The Pipettes made critical hearts swoon last year by reviving the ’60s-girl-group aesthetic. But the Gore Gore Girls have been working that angle for nigh on a decade now, only liberally slathered with heavy doses of Dee-troit pound ‘n’ sludge instead of Spectorian shimmer. This summer’s Bloodshot Records release, Get…
Pat Sullivan may have left Oneida behind to form Oakley Hall, but he didn’t abandon their garage-psych experimentation, only recast it in Americana. The result is something like Blue Cheer mugging Jerry Garcia in the bathroom while Crazy Horse watches the door. It’s twang that’s not afraid to get its…
U.K. music scribes have always been addicted to hype, but the genuflection over the British quartet is a bit too breathless, even by their standards. The chart-topping Arctic Monkeys couldn’t live up to the praise heaped on them if they were fronted by Jesus and Mohammed. So it’s hardly shocking…
Sojourner is composed of three individually titled collections, one EP, a DVD, a poster and a small medallion that can be carried around by fans as a sort of heartland St. Christopher’s medal. Of the four discs, Nashville Moon is the most polished and the best representation of the full-band…
Legend says that blues great Robert Johnson made a deal with the devil at the crossroads in exchange for ungodly musical skill. Dax Riggs, former singer/guitarist of indie-rock duo Dead Boy and the Elephantmen, seems to have had a similar meeting with Satan before recording this album. “Have mercy on…
Eisley brothers….and sisters: Entertainment Weekly gave Tyler’s family supergroup Eisley a big thumbs up a couple weeks back. Music journo Andy Greenwald gave the group’s second disc, Combinations, a B+, noting, among other things, that the “towheaded Texans” are “unlike stereotypical family bands,” as “their music is neither pathologically cheery…
My first taste of all the Dallas music I had missed in the eight years I was away from Texas came in the form of Carter Albrecht’s piano playing. Girl on Top’s Andrea Grimes was kind enough when I moved back to Dallas almost a year ago to make me…
Well, we guess that’s the sort of stuff that can happen when you let your kids wander off to Los Angeles—they come back with all sorts of crazy notions in their heads. Like, get this, singer-songwriter and former Dallas Observer employee Sara Radle actually wants you to believe that not…
While we’re a touch confused as to why a Dallas music blog run by a guy who no longer lives in Dallas has any say in the matter, we’re glad to know that the grand tradition of the Dallas Observer Music Awards Losers (DOMAL?) show lives on. Know why? ‘Cause…
Happy to identify themselves as a Fort Worth band, Urizen have been around for the better part of a decade, honing their songwriting and instrumental chops while skillfully avoiding any easy classification. Autocratopolis, the band’s 2005 debut, has been described as avant-metal and features a bewildering concept of man’s inhumanity…
Maxine’s Radiator had a fun-loving psychedelic take on white-boy soul that made them one of Denton’s most exciting live bands about a decade ago. I wore out my cassette copy of Plastissimo, and I can’t be the only one who thinks they were a treasure: Fuzz Bites on Your Neck…
Get it straight: Scary Cherry and the Bang Bangs won’t be playing geeky music at Darkside Lounge Friday just because it’s a Revenge of the Nerds theme party. That’s a happy coincidence. “The theme doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with what’s going on onstage; we won’t be playing nerdy…
If you’re digging around in your mom’s attic and stumble across an LP called The Impact Sound of Kenny and the Kasuals Recorded Live at the Studio Club, hold on to it. The sucker is worth about $400, and with good reason: Kenny and the Kasuals are a legendary Dallas…
It’s no secret that AFI’s Davey Havok and Jade Puget have an affinity for electronic music, as evidenced by Puget’s programming credits on the last two AFI discs. With CexCells the duo takes its synthesizer obsession to the next level, though, with results that range from sublime to serviceable. The…
Unfortunately, none of the money from this benefit will be going to freelance Dallas Observer writers. But don’t let that stop you from heading out to Secret HeadQuarters in Denton for this fund-raiser for indiewriter.net, an independent Web site and magazine dedicated to “supporting independent authors and their publication.” Your…
The last Lazer show of 2007 is destined to be like Woodstock—so many more people will claim to have been there than were actually present. And sure you could just lie to your grandkids and say you were there; you can even probably bluff your way through reciting a fake…
Even if you don’t know acid house from Hugh Laurie, you’ve probably heard of U.K. DJ Digweed, who as half of Sasha & Digweed and as a solo DJ/producer became one of the biggest dance-floor tastemakers and trendsetters of the past decade. (Perhaps you’ve heard “For What You Dream Of,”…
Though it sounds like the mascot of Major League’s woeful Cleveland Indians, the moniker Chief Beef is entirely appropriate for a band that yields juicy slabs of power-trio rock. The Phoenix, Arizona, band’s 2007 Gravy Tour comes on the heels of its independently released debut, Something About Rock. Step into…
It’s not every day one stumbles across a French band that sounds plucked straight from the Midwest—specifically, the mid-’90s Midwest and its thriving post-rock scene. But that era’s melodic throttling and anti-grunge angst spring to mind when listening to the Headcases and the trio’s 2007 album Castaway But Blessed. Recorded…
“Conscious rap” needs to be eliminated from hip-hop’s vernacular—or at the very least, Talib Kweli’s name should be stricken from its rolls. Nobody’s quite sure what the term means: Music that doesn’t focus on rims and butts? Songs wherein the listener’s life isn’t explicitly threatened? Kweli has said he doesn’t…
Welcome back from summer vacation; hopefully, you’ve advanced a grade at your Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, so sharpen your pencils: Question 1: MatchingMatch the following bands, each of which is releasing a CD in the next seven days, with their type of music: A. Karen Mal (Friday, September 7,…
Notorious B.I.G. D: OK, this is weird. As you probably already know, Violetta Wallace, mother of Christopher Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls, aka Notorious B.I.G., is co-producing a biopic of her son, the rapper who was mysteriously gunned down in L.A. in the late ’90s (P. Diddy is another producer). Rather…
