When asked what disc is currently in his car’s CD player, Ben Templeton’s expression is one of bemused sincerity. “I listen to me a lot,” says Templeton, singer-songwriter and guitarist for Roy Bennett, a relatively new entry into the Dallas music scene. His full name is Roy Bennett Templeton, but…
Candee D*Vine wants to be your friend! She’s 19, cute, bisexual and “up for anything.” If you approve her request, and you probably will, she’ll go into the pile with the rest of your “friends,” who are more than happy to invite you to check out their naughty webcams, remind…
I wouldn’t call it bad luck, but Friday the 13th seemed to have some strange effect on the space-time continuum. After opening acts Sarah Jaffe and Dove Hunter cleared off the Granada’s stage, we were transported back to 2001, when Joe Butcher still played with Pleasant Grove and Centro-matic was…
From the sound of “My Ship Is Coming In,” a smooth-as-silt track near the end of Li’l Cap’n Travis’ latest platter, you’d assume the Austin sextet is manning the helm of a yacht-rock revival. You wouldn’t be quite right, but only because the band refuses to tie up in any…
On its third album, Pelican continues its quest to incorporate the best bits of shoe-gaze stoner rock and heavy music—and then flip the bird at the genre conventions of all three. Since debut album Australasia, the Chicago quartet has progressively drifted away from its earliest, most metal compositions toward more…
Five years later, Spoon’s 2002 release, Kill the Moonlight, still feels new. In fact, it still has the acute ability to make listeners pace from room to room, clapping their hands, attempting bad imitations of Britt Daniel’s raspy croon, wishing there was a sweet party about to happen. It’s almost…
After leaving the pioneering roots ensemble the Jayhawks, Mark Olson married singer-songwriter Victoria Williams and retreated to the California desert where he fronted a loose collaborative called The Original Harmony Ridge Creekdippers. Sadly but predictably, Olson’s post-Jayhawks work has been spotty and unfocused; the voice that once sounded so remarkably…
Feigned ironic excitement and flat-out ridiculing people who never left the Headbangers’ Ball are probably the two most common reasons to attend this pairing of less-interesting GN’R predecessor L.A. Guns and shock-rock also-rans W.A.S.P., but there are other angles. There’s the semi-obscure conflict: Play up the angle of bad (fake)…
Somebody call Pitchfork, cuz it’s time to believe the hype. Denton’s Ghosthustler is the real electronic deal, rolling up scuzzy, evil, synthetic riffs in a big spliff coated in angel dust and blowing them out at the audience. The consequences of attending a Ghosthustler show are therefore varied and dangerous:…
Although tremendously talented, Stan Ridgeway can be both pretentious and annoying. Such disparagement does not prevent his music from being incessantly interesting however. With a vocal delivery like a James Cagney impersonator, the former leader of Wall of Voodoo has balanced chutzpah and cheese for the better part of three…
10 Things About 10 Hands: 1) They’ve been around since the mid-’80s in various lineup incarnations, though the brilliant Paul Slavens has been a constant throughout the band’s tenure. 2) The band began in Denton when members of Slavens’ band the Gonemen fused with members from a band called Zane…
The Winter Sounds: Four guys and one gal from Georgia and South Carolina have a debut CD, Porcelain Empire, that’s old-fashioned modern rock. Built on chiming guitars, intermittent synths and catchy choruses, there’s a dash of emo here and a pinch of U2 there. They are better when they generate…
Sumner Erickson’s on the phone from Copenhagen, Denmark, explaining that his older brother, Roger Kynard Erickson, will be phoning a few minutes later than expected. “We’re in the car, and he wants to do it from his hotel room, if that’s OK,” says Sumner, who, in no uncertain terms, helped…
You don’t notice them at first, but at a certain point, you become aware of the hands. They are simultaneously delicate and strong, nimble and dexterous, their power coming in quick flashes like lightning, but also dense with strength, the kind that builds deliberately, like a river’s current. The hands…
It’s been more than a year since Dallas proper last heard from Centro-matic, but that doesn’t mean Will Johnson and Co. haven’t been busy. As one might expect from the prolific Texans, a new double record—a split release from Centro-matic and its slower, atmospheric sister band South San Gabriel—sits nearly…
You’ve heard of one-man bands—but one-man glam is something else entirely. On The Moonstation House Band, released earlier this year on the Secretly Canadian label, and a new EP built around the Moonstation single “Nothin’ No,” Vandervelde, who’s based in Chicago, nods to the glitteriest rock of the early ’70s…
This Oklahoma City five-piece plays a brand of bluesy rock with just the right amount of grit and soul. Wish I Had You, the band’s recently released third effort, is filled with authentic roots music that never descends into parody. Hints of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Tom Waits get equal…
“Any line-up is like a marriage,” says Nick 13, leader of Tiger Army and one of the best practitioners of psychobilly. “You hope it will work, and it either does or it doesn’t.” Speaking from a stop on the Warped Tour, Nick 13 (born Kearney Nick Jones) is happy with…
John Doe has experienced a few scary things in his day. The former singer for seminal L.A. punk band X was once run off the road and went off a small cliff in Maui while in a rental van with his wife and kids. He also encounters a few rattlesnakes…
According to maverick Nashville producer R.S. Field, Max Stalling “reminds me of artists back when I lived in Austin in the ’70s who existed outside of any groovy clique but still managed to fill up places like the Broken Spoke, the Split Rail, and Gruene Hall with regular people. I…
Like a Beyoncé album, Queens of the Stone Age records typically have two awesome tracks and are otherwise filled out by mediocre ones. The act’s latest effort, Era Vulgaris, is no different. Lead single “Sick, Sick, Sick” is a simple power-guitar anthem that speeds along during the verses, then slows…
Ryan Adams’ well-documented, newfound sobriety hasn’t changed anything about the artist really. He’s still consistently unsure of himself, pondering relationships and his role in them, and now coping with his own flaws. Easy Tiger sounds like a culmination of his last five years; it recalls the Grateful Dead sound he…
