The Strokes will fade from glory, as will the popular resurgence in taste for garage rock–this much seems inevitable. (Doesn’t it? Or can we look forward to a future in which Barbra Streisand gets called out of retirement to sing Mitch Ryder tunes? And Liza Minnelli has the Hives play…
When Lewis was named Best New Act in the 1999 Dallas Observer Music Awards, the band was so new that the joke around the office was, “Lewis who?” The quartet had recently moved to Dallas from College Station where three members earned degrees from Texas A&M University. But then things…
What burbles through the veins of the online underground soon enough spills out into the mainstream; by the time The New York Times comes sniffing around, the cutting edge has dulled and the trend has outlived its expiration date. Yesterday’s Brand New Thing is today’s pale and bloodless fad, like…
I got an e-mail from Chris Holt, lead singer-guitarist of Olospo, a few days ago, at the very unrock-starish hour of 7:31 a.m. He was responding to my request for some lyrics and a set list. “Can’t wait to read your article, as long as it doesn’t say anything about…
Even the loosest, freest musical movements need standard-bearers, those few acts whose rigorous work ethic keeps the younger whelps in line. And so it was that Widespread Panic, one of the earliest groups to build a dedicated performance-based following upon the demise of the Grateful Dead, became the quintessential Jam…
Multiple-choice time. Recently, the following words were uttered: “Ain’t no way that SPM can be a human being.” Who said them? a. the prosecutor during SPM’s molestation case b. a disgusted juror on that same case c. a pissed-off grandmother after hearing about the case on the news d. none…
Maybe 11 or 12 years ago I saw Social Distortion with my dad at an outdoor summer-themed concert series in Little Rock, where I grew up. Seeing Social Distortion with your dad is weird, but I guess I was too young to go alone or he was too old to…
You know indie rock’s begun its slide into respectability (or calcification) when its front people start tossing out solo albums like guitar picks. Recent discs by Modest Mouse singer Isaac Brock and former Archer of Loaf Eric Bachmann have straddled the divide between essential slacker-guy pathos and superfluous minor-key mewing,…
Surprisingly, the Brooklyn duo I Am the World Trade Center isn’t the only outfit in the indie-rock underground where the boyfriend plays dinky synth-pop on a computer and the girlfriend sings anodyne melodies in a voice that’s supposed to humanize machine music. The California band Her Space Holiday functions in…
We could ignore this, move on to something else for 800 or so words, make everyone happy. There are other things we could talk about. Say, Vanilla Ice (or V-Ice, as Robbie Van Winkle now refers to himself) and his new double-disc set, Bi-Polar, which finds him teamed up again…
The most difficult thing about making an utterly sublime album is the (sometimes insurmountable) task of making the next one. Doves have a lot to live up to with their newest release, The Last Broadcast, coming as it does on the heels of 2000’s Lost Souls, a near masterpiece of…
Each week musicians drag out their friends, family and co-workers to see them play new-band showcases where the drink specials are the real draw (and often stronger than anything seen onstage). They hope one day they’ll play to more than a handful of familiar faces and some disinterested drinkers. Maybe…
High on Fire just might be the most overhyped indie metal band in the world. Spin called it one of the top five bands to watch for, Alternative Press gave its debut album, 2000’s The Art of Self-Defense, five stars, and several critics placed it in their year-end top-10 lists…
For the third weekend in a row, a local radio station throws its annual summer shindig, a pledge drive disguised as a present to the fans, a bash studded with stars and loaded with favors. As in, X will play your concert if you start spinning Y’s record. That kind…
Romantic to some, maybe: “It’s painful to observe him looking at your curls/It’s sorry to be me, sad to be a churl.” That’s about as amorous as Luna front man Dean Wareham gets on Romantica, his band’s sixth album of shimmering, downbeat guitar-pop. If you’re familiar with the detached personality…
I freaking love this band, and there’s not much more to say. Thank God for whatever it was that got Beth Ditto, Nathan Howdeshell and Kathy Mendonca out of Searcy, Arkansas. House shows with The Gossip are among the finer things in Olympia life, along with Oly stubbies and the…
Didn’t take long for neo-soul or whatever you wanna call it–Raphael Saadiq prefers “gospeldelic,” it seems–to become another ghetto, another programming block on MTV, another marketing tool, a sticker on a jewel case, a recommended-if-you-like shrug. Even an album title, judging from former Tony Toni Toné singer Saadiq’s solo debut…
Everything in his little patch of Texas was blooming except for those high skinny weeds, and Darden Smith couldn’t decide what to do about it. The Austin-based songwriter had had a plan for his back yard, once upon a time. The earth between his house and his home studio had…
The building at 508 Park Avenue isn’t much of one, just a shell, really, not that different from the dozens of other abandoned husks cluttering downtown Dallas. It’s still worth plenty to the Glazer family (whose main concern is Glazer’s Distributors, a major food and beverage supplier), owners of the…
With the music he composed for last year’s John Travolta techno-clunker Swordfish, trance titan Paul Oakenfold confused the idea of composing a soundtrack with actually replicating the crashes and explosions crucial to any big-budget action flick. The resultant album was music-as-extreme sport, the bloodless electronic rush of trance married to…
Nü metal is pretty patently the mainstream now; the charts are full of Stainds, Nickelbacks, Disturbeds and other bands for whom personal torment and societal persecution aren’t just the potential results of lifestyle choices but ideal states of being, conditions to be prized and fetishized. In our accelerated consumer culture,…
Not to get all George W. on your ass, but how come one of the most exciting English-speaking rock bands currently capturing American hearts is from Sweden? I thought the Strokes were supposed to be a reminder of our knack for empty calories–the Hives just plow over the Fab Five…
