Business is down in Deep Ellum. Heard around 30 percent from some, a little higher from others. Some clubs are doing better than others, of course, and some are just hoping to get through this. We’ve heard plenty of off-the-record stuff, plenty of conversations that end with “and you did…
The heart of hip-hop is in Billings, Montana. Really. Right now, at this moment, that’s exactly where it is. At a rest stop, to be precise, if you want to get technical. But don’t go looking for it, because by the time you get there, it’ll be long gone, back…
Dan Bejar needed a change or, at the very least, a break. Needed to get away from what he was doing, needed to get away from where he was doing it. He was born and raised (mostly) in Vancouver, spent his entire adult life there. And for most of that…
I was in Amsterdam cooking a stir-fry for a house full of people when I got the news about 2Pac. I stepped into the rest room for a moment. Midstream, one of my best friends started pounding on the door hollering, “Oh, my God, they shot Pac! They shot Pac!”…
Overseas, Ash would be touring in support of its recent best-of, Intergalactic Sonic 7″s, released in the U.K. in September. They’d be pushing their new single, “Envy” (also included on Intergalactic), which wonders what it would sound like if the Undertones heard the same symphony the Supremes did, with its…
Françoise Cactus and Brezel Göring weren’t exaggerating when they named their band Stereo Total: A French-German duo based in Berlin and given to collaborating with various other folks who pay for their records with euros, ST makes a version of cut-and-paste pop that doesn’t cut much, a spirited, surprisingly subtle…
The 21-year-old Baltimore kid who’s headlining this traveling tour of artists affiliated with the Bay Area electronic-music indie Tigerbeat6 calls himself Cex, and if you think that’s funny, you’ll love Tall, Dark, and Handcuffed, his new album. Like much of the stuff Tigerbeat6 releases, it’s a sometimes tacit, sometimes active…
Long-haired Arizona troubador Roger Clyne kicks off the title track of his latest album, Sonoran Hope and Madness, with a volley of fireworks–and a typical show from the Peacemakers, his sharp band of compadres, promises equally high spirits, with a sometimes irritatingly generous approach inherent in their life-affirming brio. The…
The Epoxies’ name is no misnomer. Just like glue, the Portland band’s new wave-meets-punk tunes get stuck in one’s head with their shredding guitars, bopping keyboards and the voice of female leader Roxy Epoxy, which shifts from Exene Cervenka growl to straight-forward Missing Persons-style singing to the mid-’80s hiccup emphasis…
On Hot Water Music’s latest album, Caution, the group shows a strange obsession with defeat, visiting again and again themes of falling and hitting the ground with a thud. Singer-guitarists Chuck Ragan and Chris Wollard (who are backed by bass player Jason Black and drummer George Rebelo) sing, “That a…
Conjuring a prototypical underage Saturday afternoon in the city, Arlo strains its sunshine-drenched power pop through a gritty colander of Gen-X smog, then magically regurgitates it as pure retro pleasure. Having mastered the arcane art of writing hooks hypnotic and muscular enough to charm a cobra, the Los Angeles band…
The new post-punk descends upon Denton. New York’s Ex Models have a new split EP out with the Seconds, a band that features one of the dudes from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs; the Models’ side is very fast and includes riffs that don’t leave much room for elaboration. Pretty Girls…
Peaches derives power from her follicles just as Samson did; it’s just that hers are shorter and curlier. Witness her self-directed video for “Set It Off,” which opens with the Carla-from-Cheers-looking rapper perched on a urinal: a Eurotart in pink undies and cheapo aviator sunglasses. She chants the song from…
On Tuesday, Interscope Records at long last released Nirvana, a 14-song best-of that features not only tracks from Bleach, Nevermind, In Utero and Unplugged, but the long-lost “You Know You’re Right.” The song, recorded almost a decade ago by Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl, had been tied up…
By the time The Fugs released their self-titled debut album in 1966, lead vocalist and lyricist Ed Sanders had already established Beatnik street cred as the heart and soul of the legendary NYC Peace Eye Bookstore in 1964, and two years earlier as the publisher of a prototypical Lower East…
Christy Darlington wishes he’d never gotten so many tattoos. Well, not really, but he knows they give people the wrong idea, especially women. The girls those tats attract think they’re getting a typical punk-rock boyfriend, he says, someone who can keep up with them, raise at least a little hell…
The acolyte will deride the obvious misses amid this collection of hits, among them “The Fly,” “Please,” “The Wanderer” and “Elevation,” at least the Tomb Raider remix that would have fit nicely on the wobbly dancefloor-bound Disc Two; the casual fan won’t even notice, since the casual fan skipped most…
Surprising to see No Doubt still hard at work behind Rock Steady, the surprisingly excellent album the surprisingly long-running Orange County outfit released nearly a year ago. Not because the record can’t support it–it could probably withstand two more singles, in fact–but because the disc suggested the band was more…
Trustworthy sources say Anglo-Brazilian producer Amon Tobin sells more records than any other Ninja Tune artist. What makes this factoid surprising is the sheer strangeness of Tobin’s music. Neither intended for chill-out rooms nor suitable for moving moneymakers, his tracks are the sonic analogue to Salvador Dali’s paintings: maniacally detailed,…
Well, I guess this is growing up. The Brooklyn-based fashionistas in Black Dice used to be Providence art-school noiseniks–I remember a brief 2000 disc on Troubleman Unlimited that sounded like a junkyard on fire–but their new Beaches & Canyons (issued via the super-hip NYC indie DFA Records) is an amorphous…
If Black Dice, Karate and k. are making northeast Texas a safe place for wizened college rockers this week, the perpetually adolescent among us need not feel abandoned: Shows by Sum 41 and Everclear and KEGL-FM’s Freakers Ball should provide safe havens for confused teens on the prowl for identity-rich…
They might be terrible dressers, they might have chosen a dreadful band name, they might even be friends with those dorks the Get Up Kids, but don’t let anyone tell you that Lawrence, Kansas, popsters the Anniversary aren’t crafty: Designing a Nervous Breakdown, the band’s tuneful 2000 debut, packed just…
