Ed Anderson leads this alt-country trio from Illinois, and it’s on their fourth full-length release that he moves beyond the standard blue-collar sentimentalism that dogs many in the Americana genre. Anderson still takes his cues from Neil Young, Slobberbone and Whiskeytown, but now he’s come to appreciate the finer points…
The guys in White Demons may occasionally wear eyeliner and tight jeans, but there is not a single song about a chick on this CD and not one stinky whiff of shitty emo. What we’ve got here instead is explosive, trashy, borderline-glam punk ‘n’ roll with shouted choruses and crisp,…
The fact that the Earlies made a second album is pretty remarkable; having band members scattered on both sides of the Atlantic must make songwriting rather difficult, yet they make it look easy. As in, bands that do get to practice and do get to write in the same room…
Born in Dallas but now an Austin resident, Vanessa Peters is the best kind of singer-songwriter: astute enough to explore the deeper recesses of relationships but tough enough to avoid the pitfalls of sentimentality. Little Films, produced by Peters along with Salim Nourallah, is folk-pop of a rare quality. Encompassing…
“For a rock show, you’re gonna kinda try to get yourself pumped up and stuff. For this kind of show, you drink a nice, warm glass of milk and put your slippers on.” So says Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy in his new solo DVD, Sunken Treasure: Live in the Pacific Northwest,…
Erykah Badu’s accomplishments as a local community activist and charitable giver are almost as well-known as her incomparable grace and style as a musical artist. And we’re not talking about your everyday celebrity tax write-off kind of “charity.” Badu continuously immerses herself in giving, knowing full well it’s simply not…
Access to behind-the-scenes band life has become increasingly banal. Between “reality” television and coverage of performers hoping to lower the bar on self-destruction (dudes, anything you’d dream of trashing, Led Zeppelin has already destroyed twice as monumentally), it’s tough to even cock an eyebrow at backstage behavior anymore. The entertainment…
Nothing like an Armageddon-like onslaught of frozen precipitation and arctic temperatures—and here we thought the apocalypse was supposed to be fire and brimstone, not sleet and black ice—to shut down hopes of weekend musical endeavors. For me, the cabin fever-inducing shut-in weather, combined with a searingly raw throat that evoked…
The death of Deep Ellum is now more of a simple catchphrase than an actual event, nothing more than a selling point for folks reopening closed venues and then climbing on the cross as the resuscitator of the old girl. How many times will people say “Deep Ellum is dead”?…
Everyone loves a good time. And nobody had a better time than ’80s glam-metal hitmakers Poison. Not only did they revel in many good times, they desired to have nothing but, a pursuit meticulously chronicled in their hit single “Nothin’ But a Good Time.” Because when you want nothing more…
Singer-songwriter Erika Wennerstrom is the driving force behind the indie-rock trio Heartless Bastards. She started the group as a quartet in 2003 with co-founder/bassist Mike Lamping. After a couple changes in staff lineup, drummer Kevin Vaughn joined the group, and the current version of Heartless Bastards was formed. In the…
Army of Anyone is the next entry in the cycle of dudes from successful, now-defunct alt-rock bands of the 1990s forming 21st-century supergroups. The anyone in this army includes Robert Patrick, former front man for buzz band Filter (“Hey Man, Nice Shot”), and brothers Dean and Robert DeLeo, Scott Weiland’s…
Horseshoes and Hand Grenades, the sophomore effort from Trent Summar, is a rough-hewn, shit-kicker’s delight, an effort that mocks the sterile country confines of Nashville and revels in the Hill Country Americana spirit embodied in the likes of Doug Sahm and Jerry Jeff Walker. Sounding like Paul Westerberg fronting the…
When an open mike or amateur night advertises itself as “one of Dallas’ great unknown treasures,” you get the cynical inkling that it’s perhaps “unknown” for a reason. And if such a description is applied to a weekly 8 Mile-esque rap battle and dance-off that happens to be held at…
Do you have affection for big-band jazz and classic pop but can’t stand the cheese that tries to pass for it these days? John Pizzarelli is your man. He comes by the style honestly as the son of celebrated jazz guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, with whom he cut his teeth as…
January 8 was Elvis Presley’s birthday. This fact had not entered my consciousness until I received a last-minute invitation to help judge the Elvis impersonators contest at Dick’s Last Resort, a proposal that immediately prompted two songs to compete for space in my head. The first was Elvis’ own “Hunk…
Idol Chatter: Those of you wondering how Picnic, one third of Idol Records’ splendid hip-hop group PPT, is faring after a fire destroyed his home last month, take heart. The man has bounced back like a classic NBA ball: He’s moving into a new home this month, and he’s already…
Sitting in an IHOP in East Dallas on a dreary day, just over a month removed from the death of her older brother in Iraq, Kristy Kruger pops a couple of Prozac and stares at the ceiling as the questions and answers become inherently uncomfortable. She wants to talk about…
Good Records assistant manager C.J. Davis is the kind of guy for whom time and history are not defined by important geopolitical events or scientific breakthroughs, but by music. When trying to describe how it feels to look down the barrel of the big 4-0, the first thing that comes…
When asked how he feels about the claims that he started the singer-songwriter movement nearly four decades ago, Tom Rush answers with characteristic flippancy. “Guilty,” says Rush sarcastically, not hiding his contempt for the label that has dogged him his entire career. In 1965, Elektra Records released The Circle Game,…
Nelly Furtado “Say It Right,” Loose (Geffen) Ten years after Aaliyah’s “One in a Million,” Timbaland is still using the same heaving synth waves and tricky, Tourettic drum programming, but the rest of the pop world still hasn’t caught up. Here, Tim channels early-’90s Peter Gabriel, his rippling bongos and…
Remember the first time you heard the Pixies’ classic “Where Is My Mind?” It condensed the euphoria of cutting anchor and sailing into the abyss into a four-minute pop song. Now Jay Reatard (that Memphis garage punker from the Lost Sounds, the Retards, Angry Angles and probably a dozen other…
