Music

With the music industry, print media and the economy all struggling (to put it mildly), I imagine there are a lot of people in Austin trying to pinch pennies however they can. At least, I am. Now, I don’t want to be a piker when it comes to bringing home…

The first night of SXSW saw four pretty major draws around town–Echo and the Bunnymen at Emo’s; The Decembrists at Stubbs; St. Vincent, Department of Eagles and M. Ward at the Central Presbyterian Church; Peter Bjorn & John and Glasvegas at Vice–and a whole bunch of other worthwhile draws…..

After the three-and-a-half hour drive from Dallas I decided to start the evening off right at Hut’s Hamburgers before finally checking out some music. Here’s what I saw. Now it’s time for breakfast tacos at Nueva Onda and more bands in the beautiful Austin sunshine, but more on that later…Band:…

Although the dust hasn’t even had time to settle on its latest release, MSTRKRFT claims it has already begun planning its third album. Released earlier this week, Fist of God features guest spots from N.O.R.E., John Legend, hyphy legend E-40 and the most beloved of all the Wu-Tangers: Ghostface Killah…

Few bands do a better job of capturing the eerie surrealism of 21st-century life than Handsome Furs. The act creates music that comes from an outside observer’s standpoint, where each song is something of a foreign correspondent’s small commentary or status report on the nature of things on the ground…

Death Set partners Johnny Siera and Beau Velasco are pros at getting fans onto the dance floor and keeping them there—not that their songs sound anything like the stuff usually heard on the nightclub scene. Take “Intermission,” from last year’s Worldwide full-length. The tune’s a collection of hammering riffs, feverish…

Along with eccentric one-of-a-kinds like Sufjan Stevens and Joanna Newsom, Andrew Bird would make a fine professor at some school for indie overachievers. Flying around in a genre obsessed with punk’s unlearned cool, Bird is a classical violinist, a virtuoso whistler, and a songwriter whose über-literate lyrics wouldn’t dumb down…

The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach used to make annual pilgrimages to the Mississippi Delta, starting on Nashville’s Music Row and detouring west through Memphis, if only to dig through the bins at Shangri-La Records. The Akron, Ohio, native’s self-produced and perfectly sequenced solo debut, Keep It Hid, plays out like…

Escadrille, the debut album from Denton’s Starhead, captures a riveting combination of Ira Wile’s passionately delivered poetry over contemplative, hushed accompaniment. It opens with a recitation of Solomon and closes with “Our Revels Now Are Ended” from Shakespeare’s The Tempest over quiet violin and guitar droning—none-too-subtle reminders that the lyrics…

Let’s face it: At its core, the annual South by Southwest Music Conference and Festival is a numbers game. Well, once you get down there, at least. In Austin this week, it’s all about how many bands you’ll see and how many parties you’ll hit (saying nothing of how many…

As frontman of the New Jersey band Thursday, Geoff Rickly helped pioneer many of the main motifs of today’s landscape of contemporary punk-inspired rock. From his group sprang a distinctive sing/scream vocal technique, wordy song titles and lyrics, and even the use of the calendar as a source for band…

north of the dial On the final night of NX35, as Monotonix loads its gear and merch into a van in front of Hailey’s, some guy a block away at The Boiler Room is already updating the sign high above the main entrance of the venue to reflect the coming…

The technology has changed from tapes to CDs, but otherwise, Young Bleed (aka Glenn Clifton Jr.) is back where he began. And that’s fine with him. The Baton Rouge rapper started out recording and selling tapes to friends in his South Baton Rouge neighborhood as a teenager—until his drawling flow…

With North Texas serving as a natural stopping point both on the way in and on the way out of Austin’s South by Southwest Music Conference and Festival, fans in the region have always had scores of great shows to see a little closer to home before and after SXSW—but…

Geographically speaking, it makes perfect sense why we see so many shows in town come mid- to late March. Yet, every year, it manages to surprise us. Below is a breakdown of some of the more promising shows coming through as a result of South by Southwest overspill. But it’s…

If there is a good side to the term “corporate rock,” local quartet Inner Frequency may have claims to such a region. Singer Cara Young and the rest of the band look marvelous; the hair is perfectly disheveled as each member does his/her best to look seriously contemplative. Yep, Inner…

Stardeath & White Drawfs is a single entity, an experimental rock band from Norman, Oklahoma. And, led by singer Dennis Coyne (nephew of Wayne Coyne, lead singer of The Flaming Lips) Stardeath serves as this evening’s headliner. But the real attraction (at least for me) is Wintersleep.Hailing from Nova Scotia,…

The realm of guitar gods, much like the beardo deities promoted by organized religions for centuries, is overwhelmingly dude-centric. Whether biblical originators (see Clapton, Hendrix and Paige) or post-modern satirists (see Angus Young and Nigel Tufnel), we know the routine: We worship at the altar of extravagant shedding, our fists…

Gotta love that SXSW backwash that brings so many quality bands into our region. Three of these make their way to City Tavern tonight in a show that offers, besides some great music, an odd animal motif.Twin Tigers, Sleepy Horses and Gift Horse all hail from Georgia and all three…