Music

K, you know how I said yesterday that because I was kinda-sorta nice about Tim Urban’s Beatles performance, that he’d either get kicked off or one of my faves would be? Well, I was was right. Someone was trying to punish me. But not really. But kinda. Because, see “Big…

Later this month, on the 29th, new-ish local electro-rock outfit Hoyotoho will release its debut album, Brutal Beauty. Check out the flashy, above Matthew Cooper-directed music video that’s been made for lead single, “Virgin Eyes.” It’s a good-looking clip, no doubt, and frontman Calvin Chynoweth and his band of merry…

Part of Julian Casablancas’ reputation as The Strokes’ frontman has always been his bratty nonchalance. So it’s something of a surprise, then, to discover that his solo album, Phrazes for the Young, is fairly surging with exuberance. Phrazes’ songs are brassy and confident in ways that The Strokes’ more recent…

When it burst on the scene two years ago with its self-titled, Afro-centric, indie-pop debut, Vampire Weekend was the subject of such overheated blogger buzz and hipster adoration that it didn’t even have to await its sophomore release before the backlash began. Hopefully all the haters got it out of…

It’s no secret that Shearwater frontman Johnathan Meiburg loves birds. His band’s namesake is a medium-sized, long-winged seabird, for instance—and then there’s the fact that most of Shearwater’s albums seem to have birds on their covers. To be fair, Meiburg’s no amateur ornithologist; he once gave a lecture on “The…

Thanks to its 2001 debut album, Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi (produced by Belle & Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch), Camera Obscura was set for nothing less than indie splendor from the beginning. The Glaswegian band formed in the late ’90s and has since turned out four albums, toured extensively and seen a…

The word “subtlety” doesn’t really factor into any description of The Big Pink. To begin with, the London duo produces an oversized, forceful sound between its two members, shamelessly following in the footsteps of multitudes of its Britpop predecessors. There’s the My Bloody Valentine wall of guitar, the Stone Roses’…

Chris Keating is effusive, having just returned home to Brooklyn for a few days from a European tour. But he seems a little shocked when he’s reminded that he and his bandmates in Yeasayer will be appearing at the Granada Theater this week as an early date in the band’s…

For the first time in some 15 years—and, more than likely, for the final time ever—the Buck Pets will play Trees on Saturday night. This comes as a surprise to many, chiefly those who recall the band’s ascension from suburban comers to downtown rock-and-roll gods in the mid- to late…

The debut, full-length record from the Dallas three-piece Shapes Stars Make, These Mountains Are Safe, is a study in both the great and not-so-great qualities of post-rockin’ in the free world. Produced by John Congleton, These Mountains offers up some rewarding and climactic moments via dramatic chord progressions, lifeblood-pumping drumbeats…

With the opening lines “Rain cuts like glass / The wind moves souls” from “Wooden Floors,” the first track from Nicholas Altobelli’s rather agreeable latest full-length album, The Regulator, the Dallas troubadour introduces the listener to a dark, and often dense, brand of poetry. Recorded in Dallas with Salim Nourallah,…

John Grant, like Joe Cocker before him, gets by with a little help from his friends. The former leader of Denver’s The Czars ensconced himself with North Texas torch-bearers Midlake in a Denton studio for his new release, relying on guitarist Eric Pulido and the rest of the group to…

Before your mind flashes back to thoughts of Denton’s North by 35 Conferette—or, worse, thoughts of Austin’s South by Southwest Music Conference and Festival—consider this about the impending MusInk Festival taking place at Fair Park this weekend: It isn’t really a music festival at all. Well, that’s not entirely true…

It was sorta-kinda-Beatles week. And Macca even sent a “Good Luck!” message via satellite from tour and everyone thought it was awesome. Looks were shared around the theater. People probably embraced, it was hard to tell. The band mates just played better knowing that message came from Sir with love.Some…

While we’re at it, here’s your YouTube link too.Jimmy Menkena knows as well as anyone how satisfying it can be to let loose screaming and just wail on the guitar onstage. By the time he moved to Dallas in 2006, he’d already done that, in a past life in a…

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…

Last Night at Sons of Hermann Hall, Bad Sports, The Fresh & Onlys, and King Khan & The Shrines melted the wood floors of the venue with a bill that began punk-ish and ended with some soul-gospel-sex-jazz. You’ve read the review already, we know. But we also have the feather-crowned…

For a band that by some accounts had broken up over a year ago–and with only a five-song EP to show for its efforts–The Middle East should consider its current US tour nothing less than triumphant. An impromptu showing at NX35 elicited the sort of enthusiasm from a Dan’s Silverleaf…