African-American pop’s had a wild ride over the past two years. In the Top 40 division, business is booming: Destiny’s Child has virtually remade the best-seller list in its image, selling more records than Jesus and becoming more popular than the Beatles (or whatever). And it’s no accident: Whether or…
Soul brothers can’t win for losing. While sisters can share the throne–there seems to be plenty of room at the top for Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, Macy Gray, Mary J. Blige and even rising divas like Mya–in the guy’s court, as in the Highlander series, there’s only room for one…
For no small portion of North Texas music fans, the sound is unmistakable. The soulful electric piano runs, the swinging hi-hat rustle, the strolling bass line. The three intertwine to form the opening salvoes of “Manitou Inclined,” the fiery first track on the new Earl Harvin Trio album Unincorporated on…
Norah Jones, an unknown for now, came this close to landing a gig on tonight’s Late Show with David Letterman and canceling this interview. A guest on the August 27 show had backed out, and Jones’ name, unfamiliar to all but those who’ve heard her play piano and sing in…
Being blessed an alt-country songstress must be as endlessly tiresome as being Cher’s plastic surgeon. You have to compete with gusto as genuine as the impossibly bewitching Neko Case and pop-country schmaltz like 2001 Best New Artist Grammy winner I Am Shelby Lynne (and I’ve been around since 1989). No…
On John Vanderslice’s second LP, Time Travel Is Lonely, printed lyrics have been replaced with a series of handwritten letters from Jesse, our strange protagonist who is trapped in Antarctica, lost without GPS coordinates or Internet access. After a few listens, it becomes clear that each of these lonely and…
Some things never go out of style, and if the recent fracas stirred up by the “how to prepare a kitty” mpeg on the Internet is any indication, Pavlovian revulsion is one thing that’s here to stay. Of course, people who get riled up over such detritus usually aren’t any…
If you remember, a year or so ago, we told you about John Freeman and a few other local types doing voices for the wildly popular Dragonball Z anime cartoon show for Cartoon Network. Now, it seems that even more area musicians are making appearances on Dragonball, the precursor to…
Bob Dylan’s last studio album, 1997’s Time Out of Mind, was about as much fun as a eulogy. With its songs of remorse and regret, with its plaints of begged-for salvation and yearned-for deliverance, that collection sounded like a last will and testament–a big adios from the jokerman in pancake…
In March, the four members of the Toadies–Todd Lewis, Lisa Umbarger, Clark Vogeler and Mark Reznicek–sat around a table at a Lakewood Italian restaurant to celebrate the impending release of the band’s second album. They were giddy with anticipation, a welcome relief after so many months–years, actually–of not knowing whether…
James Mercer, a quiet, soft-spoken guy from Albuquerque, New Mexico, is helping save the music he loves best. He’d probably never tell you that, even if you decided you wouldn’t hate him if he did (which you really couldn’t do once you talked to him anyway). But take a listen…
We’ve never met Jim Heath, whom many of you know as the Reverend Horton Heat. Or the Rev, maybe, if you’re tight with him. Heath has called us a few times to express his, um, extreme disappointment with our treatment of his and his band’s recent efforts, but no, we’ve…
As the reasonably dependable member of the fourth estate I take myself for–shit, Dubya sucks–I can see the merit in two recent descriptions of the new Chicago band Owls. One, from the band’s Delaware-based record label, Jade Tree Records, calls the band its town’s “newest art-funk post-rock groove outfit.” Because…
Kool Keith should never worry about finding his niche in a hip-hop world obsessed with marketing and gimmicks, because he’s got the market cornered on total insanity. We’re talking the sort of blue material that sounds like Blowfly and Redd Foxx getting together to tag team Millie Jackson, or Ishmael…
To your average rock-and-roll fan there is no discernible difference between the Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync–or any other teen-pop outfit for that matter. They’re all a bunch of skinny, middle-class white kids–even though a few have ethnic-sounding names–who shake their lithe and limber bodies to canned synth-pop while singing…
Ever seen a lanky man walk onstage wearing nothing but a pair of corduroy jeans, a battered straw cowboy hat, boots, the lines of a bra on his chest and a handlebar mustache over his lip crudely scrawled in Magic Marker? If you ever caught the Cows during their most…
A snare-cymbal clash fades in to join two guitars–one a simple bass line, the other a recognizable tone of warm distortion sparked by awkwardly picked chords. Over it, an unfamiliar voice breathes some familiarly elliptical lyrics: “Tortured statues someone once held up to the sky/The silver trees and weathervanes mark…
By all counts, Björk albums should be commercial disasters. Her lyrics make little sense to the outside world, and she’s known to invite listeners into the depths of her mind. (She also doesn’t care one bit about the repercussions of dressing like a swan, but that’s beside the point.) On…
The rumors have been floating around since late July, but now they can be confirmed: The Toadies have broken up. Singer-guitarist Todd Lewis called the Dallas Observer late Wednesday afternoon to deliver the official word, saying the decision was made on the bands last tour, when bassist Lisa Umbarger told…
Eleven Hundred Springs doesn’t look like your average country band. Obviously. Clearly. They’ve all spent plenty of time in tattoo parlors, and not just for the pleasant conversation. A couple of them have long hair. In a rock club, they’d blend in; they’d be camouflaged. But they’re five sore thumbs…
Andrew Kenny has a problem, and he isn’t ashamed to admit it: He likes long songs. Songs so long they seem to have no end. Songs so long they bleed onto other bands’ records. “Once we got something that we liked,” says the singer, guitarist and principal songwriter in the…
Townes Van Zandt died January 1, 1997, his heart betraying him as he lay in the Tennessee night recovering from back surgery. Only the romantic and the fool would suggest that’s when the man would have wanted to go, but maybe it was appropriate: He was spared the pain of…
