When the people standing in a circle introduced themselves, I became increasingly nervous. Out of the 20 or so who arrived for Monday night’s very first Save the Scene Dallas meeting at the Darkside Lounge, half of them either were affiliated with musicians/companies I’ve bad-mouthed or who had previously made…

The man onstage at revered Denton country bar Dan’s Silverleaf is absolutely petrified. He’s clutching a piece of paper like he wants to tear it in half, and his arms and legs are shaking: a strange sight during a heat wave. Every other Tuesday is the Porch at Dan’s, an…

Mainstream culture, as it is with most other hot hip-hop trends, was embarrassingly late in discovering the bombast and distinctive synthesizers of Lil Jon. His 2001 major-label debut, Put Yo Hood Up, definitely wasn’t the first example of crunk, a style of booming drawl-rap pumped up by house beats and…

Why smack everyone over the head yet again with the importance of these two acts (which we already did months ago by reviewing their new records, Paul Simon’s Surprise and Ray Davies’ Other People’s Lives)? Because for once, it’s easy to lump them together. Both charmed the world in their…

In the indie-rock canon, the Pacific Northwest gets its rep mostly from its Seattle and Olympia greats. Makes sense–Washington state’s Pacific neighbors, Portland and British Columbia, Canada, haven’t had important record labels such as Sub Pop and K to push their best bands. But the best Pac-NW album of the…

Finger-lickin’ good: Whenever an e-mail hits the AAT wire from local noise-rock progenitor Mwanza Dover, a huge groan can be heard in the office. That’s because we need at least five staffers to dig through his lengthy spiels (“I am burned out on the local scene and a lot of…

“In the States, I’m still worried it’ll slip through the cracks again.” Midlake lead singer Tim Smith is at his home in Pilot Point, an hour north of the Denton house where he and the rest of the quintet recorded The Trials of Van Occupanther, and he says this while…

I’ll level with ya: We haven’t run a Set List concert review in way too long. But it’s not that the writers here have shunned local concerts–far from it. Here are some of the best live acts I’ve seen in the past month and a half that haven’t gotten enough…

I can scream from the mountaintops about the wonders of the Internet all I want. Shout about blogs. Hoot ‘n’ holler about podcasts. But for all the attention and growth that Dallas music Web sites have seen in the past few years, the result is still just the sound of…

Do you even read this?: Every week, someone calls or e-mails AAT HQ to ask the following: “Are there any good local bands worth seeing?” We’re required by staff policy to smile and politely respond with a concert recommendation or two, though we’d rather wrap a brick with a copy…

With so much death metal and screamo in the metroplex, what’s a headbanging purist to do? Sure, a band like Necrogazm will hump your eye socket with rapid-fire sludge, and Autumn Silence adds metal riffs and satanic screams to a mall-friendly emo formula, but speed and screams alone don’t cut…

Nothing like a blanket statement to get locals excited about a band, so here goes: Comrade is the new Pleasant Grove of Dallas rock music. You can’t get a better compliment than that, really. There’s Many a Slip Twixt the Cup and the Lip, the Dallas quintet’s debut, has the…

“There are some guys in England who would kill you for this,” Brandon Carr says as he discreetly hands me a plastic case. The bearded Dallasite then gives me a look like he’s got murder on his mind as well. “Don’t. Leak. It.” I can’t help but laugh, and it’s…

“There’s just something about them,” Kristin Allen-Zito sing-mutters to open her 2004 album Helium. Sounds like yet another coffee house singer with cigarette-stained vocals, a strummed acoustic guitar and cute “ooh”s in the background, but then she finishes the sentence–“that makes me want to stick my dick in/I know it’s…