There are two ways in which one can be offensive: One is by causing a disturbance in a way that targets vulnerable people, and the other is by causing a disturbance in a way that targets power. Truly constructive and historically exonerated offensiveness is achieved with an implicit understanding of…
When Dierks Bentley was in Dallas just last year, he turned Dos Equis Pavilion inside out, entertaining a rowdy group of fans, the same kind of loyal followers who helped make the country artist a star with multiple No. 1 hits spread out over nine successful albums. Now, as he…
For 9-year-old Dave Walser, the inspiration that would propel him through the next 55 years seemed to strike out of nowhere. As a boy living in West Texas, Walser was still learning to play the guitar but had mainly been learning the traditional folk and bluegrass songs his parents and…
Coming up with an idea is not the same as devising a plan, executing it and bringing it to fruition. When Dallas hip-hop artist and entrepreneur Mozez Tha Great has an idea, he sees it through. A year ago, we spoke with him about the first I Am Dallas Hip…
Since exorcising some of his demons and getting clean on his 2017 sophomore album Corners, Dallas-based singer-songwriter Dalton Domino has recently had more things go right than wrong in his life. Domino has lost two bands, suffered a relapse and gone back into treatment, but he still says his life…
With a catalog as diverse as Beck’s, with its broad range of emotions from manic to maudlin, it was hard to predict the set that Dallas would receive this past Saturday night. With tour mates Cage the Elephant and special guests Wild Belle and Spoon attached to the bill, however,…
On Friday night, I was on assignment for a concert review at Toyota Music Factory, where Third Eye Blind, Jimmy Eat World and Ra Ra Riot performed. A fellow Dallas Observer music writer, Chelsey Norris, happened to be among the 8,000 people in the crowd, after which we conversed about…
There are plenty of top-dollar shows this week, but about half of them on this list are free. The “Spontaneous Song Generator” Paul Slavens will be doing his thing in Denton on Monday. On Tuesday, you can hop over to The Free Man Cajun Cafe & Lounge to see the small-band…
Frank Iero is a man of many names. Band names, that is. The former My Chemical Romance guitarist has always dabbled in side projects, even in the band’s heyday. But since the emo icons went their separate ways in 2013, Iero has been going at it alone. “I never set…
For this week’s batch of announcements, our area will receive a return visit from a local Grammy winner along with drop-ins from some punk veterans, soulful female singers and a couple of singer-songwriters. Read on for the details. News came in late last week that Texas native and Grammy Award-winning…
After a string of renovations and soft re-openings earlier this year, Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios is poised to ring in a new era for Denton’s creative scene. With more than just concerts on the books these days, the club is undergoing an identity change under the ownership of a retired…
In between jokes about raucous rock orgies, memories of “mystical,” mushroom-fueled adventures and stories about onstage “fuck-ups,” the men of Kyoto Lo-Fi reflect on the peaks and valleys of the last few years. The late summer sun has descended on Bishop Manor, and the band is taking a break from…
The Tay-K saga is a tall, meaty lasagna, and to go into granular detail on it would be as exhausting as explaining to your parents who Tay-K even is. So in the interest of brevity, I’m going to pretend you, the reader, are my mother (a 56-year-old woman who listens…
Musicians like Mike Mitchell, Bobby Sparks and Frank Moka, all of whom have either won or been nominated for a Grammy, don’t want to be told what to play. They want to do what they want to do, says Corey Pond, founder of restaurant-live music combo The Common Table. When…
The new Helium Queens video isn’t just a neon-bright example of the Dallas band’s dreamy vibe. It also provides an intimate glimpse into the group’s psyche. In particular, the mental inner workings belonging to Poppy Xander could be described as a vivid, complex, enchanting, bizarre and galactic tapestry of ideas…
Austin-born band Spoon will be releasing a compilation of their greatest hits, Everything Hits at Once: The Best of Spoon. The album is a scrapbook of the last 25 years of Spoon’s career, which will delight old fans and serve as a road map for new fans discovering the band…
It’s difficult to listen to commercial pop music with a critical mind, and that is said with no hint of irony. You would think that commercial pop’s mainstream accessibility and focus-grouped nature would make artists of the genre easy to evaluate, but if anything, the corporate nature of such music…
Unlike their ant-snorting rock star predecessors, for Rufus Du Sol, the only acceptable vice is exercise. The band’s on the road for their 25-date North America summer tour, and drummer James Hunt is strolling California’s Avila Beach. The sea breeze is blowing while an unruly flock of seagulls rudely chirp…
Julia Holter is not your average singer-songwriter. She layers orchestral and electronic instruments over her ethereal, mesmerizing vocals to create something wholly unique. Her music could be described as avant-garde, but don’t let that intimidate you. It’s captivating and has an air of mystery, which as it turns out, was…
By now, you’re a little past the half-way mark and just need to survive another month of summer. Well, that still calls for a celebration, a week-long celebration full of live music. Shawn Mendes can help you get the party started at American Airlines Center. Afterwards, if you’re trying to save some…
As a member of the iconic band The Moody Blues, musician John Lodge has been going strong for over five decades. To hear him tell it, there’s no time to rest on one’s laurels. “I never reflect on any of it…If you start doing that you’ll get lost somewhere else…
The world of electronic music is dense and varied with more genres, subgenres and non-genres than most other types of music. To the uninitiated, it can be intimidating. To those who just discovered dance music in the last decade, there is a common pitfall of lumping it all under the…
