Listening to Sarah Reddington’s debut full-length, All Our Friends Have Gone Missing, one hears a band bursting with potential. From the lovely slacker twang of “A Girl and Her Grocer” to the Pavement-esque crescendo of “I Had a Bad Dream,” it’s clear the young Denton group has the sad-eyed stoner…
The Hymns’ singer/guitarist Brian Harding is often compared to Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy or Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus. In a pinch, there’s a bit of Britt Daniel in there too. And it’s true, Harding’s nasal slacker wail incorporates bits and pieces of those-who-shalt-be-worshiped-by-rock-critics. But to me Harding echoes less these modern voices…
Every music lover has a line beyond which material that had been intriguing becomes self-indulgent. On In Glorious Times, the Museum members don’t just cross this line, they flip back and forth over it like Carly Patterson on angel dust, daring listeners to decide from one moment to the next…
Dance-rock, dance-punk, electroclash—if you’re honest, you have to admit that 90 percent of it is about as sexy as a silicone implant. But is this supposed to be dance music for people who can’t dance, or by people who can’t dance? “I think No. 2,” says singer and guitarist Scott…
Too often the whole garage band shtick proves as thin as a pasty lead singer’s skin. Oh sure, worshipping Iggy and Nuggets and the Troggs (side note: what’s with the two g’s?) is all fine and dandy, but the music ultimately has to be, er, about music. Too many bands…
Refreshingly retro, this Canadian sextet makes old-school metal that should thrill those mining their (foggy) teen years for memories of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. Vocalist Jamie Hooper is a shrieker of the highest order, but he does maintain a semblance of comprehensibility that sets him apart from many in…
The musical output of these Canadian twins inevitably carries with it a vaguely alien air. One can just imagine Tegan & Sara in Montreal and Vancouver, respectively, engaging in some seizure-like sibling communication and spontaneously birthing The Con. Nothing so medievally weird happened, of course, although it would make a…
Let’s just clear some things up here concerning the Dallas Observer Music Awards. There’s been a lot of, er, intense feedback concerning this year’s ballot. The main concerns appear to be: 1) Some categories contain up to 10 nominees, while others only have a few; 2) Some nominees don’t match…
Every now and then there comes a pivotal character in any culture, someone who disrupts the norm. Some people call them prophets. In hip-hop, we call him Nas. Since his emergence in 1991 with a verse on Main Source’s “Live at the Barbecue,” heads knew they weren’t ready for God’s…
A collaboration between Lichens and White/Light reads like a great idea on paper. Lichens—former 90 Day Men bassist Robert Lowe—specializes in vocal drones colored with guitar and percussion. White/Light’s twin-guitar doom—a menacing fusion of VU, Earth and Kevin Drumm—should give Lowe’s bubbly atmospherics ground to float over and play the…
“BARK BARK BARK IS BLOWING THE FUCK UP!” screams the big banner on the band’s MySpace page. That may be overstating it, but the band—actually just Arizona’s Jacob Safari plus a rotating crew of assorted friends—should be going places. Bark3’s synth-y oeuvre is like a more friendly Nine Inch Nails—still…
Like many veterans of the Chapel Hill, North Carolina, scene, the Comas are as averse to pigeonholing as most non-pigeons are. Indeed, Spells, the outfit’s new disc for the Vagrant imprint, is a veritable variety pack of indie-rock stylings. For instance, the opener, “Red Microphones” is an up-tempo chugger that…
When R&B sensation Andre Williams first reared his magnificently ugly mug back in the late 1950s, his calling cards were a knockout stage show and some of the roughest wide-open numbers the idiom ever had visited upon it. The drawling raps of “Bacon Fat,” “Greasy Chicken” and the poon-fixated classic…
Maybe it’s the mystique: The Frenz, one of local electro-Renaissance-man Wanz Dover’s many ambitious projects, is one of those computer/electronic progenies of Kraftwerk that takes you to another plane. An astral plane? Possibly. More likely, though, upon listening to the Frenz’s intricate blend of beats, blips and bodacious guitar riffs…
As with Contraband, the first Velvet Revolver CD, Libertad is an amalgam of its influences: some good (Guns N’ Roses), others less so (Stone Temple Pilots). Still, the unregenerate retro-ness of the project—and of Slash’s axing in general—will leave those with a taste for cock rock at least temporarily sated…
Those of you hoping that the Smashing Pumpkins’ comeback record is an unmitigated disaster will be disappointed: It’s not. Those of you afraid that lead Pumpkin Billy Corgan made another The Future Embrace (his über-synthpop, somewhat-cheesy solo album) will be happy: He didn’t. With drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, the lone member…
If ever there were a band that represented the popular heights and resounding depths of the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, it’s Badfinger. Coming together in the early ’70s, the band benefited from its association with the Beatles (Paul McCartney wrote Badfinger’s first hit, “Come and Get It”) and the Apple…
On the mouth: That charming fellow we all know as Cottonmouth Texas is hard at work these days, including recording a mash-up with Los Angeles-based band the Spores. (If you’ve never heard/seen the Spores, think go-go-booted bassist/singer spewing off-kilter vocals with hard—but not exactly metal—guitar behind her. Oh, and puppets.)…
The life of a touring band has got to be glamorous and decadent. Luxurious buses packed to the gills with liquor, drugs and acquiescent groupies, shuttle you from one glittering city to the next. At each destination, flashing cameras and screaming fans greet you as you make your way to…
After years of writing songs for the likes of John Anderson, Randy Travis and Confederate Railroad, Chris Knight is finally getting the accolades he so richly deserves. Growing up in Kentucky, Knight lived in a trailer house and worked for a decade in the coal mines before venturing to Nashville…
These days, modern rock—and by that, we mean straight-ahead bass-drums-guitar—has taken a strange and often irritating turn. A genre that once frightened parents has grown tepid, plagued by hookless guitar work and excruciatingly boring, anthemic, off-key vocals that sound more like Christian rock than the devil’s music. And let’s not…
Sitting across from Jacob Rodriguez, it’s easy to be taken aback by his well-spoken demeanor and baby-faced good charm. Although he plays hip-hop under the name Accomplice and has, in the past, written lyrics as violent and sexist as just about any rapper, Rodriguez comes across as a likable softie…
