Andy Bothwell wasn’t supposed to lose. It was August 2002 when the SMU student, then 20 years old, drove all the way to Cincinnati to compete in the Scribble Jam, the Midwest’s largest annual hip-hop event. The MC, going by his alias Astronautalis, was supposed to show and prove on…
When people hear about God at Six Flags Over Texas, it usually happens while plunging down the first hill of the Texas Titan. There’s just no better place to invoke the name of Jehovah at the top of your lungs than right before absorbing 4.5 G’s of sheer terror. This…
I can’t blame people for asking the same question over and over: “How’s the music scene in Dallas?” But I feel silly answering it in conversation. Sure, I see a lot of bands, but I’m not qualified to make an end-all declaration. After all, too many bands are playing around…
Where?: Chalk another one up for Dallas bands on TV, as local dream-rockers Radiant have latched onto Steven Bochco’s latest TV series, Over There, on cable network FX. Radiant’s Web site, radianttheband.com, claims that single “World” was “picked as the music pilot for the series,” but singer Levi Smith explains…
There’s a right way and a wrong way to add violin to a rock band. For example, a 1998 University of Pennsylvania study discovered that the Dave Matthews Band exceeds the violin-to-rock ratio by 2,000 points. (OK, not really, but still.) No such test has yet been pushed upon Oakland’s…
Back in 1991, Chris Whitley’s debut record was a critical favorite played incessantly by indie record store clerks and praised for its atmospheric, consumer-friendly take on the blues. But for all of Whitley’s talent at the guitar, he was an overwrought singer who shunned the limelight, and his sound was…
If you were an independent rapper whose first album sold so well that you could already afford diamonds, exotic cars and real estate, why would you sign with a major label? To make the nation respect your gangster, that’s why. Houston rhyme slinger Slim Thug has only ego as a…
The Fruit Bats’ Eric Johnson was definitely born in the ’70s. On his band’s third album, Spelled in Bones, he comes right out and says it, but even without a song title like “Born in the ’70s,” the sounds of SiB stir up images of Astroturf, bell-bottoms and all things…
Between songs, Robert Gomez is all smiles, offering an abandoned warm beer to anyone who wants it, estimating the number of chickens that have died to feed him while on tour and joking about the $12 a guitarist owes him for his favorite guitar strap. But the easy stage presence…
Singer-songwriter Richard Buckner has a voice that could shift tectonic plates. Live, it practically pours out of him, shaking the room with sound as his eyes roll back into his head, trance-like. On recent tours he’s taken to performing song suites, tying songs together with instrumental interludes created with the…
Oklahoma City’s Redbud Revival is the best reason to get to the Gypsy Tea Room early on Friday. RR specializes in bluesy, no-frills rock reminiscent of the Stones, Tom Petty and early Wilco with swaggering Southern rockers and slide-guitar-drenched weepers. Fans of Pleasant Grove and Sorta shouldn’t miss it. Meanwhile,…
With last year’s debut, Trouble, Ray LaMontagne made critics swoon by mixing Neil Young’s delivery with Patty Griffin’s lyrics, and the fuss was worth it. But it’s opener Rachael Yamagata you need to fight your way to the front to see. At her first Dallas concert, she’ll prove why she’s…
Raymond Raposa is the creepy kind of guy who has just enough genius to stay on the critics’ radar but off the police lineup. He is the core of Castanets, a ragtag band that creates dark, disturbing and whispered odes of frustrated redemption. Like Will Oldham, Raposa croaks and moans…
Lucero is not your typical Galaxy Club fare. The roots-rock by this Memphis quartet sounds a lot more like Two Cow Garage than Seether, and they put on one helluva beer-chugging, cigarette-smoking show. Meet me there–I’ll be in the front row shouting along to loud-and-proud twang-punk songs like “Bikeriders.” Elliott…
KERA 90.1 might prefer to forget about its music-loving past. The public radio station’s schedule would certainly suggest so, with talk, talk and more talk crowding out the six hours of weekly music that, in the past two months, have waited on the chopping block to learn their fates. In…
Big Oven: We don’t question the intents of the Buzz-Oven series. Please continue giving attention to local groups, by all means, but after putting on 14 compilation concert series, can’t organizers jazz things up a bit? How about a rooftop concert with rings of fire and alligators and stuff? No?…
Royksopp’s debut disc, Melody A.M. , produced mood-setting mix-tape fodder and soundtracked any room at a rave that came with a couch. The Understanding starts in the same vein, with parochial piano and a gentle percussive pulse, but then it turns the beat around, disco-style. Bop-gun bloops, vocoder murmurs, quick-click…
Back in 1996, every mutton-chopped songwriter with a rhyming dictionary wanted to be Jay Farrar. These days, most of them would be happy if Farrar would just be himself and go back to rocking like Neil Young’s bastard son. After two mysterious solo albums filled with abstract instrumentals and Eastern…
Two lyrical heroes of indie hip-hop team up to pay tribute to everyone’s favorite Cosby Show cast-off, Lisa Bonet. Well, actually, Slug and Murs’ sweet memories of Denise Huxtable play only a minor role in the duo’s stories about the opposite sex. Felt 2 pops off with the picked guitar…
As a longtime bassist for Ray Wylie Hubbard, Guthrie Kennard has spent a good while compiling songs and absorbing influences. Ranch Road 12 is the culmination of years spent on the road and at guitar shows. Recorded in Dripping Springs, Texas, the disc is drenched in the kind of grit…
Rodney Parker is sneakier than he looks. At Fort Worth’s Horseman Club, he and his band, 50 Peso Reward, looked like any number of other Texas country combos. A clean-cut singer in a polo shirt with a rough-hewn voice, Parker easily could have passed for a Pat Green or a…
Thankfully, Robert Gomez is a Texan. Why is this such a blessing? Were he from the UK, Gomez would be so overhyped that his first solo album, Etherville,couldn’t live up to the praise it deserves. Let the disc spin in your player for a full week until the effortlessly lush…
