Willis Alan Ramsey is the most reluctant and least likely of Texas singer-songwriters. With the requisite three names (the calling card of most Texas singer-songwriters, from Townes Van Zandt to Robert Earl Keen, and, of course, serial killers), the dashing looks, the heroic narratives, and the memorable songs that became…
Ten years and three months after his death, Stevie Ray Vaughan releases yet another disc–three, actually, plus a bonus DVD of unreleased Austin City Limits performances, as this long-awaited boxed set finally arrives a year later than promised. For those keeping score, SRV makes 12 albums that Sony has released…
The Rock*A*Teens’ latest album, Sweet Bird of Youth, opens with “Car and Driver,” a deceptively sweet tale that, soon enough, turns into a warning pilfered from the Roxichord-loving loins of Sam Coomes. The organ jaunts along, covering melody and bass, with drums beating a soft path through a lane of…
k.d. lang: There are several good reasons to make the trek to downtown Fort Worth to catch k.d. lang, chief among them the ideal merging of artist and venue: Her sumptuous vocal artistry fits perfectly and warmly inside the acoustic flawlessness of Bass Performance Hall, like your daughter’s hand in…
Might wanna stay home for this, only because the floor might get a little sticky around last call, and not because some tourist from Plano spilled his Bacardi and Coke. “I want people to make love to this” album, says Guru in the liner notes to his latest, Jazzmatazz Vol…
Le Shok: While tight pants and white belts have become the leisure suit for the ’00s, San Diego’s Le Shok has taken the all-looks-no-hooks philosophy to new heights. Featuring Locust keyboardist Joseph Karam on drums, the fivesome has attracted that band’s prissy, pretentious, and style-conscious following, despite making music less…
Of these two discs–both from would-be Becks from south of the border–Plastilina Mosh’s sophomore release, Juan Manuel, is the better, mostly because it’s more of a live-band thing than band-in-a-box product. “Boombox Baby,” the record’s second track, is its best: bubblegum bass, chicken-scratch guitar, lemon-meringue synth. Its tongue barely fits…
Merle Haggard is contemplating quitting country music, and it’s your fault. The 63-year-old Haggard isn’t ready to walk away just yet. In fact, he’s about to embark on a two-month national tour to promote his biggest recording in more than a decade. Yet Haggard, if anything, is a realist. A…
I’ve interviewed Cypress Hill four times, but on each occasion, Muggs, the DJ/architect of the rap act’s sound, was conspicuously absent. It’s not that he’s shy, or hates reporters, or wants to maintain a low, mysterious profile. It’s just that he has better things to do. Like make records. He’s…
By now, the story is familiar. Steve Earle, a more-than-promising Nashville record-maker on the verge of major stardom, ends up in the Gray-Bar Hotel after burning out on drugs. Then comes the artistic rebirth: an acoustic disc, followed by small-label releases focusing on a tight Americana sound, followed by an…
In case you haven’t heard, and unless you hang out on The Toadies’ Web site (www.thetoadies.com) you probably haven’t, Interscope Records has finally set a release date for Hell Below, Stars Above, the band’s second album for the label and first since 1994’s Rubberneck. (Yes, yes–it’s been a while; no…
Both of these acts belong in a rock-and-roll museum–Bono’s fly specs and Liam’s eyebrow, preserved in amber behind Plexiglas (most of Oasis’ riffs are already sealed and on display, under the Beatles’ exhibit). They belong to another era, a time when it was possible to be a superstar for more…
By the time this goes to print, we’ll have a new president. For the sake of pop music, let’s hope that my requisite college-girl vote for Ralph Nader serves to place George W. Bush in office and get a band such as Rainer Maria out of sight. The Madison, Wis.,…
Though their résumés read differently–ex-shoegazers from England at one end, erstwhile alt-country bard from Massachusetts on the other–both Mojave 3 and Joe Pernice have found an auburn redemption in the strummy elixir of Big Star-styled pop. Excuses for Travellers, ex-Slowdive front man Neil Halstead’s third album of lazy, free-floating rehab-core,…
Bobby Glenn Calverley would have turned 46 next month, on December 29, but there will be no birthday party. Instead, on November 5 at Bar of Soap, there will be a wake: Last week, Bobby died of liver failure. At 2 a.m. on October 23, the doctors at Baylor University…
Call me lazy, shiftless, whatever you want. You’re right. For once, God almighty, you’re right. These records should have been reviewed before now, before the bands that made them moved onto something else. So, save your letters. You don’t agree with my feelings about these eight records, write about that…
You gotta hand it to Matt Gunter; the kid’s persistent. After working with Jeff Liles and his HEIRESS-aesthetic Records label on the Static Orange project–a double-disc set of local groups that was available free with the purchase of any other local album at area record stores–Gunter jumped right back into…
“I’m sick of looking at the inside of space stations/Time for Deltron to take a vacation,” rhymes Deltron Zero, exasperated and desperate for a breath of fresh blunt. Who can blame him? He, the Cantankerous Captain Aptos, and Skiznod the Boy Wonder have been cooped up in a flying saucer…
I have seen the future of pop music, and its name is Robbie Williams. …is I guess what we’re supposed to say after wading through this 50-minute valentine from Williams to himself, but Lordy, how it do fall flat. It might be taken as parody, I suppose, a kind of…
Melt-Banana; 90 Day Men, Black Heart Procession: Although everyone is talking about Chicago these days, if you’re looking for the best in American rock, a better starting point would be Tokyo, home of Melt-Banana, an act that exceeds the expectations of any devotee of noisy, grinding, chaotic, post-hardcore. Their newest…
Tom Tom Club: I’ve always had a thing for smart people making dumb music. Not like Weird Al Yankovic (smart person making smart music) or Britney Spears (smart mom making dumb daughter make dumb music), but like Devo, where half the show is finding out where the show starts. Or…
Thoughts of birds and whatever cloud my brain. I can see some through the window, which I guess explains it, but mostly I’m thinking that Iceland, I bet, looks nothing like Texas. The birds are getting to my brain through my ears, and they’re getting there through my headphones, which…
