Last Night: Octopus Project at the South Side Music Hall

Octopus Project South Side Music HallNovember 18, 2010Better than: Quadrophonic?It was bleeding Octophonic! Or so it was last night, when The Octopus Project treated a couple hundred people to an immersive performance of their new Hexadecagon release.As promised in the promotion for this event, the four-member Austin-based band trucked in…

The Daily Fail: Tribute Bands

Tribute bands… ugh. From Jason Bonham’s Zeppelin Experience to Peter Hook’s, I guess, Joy Division Experience, the tribute band is a big sad ball of has-been. Or in Bonham’s case, a never was…

The Problem With Ke$ha’s “We R Who We R”

Y’know, after months trying to forget about Ke$ha — and I tried a lot — a weird idea occurred to me. What if Ke$ha is trying play like the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope?You see, both of them live in bathtubs — yet ignore their hygiene and appearance –…

The Daily Fail: Early Greatest Hits Or Tribute Albums

The greatest hit and tribute album–the greatest things ever invented for a record label to cash in on its artists. Of course, greatest hits and tribute collections are a great way to get to know older bands that you weren’t around to catch initially — or just didn’t care about…

Where Have All The Bassists Gone?

Ryan Hamilton doesn’t see what the big deal is. He and his musical partner Jencey Hirunrusme have performed as Smile Smile for more than five years, splitting the band duties between the two of them, an acoustic guitar and a keyboard. When they recently decided to expand their sound for…

Kurt Vile & The Violators, Purling Hiss, True Widow

Kurt Vile is a sensational guitarist who spends considerable recording time crafting songs and sounds seemingly designed to obscure that fact. The Philadelphia native has concocted a wildly diverse song book with four album releases during the past three years, all of which demonstrate prodigious skill and a musical palette…

Stars

While it might be a tad blasphemous to proffer that an offshoot of Canadian musical collective Broken Social Scene contains any one voice that should be heard more frequently than the others (an inherently capitalist suggestion), plenty of Stars fans (this writer included) feel that Torquil Campbell should play Oates…

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, The Lonely Forest

Despite having a band name that’s as awkward as it is long, Springfield, Missouri’s Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin’s blend of melodic indie rock and hopeful, catchy songwriting has gotten them kudos from pretty much every source of music press imaginable. And it’s easy to see why: Songs such…

Deep Snapper Isn’t From Denton, But Should Be.

Their members may be spread all over the metroplex, but Deep Snapper is still one of the more prolific bands associated with the Denton music scene. Sure, none of the members actually resides in Denton, but the band’s ties and identity are firmly fixed to the town—and for good reason…

Social Distortion Ages Gracefully

Punk rock, perhaps more than any other musical style in recent times, has evolved into a multi-pronged and tough-to-define assault. What began as a vehicle for the principles of incendiary, raging youth has become, in many cases, an outlet for hoodie-wearing adolescents who have just graduated from the Tiger Beat…