Sometimes, an album just feels inevitable, like it was always out there, ready and willing, but so elusive it couldn’t be captured. When it arrives, finally, all you can do is listen to it again and again and wonder where it was all this time–lying dormant somewhere, playing hide-and-seek with…
For their latest pictures, independent-film mainstays the Coen Brothers and Sam Raimi have made an ulterior mission of resuscitating “real country music”: that rustic species of popular creative expression indigenous to the southern United States. Both movies, the Coens’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Raimi’s The Gift, utilize their…
Prevailing rockcrit wisdom posits Jon Spencer as rock’s pre-eminent postmodernist. Sure, he’s not as neon as Beck nor as conniving as Madonna, but he also doesn’t constantly evolve as visibly as either the whore or the mother and, ergo, is not as susceptible to the cataclysmic shifts of pop cult’s…
Gotta get this out of the way right now: Neither band gracing the stage February 27 at the Galaxy is worth much anymore. Don’t get me wrong: One used to be worth quite a lot, and the other used to be a good joke, but tonight, today, right now, Bratmobile…
It’s 2001: Do you know where Kathleen Hanna is? While Bikini Kill records have come to evoke that wincing feeling usually only experienced while reading old diary entries, the woman who gave the Sassy crowd a role model and Sharpie a second wind moved to New York a few years…
The difference was slight; it was supposed to be. Well, it wasn’t supposed to be anything–it just was. Matt and Bubba Kadane weren’t fooling themselves, and they certainly weren’t trying to fool anyone else. This was pretty much the same band. These were pretty much the same songs. This was…
Caithlin De Marrais is afraid she sounds like a dork. “You know how MTV has those shows that have little snippets of other music in it?” she sheepishly asks on the phone from her home in Connecticut. “Just recently, a song from our new album was on during the Top…
Years before Loretta Lynn finally signed with Audium/Koch and began recording Still Country, her first album in more than a decade, a series of personal tragedies had left her reeling. First, her son Jack drowned. Then her husband of almost 50 years, Oliver Mooney “Doolittle” Lynn, passed away. Soon after,…
Is it fun to point fingers? Abso-freaking-lutely. Is it right? Depends on who you ask. Is it a waste of time? Usually. So, while we have a fairly good idea of where the Trees-is-dead rumors started, we won’t name names. For a change. And yes, in case you’re still wondering,…
Long after the revolution became the soundtrack to commerce, “techno”–or whatever name one wants to give to noise made by man and his machines–remains the misunderstood music; what’s bleep-bleep-bleep to others is still blah-blah-blah to most. Even now, electronic music makes the top of the pops only when it’s packaged…
It’s perhaps the ultimate dilemma in art–once you successfully shake off the contrasts of your genre, effectively moving into the great unknown of the “avant-garde,” what the hell do you do next? If you continue to produce work that conforms to some accepted definition of “experimental”–one being followed by every…
Forget Zen–you don’t have to engage in obtuse intellectual gymnastics or wrestle with metaphysical riddles to be perfectly at ease with being in the now. Just ask Daniel Black, lead singer and guitarist for San Diego-based quartet The And/Ors. On the morning of the band’s kickoff show of its first-ever…
The Gossip has only one motivator when it comes to playing music: “We want you to dance. If you come to our show and you don’t, you should have stayed at home.” Any fame or notoriety the Searcy, Arkansas-born and Olympia, Washington-based trio gains will be “nah-ce,” as singer Beth…
Here’s the funny strange/funny haha moment of the week: As we began to work on this week’s column (read: woke up with our face on our keyboard and grabbed the nearest stack of papers in a clumsy and transparent attempt to look busy) we got a paper cut. A big…
On his new solo album, Karate frontman Geoff Farina asks the question burning heart-shaped holes in a hundred thousand indie-rockers’ ironically T-shirted chests: Can you rock without rocking? A good question, but I like his answer better: “Um, well, hell yeah.” Doesn’t sound like much, but I’m inclined to take…
The curse of the fetishistic rock fan is that one can never listen to something new without reflecting upon how it sounds so much like something old. The thrill of the discovery is shoved aside by the ache of stumbling, once more, across the fetid and familiar. You are forever…
After conquering America by selling more than 7 million copies of 1998’s Devil Without a Cause, the only question that remains about 30-year-old Detroit native Robert James Ritchie–that’s Kid Rock to you and me, and Bob to his pal Carson Daly–is not why you shouldn’t wretch at the sight of…
The only thing that attracts rock critics’ attention more than the promise of a free meal is an album by an unknown that comes fully stocked with Big Names From Other Bands; it’s a sure-fire promotional gimmick, the guarantee of coverage from folks who’d otherwise put the CD in the…
This Valentine’s Day is the one in which you’re really going to impress that special someone in your life. You’ve been, you know, kind of dating, but you’re not quite sure what the situation is between you two. Some unexpected but very welcome kisses have been exchanged, and you are…
Labor agitation doesn’t seem to end up in rioting, disturbing the peace, and threatening the security of the state the way it used to. Which is a shame really. The advent of the National Labor Relations Board and negotiations have taken the place of policemen bashing striking workers on the…
The man looks younger than his 64 years, sure, but not much. His hair is whiter now than the black-brown it used to be, and grandfatherly wire frames holding thick, bifocal lenses have replaced his signature black-framed glasses. It’s more a look in his eyes than the features around them…
One year ago next month, Denton’s Lift to Experience was scheduled to perform at Austin’s annual South By Southwest Music Festival. With much of the music industry in town for the week, it’s a stellar opportunity for bands to get exposure, if only they can get themselves on the right…
