Things you always knew needed to happen on the last Guided By Voices album: It has to be on Matador Records, the home of Alien Lanes and Under the Bushes Under the Stars. (It is. The band returned to Matador in 2002 after a brief fling with TVT Records. Though…
All of Damon Gough’s albums lack focus, indulging his fondness for his kaleidoscopic record collection until they become high-concept mix tapes, connected by singer but not sound. They are all, also, at least two or three songs too long. And guess what? Those two so-called flaws are exactly what makes…
When Tommy McHenry steps onto his porch, it’s obvious what the problem is. Or part of it, anyway. To the elderly ladies who’ve lived here in Casa View for three and four decades, the retired homemakers and widows of war veterans who get together and play bridge, McHenry probably looks…
Drag It Up is the Old 97’s sixth album and their first since 2001’s Satellite Rides. Since that album, the band has been dropped from its major label, Elektra, and for a while, its future was rumored to be in jeopardy while front man Rhett Miller started a family in…
On their last album, 2002’s Jennie Bomb, Sahara Hotnights were a badass girl gang, switchblade sisters whose game plan was summed up by “Alright, Alright (Here’s My Fist Where’s the Fight?)” and its two minutes of sweaty swagger. Basically, they were everything the Donnas and their major-label debut, Spend the…
Everyone in Dallas is salivating over the prospect of Shaquille O’Neal playing for the Mavericks next season. No one on the Mavs has been deemed untouchable by owner Mark Cuban when it comes to trade talks with the Los Angeles Lakers, even Dirk Nowitzki. That saddens us, sure, but with…
My wife belongs to a book club, a monthly, no-men-allowed assembly at the home of one of her girlfriends where the gossip and red wine flow as freely as the discussion of that month’s book. It’s more of a social gathering than anything else, and the books under consideration are…
The kid calls it luck, says it with a little laugh and a small smile, as if he´s sharing a secret. Says it casually, his dark eyes flitting from side to side before they land in his lap. It´s the same self-effacing manner he adopts whenever the subject of Niket…
There are good bands that write well-crafted songs and play them capably, even managing to inject their heads and hearts into the process. And that’s fine. More than you could reasonably expect from drums and wires. More than most of their colleagues can muster. Then there are the great bands,…
No one’s really sure how Bobby Weaver got in or what, exactly, he’s doing on the couch. Well, besides sleeping. But here he is, sprawled out in the living room of John Congleton’s house just off Northwest Highway, 6-foot-something of beard, boots and black clothing. The three other members of…
Check out the reviews from the recent Coachella Festival in California (and ticket sales while you’re at it). Look at what’s being downloaded on iTunes. Turn on MTV and MTV2. Listen to the radio. What’s going on is not as sudden and shocking as when Nirvana smelled teen spirit more…
When we ran our cover story on LaMarcus Aldridge (“He Wants to Be a Millionaire,” April 29), it seemed as though the Seagoville High School basketball stud had finally made up his mind. After flirting with entering the NBA draft, the 7-foot 18-year-old signed a letter of intent to play…
Jack Matthews was the only one who saw it, the only one who looked at the deserted buildings on a forgotten street off downtown and pictured a community. But, hey, that’s his job. He’s a real estate developer, a guy who is supposed to see something where everyone else sees…
Go back in time and destroy every copy of the Descendents’ 1982 Milo Goes to College, and the Warped Tour never happens. Because without that record, and the band that made it, there would be no Blink-182 and, oh, about 100 other bands. They aren’t fawned over and fetishized like…
Every few minutes, the man screams the same desperate sentence, hands cupped around his mouth in a futile attempt to be heard above the crowd. Hunched over in his seat high up in the rafters, he’s like a jockey whipping a horse, urging it toward the finish line: “LaMarcus, you…
Four decades of James Bond films have proven that I must die now. Ive seen all the secret plans, uncovered facts and figures. I now know how the evil geniuses in Frisco plan to take over the world; i.e., I know too much. So this is where the needlessly complicated…
It was one of those years. Three beloved major-label acts dominating nearly every major category, with little but their hometown in common. One a sweet, unassuming Christian family making music beyond their years. One a crew of aging but still-scorching rockers giddily throwing up the devil horns. One a chorus…
In the short history since 9-11, there hasn’t been a song that so accurately sums up the feelings of that ambush and its aftermath as Apollo Sunshine’s “Happening” does, and there probably won’t be. “Happening” is a mess of screamed sentiment and squealing synths, the music as ragged and ripped…
Sondre Lerche’s songs live in a world with Nick Drake’s pink moons and the Flaming Lips’ pink robots, where maladies have melodies and modern rock is just an ugly rumor. In Lerche’s world, Highway to Heaven reruns are, apparently, still a big deal (check the title track’s shout-out to “Michael…
Sam Beam has a voice as sweet as iced tea in the summertime and a way with words that breaks hearts like a drunken surgeon, and so his second full-length teems with love songs wherein one of the lovers ends up as “ashes around the yard” and it’s no big…
If Jay-Z and Dame Dash are the Mick and Keef of the Roc-A-Fella fam, then Kanye West is the label’s Charlie Watts, the quiet rock behind the roll. Or he was until now. After The College Dropout, he’ll never be small enough to fit behind the scenes again. And why…
Blake Sennett’s breathy, breakable delivery is as overly dramatic as a LiveJournal entry, and his dear-diary lyrics are even more so. “And if you see me down at the liquor store, please don’t tell my dad,” he moans on “Greeting in Braille,” with the back of his hand presumably draped…
