Music

The curtain dress. Oh, the curtain dress.In celebration of the AFI Dallas International Film Festival, Texas fashion institution Neiman Marcus has collaborated with The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas to present the unique AFI event Through the Lens Clearly: Icons & Images from The Harry Ransom Center…

Wait, let me get this straight: You just went ahead and blew all your hard-earned cash on musical instruments and computer software? You want to start a band? Well, good luck. You’re gonna need it. Because—just so you know—today’s musical climate is somewhere south of overcast with a chance of…

A wide-eyed, panting inline skater—no more than 12 years old—whizzes through a narrow concrete passageway past a fenced complex of quarter-pipes and launch ramps. “Guys! Guys!” he yells to his buddies. “There’s a band about to play! There’s a band about to play!” It looks like Vicki Eisenberg’s prediction is…

Punk blues/soul musician Black Joe Lewis is apparently a man of few words, but then again, songs like his own “Bitch, I Love You” pretty much speak for themselves. The track, from his self-titled 2006 debut, marries Lewis’ foul-mouthed man-done-wrong verses (“Come home late at night/Bitch, you know it just…

Colin Meloy, the Anglophile frontman for indie rock darlings The Decemberists, hardly tops the list of the people you’d expect to hear singing Sam Cooke. After all, the wordy, bespectacled and talented songwriter is known more for his affected accent and stylistic wardrobe than for his soulfulness. Basically, you can…

The biggest knock on the Keys’ 2006 major-label debut, Magic Potion, was its lack of innovation. That can’t be said about the band’s new disc, Attack & Release, which remains steadfast in its blues allegiance while expanding the Akron, Ohio, duo’s territorial reach. Tastefully done, it’s undoubtedly a Black Keys…

R.E.M.’s 14th studio album, Accelerate, lives up to its speedy title. It’s loud, quick and dirty, spinning by so fast that it takes multiple listens to absorb. It’s full of buzzing guitars and stream-of-consciousness discontent, along with an abundance of Mike Mills’ choir-boy harmonies and sinewy bass. And naturally, it…

Destroyer frontman Dan Bejar decided that the lineup that recorded his band’s 2006 album Destroyer’s Rubies should remain intact indefinitely, so the follow-up to that record, Trouble in Dreams, now finds the Vancouver indie-pop band testing its own limits. “Blue Flower/Blue Flame” trumps Ladybug Transistor at its own game and…

Like the subject matter at the heart of its lyrics, Wounded Soldier is almost too much to bear. The ghosts of fallen soldiers and the traumatic memories of warriors still living seem to haunt every song in this brutal tour-de-force from Broadcast Sea. A press release notes that singer Sterling…

The southern rockers in Cross Canadian Ragweed—who, it should be noted, aren’t Canadian at all (their band name is derived from elements of the four members’ last names: Cross, Canada, Ragsdale and, um, Plato); they’re from Oklahoma—are, at worst, an act you wouldn’t mind playing your favorite bar and, at…

Ghosthustler, Denton’s much-loved electro-dance outfit, doesn’t exactly appear to be in a big hurry. They’ve been mentioned on Pitchfork’s tastemaking site, they’re constantly hyped up by locally based national music blog GorillaVsBear and they’ve even been profiled at length in this very publication. And yet, the band has only offered…

Indianapolis-based Christian metalcore band Haste the Day is the headliner for this show, but it’s the Australia-native Sick Puppies who are the real attraction on this bill. Dressed Up as Life, the Sick Puppies’ debut, features “All the Same,” a song made famous via YouTube as the soundtrack for a…

Fort Worth’s Collin Herring is temporarily residing in Austin, trying to keep his life in order. After releasing his brilliant sophomore effort, 2005’s The Other Side of Kindness, Herring’s fortunes took a dark turn for the worse. Rumors of alcoholism were rampant over the past couple of years, but Herring…

It’s 1 p.m. on a Wednesday, and the Irving office of Radio Salaam Namaste has all but emptied out. The only one who hasn’t gone to lunch among the station’s Pakistani and Indian staff is DJ Neha Upadhyay, who is spending the hour with her listeners. Dressed in blue linen…

You may have already heard that local folk/pop duo Smile Smile was signed to local label Kirtland Records earlier this week. Not a huge shocker–Smile Smile’s a talented act. See for yourselves on that front, though; Kirtland’s hooking DC9 readers up with a free download of “Sad Song” (from of…