998 album Pack Up the Cats, a concept piece about a small-town rocker’s bid for big-time success, because it convincingly resuscitated the obviously flagging mode of music originally popularized by workhorse Midwestern outfits like Styx and REO…
Cranky singer-songwriter James McMurtry once dismissed Pleasant Grove, his opening act, from the Sons of Hermann Hall stage, calling the band’s music “Seattle alt-country bullshit.” He claimed if you wanted the real deal, you’d be best served checking out Deadman instead. Huh. While it’s a good idea–we’d even say it’s…
We may never get back the true Mystikal, the real Mystikal, the Mystikal who put his skills on the table first, then looked around for some well-deserved ass. That was the Mystikal of “Y’all Ain’t Ready Yet,” and indeed we weren’t. When the New Orleans rapper dropped that single in…
Dan Bryk, a frumpy Canuck who refuses to give his age but looks to be in his 20s, sits on an outdoor patio behind his Yamaha keybs and sings his ass off, which isn’t such an easy task–the dude’s heavy, literally. It’s 9 p.m. on a Thursday in Austin, and…
