John Grant, like Joe Cocker before him, gets by with a little help from his friends. The former leader of Denver’s The Czars ensconced himself with North Texas torch-bearers Midlake in a Denton studio for his new release, relying on guitarist Eric Pulido and the rest of the group to…

With the opening lines “Rain cuts like glass / The wind moves souls” from “Wooden Floors,” the first track from Nicholas Altobelli’s rather agreeable latest full-length album, The Regulator, the Dallas troubadour introduces the listener to a dark, and often dense, brand of poetry. Recorded in Dallas with Salim Nourallah,…

The debut, full-length record from the Dallas three-piece Shapes Stars Make, These Mountains Are Safe, is a study in both the great and not-so-great qualities of post-rockin’ in the free world. Produced by John Congleton, These Mountains offers up some rewarding and climactic moments via dramatic chord progressions, lifeblood-pumping drumbeats…

We’ve got quite a backlog of CDs we’ve never gotten around to, so we’re going to try to chip away at the pile with this regular feature. The plan: to take four or five at a time and play each CD for as long as I can stand it.Kris Allen…

Consistency isn’t always mundane. Consistency can have some serious soul. And Alicia Keys has been consistently enthralling millions for just shy of a decade. Indeed, Keys’ four studio albums, along with the chart-topping album from her virtuoso 2005 MTV Unplugged performance, have become cultural touchstones that will help music fans…

The latest project from Fort Worth’s Katsuk, Skeleton Key, is an unusually ambitious EP that funnels a diverse collection of sounds through an acoustic filter, effectively purifying each of the offering’s seven songs. The earnest lyrics that frontman and band namesake Daniel Katsuk delivers, with an often-times Oberst-style warble, strive…

Attempting to breathe freshness into a classic—if not slightly stale—style such as soul-baring blues can be a tough task to tackle for many bands. All too often, the group brave enough to undertake such a possibly embarrassing task ends up coming off as more of a living room blues-Guitar Hero…

There isn’t anything simple about an artist injecting the natural beauty of true simplicity into one of his songs. And, sadly, today’s country music landscape is littered with catchy ditties that aim for an unaffected purity but instead fall into a clichéd and brain-dead compost pile filled with recycled anecdotes…

For 14 years now, KHYI-95.3 FM The Range has hosted a yearly celebration known as the Texas Music Revolution. And, this year, as has been the case for the last 12 years, the party will be held at the legendary Southfork Ranch. Perhaps the most revolutionary aspect to the independently…

Band: Joe Pug Venue: J & J’s PizzaTime: 9:00 p.m., evidently Around the time that the Flaming Lips were dealing with its second power-outage of its set (more on that later), Joe Pug was beginning his solo-acoustic set at J & J’s Pizza. Oh, and, by the way, I hadn’t…

Band: Sleep WhaleVenue: Andy’s Bar & GrillTime: 12:30 a.m. Where Ola Podrida, who had just played on the same stage, had never performed in front of a Denton crowd before, Sleep Whale has called the college town, along with its clubs and bars, home for many a year. That favored-son…

Band: Ola PodridaVenue: Andy’s Bar & GrillTime: 11:30 pm The Flaming Lips weren’t the only band making its Denton debut at this year’s NX35. Austin’s Ola Podrida, led by Dallas native David Wingo, took this opportunity to show the somewhat distracted and talkative audience what they have been missing out on…

Band: Carrie Rodriguez Venue: Dan’s SilverleafTime: 11 p.m. Any concerns of a drowsy lull following RTB2’s set at Dan’s were quickly stomped away by the boot of Carrie Rodriguez. Opening with the twangy and beefed-up “Wide River to Cross,” a track from her upcoming album, Rodriguez bore little resemblance to…

Band: RTB2Venue: Dan’s SilverleafTime: 10 p.m. When RTB2 bashed out the first few thunderous thumps of the appropriately titled “When Hammer Hits Stone,” the Dentonites almost seemed to be shooting the starting pistol for NX35. Ryan Thomas Becker writhed and jerked so frantically that, at one point, his glasses flew…

Creede Williams’ latest offering, After the Letters, showcases a gamble that many songwriters make: showing off their sensitive hearts in a mainly literal fashion, while hoping to remain engaging and compelling. The risk that Williams takes yields some small yet satisfying payoffs, sure. But, ultimately, it fails to hit the…

Q: When is a country record not merely a country record? A: When the record in question swaggers more than it swoons, or when the album makes your eyes sting with sweat, rather than filling them with tears. While Southern Drive is considered by many to be one of the…

When you think of a person who lives without running water in the low rolling hills of Virginia’s Piedmont region, you likely won’t make a quick or easy association between such a Spartan existence and anything remotely resembling “punk.” But, for nearly 20 years, Tim Barry has displayed punk ethos…

“Red dirt” and “Texas country” have long baffled me. Such overly vague terms are essentially useless in actually describing any sort of a sonic style. I haven’t a clue as to whether this is a good or bad thing, actually—the variety of styles associated with the aforementioned “genres” range from…