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Swingtown
Local swingers think life is a bowl of cherries, but Duncanville wants to spit out the Pit
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Deep Ellum LIVES!
Scott Beck's about to buy 14 acres in the"heart" of Deep Ellum. What then?
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Un-Super Size Me: One Week of Eating Local
One mans attempt at slow food living in the Dallas metroplex
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Toll You So
The Trinity River Project should be floating right along. Instead it's sinking under the weight of its own folly.
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Six Pac
The Cowboys are counting on NFL outlaw Pacman Jones to pop the top on their sixth Super Bowl.
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Seeing a Ghost
Yeah, Grandmaster Flash graced the ones and twos at Ghostbar this weekend. But who cares? The people there didn't seem to.
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Behind the Curtains
A weird weekend in Deep Ellum: names were changed, CDs were released, and two bands supposedly called it quits
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Another Matter Entirely
The members of The Theater Fire are as different as Lightness and Darkness
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Dirty Talk
Twenty years later, the godfathers of grunge in Mudhoney still remember their roots
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Pet Peeves
The Beach Boys are popping up everywhere this year in music but don't seem to be getting their due
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Arctic Monkeys
Favourite Worst Nightmare (Warner Brothers/Domino)
Published on April 26, 2007
Ah, it seems like yesterday these English lads were the toast of the town, the leaders of the hype pack. Oh, wait. It pretty much was just yesterday. Over the last year, we've learned that the Arctic Monkeys are brats: arrogant onstage, snotty in interviews and whiney on record. Of course this is masked by their punchy, Brit-poppy punk—fast and heavy, yet with simplistic guitar arrangements that give them an air of edginess. Their lyrics supposedly describe the day-to-day activities of working-class British youth, but the sentiments they're expressing are probably not that localized, especially this time around. Maybe it was too rushed, because Favourite lacks those initial hooks we saw last year—or maybe said hooks just became stale. Aside from the slightly jarring single "Brianstorm," which echoes their former slightly jarring single, "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor," most of the cuts here sound pretty derivative of one another. With their first offering, the Monkeys mixed things up with a bit of funk and ska, recalling The Clash or, more recently, The Libertines. Those drawn to that vibe will find it in "Fluorescent Adolescent" (that rhymes!), but overall this is mostly a mediocre collection of I-might-have-been-burned breakup songs that would be awesome if you were 16 and reeling from that first bout of heartache. Or, in the words of the Arctic Monkeys themselves, "I think you should know, you're his favourite worst nightmare." That's right. You. But hey, I guess brats have feelings too.