A new attitude Walter T. Smith ambersunshower Gee Street Records God knows what’s taken so long, but contemporary R&B is slowly taking a turn for the better. This overlooked album follows the examples set by Erykah Badu, Me’Shell Ndegocello, and Maxwell, a new wave that is putting the soul back…
The President of the United States of Love When the Beatles said, “All you need is love,” they obviously hadn’t seen the dark side of that emotion–the side that can plant you on your couch in a bathrobe for weeks at a time, wondering what went wrong. The side that…
Not just an opening act A year or two ago, while freelancing for The Dallas Morning News, I reviewed a show that featured Maze and some hot diva-of-the-moment–I believe it was Whitney Houston–and I expressed a bit of irritation with the fact that the bill had been reversed from its…
Gaze into skies unseen Abandinallhope Mazinga Phaser Idol Records “All I can see in this beautiful dream/Is circles of light and they’re floating around on me,” sings Mazinga Phaser’s Jessica Nelson on “A Diamond in Shrink Wrap,” the opening song on the band’s new album Abandinallhope, and at first blush…
Amid a flurry of rumors, it has finally been confirmed that the Sons of Hermann membership will be taking a more active role in the booking of their facility, the popular Sons of Hermann Hall. In a move bound to decrease longtime booker Mike Snider’s access to the venue, more…
Guitars used to be less giving than they are now. Today, stacked amps and store-bought effects can help you make a great and passionate din, while in olden times you actually had to know how to play one in order to do that. Those were the days that forged Denny…
No chaser required Straight Up With a Twist Kitty Margolis Mad-Kat Records Kitty Margolis has got the goods–a strong, blunt voice, perfect pitch, a fine sense of swing, and terrific scatting chops–but there are plenty of singers who’ve got the goods and don’t know what to do with them. Margolis…
The world of hip-hop is an immensely competitive battle for the spotlight, where artists have the life spans of a dealer on the streets–sometimes literally. It is, in fact, the same street game many were born into, just taken to a higher level. A rapper can kill or be killed…
The Nixons The Nixons MCA Records Imagine an Orwellian world where any use of your imagination is banned and music has been stripped of any vestige of melody or originality. In such a world, bands like the Nixons would land a sponsorship deal from Big Brother. Never critics’ darlings, the…
It doesn’t look like much now–just another run-down building in a neighborhood gone to seed, where flat-black burglar bars seem to have spread across doors and windows like mildew, and by noon clots of the glassy-eyed have staked out the favorable corners, bag-wrapped brown bottles at their feet. Windows in…
The Fat of the Land Prodigy Maverick Records There’s been a lot of backlash against electronica lately, but that doesn’t seem to be the case at the magazine counter this month–Prodigy frontman Keith Flint’s mug is all over the place, leering out from even the mighty Rolling Stone. Ironically, in…
History abounds with the sort of mythical real estate that inspires song: Oz, Atlantis, heaven and hell, even Atlantic City. Unto each has been written some form of musical tribute or another, from the dope-heavy “Way down below the ocean” stanza during Donovan’s “Atlantis” to countless evocations of Paradise and…
Jimmy Webb, the man who wrote one of the greatest songs of all time, does not know when he will be able to write again. He wants to–“with a vengeance,” he insists–but he’s afraid he might not have it in him right now. Webb has spent so long writing a…
Although Athens-based Vigilantes of Love leader Bill Mallonee says that his musical goal is “Bible study that rocks,” don’t lump VOL in with the tepid majority of contemporary Christian rock. For one thing, Mallonee usually has his tongue slightly in cheek and a sly grin on his face when he…
Leave it to the man who wrote a song called “I’m Sorry I Killed You”–mainly “’cause now I am in jail,” although the protagonist (if that’s the right word) finds some solace at making goo-goo eyes at the victim’s underage sister–to pick up and get on with his life. The…
Wade in the water Selections 1976-1988 Sweet Honey in the Rock Flying Fish/Rounder Records Gospel Oak Sinead O’Connor EMI and/or Capitol Records Nowadays it seems that all you need is a city or church name in front of the words “Mass Choir” in order to put out an album, but…
Buck Jones would make a good subject for a rock ‘n’ roll fable as cast by O. Henry: Genie grants struggling young band a wish–say, a mention in some major publication–and a couple of months later, they’re still sitting around the garage. Nobody new seems to know about them, and…
Local harpist Cindy Horstman–classically trained but possessing a yen for taking her instrument into the realm of jazz and blues–has just released a new album, Tutone, that’s primarily duets with her longtime bassist and producer, Mike Medina. “We play together so much, we thought we’d just release an album that…
Gone so long Didja Miss Me John Nitzinger ITR Records It’s always been a mystery to me why John Nitzinger wasn’t as big as Stevie Ray Vaughan. After all, comparisons abound: They were classmates during the golden age of bad-ass North Texas white boy guitarists–along with Jimmie Vaughan, Bugs Henderson,…
Updating the mainstream Perhaps it’s just a sign of the times (impending millennium sows seeds of divisiveness everywhere, etc.), but reggae music is animated by a tension between old and new every bit as vital as the one Western pop is currently experiencing via the much-ballyhooed electronica wave. In the…
It would seem to say a lot about the strength of the British music renaissance led by Blur and Oasis that a band like Bush, monstrously huge in America, is almost overlooked in England. After years of having American this and Yankee that shoved down their throats, the Brits tend…
The king of soca Calypso–laden as it is with intimations of day-o, the limbo, and un-cola nuts–is one of the few musical forms that can credit its genesis to fuel oil. With roots in the rhythmic patterns and music of the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, calypso’s antecedents were forbidden…
