Music

This week’s featured poster promotes Ishi’s opening set for El Ten Eleven and The Bizarro Kids tomorrow night at Hailey’s in Denton. It’s a simple design, but I really like the fonts and colors. There are variations of this poster floating around the web, including animated versions where the background…

This week marks the release of former Sorta frontman Trey Johnson’s debut solo release, Mount Pelée, a disc that finds Johnson and his familiar, classic, soothing voice heading in a somewhat different direction. How so? Well, the disc kinda sounds like it’s a blend of Sorta and the eccentric, toungue-in-cheek…

Yeah, yeah. I know that these oldie tours are an easy target for the cool, indie rock naysayers out there, but most of the acts on tonight’s Hippiefest bill at Nokia Theatre are just a wee bit older than Aerosmith and ZZ Top, and I didn’t hear anyone complaining about…

Until the release of this year’s Are You In? Nike+ Original Run project, the last time the masses got a full-fledged dose of De La Soul was the group’s 2006 mixtape, The Impossible: Mission TV Series, Pt. 1. Between then and now, though, fans were blessed with a few collaborations…

A Brooklyn-bred MC who reportedly taught himself his craft while serving 10 years in prison, Maino rhymes with understandable urgency. The majority of the songs on If Tomorrow Comes… are ferocious inspirationals rapped over movie soundtrack-style beats. Which is fine: Maino is a utilitarian rapper who’s not particularly quick or…

Jack White is a really good guitar player. With The White Stripes and The Raconteurs, he’s shown off his proficiency in a variety of styles and genres (six years later, the faux bass line of “Seven Nation Army” is still stuck in a lot of heads). So it’s perplexing that…

It’s easy for an artist to idle as they slide down the long tail, settling into their niche of cult fandom. But Michael Franti’s been able to maintain his creativity as strongly as his social activism for more than two decades now. He initially burst on the scene in ’88…

Norwegian pop-punk damsel Ida Maria is making a serious run at American stardom, and that’s awesome. We love, love, love Scandinavian pop stars, with their plump cheeks, slick sounds and oh-so-slightly fractured English. But Ida Maria’s rise is welcome for another reason, though: It puts a positive capstone on what,…

Rockabilly’s trappings are encased in the amber of ’50s culture, but that doesn’t mean its attitudes have to be. Or, at least, that’s Kim Lenz’s perspective, something the red-haired rockabilly siren demonstrates with It’s All True!, her third album and first release in a decade. The record bleeds a sass…

Grand Prairie native Vincent Sliva knows there’s a good chance you have no clue who he is. And he’s perfectly OK with that. Because, for one, super-producer Mark Ronson—the man behind Amy Winehouse’s powerhouse 2006 release Back to Black, among many other U.K. hits in recent memory—knows his work. Digs…

…and for the relics still stuck on Youtube, here’s your link.On its upcoming album, The Tide and The Current (set for an August 18 release), Telegraph Canyon pushes itself far beyond the “promising” tag it had dutifully earned with its 2006 full-length, All The Good News. Indeed, the new disc,…

A Ghostly Friend Of DC9 took issue with my omission of the Deathray Davies’ Sons of Hermann Hall show on last week’s Good Friday. I never really considered myself a huge fan, but the fact that the band is doing live shows again is certainly worth pointing out. And another…

We don’t get too too many chances to talk jazz in these here DC9 parts–although, really, when you have the time, you really should do yourself a favor and check out the great Monday night Bad Ass Jazz gigs at the Amsterdam Bar in Expo Park–so pardon this little sidetracking…