Pixel Revolt, John Vanderslice’s most recent concoction, was such a well-constructed, thoughtful and original piece of indie pop that it was a shock to find out he lists such bloated fare as King Crimson and early Genesis as key influences. Yet a quick glance at Vanderslice’s impressive bio will show…
If you happened to see the movie Closer, then that was probably your first taste of Damien Rice; “The Blower’s Daughter,” from his debut O, served as the movie’s ultra-depressing theme and proved even more ultra-depressing than the movie. Last year, Rice released his follow-up, 9, which was a bit…
Tristeza guitarist Jimmy LaValle is the Album Leaf, and it’s his orchestral vision that sets his music apart from many making similarly experimental pop. Tranquil to a fault, LaValle creates compositions with a pulse so faint that listeners might want to invest in a stethoscope. Into the Blue Again, LaValle’s…
Joss Stone is ready to finally introduce herself. Again. Well, again again. Her third album, Introducing Joss Stone, is supposed to be the truest representation of who she is as an artist, but, at the end of the day, it’s still just really funky, hip-hop-infused soul sung by a 20-year-old…
It might seem strange to call folk-rockers Cartright one of the best bands in North Texas—after all, they moved to Austin more than a year ago—but that’s exactly what the former Denton residents have been in recent months, playing North Texas shows every few weeks (or 10 times more often…
Since music is said to be the universal language, it should come as no surprise that many hidden treasures come from all around the globe. And with import/stateside release schedules fluctuating with reckless abandon, it’s easy to overlook some intriguing music. The focus this time is definitely international, but at…
Spam-a-lot: If there’s one thing the music staff here at the Dallas Observer can agree on, it’s Vanilla Ice. We love Vanilla Ice. We want to party with him. We want to party with him soooooo bad! So imagine our happy surprise when, upon checking our tricked-out MySpace page, we…
Denton’s Daniel Folmer is a prolific 20-something wunderkind who somehow found time between delivering pizzas and playing pick-up hockey games to release two CDs in six months. Folmer’s debut, Wear Headphones, was a 22-song indie rock paean to caffeine and contradictions that showed equal parts gall and slacker intelligence. Gloria…
Lake Highland resident Annie Benjamin is hard to miss. With her fiery red hair and tirelessly animated personality, Benjamin has been a fixture of the local music scene for more than two decades, writing and performing her brand of urban folk while championing a variety of causes. Some Kind of…
Dear Gods of Rock: It’s me, The Mullet. Please kill me. My time on this earth—hanging off Richard Marx’s head as it sang “Don’t Mean Nothin’,” going to Indigo Girls shows and bathing in NASCAR exhaust fumes—has been fun, but I just can’t take being the style that springs and…
Leave it to Trent Reznor—a musician who probably doesn’t even need to hype his art at this point—to trump every other viral marketer with the Internet-heavy promotional campaign for Year Zero. (It’s a concept record; think the Big Brother mentality of George Orwell’s 1984 combined with the drugged-out society of…
Ah, it seems like yesterday these English lads were the toast of the town, the leaders of the hype pack. Oh, wait. It pretty much was just yesterday. Over the last year, we’ve learned that the Arctic Monkeys are brats: arrogant onstage, snotty in interviews and whiney on record. Of…
Waking Ashland’s frontman and keyboardist Jonathan Jones says he wants to combine the emotion of piano-based singer-songwriters such as Elton John and Billy Joel with the edginess of The Pixies, all without sounding like any of the three. He generally succeeds. Waking Ashland is often called piano rock, and for…
Kazu Makino has a voice so shiny and cold, you can almost hear the titanium in her face. The Kyoto-born singer of Blonde Redhead—the New York art-rock trio composed of Makino and Milanese twins Amedeo and Simone Pace—was severely injured in a 2002 riding accident. She was thrown to the…
Dallas loves it some lady bloggers. And the ladies show their love back, especially this week, when not one but two estrogen-generated events will be foisted upon the masses by two of our fair burg’s favorites—namely Kittenpants (aka Darci Ratliff, who has expanded beyond the digital realm into that of,…
When Elvis Perkins takes the stage, ladies swoon. He bears a scruffy resemblance to his father, Psycho star Anthony Perkins, but his songs of alienation, heartbreak and emotional mending conjure up the poetic lyrics of Leonard Cohen. Elvis’ personal burden is public record; dad died of AIDS in ’92, and…
When the Smithereens debuted in 1980, they actually had to refute criticism that they sounded too much like the Beatles. Such dated lunacy makes it especially ironic that a quarter-century later the band would release Meet the Smithereens, a song-for-song re-creation of Meet the Beatles. Frontman Pat DiNizio has always…
If you saw the potent and distressing documentary Before the Music Dies, you had the opportunity, aside from a concert venue, to see why Erykah Badu is so special. Badu’s critique of the current climate in popular music and her hilarious (but dead-on) list of exactly what physical attributes are…
Modern rock is plagued by many problems, and two of them revolve around the issue of earnestness. Often musicians suffer from one of two sides of the same problem: Either they, in all their “coolness” and allegiance to all that is affected, worship at the altar of irony with such…
European sensation Hot Chip started making music because the bandmates were bored with everything new and just couldn’t get over their old favorites. “We loved Phil Spector and the Beach Boys, Kraftwerk and Robert Wyatt, Timbaland and Madlib, Brian Eno and Devo, Anti-Pop Consortium and Aphex Twin, Will Oldham and…
Like their crescendo-loving peers in Explosions in the Sky, Japanese post-rockers Mono lay down soundtracks for the Oscar-worthy epics in your head. Formed in 2000 as a pet project for experimental guitarist Takaakira Goto, Mono soon evolved into an instrumental quartet consisting of the basics—y’know: guitar, bass and drums. The…
Sanjaya, gone from American Idol! Alas, I barely knew him. Our time together was but brief, comprised of stolen moments on YouTube and furtive glances at celebrity gossip blogs. And though now the Indian warbler is forever gone from the Idol ranks, he will always be in my heart. For…
