When you’re 23 years old, it’s all about smoking dope out of an empty beer can, having sex in the backseat of your car, and watching Soul Train the next morning with a hammer-to-the-forehead hangover. At least, it would’ve been for me, if I had actually owned my own automobile…
One-time Dallas native David Berman, the mastermind behind longtime indie folk favorite (20 years!) the Silver Jews, has reportedly decided to end his project.The news is all over the web this morning–Pitchfork, Stereogum, NME and many other places, too, I’m sure–and for devoted fans of Berman’s work, this is no…
John Legend Nokia Live January 22, 2009 Better than: Letting the bartender mix your cocktail with Pepsi products. Having learned a hard lesson in traffic jams the last time I went to Grand Prairie’s Nokia Theatre, I took MacArthur to the venue, to discover the streets were flowing free and…
Your daily dose of national music news for Friday, January 23, 2009…Hey, did you like the Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake song “Dick In A Box” (see above)? It was pretty funny, right? Well, Samberg and his comedy writing partners are coming out with an album now…I guess Kanye West…
This week’s Poster of the Week, or POW as the kids aren’t calling it, is for Friday’s Double-Wide show featuring the grimy sleaze-rock of Stag Film, the gritty garage rock of Bastardos De Sancho and straight-forward rawk from Fort Worth’s Shittiest Band. Once again, not a unanimous choice. Calendar editor…
Yesterday, over on FrontBurner, we saw a post by former Observer music editor Zac Crain, purporting that The Happy Bullets (who have a history of making some great videos) were going to attempt to break the world record for most people making out in one place at one time during…
It was just about six months ago that we’d heard that Soulja Boy had signed a contract to promote the Arlington-based shoe company Yums, and since then, Soulja Boy’s kept up his end of the deal, for sure, promoting the apparel and kicks on BET (see above) and in interviews…
Hilariously gritty press photos of Duncanville rapper Johnny Ringo stuffing people into the trunk of his Cadillac (like the one to the left here) aside, the rapper actually manages to boast a pretty interesting flow and a decent following, somehow amassing well over 350,000 profile views on his Myspace page and…
Iff’n you’re in a band, and you wanna play NX35, well, you better get to submittin’ yer application. Because the deadline is today… maybe… but most likely, yes, it’s today. So who else is playing so far? Check the list right here. The list is not complete just yet (obviously…..
Early in 2007, a group of young men out of Plano formed a band called Swim Swim and released I’m So Glad That I’m an Island, a wonderful, but grossly neglected collection of indie pop that should have made local heroes out of Jeremy Aulden, Mike Brady and Jason Bailey…
Another Denton-reppin’ experimental band got some love from overseas. This time it’s Florene, which caught the ear of No Pain In Pop, a London record label and music blog. The duo’s “Room 5” was yesterday’s featured download track. NPIP’s Tom King described the group’s music as “soothing and balming, melting…
Your daily dose of music news for Thursday, January 22, 2009… Even the inauguration of Barack Obama on Tuesday couldn’t keep Beyonce from goin’ all diva on the Secret Service’s ass. It seems the building her hubby Jay-Z was rehearsing in for his inauguration concert was part of a five…
Hard to believe that it’s been 30 years since Ranking Roger and Dave Wakeling first formed The Beat and exposed the disaffected youth of England to the sound of ska. Those were the days when, because of an American band already possessing the name, the band was forced to call…
Last summer, Brett Dennen released his third album, Hope for the Hopeless to modest success and a fair amount of critical love. But, surely, the hoopla surrounding the album release wasn’t what this singer-songwriter with a unique slur was hoping for; after all, in November 2007, based on the groundswell…
north of the dial Ryan Williams stood sipping on a double whiskey and soda at the bar in Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios. Minutes earlier, he’d finished playing a set with Dust Congress, one of more than half a dozen bands he plays bass in. That list of bands includes the…
Sitting in a back booth at Mockingbird Station’s Urban Taco restaurant, the six men of Big Red Rooster look every bit the part of rock stars. Their haircuts, their ball caps, their facial hair, their attire—it’s all pretty well put-together, all intended, it seems, to showcase the band members’ somewhat…
Picking up precisely where his winning 2004 solo debut, The Slow Wonder, left off, New Pornographers leader Carl Newman (aka A.C.) has created another platter that sounds stripped-down next to the over-the-top bustle of his regular band. Still, there are pleasing orchestral flourishes, squirrelly keyboards, wintry reverb and affable vocal…
For a debut EP, Caterpillars’ five-song set of electronic-tinged pop rock is remarkably polished and consistent—to a fault. Still, the Dallas band’s lush arrangements of dramatically soaring pop are impressively full, particularly for a trio and such a new band. Singer/guitarist/programmer Chris Robinson (no, not that Chris Robinson) clearly knows…
Reviewing Black Ice, AC/DC’s latest album, one critic summed up its strengths thusly: “Sounds exactly like every other AC/DC release.” And its weaknesses? “Sounds exactly like every other AC/DC release.” That pithy assessment gets to the heart of this band’s remarkably durable 35-year career: Are they geniuses for being so…
Wouldn’t you know it: AC/DC is coming to town the same week as Australia Day (January 26)! In honor of the only country we can think of with its own international holiday, we celebrate 10 essentials of Aussie rock: 1. The Living End,”Prisoner of Society” The Living End is Australia’s…
Hands down, AC/DC are 2008’s comeback kids. Black Ice, the Australian hard-rockers’ first album in eight years, trailed only Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III in first-week sales. And it’s the band’s best since 1990’s The Razor’s Edge to boot. Even after such a long hiatus, AC/DC’s near-immediate resumption of its…
With a sound that ranges from indie-pop to Brit-pop (with beautiful soaring melodies thrown in between), Radiant* is one of those local bands that makes you wonder just how much talent it really takes for a Dallas band to blow up on a national level. A few years ago, this…
