Music

A sideways poster? What the what? You mean every poster doesn’t have to be vertical? What kind of crazy world are we living in? One that embraces chillwave, of course…

Dammit! Rihanna has finally gone and broken my heart!…

As distinctive a lyricist and songwriter as Centro-matic and South San Gabriel frontman Will Johnson may be, the standout track on this EP is a cover—and it’s an unlikely, left-field cover at that. Under the South San Gabriel banner, Johnson and his bandmates wind down “All Night Long (All Night),”…

Beauxregard has always been a band that looks to the past for musical inspiration. That much is obvious within a few minutes of listening to their songs. But figuring out just what era is informing their music is where things gets tricky. Gryphoemia, the follow-up to their excellent 2008 EP,…

A Cosmic Joke isn’t as boring as you’d expect a Salim Nourallah-produced Chris Holt record to be. Faint praise, sure. But it says a lot about the two Dallas music-scene lifers. For all their accolades—Holt’s as a multi-year Dallas Observer Music Award winner for his guitar and keyboard prowess and…

It’s been three years since The Hope Trust released their debut LP, The Incurable Want. Some time, some lineup changes and the birth of a couple of babies later, and they’ve now recorded their second LP, an 11-track release entitled Light Can’t Escape. The band’s main songwriter, vocalist and guitarist,…

The most impressive and distinctive quality to Raul Malo’s latest solo record, Sinners and Saints, isn’t that he basically operated as a one-man band during the recording of the self-produced project. (Well, almost a one man band—the ex-leader of The Mavericks did have help from some stellar players, including Augie…

San Francisco’s Lorin Ashton, aka Bassnectar, is as much an avant-garde composer as he is a DJ, electronic musician and producer. But his compositional skills, likely because they often employ a recognizable dancehall thud, don’t get the attention they truly deserve. Changing from double- to triple-meter and shifting the pitch…

It began with a grooving, hazy track called “Deadbeat Summer,” and there’s no telling where it may end. Dallas’ own Neon Indian stand as the chief of chillwave, an upstart subgenre that fuses laser-y synth lines, trebly beats and the chirpy blips of ’80s pop with guitar flavors and lo-fi…

Gorilla Manor, the ambitious debut album from the Los Angeles quintet Local Natives, is in one sense a pastiche of prevailing indie-pop elements, each song characterized by complex arrangements that ebb and flow, shift directions and rhythms, and invoke often-impressionistic lyrics that flirt with deeper meaning. Quick contemporary comparisons suggest…

Mix one part infectious indie-pop with one part world music section from your favorite record store—old and new, East and West. Stir vigorously and serve with a wink and a nod. It’s true: Ever since they first appeared in early 2008, Vampire Weekend’s recipe has been laid bare. At a…

Mike Conte, guitarist and vocalist with the Los Angeles-based Early Man, believes that many metal acts have lost their way. “There are bands nowadays that have been around for 15 years and they still don’t have a clue about Megadeth or Iron Maiden,” Conte says. “One of the sad things…

Over the last six years, California trio Tera Melos and their ever-evolving blend of jazz, prog, math-rock and off-kilter punk have started developing a cult-like following with an affection for the band’s unconventional song structures and live performances, which blend manic time signature changes with intense noise-influenced improvisational passages with…

I’m not usually one to get too nostalgic—not for local music, at least. There’s already a debilitating amount of those types around town as is. You know them—those who glorify our town’s past while unwittingly spitting in the face of the metroplex’s ridiculous talent level at the moment. They’re same…

Holy crap, what a busy night! Buckle up and get ready for an early start on the weekend, as tonight’s docket is flush with prime musical satisfaction…

Welcome to Staff Trax, the weekly feature here on DC9 where we shed some light on the music we’ve been enjoying of late, regardless of the touring or album release schedules that tend to bear the focus of most of our coverage. Consider it a chance for you readers to…

Quite the treat tonight down at the Palladium where Robert Pollard and the rest of his classic Guided by Voices lineup are reuniting and kicking off their U.S. tour for one of just two dates the band will play before performing at Matador Records’ 21st anniversary party in Las Vegas…