Your national music news for Friday, January 2, 2009… Prince said he plans on releasing three albums this year. The first will be an electro-pop record tenitively titled MPLSOUND and Lotus Flower. He also said he didn’t vote this year because of his religion. Right, Prince. Right. Jerry Cantrell recently spoke about Alice…
Your daily music news for the first day of 2009… Don’t get your hopes up for a two year Guns N’ Roses tour. It looks like Tommy Stinson was misquoted. Doesn’t it always happen that way? Scientists are mad at Mariah Carey for “misreading” algebra with her album title E=MC2. You would…
This past year put the spotlight on several Dallas-area hip-hop artists, including Lil Wil (of “My Dougie” fame) and rapper/producer brothers Play-N-Skillz (whose production helped propel Lil Wayne’s Grammy-nominated, platinum-selling Tha Carter III). So we figured Wil and Play were as qualified as any Dallas artist was when it came…
Tom Gabel, Against Me!: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “More News from Nowhere” “The closing track off of Cave’s Dig Lazarus, Dig!!!, a record which, in my opinion, is the best album of 2008. It’s no wonder that Cave did such an incredible job on the movie The Proposition…
Alan Palomo’s DJ set at Hailey’s last weekend was a homecoming of sorts. Together with Jason Faries (aka Females), Palomo used to have a weekly gig at the club spinning electro tracks as It’s What We Get. But other than making an appearance at that Denton-trotting We Shot JR party…
In 2002, Marc Broussard gave up on the Christian-rock circuit for a solo career that sizzles like a bayou barbecue, where sinners jam and the saints keep a keen eye out for the law. The son of legendary Boogie Kings guitarist Ted Broussard, the Carencro, Louisiana, native creates a version…
As the end-of-the-year best-of lists finish dropping off the assembly lines, they are, again as always, compendiums of the familiar, the expected, the reliable, the safe: TV on the Radio, Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, Vampire Weekend, Santogold, MGMT, Portishead, Ne-Yo, so forth. Even The Lady of the Lake—which is to…
Ludacris’ strength as a rapper has been—and always will be—an unfortunate irony: He’s a schizophrenic mess of disputatious bravado and wit. He’s the musical equivalent to Allen Iverson, handicapped by his own bombastic skill and unending creativity—and Theater of the Mind may be the most accurate portrayal of that yet…
Da REAList is not Plies’ meditation on Platonic realism; it’s mostly just demonstrably false braggadocio and sentimental hooey. (He could have eliminated this confusion by calling it Da REALest.) The main problem is that a July Hip Hop DX report showed that, despite his claims to be a lifelong thug,…
Now that we’ve officially kissed goodbye to 2008 and all, let’s get all cutesy and name the eight biggest area music stories of 2008—the ones we might actually still be talking about a few years from now—and maybe toss in some honorable mentions along the way too. I mean, it’s…
Fair to Midland holds the platypus-rare distinction of sounding like pretty much no one else in rock music today. Consider a track such as the single “Tall Tales Taste Like Sour Grapes,” from the band’s debut album, 2007’s Fables From a Mayfly. There’s a hushed moment of shuddering, medieval violin…
It’s been a year, hasn’t it? Maybe not the greatest year in DFWd music history—but not certainly a bad one, either. At the very least, this year’s crop was a deep, quality one. So, on that note, here are my picks for the best 20 albums from our region in…
The New Year’s Eve balloons loomed high above a sold-out crowd at the House of Blues Tuesday night, where the Old 97’s played their part of a big alt-country night around Dallas.It was a little early for a New Year’s Eve party, but front-man Rhett Miller said he understood why…
Assuming you’ve been keeping up with this blog, then, yep, you’ve seen me counting down my favorite local record releases of 2008, one record a day, for the past week and a half or so. Well, it all comes to an end right here, right now. Below, a recount of…
The Gourds, Two Tons of Steel, Hosty DuoGranada TheaterDecember 30, 2009 Better than: Spending the night before New Year’s Eve shelling black-eyed peas with my relatives. Mike Alves In its annual pre-New Years Eve concert, The Gourds performed a typically well-played and enthusiastic set of oddball alt-country in front of…
Your daily dose of national music news for the last day of 2008… It seems that all it takes to ruin Kanye West’s vacation is to write something untrue about him. There was talk of him chanting to “improve his singing voice” and he read it…and it ruined his va-cay. Usually it…
Barn sides are the new brick walls. (Trevor Paulhus)Nope, we’re definitely not the only ones digging MATAS’ Family Family Family Meets The Magic Christian disc. Just spotted this little bit o’ love today: AWMusic, the Toronto-based blog that gave Forever the Sickest Kids some love in its year-end lists, has…
The title of this post is ripped right from an email that popped up in the inbox yesterday afternoon in the wake of this post–and, lo and behold, yep it’s from Preston Jones of the Star-Telegram, sharing the links to his favorite concerts and albums of the year, as well…
Minc Lounge in Exposition Park is following up on its Halloween Kool Herc performance by bringing another old-school hip hop icon to Dallas. KRS-One will perform at minc Thursday, January 22, along with Channel Live, according to Vigilante Music Group’s Greg Barrett. The January 22 show is not the first…
Editor’s Note: Over the next 10 days, I’ll be presenting my favorite local records of the year, counting down from No. 10 to No. 1, one album a day. Keep checking back to see how the list pans out, and, in the meantime, click after the jump to see albums…
In reverse order, this handful of releases looked cool and the music matched the cover art. 5. Calexico – Carried to Dust Not only did the uncomplicated illustration style reflect a return to the simple desert themes that are Calexico’s stock and trade, this cover oozes retro cool…
Quite the packed night-before-New Year’s Eve we have tonight, huh? You may have already read my interview with Kevin from The Gourds as they play (along with the great Two Tons of Steel) this evening at The Granada, but the bill at the House of Blues is also quite mighty:…
