Animal training is a trying activity for most people. Keeping the dog from crapping on the rug or the cat from scratching the couch can take months, and many just don’t have the patience, instead opting to pay for a training service or just resigning themselves to the fact that…
After sending freak-folk king Devendra Banhart off to the greener pastures of V2 Recordings, Michael Gira’s Young God Records continued to show its impeccable taste with the signing of Akron/Family, quite possibly the most original new band to make its mark on 2005. Like a backwoods Animal Collective with better…
It’s not surprising that Nick Hornby, author of High Fidelity, counts Marah as one of his favorite bands. They’re exactly the type of band his most famous protagonist, Rob Fleming, would obsess over. The band even wrote a song set in a record store eerily similar to Fleming’s Championship Vinyl…
Remember Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus (the ridiculous relationship book that sold a bajillion copies and was written by a “Dr.” who bought his degree from a diploma mill)? The book: not funny. The people that bought it seriously thinking it would help them understand the opposite…
Guys that are sculptors must get a lot of action. The creativity, the powerful hands, the clay-stained face and chest…how could anyone resist? If Patrick Swayze could get laid in Ghost for making a measly clay pot, Auguste Rodin must have gotten triple-dog laid for “The Thinker,” and the unknown…
“Western swing ain’t dead, it’s Asleep at the Wheel.” So goes the slogan for big Ray Benson’s beloved ensemble, the band that’s kept Bob Wills alive for longer than he’s been dead while touring everywhere from Texas to Timbuktu. Most western swing bands only sport twin fiddles, but this Friday…
An IMAX movie about da ’85 Bears has been a long time coming, but 20 years later, it’s finally here. Ditka and “Da Fridge” on an 80-foot dome screen! 18,600 watts of “The Super Bowl Shuffle” coming out of the Fort Worth Omni Theater’s 72 speakers! Excited?! Well, too bad…
Chris Penn, who holds such titles as Good Records owner/manager and Polyphonic Spree Robemaster, has one awesome beard. He’s also responsible for one of the finest nights of my life. (Wink, wink.) It was October 31, 2005. I was dressed as a born-again Chick-Fil-A cow, Mr. Penn was dressed as…
The holiday season is a time for family, friends, reflection and, of course, maxing out the power circuits in your house. For many, December just wouldn’t be the same without the lights, figurines and fake snow. In recent years we’ve seen a number of new decoration trends come and go,…
Thursday, December 1 For 364 days and 22 hours out of the year, Starbucks is perfectly content charging you an arm and a leg for bad Ray Charles duet albums and frothy, fattening Frappucinos. But for two hours on Thursday, the coffee chain opens up its quick-beating caffeine-fueled heart to…
There was a time when it was perfectly respectable for a grown man to have a poster of a beautiful woman on his wall. It could be said that women like Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable even helped win World War II–not by taking up arms and fighting but by…
On March 25, 2003, Scott H. Biram was severely injured in a head-on collision with an 18-wheeler, his truck run over by a careless driver talking on his phone. For a guy so enamored with trucker culture, it would have been a fitting way to go, but miraculously, he was…
It’s not everyday that the biggest living legend in Texas music plays on the street in downtown Dallas, but this Friday, Willie Nelson will do just that during the Chevy Speed Stampede, a free event coinciding with this weekend’s NASCAR races at Texas Motor Speedway. The Whiskey River will flow…
For Calexico’s Joey Burns and John Convertino, agreeing to collaborate with Sam Beam of Iron and Wine was a no-brainer. It’s an indie dream come true, a fantasy mating of Beam’s sepia-toned Southern folk with the instumental fireworks of Calexico’s widescreen technicolor West. Logistical hassles delayed the project, with both…
Marah used to be an easy band to fall in love with. Their first two albums were shambling folk rock masterpieces held together with duct tape and bubble gum, and their sweaty live shows were equally legendary. But the Philly band took a Brit-pop-inspired turn for the worse with 2002’s…
The Constantines’ first two albums cast a very long shadow. Combining post-punk instrumental smarts with dark, Springsteen-style anthems, their self-titled debut and Shine a Light are two of the best rock records of the aughts, so it’s not surprising that the Ontario band’s third album, Tournament of Hearts, arrives with…
Ryan Adams wants you back. He knows you only liked about seven songs on Rock N Roll and Love Is Hell, and he’s decided to spend all of 2005 making it up to you. May’s double disc Cold Roses was a flawed but refreshing apology, and on Jacksonville City Nights,…
If 2003’s It Still Moves was the album that showed why My Morning Jacket was ready to play stadiums, Z is the one that proves they deserve lasers and smoke machines. While the band’s music has always walked a fine line between twang and space-rock, Z sees them stretching out…
Montreal’s Wolf Parade sure looks good on paper. The band’s members have played with a who’s who of Canadian indie rock bands, including the Arcade Fire, Destroyer and Frog Eyes, and they even secured Modest Mouse front man Issac Brock to produce their debut album. And while they’ve shamelessly stolen…
Two albums and three EPs into his career, the man known as Iron and Wine is still plucking songs from his original 2001 home demos, and his latest release is further proof that there’s not a clunker in the bunch. On In the Reins, Sam Beam realizes his dream to…
If you believe the songs on Cripple Crow, that goddamned hippie Devendra Banhart is some sort of sexed-up Johnny Appleseed, sewing his freak-folk oats from coast to coast and filling your daughters’ wombs with long-haired babies. He starts out just like the wide-eyed innocent we heard on last year’s Niño…
The members of Magnolia Electric Co. don’t listen to a lot of music on the road. Relentlessly touring behind the two records they’ve released this year, What Comes After the Blues and the live Trials and Errors, the Midwestern quintet may spend a lot of time cooped up in a…
