This year’s Austin City Limits Music Festival proved to be the year of the bandit. By the end of Sunday night, so many concertgoers had covered their faces with bandannas and handkerchiefs that you had to wonder when the world’s largest stick-’em-up would begin. But these people weren’t trying to…
“A lot of people come to our shows, and they have no idea what the fuck they’re coming to watch,” says Stormy, one of the suicidegirls.com models who opens the modeling Web site’s debut DVD, Suicide Girls: The First Tour. “But I think they come away satisfied.” Twenty seconds later,…
While the rest of the paper looks to the past for its 25th anniversary, the music section looks to the future by presenting picks for this weekend’s North Texas New Music Festival. I’ll level with you: This isn’t my dream local fest. The schedule has a smattering of genres, but…
Anything less than unique would be a disappointment from the recording-company arm of local Polyphonic Spree lovers Good Records. That Water Sphere is overwhelming in its orchestration and completely bizarre, therefore, is no surprise. But who’d have thought the first DeLaughter-free band signed to Good Records would be so influenced…
Godfather of American punk, former Dead Kennedys’ front man Jello Biafra has been comfortable on the spoken word circuit for years, releasing an occasional musical collaboration with like-minded sorts such as D.O.A. and Mojo Nixon. Clearly inspired by the Iraq war and the debacle of Schwarzenegger, Biafra has returned to…
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…
For Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, the time has come prematurely. On only their third album, they’ve already gone Starbucks on us, ditching the overdriven fuzz of their first two records in favor of the bluesy acoustic stomps of the new Howl. How this plays out onstage bears watching, as does…
For the latest in Bend Studios’ “An Intimate Evening With” series, it just doesn’t get more intimate than Will Johnson. As powerful as his band Centro-matic is live, there’s something to be said for seeing main man Johnson stripped to the bare-bones birthing ground for his songs, including those of…
If you missed the most recent MTV Video Music Awards, consider yourself fortunate. Thanks to Sean Combs, My Chemical Romance and Mariah Carey, the show was a complete and utter bomb. Well, with one exception (or two, if you actually credit a surprise appearance by the crusty MC Hammer)–Grandmaster Flash…
Why the Fruit Bats are playing the Cavern is beyond me. Yes, the Cavern has become an amazing local music destination ever since the booking and sound were revamped a few weeks ago, but Chicago’s Fruit Bats will surely sell out the undersized venue. Touring on the strength of their…
Best not clang the pint glasses during Mono’s lulling, ambient guitar build-ups. Hold ’em too loose and they’ll crash to the ground when the Japanese quartet goes ape with their devastating tension-release tsunamis of sound. Last year’s instrumental Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered and the Sun Shined…
When a DJ is sometimes only as hot as his latest cut, it’s easy to overlook the legends who made dance music so huge. And more than any of ’em, Marshall Jefferson’s massive thumbprint is tattooed on every four-to-the-floor genre. Techno? He did that. Gospel vocals in a house track?…
It’s hard to fault a hastily organized benefit for a good cause, and really, no cause was better (and no concert more slapped together) than Sunday’s Deep Relief. Though Dallas has already seen its fair share of Katrina benefit concerts, DR was easily the most ambitious local one to date,…
Twelve years ago Nirvana was about to release In Utero, and Kurt Cobain locked himself in a bathroom, threatening to commit suicide. Twelve years ago the only thing as awe-inspiring as alternative music was the inability of thrift stores to keep flannel shirts in stock. Twelve years ago grunge was…
After 30 years, you’d think that fans of John Prine would have gotten the hint. After all, this is the guy who wrote 1971’s Vietnam war protest “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore,” in which St. Peter tells the deceased narrator that Heaven is crowded with casualties…
Between releasing their second LP, Haha Sound, and recording their third, Tender Buttons, the band Broadcast lost a few members and, it seems, gained a body. Although the new album is distinctively Broadcast-esque in its finessed sonic atmosphere and lullaby vocals, there’s a kind of corporeality to the music now…
Fifteen years ago, the flashy harmonica and sly vocal delivery of John Popper helped cement a new subset of pop music. Picking up where the Grateful Dead left off, Blues Traveler’s success and the formative H.O.R.D.E. tours they organized and headlined popularized dozens of bands like Phish, The String Cheese…
Since reclaiming the moniker in 1997, mainstays Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant have grappled with issues of age and relevance, but Siberia is their first effort since re-forming to actually embrace their classic sound. Yearning, thoughtful and poetic, the new cuts are just a notch below such early ’80s classics…
“This is just like church,” Bagg drummer Grady Sandlin observed as he rode in a rented party bus back to Denton, after his band and headliners Olospo exhausted the Granada crowd with nearly six hours of jam-band improvisation and eclectic rock. The standing-room-only party bus shuttling Bagg’s Denton fans to…
In March, I drove to an abandoned church to be saved. More specifically, the place was Austin’s Church of the Friendly Ghost, an unofficial concert venue during the SXSW music festival, and the preacher was Micah P. Hinson, a songwriter from Abilene. I’d seen accolades from mags like Uncut and…
Though M83 is already four years and three LPs into its recording career, the band is still getting its sea legs as far as touring goes. That makes sense: The French band’s self-titled debut, which is only now seeing American release, would be daunting stuff to try to play live:…
Even at age 69, legendary blues guitarist Buddy Guy, who Clapton himself called “the greatest guitar player alive,” can still burn up a fretboard. During the Chicago blues heyday, you couldn’t find classic recordings by the likes of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf or Junior Wells that didn’t predominately feature Guy’s…
