Music

Say what you want about South by Southwest: that’s it’s overrated, that it’s over-inflated, that it’s already jumped the shark… None of those statements are necessarily false, but there still remain a few absolute truths about the annual Austin music festival. Like the fact that it still has some clout…

Last July, thousands of folks, including the mayor of Detroit and the governor of Michigan, gathered in Motown at the NAACP’s annual convention for a symbolic funeral for the N-word. It was a response to the recurrence of the word’s popping up in the mainstream media, such as when Michael…

The ramifications of a band name can never be overstated. Just ask Hymns. The New York by way of North Carolina band has had its share of misunderstandings because of the religious implications of its name. Adding to the confusion is the fact that two members are from, of all…

Other than the city of Boston, the 2004 Red Sox curse-breaking World Series win and Martin Scorsese’s 2006 Oscar-drought-breaking film The Departed had something else in common: Both prominently featured songs from Beantown Celtic rockers the Dropkick Murphys. The band’s anthemic rewrite of the 1902 showtune “Tessie” fueled enthusiasm for…

Suck it, Austin. Will Johnson may have moved from Denton to your overrated yupster hamlet years ago, but when it comes time to debut music from Centro-matic’s forthcoming double album, where does he book a show? That’s right: Dallas. Austinites will have to wait until the South by Southwest performance…

First Chomsky reunited a few weeks back. Then Light Bright Highway got back together during the throes of the Melodica Festival. And now Macavity? Reunion fever seems to be spreading around the Dallas area even faster than that cold-and-flu bug everyone’s been catching. With a sound the band describes as…

Judging by the overproduced songs on their Cry to the Beat EP, New York’s The Ropes play the kind of polished, electronica-tinged pop rock that 10 years ago would have had them written off as a Garbage clone. But Sharon Shy’s strong songwriting may help them avoid becoming the next…

The Cavern offers you some serious South by Southwest bang for your buck with this Austin-bound line-up. The Evangelicals, of Norman, Oklahoma, don’t seem to actually be evangelical—they’re not preaching, and we’re OK with that—but they are boasting some serious backing for their sound in the form of an 8.1…

The last track (“Monster Love”) of Goldfrapp’s fourth full-length claims, “Everything comes around/Bringing us back again,” and it’s so very true for Allison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory of Goldfrapp. On Seventh Tree, the pair transitions from TV-commercial mavens back to the lush soundscape/soundtrack composers they were on Felt Mountain—but with…

Just as his former band (Band of Horses) endured countless comparisons to other groups—Built to Spill, My Morning Jacket and the Shins chief among them—Mat Brooke’s Grand Archives will undoubtedly be likened to numerous other indie pop luminaries. On songs such as “Index Moon,” he bears an uncanny vocal resemblance…

London’s Hot Chip has a well-deserved reputation as a stellar live act that can sell out large clubs and draw huge festival crowds, but the band has struggled to make a killer record that exemplifies its members’ vast studio-equipment knowledge. Previous recordings sounded too polished, but Made in the Dark…

Invigorating avant-metal is how these boys from Fort Worth label themselves, and despite the pretense inherent in all things metallic, Urizen easily lives up to such a high and mighty description. Wisely straying from the typical metal onslaught of incomprehensible, Beelzebub-inspired vocals and double bass drum tedium, brothers Thomas and…