Local bands, take note: When a weekly newspaper talks shit about your music and gives you grief about changing your formula on a new album, don’t write pithy e-mails to complain. Go the Slowride route instead. The Dallas trio disappointed two years ago with sophomore album Building a Building by…
In the hedonism of the early ’90s UK club scene, something had to give. Sounds had stagnated and people were starting to understand the “dark side” of a steady diet of ecstasy and glow sticks. With rampant commercialism and subsequent unrest in the hard-core creative community, a club night was…
I walked to the Curtain Club on Friday night and asked a young lady at the door about press entry to the Dallas Music Festival. She gave me a puzzled look, said she wasn’t sure about press access and fuddled around a bit. I pulled out my wallet–I didn’t want…
Nice job: Far be it from us to take credit for something good, but man, K104 Uncut has to be our fault to some degree, right? At the end of 2005, we laid down a challenge to local hip-hop radio leaders 97.9 The Beat and K104: Put more local rappers…
If all goes according to plan, next year will herald the release of about a dozen never-before-heard songs from the songwriting team that all but created rock ‘n’ roll. And even though Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, the men behind hundreds of R&B “race records” and early rock hits including…
“You’re my mousy aesthete,” croons Kevin Barnes above a pleasing din of chugging synthesizers, spritely guitars and massed harmonies. “I never want to be your little, friendly, abstract failure.” The words are from the chorus of “So Begins Our Alabee” from The Sunlandic Twins, the latest CD by Barnes’ Of…
Dallas music snobs, here is your record for 2006. Go ahead–set the CD for On Leaping From Airplanes in the stereo, put your Funland pajamas on, curl up in your Tripping Daisy bedsheets and dim the UFOFU nightlight, so that you might fall asleep and dream of a nostalgic era…
Niece of acclaimed songwriter Vic Chestnutt, Liz Durrett is a 20-something Southern gothic wunderkind, a Georgia native who understands the poignant effect of the deliberately slow pace, the impact of space and dirge, the value of lament and loss set to music. Full of emotionally distraught tunes that take full…
Of all the artists that the fan-approved, critically underrated Rhymesayers label has discovered in recent years, Stefon Leron “P.O.S.” Alexander may be the most intriguing. A black punk-rocker from Minneapolis who leads his city’s up-and-coming Doomtree hip-hop collective, P.O.S. (which stands for “Product of Society,” “Pissed-Off Stef” and many other…
Out of Birmingham, Alabama, comes this Southern-fried greasy punk, all snarling lips and attitude, equal parts Axl Rose and Keith Richards with a fashion sense copped from Bowie to boot. Hollingsworth’s second effort ups the ante considerably over last year’s Shoot Me, Shoot Me, Heaven, presenting a charmingly ramshackle loser…
Was I seeing ghosts, or did Deep Ellum just move? Maybe she was writhing and kicking in deathbed pain from yet another wounding club closure, or maybe her body was being molested by necrophiliacs who never had the chance while she was alive. Either way, for about a half-hour Friday…
Somewhere between the naked beauty of Low and the gut-wrenching intensity of the Swans lies Shiny Around the Edges, a husband and wife duo from Denton that likes its songs wrapped in an ear-bending sheath of finely-combed feedback. If the material off their fine Secrets of the Double Blind CD-R…
Bill Monroe might scowl at it, but the rise of newgrass (the instrumental and stylistic tenets of bluegrass mixed with modernist touches) still remains true to the spiritual mountain-music root. Its leading purveyors are the maturing and blossoming Nickel Creek, the Dixie Chicks on Home and the aptly-named Greencards–two Aussies…
There’s no doubt that Edie Brickell’s dreamy lyrics and shy yet versatile voice tended to overshadow the other talented New Bohemians during the band’s late-’80s heyday. Nowadays, with Edie holed-up with her family on the East Coast, the rest of the band manages to keep quite busy. Percussionist/drummer John Bush…
Mike Love, the only original Beach Boy in the group touring under the band’s moniker, would be better named Mike Hate. He recently sued Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson for using the band’s sound and songs in his solo re-creation of the legendary Smile album, the irony of which would…
With their 1998 debut, the boys and girls of Nashville Pussy declared Let Them Eat Pussy. Seven years later, they’re still all about the muff. Their latest album, Get Some!, opens with the holler, “Well, all right, who wants some pussy?” The quartet’s two superhot, supercrass female members, guitarist Ruyter…
Leave it to a Texan to blast away the stylistic strictures of spinning, mixing and scratching and to do so with a Lone Star twist. Appearing as part of a long national tour with Of Montreal, Grand Buffet and MGMT, DJ Jester–aka The Filipino Fist, aka Mike Pendon–sees just about…
Slowly, people are trickling into the Cavern, sporting requisite hipster wear in all its various forms, from punk chic to whatever’s on the mannequins over at Urban Outfitters. It’s Thursday night, and they are, or will very soon be, hard at play. Forty miles west, at KTVT-Channel 11 in Fort…
Eric Elterman would have brought Oceanographer’s new CD tonight, but he got mugged last week. The band’s violist and synth player, Elterman was on the sidewalk outside the bar we’re sitting at now, a railroad pub in Williamsburg, Brooklyn called Clem’s. Some dudes took his wallet, which meant he had…
Which of the following is an omen of the impending apocalypse? A) The Sex Pistols playing Dallas’ Longhorn Ballroom, once the home of Bob Wills, in 1978. B) The re-formed Sex Pistols playing the Trump Marina Casino during their 2003 tour. C) The Sex Pistols Experience– a tribute band that…
[Backstage. The five members of Aerosmith sit at a deli table, each with a small plate of healthy snacks. A cooler of bottled water and sodas rests by STEVEN TYLER, and a nearby monitor shows LENNY KRAVITZ playing his last encore.] JOE PERRY: Anybody know what the Dow closed at…
People, I am royally pissed about Deep Ellum right now. I become angrier every time I read and re-read a page from last weeks Dallas Observer. Its like a car wreckI cant help but repeatedly look at the page and feel an overwhelming mix of shock, hopelessness and frustration. Im…
