While this summer’s biggest affront to expectation unquestionably belongs to David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar–who besides their managers would’ve guessed a year ago that these two losers would kiss and make up?–Dallas indie-rockers are also in for a surprise at Rubber Gloves, when they find that Elf Power and…

For all its technical, sample-splicing glory, the reason DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing… became a modern classic was how deftly it conjured the raw source code of human melancholy out of elements pilfered from a seemingly infinite pile of dusty thrift-shop vinyl. No other electronic musician had come so close in 1996…

A freshly scrubbed alternative to last week’s grungy Edgefest, KISS-FM’s summer throwdown might be the perfect little diversion this weekend if you’re looking for moderately shiny pop that floats like a butterfly and then ends. Actually, The Calling does sting a bit: Its Camino Palmero is freeze-dried modern rock without…

According to Amazon.com (but against my better judgment), Poison has a new album out. It’s called Hollyweird, and the cover features a naked woman with an enormous dragon tattoo astride a motorcycle, about to pull onto Hollyweird Boulevard, which apparently is a street that time forgot, since you can also…

It’s a perfect pairing: Johnny Marr, the former guitarist of the Smiths, one of the world’s most impossibly melodramatic rock bands, and the Pet Shop Boys, one of the world’s most theatrical pop groups, joining forces for a set of fey, delicately heartbroken love songs packed with sophisticated melodies and…

If ex-Wilco multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett’s new album, The Palace at 4am (Part 1), is a challenge to the studio-borne alt-country he helped create on Wilco’s new Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, well, Wilco wins. But if the disc, which Bennett made with friend and fellow songwriter Edward Burch, is any indication of…

The good news is that Flickerstick’s playing early, as part of a Friday-night warm-up gig for KDGE-FM’s annual alt-rock cluster that will also include a set by casual misogynist Custom, whose “Hey Mister”–the one in which the raspy-voiced New Yorker promises a young woman’s father that when he’s “horny like…

Long-haired rock weirdos won’t be the only ones hitting Dallas en masse this week; expect a number of short-haired hip-hop weirdos, too. Rubber Gloves is the place, and though the festivities will be spread over two nights, comprising stops on two separate package tours, the MCs and DJs (and lone…

Lots going on this week for fans of denatured guitar rock. First up, headlining the Ridglea Theater on Friday night, is Trans Am, three zany Washington, D.C., gearheads who’ve spent six albums figuring out how to best emasculate that form. They used to do it by laughing with it: The…

Will Goo Goo Doll Johnny Rzeznik ever be satisfied? Not with his personal life–there’s a trail of Goo songs about dashed hopes long enough to suggest that Rzeznik’s stream of pent-up disappointment will never run dry–but with the lucidity of his sleek pop-rock, which since the Dolls’ 1995 breakthrough disc,…

Sort-of-local chanteuse Norah Jones has been getting flak lately for the smoothness of her Come Away With Me, the seamlessness with which she synthesizes the blues, pop, folk and jazz stuff she hears in her head. It’s an argument that’s as understandable as it is frustrating: Come Away With Me…

Less than a year ago the smart money would’ve been on Alanis Morissette and Bryan Adams, two Canadians totally convinced of overblown, overproduced pop-rock’s persistent relevance. Surely no one would’ve expected The Ironic One to be joined by Ryan Adams, a young American singer with an airtight reputation for astoundingly…

Dallas got a big helping of plastic pop last week, when No Doubt and the Faint brought their retrofitted robot rock to the Bronco Bowl, but those new wavers looking for a safer night out–hey, the Faint’s first video just got banned by MTV, and Gwen Stefani’s tank tops keep…

If there’s one thing the world most definitely does not need right now, it’s another watery mix CD from some overhyped trance DJ–you know, the ones with the tastefully modernist cover art (invariably featuring a handsome European staring meaningfully into space) and the interminable synth build-ups that eventually crest in…

One of these things is not like the others. But which is it? The multiplatinum pop-punk band that’s been around longer than any of the bazillion younger groups currently frolicking in its wake? Or the younger multiplatinum pop-punk band that’s introduced a bazillion prepubescent boys to their first dick jokes?…

And so the formal coagulation of Atlanta crunk-hop and Philadelphia neo-soul continues, propelling two of the scenes’ new stars westward to Dallas for a night of full-throated singing and the tactile musicality this movement toward precious organicity is quickly formulating. Goodie Mob boss/Dungeon Family member Cee-Lo makes no attempt to…

Pink, the new Madonna? Doesn’t seem possible–certainly didn’t in 2000, when “There U Go” introduced Philadelphia homegirl Alecia Moore as the latest in a long line of producer/svengali Dallas Austin’s bad girls gone badder–but that’s what the English press are saying we’re saying, and you know how accurate their fortunetelling…

If Dave Matthews’ sappy songcraft sounds like a pretty soggy way to spend your Tuesday night, consider taking in Buddy Guy’s set at Saturday’s House of Blues Music Festival first–the Chicago blues legend might scare you so bad you’ll appreciate Matthews’ aural analgesic. Just a few years ago, that might…

There are, I suspect, exactly two reactions to the music video for the Dave Matthews Band’s “Everyday,” the one where the big frumpy guy who you at first think is a panhandler stands on the street and asks strangers for hugs: “Man, this Dave Matthews character has really done it…

Brendan Benson’s story is as familiar to fans of homegrown neoclassical pop as the records so many of its practitioners look up to: Signed to Virgin (apparently in an attempt to woo that moneyed power-pop market Matthew Sweet and Jellyfish broke wide-open), he released the accomplished One Mississippi in 1996…

As blues drama goes, Buddy Guy may be feeling old this week, but at least he doesn’t feel superfluous. Jon Spencer, the mutton-chopped leader of the blues-exploding outfit that bears his name, has seen the garage-rock/dirty-blues resurrection he’s been leading nearly singlehandedly for a decade swing into vogue in the…

Fans of retro-minded indie pop that tries as hard as it can to push past its low-budget boundaries might want to get their paisley shirts dry-cleaned today, as a quartet of well-regarded touring bands hits Dallas this weekend for two shows that should offer plenty in the way of reconstructed…