2005 Dallas Observer Music Awards

But plenty of young drunk girls (and their young drunk boyfriends) became fans of the band. Fortunately for Flickerstick, those new fans stuck by the band during a four-year gap between new albums with only a live record (2002's Causing a Catastrophe--Live) and EP (To Madagascar and Back) to tide them over. The wait was worth it: While Tarantula, released last year on Dallas' Idol Records, isn't exactly dangerous, it's a more diverse album than Astronauts, the kind that not only maintains a fan base but also builds it. Astronauts sounded like a band in search of a major-label deal. Tarantula, on the other hand, sounds like a band happy to be liberated from corporate clutches; the music and the musicians have never sounded freer. "When You Were Young" echoes the Bunnymen with a symphonic sound, and "Teenage Dope Fiend" is the kind of teen anthem that made The Vines (briefly) stars, with its "c'mon, c'mon, c'mon" chorus.

We tried not to like it--really, we did--but our toes began tapping in spite of themselves, and soon enough, we were singing along. So go ahead and start liking them. Seriously, there's nothing wrong. --Merritt Martin

Stacy and Sherri Dupree (Eisley)
Best Female Vocalist
"Melodic," "angelic," "melancholy," "lovely," "crystalline," "cloying"--these are but a smattering of rock-crit adjectives slathered upon the sisters DuPree, whose Eisley bowed, at last, with a full-length, Room Noises. Those who would dismiss them as cloying--and, Rolling Stone, we're looking in your direction--miss the point entirely. Or perhaps they simply can't stomach so much loveliness in one sitting. This is light stuff but not lightweight, sweet stuff but not saccharine, moody stuff but never so mellow you could roast it over a campfire between graham crackers and chocolate bars. There's a reason Coldplay loves them so, and why Snow Patrol took them on tour: They make modern rock for people not yet ready to move into the future, for those who prefer their heartbreak comforting and their romance discomfiting and their salty tears just a tad bit sweeter than everyone else's.

Sure, the DuPrees write and perform material that's not hard to mock ("how the pollen fell all around your face in strange, yellow patterns"; "all the war horses wore rubber bands"). Anything's easy to dump on if you refuse to get it. But make no mistake: It takes guts to get out there and pretend punk (or, for that matter, rock of any kind) never happened, to open your mouths and let fly with some of the most florid imagery and baroque vocals this side of Tori Amos or Kristen Hersh or that chick from the Cardigans. Punk doesn't take guts. Singing about dreary birds parading across dreary skies and bats with butterfly wings, Holmes, that takes real balls. It's deceptively simple--the innocent longings of young women not yet ready to give up little-girl things, not yet ready to accept that what's out there is far less interesting or rewarding than what remains untouched and unblemished in here. --Robert Wilonsky

A Dozen Furies
Best New Act
A few weeks after their guitarist Marc Serrano first appeared on MTV's reality show Battle for Ozzfest, the five sufficiently scruffy, black-clad members of A Dozen Furies piled into my office for an interview. Back then, they were nobodies--kids from Plano with metal in their mouths, who quit their day jobs and toured the country in a crappy van (that is, until the van broke down). But an odd benefactor presented himself in the form of Ozzy Osbourne, reality-show guru, possible loon, whose new enterprise was a kind of Real World/Road Rules Challenge for the black hoodie set. The band beat out 300 hardcore acts at an L.A. audition to land a spot on the show, which picked Serrano as ADF's on-camera representative.

"I was really excited the night the show came on," said Serrano, a pint-sized pretty boy with tattoos wrapping around his arms. "The minute the credits started rolling for the show before ours, my heart started fluttering."

"It could turn out to be really big," said lead singer Bucky Garrett. "It's like American Idol for metal bands."

In those days, the boys were adjusting to their minor fame, grappling to explain the show's concept to local news anchors and wondering, privately, what all the attention would mean. Of course, A Dozen Furies went on to win Battle for Ozzfest, landing $60,000, a slew of Guitar Center gear, a record contract with Sanctuary Records and a slot on the second stage of this summer's Ozzfest. The band is currently at work on its first full-length, which follows up last year's Rip Down the Stars, an EP that flaunts its commitment to noise and speed above all else.