OK, so it wasn’t the trial of the century or anything. But with planking beginning to become passe, all the good sports either in their off-season or lockout, and no high-profile Robert Blake/Phil Spector/OJ Simpson murder cases going on, the Casey Anthony murder trial thing provided plenty to captivate America’s…
R. Stevie Moore, Tropical Ooze, Marriage Material, Hares on the MountainHailey’s Club, DentonJune 30, 2011Better than: waiting in line to see Santa in the mall Last night at Hailey’s, R. Stevie Moore really lived up to his reputation. The singer-songwriter is just as legendary for his seemingly endless stream of material…
There’s a good chance you’ve never heard of R. Stevie Moore. Despite his legendary status in the indie underground, you more than likely don’t own a single one of the 400 albums he’s recorded over the past 35 years, mostly from his own home. But his lack of mainstream notoriety…
Since the mid-’90s, David Bazan, more so than any of his contemporaries, has held a reputation for composing shrewd and engrossing songs that deal in the subjects of religion and the Christian faith. Pedro the Lion, the band he fronted from 1995 through 2005, sold a few hundred thousand records…
Just last month, former Rilo Kiley guitarist and co-songwriter Blake Sennett released his third album with the band The Elected. Called Bury Me In My Rings, it’s the band’s first release since 2006. But the disc’s shimmering West Coast pop rock does more than mark Sennett’s return to the side…
On the surface, Parallel Play is nothing more than a run-of-the-mill string band—just your average quartet with a banjo, a guitar, a stand-up bass and drums. But there’s more to the group’s latest effort, The Floor’s Made of Lava!, than one might initially suspect. Here, simple folk and bluegrass numbers…
It’s hard to believe that Two Knights were just seniors in high school last year. Now recent graduates Miles DeBruin and Parker Lawson are poised to become staples of the local scene with their first-ever tour and the release of their latest, the Quilt Chamberlain EP, which was recorded by…
Tonight at Dada, the English indie folk outfit known as Noah and the Whale will perform. Good band, interesting name — especially since, we just realized, there isn’t actually a dude named Noah in the group after all. Not even a guy whose name starts with the letter “N.” Just…
Peter Bjorn & John had already released a pair of marginally-successful albums and were even beginning to gain a small amount of notoriety as being one of Sweden’s most promising young pop bands by the time 2006 rolled around. But it was their third album, Writer’s Block, that really put…
Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.DadaMay 27, 2011Better than: making a left turn, and then a left turn, and then a left turn… It speaks to the power of the Internet/new music business model when a band with only four officially-released tracks is able to embark on a headlining cross-country tour. But…
You can draw a couple of conclusions upon hearing the band name Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. Firstly, that they are probably punk rockers, as punk bands like Abe Vigoda, Burgess Meredith, Ronald Raygun and The Fabulous St. Knicholas Cage have been re-purposing celebrity monikers for years. Also, that their music…
Primus is a band we discovered pretty early on in life and whose sharp and innovative playing we’ve only grown to respect more and more as we’ve aged. Unfortunately, though, our first exposure to the group was to their biggest single of the ’90s: “Wynona’s Big Brown Beaver.” Even more…
According to some loosely connected Christian groups the end times may be coming sooner than we all think. A lot sooner, in fact, as the groups in question have paid to put up messages on several local billboards to that effect. According to the signs, Jesus Christ will be coming…
Sure, Dallas has its fair share of great restaurants, concerts and art galleries. But rarely do all three of these components blend as seamlessly as they will during Saturday’s second annual Homegrown Music and Art Festival. It’s an impressive feat, actually, that the festival, for at least one day, is…
Los Angeles post-rock duo El Ten Eleven isn’t your run-of-the-mill indie-rock two-piece. For starters, their live sound isn’t stripped down like fellow duos Matt & Kim or The White Stripes. And they don’t have to rely on drum machines or pre-recorded backing tracks to faithfully reproduce their recordings, like The…
When White Rabbits headlines The Loft this Saturday, the band won’t be doing so as part of a big national tour. Rather, the group, which has been holed up in Austin for the past few weeks working on their upcoming third long player, is treating its brief swing of Texas…
Ricky Martin will be performing at Verizon Theatre in Grand Prairie tomorrow night. And, yes, that kind of has our mouths watering. No, not because we have a thing for the recently outed Latin singer, but because, gluttons that we are, our stomachs have always growled when we hear his…
Though her brand of melancholy is more akin to Jenny Lewis than St. Vincent, local singer-songwriter Jessie Frye is likely to draw more comparisons to the latter, thanks to her decision to enlist John Congleton as the engineer and co-producer for her latest EP, Fireworks Child. That’s mostly a shame…
Back in 2009, when Denton piano-pop songstress Jessie Frye released her debut The Delve EP, our own Darryl Smyers wrote that “if Frye ever chooses to venture further from the safety net of her undeniable talent, she might prove to be dangerous in alarming ways.” Now, with the release of…
Chris CornellHouse of BluesApril 3, 2011Better than: open mic night at any given local bar, although not by much. Let’s get something out of the way right up front: I’m a pretty huge Chris Cornell fan. I’ve seen him live a few times before, and he’s always exceeded my expectations…
There are plenty of bands over the years who have used the word “cult” in their names. From ’70s hard rockers Blue Oyster Cult to ’80s Brit rockers The Cult to ’90s art rockers Cloud Cult to current indie darling duo Cults, the phenomenon isn’t really all that new. Meanwhile,…
During his time fronting Soundgarden, Chris Cornell helped to pioneer the grunge sound of the early ’90s that brought national attention to the Seattle scene. As a member of Audioslave, he was part of the first American rock band to ever perform an open-air concert in post-revolutionary Cuba. As a…
