Music

This week’s featured poster spiffs the Friday Aftertraces show at the Prophet Bar with Legacy Fails, The Room Sounds, Book of Sounds and Kirk Thurmond. Clay Hervey, drummer for Dallas indie/alt-rock band Aftertraces, designed this one. I like how the coloring of the overlapping figures blends together  and into the…

Back in 2006, Nick Nowell fronted a great local metal band called Thorn vs. Side. The band put out a great EP, Arson, before Nowell imploded the band and decided to become a teacher. Over the past three years, Nowell has kept his instrumental chops in order by playing with…

Legendary ’80s California punkers D.I. make a rare local appearance this evening at the Lakewood Bar and Grill. Although lead shouter Casey Royer is the lone original member of D.I., the band’s sound hasn’t changed all that much from the froth and snarl approach first introduced on Ancient Artifacts, the…

I can’t tell you much about Joey Gardner nor can I recall the first time that heard Mental Dentist. But, what I can tell you is that I heard “People You May Know” a little while back and the song burrowed deep into my head after one listen. The tune…

Ten years after Mos Def’s solo debut, Black on Both Sides, fans might’ve looked at his subsequent uneven catalog and started to wonder if their fondest memories of him in the ’00s would consist mostly of his Chappelle’s Show cameos. But after the 2004’s divisive, rock-heavy The New Danger and…

Tom Araya, bassist and vocalist for legendary metal band Slayer, is unapologetic about the controversy that has always surrounded the group—whether it’s charges of devil worship or having sympathies for Nazis or terrorists. “I don’t look at any controversy as negative,” Araya says from Slayer’s tour bus as it heads…

The music scene is clogged with performers desperately seeking stardom. So does Los Campesinos! guitarist/songwriter Tom Campesinos! (who, like his mates, has jettisoned his given last name in favor of his U.K.-based combo’s moniker) see any irony in the quick rise of his group, which quickly earned buzz-band status even…

Judas Priest started its metal odyssey in the early ’70s, when bands from the industrial-wasteland towns of northern England were just starting to set fire to traditional blues riffs, and its constant output and evolving sound helped it to transcend fickle trends over the years. Whitesnake’s music, however, exists in…

What with the Dallas Observer Music Awards taking up the bulk of our time here at the offices of late, we’ve been focusing a little too much on the best that area musicians had to offer us last year and, admittedly, not paying enough mind to the releases sent our…

It was just another informal meeting for the people behind the Deep Ellum Enrichment Project, or DEEP, as it’s called. Which is to say a bunch of residents and business owners gathered at Frank Campagna’s Kettle Art gallery last Thursday evening to sling back a few drinks and talk (gossip)…

More than 50 people piled into the cavernous DIY venue known as The Majestic Dwelling of Doom to see Shiny Around the Edges play a passionate, “secret” performance—a show which Michael and Jennifer Seman are calling the band’s last Denton gig for a “long, long while.” “We’re bidding adieu to…

…and if it’s the YouTube you want, then, by god, it’s YouTube you get.Good luck picking out each of the instruments at work in this week’s video.Along with the pair of guitars he’d play that night, Robert Gomez rolled into SPACE for last Wednesday night’s taping followed by Heather Test,…

It’s about time Bowerbirds paid a visit to Denton. Bowerbirds’ organic rhythms — not to be confused with crude strumming, but rather subtle arrangements and raw energy, easily surpass those of Devendra Banhart or Beirut Inspiration must come easy for founding members, Phil Moore and Beth Tacular, through living off…

Awhile back, I posted an mp3 from a local act called Three Cities Burning. In that post, I commented that the band’s country/rock sound didn’t suit its post-punk moniker. Well, lo and behold, it seems that’s now been taken care of. In a recent email, drummer Guy Cramer informed me…

Using the term “bandanna” loosely — some might just be du-rags, keffiyehs or shirts — but, used to whatever purpose, there were plenty of them out on the dance floor at Suite Basement last Friday night. Big J, Yeah Def and Vega all spun, and our nightlife photo crew was…

The guys in Moving Mountains prefer the terms “indie rock” and “post rock” instead of “emo” in describing their sound. And why shouldn’t they? Gregory Dunn and Frank Graniero lead Moving Mountains into sonic territory never imagined by most bands of the emo contingent. Hell, the guys in Moving Mountains…

We haven’t heard from Aryn Dalton for some time now that Blackbird Harmony went teats up, but that’s not to say the former drummer for BH and The Paper Chase hasn’t been lurking behind the scenes, conjuring up some new noise of his own. Dalton’s project Buscar Bronca, however, is…