Clearing Out The Mailroom: Friday, April 2010

We’ve got quite a backlog of CDs we’ve never gotten around to, so we’re going to try to chip away at the pile with this regular feature. The plan: to take four or five at a time and play each CD for as long as I can stand it.Kris Allen…

Idol Rich: WTF, Seriously? TUrban Hangs On for Another Week

No one was remotely worried about Casey James this week. And with good reason. That dude was safer than safe. But after landing in the Bottom Three AGAIN, Tim Urban survived to watch another, more emotive singer, be sent home. Not saying the dissed Didi Benami’s “What Becomes of the…

Gig Alert: Red Sparowes and Doomriders Tonight at Lola’s

Though the band hails out of Los Angeles, Red Sparowes plays music more akin to the cold, concrete landscape of Chicago: Forsaking vocals all together, Bryant Clifford Meyer and crew invest their “songs” with a post-rock/metal vengeance that should thrill fans of acts such as Mono and Jesu. Matter of…

Watch: Erykah Badu Keeps Clothes On, Wows With “Window Seat” on Kimmel

On Tuesday night, Jimmy Kimmel Live! aired the above clip of Erykah Badu performing “Window Seat” (fully clothed this time) alongside her exquisite live backing band–including band director and host of the always awesome Wednesday night jam sessions at the Prophet Bar, keyboard player  RC Williams, whose left shoulder gets…

Copeland, Person L, I Can Make A Mess Like Nobody’s Business

Copeland’s presence first captured fans in 2003, when the band released Beneath Medicine Tree, an easy-listening album that showed frontman Aaron Marsh’s soft-spoken chops and subtle strokes on the keys. Not to say his voice is boring or anything, but I’ve fallen asleep a few times listening to his “California”…

Ther Fresh & Onlys Are More Than Prolific

The Fresh & Onlys have released music on seven different labels at this point—a startling feat for a band that formed two years ago. But keep in mind that the San Francisco six-piece has a serious pedigree. And that it plays some of the coolest, woolliest garage-psych around. The Fresh…

Hockey Scores, Even Without A Hit

Write a hit. Major-label execs have mouthed those words so many times, it should just be tattooed on their heads when they get the job. But, like love, hit-making isn’t something formulated out of thin air. It happens almost magically in the proper, propitious circumstances. Trying to satisfy that demand…

Alicia Keys, Melanie Fiona

Consistency isn’t always mundane. Consistency can have some serious soul. And Alicia Keys has been consistently enthralling millions for just shy of a decade. Indeed, Keys’ four studio albums, along with the chart-topping album from her virtuoso 2005 MTV Unplugged performance, have become cultural touchstones that will help music fans…

The Beaten Sea

There’s quite the folk scene brewing in Dallas these days, and much of the credit for the genre’s rebirth can be given to the so-called Dallas Family Band, which, among its rotating players, counts Jacob Metcalf, The Fox and The Bird, Something in the Wheel, Lalagray and The Beaten Sea…

Spooky Folk

The joke about Spooky Folk is that the band’s not exactly spooky—and that its music isn’t exactly folk, either. And while that remains true enough to a degree on Spooky Folk’s self-titled, full-length debut, it’s easy to understand how people so often mistake the band for a folk outfit: Frontman…

Mount Righteous

With its 2008 debut, When the Music Starts, Mount Righteous made a delightful mark on the local scene, usurping The Polyphonic Spree’s grandiosity, cheerfulness and uplifting nature and appropriating it into an 11-piece, acoustic, faux-marching band that recalled the cutest darn piece of musical theater you’ve never seen. But, as…

Erykah Badu’s Again Proving Herself Smarter Than The Rest Of Us

Before the early Saturday morning Internet release of the music video for “Window Seat,” the first single off her new album, New Amerykah Pt. 2: Return of the Ankh, and before news outlets had created an almost laughable controversy over the clip that features her nude at John F. Kennedy’s…

DFW’s always Been A Haven For Cover and Tribute Acts

At first, it was as it has been since the advent of rock ‘n’ roll—harmless, relatively small collections of musicians playing the current day’s hits at weddings and high school reunions. These were folks involved with local bands that played original songs in seedy nightclubs all across town. Problem was,…

DC9 Live at El Sibil, Ep. 12: Sleep Whale

If you want to YouTube it instead, here’s your link.It’s not that any of the guys in Sleep Whale have something against their parents–to hear them tell it, by last year they were just plain over their old moniker. Especially after touring through Europe, where their old name, mom, had a way…

Idol Rich: The NTX2 Search Their Souls

Last night, we got to see the Top 10 taking the stage with soul and R&B hits from the likes of Chaka Khan, Aretha and domestic threat Chris Brown. Oh, and we also got to watch the weirdest backstage camera shots ever. Mmm, creepy voyeurism…Usher served as the mentor this week…