On Sunday, July 25, a 44-year-old father took his two teenage daughters to an Old 97’s show at the Gypsy Tea Room. He left on a stretcher and may not walk again. What happened in between is uncertain. Around 12:20 a.m. Monday, as concertgoers exited the show, an altercation occurred…
This week’s Deep Friday (eight clubs for eight clams!) features not-long-for-this-town popsters Mur at the Gypsy Tea Room, playing with the Mermaid Purse and Monsters and Dust. Mur front man Max Hartman reports that the band may be joined onstage by the excellent, genre-busting string quartet Neo Camerata. If you…
Tanya Donelly’s done time as a Throwing Muse and a Breeder, and as the front woman of her successful alt-pop power trio Belly; basically, if you need someone to score the introspective documentary you’re making about growing up as an intelligent young woman in a world not made for them,…
Two years ago, the campy New York-based quintet Scissor Sisters took Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” to the dance floor, shoved the prog rock chestnut in a box and sent it express-bound for Bee Gees country. Though fans of the group lumped them into the electroclash scene, they wisely avoided becoming…
The Fiery Furnaces made their debut in 2003 with the mesmerizing Gallowsbird’s Bark, which promptly slipped through the cracks before regaining steam earlier this year. Lead singer Eleanor Friedberger’s nonsensical prattle sizzled atop eruptions of chortling twin guitars, epileptic piano and pumping synth. But on Blueberry Boat, Friedberger and her…
Long before Ozzy Osbourne degenerated into an unwitting “Say No to Drugs” poster child, he was the haunting lead singer in one of the most super-heavy bands of all time. As the liner notes in this handsome eight-CD/one-DVD box set attest, early Black Sabbath influenced every major metal band of…
Tim McGraw’s Saturday-night concert at Smirnoff Music Centre felt more like a circus act than a country show. Besides the midget in an orange furry hat, the 6-foot-5 black rapping cowboy and what appeared to be a country mosh pit forming down front, there was also “Big” Kenny Alphin of…
At long last, after you’ve burned and booted CD-R transfers of scratchy-hissy vinyl copies kept on shelves long after the record player was put into cold storage, this essential twofer makes its digital debut. It doesn’t matter how much you love that Franz Ferdinand hit single, which you still can’t…
After you get a load of the Dicks With Attitude Tour–or Ozzfest, as it’s also known–head to the Gypsy Tea Room on Wednesday night for a counteracting dose of these ladies’ respective mojos. Liz Phair didn’t quite muster the high-gloss sheen of her self-titled disc on tour earlier this year,…
The Court and Spark has long been shoehorned into the alt-country pigeonhole, but the band tweaks that equation by submerging its songs in icy washes of atmosphere. As waves of pedal steel, banjo, brass and mandolin wax and wane, guitars bob through the ether on upsurges of echo and reverb…
After nearly 13 years of almost nonstop rocking and touring, Clutch has yet to repeat itself. The Maryland-based outfit continues to put out creative, unpredictable music pulling from influences such as Led Zeppelin, the Who, John Coltrane and Chuck D. From the aggro-hop of Transnational Speedway League to the spacey,…
These Canadian alt-country vets put into practice one of that scene’s most worthwhile suppositions: that there’s fertile creative territory to be tilled by mating vintage country’s twang with more modern sounds. In the Junkies’ case, it’s the slurred, appropriately druggy atmospherics of the Velvet Underground; the cover of “Sweet Jane”…
The Velvet Teen practices in a shack. The shack, which sits in the shade of a large, leafy tree, is made of long white planks covered in fuzzy, sea-green moss. Located a couple of dozen feet off the highway, next to the home of bassist Joshua Staples’ parents in Petaluma,…
I live the High Fidelity life–donning Cons and working in an independent record store–and I can tell you that Nick Hornby’s book (and the film it inspired) sums up the music-clerk world with painful accuracy. We are geeks. We collect, covet, champion and condemn music. Even worse, we do so…
Lower Greenville isn’t exactly the classiest stretch of road in the city. All those skanky neon signs and dark alleyways, the clubs that reek of back-room drug deals. There are a few bright spots, like the Cavern, with its chatty bartenders and cozy upstairs lounge, but Taco Cabana probably calls…
Christmas morning, 1978: My brother rips open his final present to find exactly what he wanted–a newfangled chemistry set. Later, bathroom pipes will mysteriously explode. July 29, Gypsy Tea Room: Dallas band The Chemistry Set holds a CD release for its self-titled album, a lovely little CD of catchy, ethereal…
This summer do your part to reverse the tide of American cultural imperialism: Buy this young Welsh screamo band’s full-length debut and blast it the next time you feel like allowing Linkin Park to soothe the pain caused by your mom’s not getting the breakfast cereal you really wanted. The…
“Everybody, it don’t matter where you come from…we’re all just a bunch of longhaired, tattooed, hippie freaks,” Matt Hilyer boasts early in Eleven Hundred Springs’ latest album, but the attempt to unite all of the world’s downtrodden into a white trash stereotype makes Bandwagon’s dedication to straightforward, old-fashioned country all…
Sometimes in order to move forward, you have to step back. Shying away from the cracked, free-form jams of their previous album, 2002’s Phrenology, the Roots return to the more traditional boom-bap-cum-Native Tongues aesthetic of their previous work on The Tipping Point, especially on tracks such as “Stay Cool” and…
Though I was late to Double Wide on Thursday night, I caught enough of Dallas band Heaven Is a Hotel to appreciate its discordant, Fugazi-appreciative rock. Bassist Gavan Nelson carried the trio’s musical load by playing more notes than the bassists from Ned’s Atomic Dustbin combined, but he displayed enough…
History may have a bad memory, but not Ian McLagan. In the last five years, the former Faces keybs man has compiled one standard-ish best-of (Good Boys…When They’re Asleep, for Rhino), penned his randy-dandy autobio (All the Rage, without a drop of it) and, finally, mashed together the damned-near best…
If you like Pleasant Grove, then you’ll love Milton Mapes and Magnolia Summer! Lord help me if some marketing company actually steals that line for a press quote, but cheesiness aside, it’s an accurate recommendation that you can take advantage of at Barley House. Austin’s Milton Mapes smothers a plate…
