Music

The Orbans might be the best band to come out of Fort Worth in a short while. After years of sharpening his songwriting in various bands (Thief, The Lifters), singer, Peter Black has finally finished his best album yet: When We Were Wild. Tonight, the album (which features this song)…

Tomorrow night at The Door in Dallas, amongst a bill of rather run-of-the-mill mall-punk acts, there exists quite the treat: The Secret Handshake, which as you know, is essentially just Dallas’ own Luis Dubuc, will solely be performing songs from his upcoming disc, Night and Day, a Motown-inspired affair, which…

Neo-soul R&B queen Angie Stone released her most recent album Unexpected to unsurprising positive feedback in 2009. The real surprise? Stone’s performing in Dallas tomorrow for free. The new Diabetes Health & Wellness Institute on Spring Avenue will open tomorrow (Saturday, June 19), and the Grammy-nominated singer has agreed to…

The five electro-pop gurus that form Passion Pit are touring the globe, offering up their infectious melodies and good times to audiences everywhere. This summer it’s all about the U.S. of A–and the fun’s making a stop at Dallas’s own Palladium Showroom on Monday, June 21. And though, OK, the…

Anyone who knows me or has read my stuff would notice that I am a huge nerd. I look forward to any music that reminds me of science-fiction that I watch, play, read, or dream about.Well, last week, Xtina released her new album, the robot-themed Bionic. It includes a great…

Yesterday, Play-N-Skillz’s G4 Muzik label released the music video for Inertia’s “Beddy Crocka,” which features a verse from Fort Worth’s Tum Tum and a sample of Play-N-Skillz collaborator Lil Wayne. You may remember the song–the Brothers Salinas were kind enough to pass the song along our way as a free…

Ladies and gentlemen, your poster of the week. And I’ll tell ya why after the jump…

In this week’s paper, Mark Schectman reviews When We Were Wild, the long-time-coming-but-well-worth-the-wait full-length debut from Fort Worth’s The Orbans. And Schectman makes no bones in shouting out the disc’s merits:[It’s the Orbans’] blending of styles that truly makes When We Were Wild such an impressive release. Singer/songwriter Peter Black…

Dear Dad, First of all, Happy Father’s Day. OK, now that that’s done, we’ve got something to say. Our heads our going to explode, Scanners-style, if we hear you jack up the radio to ZZ Top’s “La Grange” again. Maybe back in the day, when you and your friends were…

It’s been 25 years since Shallow Reign’s first show, 23 years since the release of their debut self-titled LP and 19 years since the band, which at their apex counted themselves among the heaviest hitters of the 1980s Deep Ellum heyday, called it quits. The band members just stopped talking…

There’s little doubting the pop sensibilities of Dallas native Luis Dubuc and his electro-pop project The Secret Handshake. Already a longtime Alternative Press darling, Dubuc’s most recent, third full-length release, 2009’s My Name Up In Lights, showed the artist proving himself even more adept at penning catchy little pop ditties…

Ordinarily, an album released in 2010 bearing the title Genuine Negro Jig might raise a couple of eyebrows, but the Carolina Chocolate Drops—who did that very thing back in February—are, well, chocolate. And genuine, for that matter. Although the Durham, North Carolina-based Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson were…

Rugged and shouty, the Savannah, Georgia, trio Black Tusk is bent on playing metal that plows blindly ahead instead of plodding atmospherically along. Years of demos and other self-released material led the way to 2008’s Passage Through Purgatory. A second album, Taste the Sin, out earlier this year, was recorded…

Perhaps you’ve heard Boston electro-pop quintet Passion Pit’s back-story: Two years ago, falsetto-voiced frontman Michael Angelakos—at the time, just a dude making tunes by himself in his bedroom—wrote a batch of fizzy love songs to give to his girlfriend as a Valentine’s Day present. Those songs ended up as last…

I’d like to think that, somewhere, the members of Smiling at the Ceiling are sitting in the sunlight, talking about days gone by. Because their latest self-titled EP is tailor-made for such activity—not only because it harkens back to 1970s-era yacht rock with its silky smooth lead guitar licks, but…

The untitled intro track of Pi on the Side—a trippy, echoing, swirling array of voices chanting “Thank you for ingesting me” over a distant shouted argument that eventually condenses to whirling psychedelic noise—is a jarring surprise from a band that previously seemed content to put out tight Minutemen-inspired punk-rock jams…