Most Popular
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The Hard Lie
How former Ticket host Greg Williams destroyed the most dynamic duo in Dallas talk radio through drugs, deceit and disaffection
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American Girls
Crossing between American and Egyptian cultures, he Said girls made one deadly misstep: They fell in love
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The Dirt Doctor
How radio show host Howard Garrett pushed Dallas to the center of the organic gardening movement through passion, principle and molasses
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The Caretaker
One mother's crusade to better the life of her mentally retarded son and the system that failed him
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Our 20th Music Awards
1988-2008: Two Decades of DOMA
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Park City
Wanna go see a show around town? Fine, but you'll get a ticket in Deep Ellum. Maybe towed on Lower Greenville...
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Stand and Deliver
WIth No Deliverance, The Toadies revert to the bare bones of their past
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Big Willie Style
Willie Nelson doesn't have to continue performing—which makes his insistence to keep doing so all the more remarkable
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Morning Wood
My Morning Jacket is the best live band in the world
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They Shall Be Comforted
Friends and faith buoy the family of a slain Christian music producer
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Recent Articles
Recent Articles by Roy Kasten
The Heart Is the Place (Better Looking)
Willis Alan Ramsey's cult keeps growing, 28 years after cutting his first--and final?--record
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Goldrush
The Heart Is the Place (Better Looking)
Published on May 17, 2007
Keyboards blur and bubble, guitars loop like a Möbius strip, chorale arrangements and found sounds (muted trumpet, birdsong and static) stack and stack, a bereft acoustic guitar or piano anchors the melodies, and Robin Bennett sings with a quizzical, not-quite-falsetto voice. The critical gossip? The Oxfordshire, England, quartet is crushed out on the Flaming Lips and Wilco. From a distance, perhaps, but close-up, Goldrush plays Cupid with power pop and psychedelia, without being mortally wounded by the excesses of either. Its first single, "Every One of Us," has the density of Big Star's "Kizza Me" but the liberated, ever-forward rush of the Byrds' "Eight Miles High." Bennett's songs aim for the essential urgency of rock 'n' roll, as summed up in the title track ("Our lives are too short, so what are we waiting for?") or in the soul-struck proclamation "We Will Not Be Machines"—which is sung like Bennett wants to convince himself as much as you. (Or maybe it's just an answer to Pink Floyd's alienated welcome or Jeff Tweedy's permanent emotional surrender.) Goldrush can't imagine such a retreat. In its collective imagination, rock 'n' roll, like the heart, is still a wide-open space.