Owner of San Francisco’s Tiny Telephone recording studio (a favorite of indie stars like Spoon and Okkervil River), John Vanderslice makes solo records like you’d expect an engineer to, tricking out his singer-songwriter pop with lots of headphone-ready bells and whistles. But he’s also a gifted storyteller, one who rarely…
British singer-songwriter Imogen Heap frequently sings against a backdrop heavy with electronic accoutrements–a creative tack that’s been known to trigger critical repercussions. Take Beth Orton, whose early albums didn’t receive the respect they deserved because reviewers suspected her of hiding behind the studio touches. Of course, if you believe what…
“My music is for both the mind and the body,” says Osunlade, “but even more for the spirit.” And why shouldn’t it be? After all, the acclaimed House performer/producer is an ordained priest in the traditional African religion of Ifa. Speaking from Greece, and just a few days from the…
So proud: Voting’s still open one more week for the 2006 Dallas Observer Music Awards–we just cleared out some ballot stuffers, and that leaves more than a few categories up for grabs, so if you haven’t voted, do it–but the 2007 awards’ Best New Artist category is already heating up…
Some listeners will interpret the Girls’ third disc as the sort of mainstream move currently being attempted by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but the alterations in their sound seem inspired more by creative concerns than by commercial calculation. Instead of replacing former guitarist Nathan Thalen with another ax-wielder, the players…
Loose Fur (a trio featuring Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and Glenn Kotche, along with veritable Renaissance man Jim O’Rourke) first emerged with an underwhelming 2003 debut that couldn’t even approach each individual’s best work. On this second go-round, though, the threesome sounds reborn–playful, caustic and energetic enough to avoid merely splitting…
Great storytellers know the details sell the tale. A botched robbery might be interesting on its own, but little touches–a .45’s recoil breaking a woman’s wrist–wipe away the clichés. Wu-Tang legend Ghostface Killah hasn’t let up after so many solo and Wu albums, charging into stories on Fishscale just as…
News flash: Al Jourgensen is pissed. On Rio Grande Blood, Ministry’s frontman (the closest thing industrial music has to an elder statesman) continues to whack away at his trademark formula: drill-bit guitars laid over jackhammer beats, with spoken-word samples providing context for Jourgensen’s man-with-a-megaphone diatribes. The sound is typically brutal…
Drawing on influences ranging from Godflesh to John Cage, Miguel Trost Depedro (better-known as Kid 606) wields his laptop with lethal accuracy, slicing genres, mashing styles and trampling preconception with the kind of punk-rock fervor most people don’t expect from EDM. After releasing his glitch-core masterpiece Don’t Sweat the Techniques…
Though often compared to Joy Division, Public Image and The Fall, Baltimore’s Wilderness owes as much to such pioneers of American weirdness as Zappa, Beefheart and Dave Thomas of Pere Ubu. This year’s Vessel States doesn’t differ significantly from last year’s self-titled debut: Plodding and not a little pretentious, the…
Driving to Denton on a Sunday night is a pain, I know, so thanks a shitload, Hailey’s, for giving people a reason to be late to work on Monday. Last time Montreal’s Islands came through Denton was when the members were part of the Unicorns; the 2004 show was a…
Now here’s a double bill that’s either heaven or hell, depending on your perspective. Far be it from me to tell you what to think, but here I am, so I vote for the latter. A good 99 percent of the time, any guitar solo over 12 bars long feels…
The sound of R&B radio has been defined by super-producers like Timbaland and the Neptunes for so long that it’s difficult to remember a time when that wasn’t the case. For Teddy Riley (who actually discovered the Neptunes), it’s not such a trick: History might well single him out as…
Japan’s most colorful psyche-rock circus makes its annual Denton visit, just in time to bask in the North Texas rising sun. Sometimes Acid Mothers Temple sounds like 28 guitarists soloing in different rooms, but you haven’t lived until you’ve had a splinter off Kawabata Makoto’s shattered axe hurl inches from…
“I don’t think of us as a Southern rock band,” says Patterson Hood, the main axle of the Drive-By Truckers. Huh? Isn’t this the band that made a two-CD album about Lynyrd Skynyrd called Southern Rock Opera? They boast three guitar players, just like Skynyrd. Hood even hails from “Sweet…
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Sara Beck isn’t an easy read. After all, the Wichita, Kansas-born singer, now living in Austin, mixes the dark and the sweet from the very first strum of her guitar. “BTK Blues,” from her forthcoming record Mold the Gold, devolves rapidly from a…
Two days before the start of Rainer Maria’s most recent tour, singer/bassist Caithlin De Marrais is at home in Brooklyn, enjoying what will be her last days there for several weeks. The band’s latest Catastrophe Keeps Us Together is yet another evolutionary climb for the band, shedding whatever remained of…
If it really is better to burn out than fade away, then Last Beat Studios certainly took the low road. For months, rumors have spread about the slow, quiet death of the huge Deep Ellum recording studio and rehearsal space, and people thought its demise would come in the form…
Dallas’ The Chemistry Set can finally put their recent past to rest on Blue Monsters, their most ambitious record yet. While the band has worked on its sophomore record, the only recent Chem news that has come forth has been about bassist Cory Helms’ fight with cancer, so this album,…
The other night, I got a call from an old high school buddy who wanted to catch up. When we met for dinner, we asked each other the usual questions–jobs, relationships, did you see how fat what’s-his-name got–and then he asked me a point-blank question that, for whatever reason, caught…
You’re Joshin’ me: The 2006 Dallas Observer Music Awards voting period still has another two weeks to go, so tear the ballot out on page 74 or visit dallasobserver.com to cast your vote if you haven’t already. Chances are you don’t need a reminder, though, as nominees have inundated e-mail…
The Undoing of David Wright wears one of its first-ever reviews proudly on its Web site. The quote is taken from a post on a local Christian music message board, calling the Denton band’s live performance “everything that is contrary to peace, a sound mind, God’s order, and love. It…
