By the time you read this, the 2004 Dallas Observer Music Awards ceremony will be over. So I’d like to use this space to offer an apology. Dear INSERT YOUR NAME HERE, I’m sorry I… a) spilled your drink. b) dissed your band. c) ashed on your baby’s head. I…
Way back in 1917, an obscure musician credited as one of the fathers of electronica wrote that “the raw material of music is sound.” Edgar Varese’s statement was tossed off as musical heresy, right along with the theremin (also invented in 1917), one of the first instruments to operate on…
At their Boston show last week, the outfit worn by Psychedelic Furs front man Richard Butler–a chunky beaded necklace, dapper suit and secret-agent sunglasses–embodied his band’s descent into glossy rock purgatory. Formed in 1977, the Furs’ early albums were shadowy hurricanes of post-punk rebellion. Butler’s tar-smeared vocals matched the group’s…
It’s been a few years since the world has heard Bob Schneider–on album, at least. The clubs are another story. Schneider may be one of the hardest-working men in the music biz. And that should work to his favor, because it takes seeing the guy live to appreciate his spastic…
I’ll admit it: Tendril was one of those bands I always saw listed in club schedules but never saw. Well, sometimes I saw them packing up their gear as they left the stage before another band played. Sometimes I heard the last song or two. But it took someone booking…
Wherefore art thou, Elephant 6? Just a handful of years ago you couldn’t tune into an American college radio station without drowning in the paisley poesy churned out by this loose collective of indie-popsters; bands like Athens’ psychedelic collagists Olivia Tremor Control and Denver’s supermelodic strummers Apples in Stereo imagined…
It’s easy to imagine curly-haired Canadian Ron Sexsmith writing and recording little neoclassical-pop masterpieces for the rest of his life, long after the modest critical and commercial rewards he’s won have faded. His songs sport hooks within hooks, highlight his slightly pinched regular-schlub voice and come wrapped in the kind…
Rough week at work? Kids (or parents) yelling at you? Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind break your brain? Head to Gypsy Tea Room on Monday night, where these two singer/songwriters will be gingerly strumming their acoustic guitars and trying to soothe their own bottomless aches–but in a nice sort…
Liars guitarist Aaron Hemphill has a bone to pick. No, not with Spin, which called the band’s second record, They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, “unlistenable.” And not with the folks who have walked out of the band’s recent shows–them he has no problem with. It’s just that people have…
On Tuesday, April 13, at the Gypsy Tea Room, we’ll announce the winners of the 2004 Dallas Observer Music Awards. It will be the end of a long road, one that began late last November. I’ll never forget my words on that day. “Screw you. I’m not doing some effing…
It’s so easy to laugh at metalheads, because it’s so hard for us metalheads to laugh at ourselves. You’d think a genre that came of age in a codpiece, that once rocked bangs high enough to imperil aircraft would inherently have a well-developed sense of humor. But alas, headbangers are…
Last week, the Good Records Web site carried the following notice: “For four years we have had the pleasure to meet many of you on our journey to a new adventure in listening. We have been proud to bring our vision of a record store to the people of Dallas…
These scruffy Scottish lads understand that the gentle, Belle & Sebastian-like folk-pop on their first two albums tends to be a bigger hit with critics than with folks who actually purchase CDs at record stores. So for Final Straw, their hit-at-home third, they’ve muscled up their sound so it lands…
“Float On,” the latest single by Modest Mouse, is so exciting that it could be the indie-rock answer to OutKast’s “Hey Ya!” Catchy, playful guitar lines lift cheery lyrics into this danceable contender for song of the year, complete with the happiest shout-along to ever grace a Modest Mouse song…
A CD not to think about but to groove on and on and on. King of the stoned age Josh Homme, kickin’ it behind the drum kit on this side project’s side project, wouldn’t have it any other way. If his Queens of the Stone Age exists for the pothead…
Time is the best measure of an artwork’s success: Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in 1853 and became a cause célèbre; Moby Dick sank without a trace two years before that, but we all know which is on the syllabus these days. Perhaps it’s still too soon to tell, really,…
I’m part of a small group of music fans holding out hope that someday, 10,000 Hz Legend will be recognized as the overlooked masterpiece that it so obviously is. The second proper album by chilled-out French keyboard maestros Air, Legend is a darker, weirder piece of work than the duo’s…
Some of us remember when rap music sounded and looked dangerous, when even grade-school kids could hear those old Rick Rubin beats and Busy Bee rhymes and say, “What the hell is this?” The dinosaurs who roamed that earth were former gang bangers and hoods from the nastiest, funkiest, most…
“This goes out to you, Denton!” yelled Fishboy drummer Winston Slapbracelet, leaping from his kit and stabbing one drumstick into the ground. “You! You! You!” he repeated with each thrust, pummeling the dirt into a wet, grassy clump. It was 1 p.m., and WakeUp ’04 was off to a wonderfully…
First, the bewilderment: Another Who best-of? That’s nine by my unscientific count, including 2002’s MCA-released double-disc Ultimate Collection, which, apparently, wasn’t. Then and Now! contains a scant 20 tracks, exactly half from the 1960s; only one from the 1980s, “You Better You Bet,” which wasn’t even the best song on…
A person has to be fairly out-there to be too wacky for the Beta Band, the Scottish group prone to wearing flowing togas while crafting psychedelia fit for a pastoral bank holiday. Yet Gordon Anderson, a.k.a. the Lone Pigeon, a.k.a. one of the Beta Band’s founders, left the group because…
The Theater Fire’s eponymous, full-length debut is like an old record found at the bottom of a flea-market stack, jacket yellowed at the corners, vinyl scuffed with wear and smelling of mystery. It’s hard not to compare this Fort Worth septet–that’s right, seven people–to something archaic. There is mandolin, banjo,…
