Music

Thursday, October 26 at Gypsy Tearoom

Tuesday, October 31 at The House of Tinnitus

In the month or so since I’ve been in Dallas, I’ve heard repeated reports on how dysfunctional the music scene is here. How everyone’s mean, and there’s infighting and backstabbing and cynicism. How bands claw at each other with the spastic, fang-bared verve of a bunch of male baboons. Could…

Back in 1999, when Sander Kleinenberg burst onto the global club scene, the still-wet-behind-the-headphones DJ/producer made his name by pushing the sonic envelope with releases that were so forward-thinking, he landed not one but two tracks on the wildly popular Global Underground series mixed by none other than über-DJ Sasha…

Built to Spill performs on Thursday, October 19, at Gypsy Tea Room’s Ballroom.

Ladytron performs Friday, October 20 at the Gypsy Tea Ballroom

Fred Eaglesmith performs Saturday, October 21, at the Granada Theater.

Not to get all Dubya on your ass, but what’s up with all these dang furriners invading our fine local music establishments this week? B-Sides knows you’re busy, so we took the liberty of doing your Google searches and atlas perusing for you and have typed up this handy guide…

Mark Linkous is a perfect anomaly, a literate, slightly seedy songwriter whose best work exposes an aching beauty which triumphs over his darker instincts. Over the course of four full-length efforts under the Sparklehorse moniker, released leisurely over the past decade, Linkous has created an uncompromising body of work that…

Known as one of the pioneers of minimalism, Steve Reich has been a major influence on neo-classical, jazz, avant-garde, rock and electronic artists for nearly half a century. Much of his seminal work from the ’60s and ’70s had remained woefully out of print until the release of this five-disc…

It’s been about seven years since Neutral Milk Hotel went on indefinite “hiatus.” Since then the band’s drummer and multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Barnes has kept busy with a great many projects, not the least of which is A Hawk and a Hacksaw, which kinda sounds like a traditional Hungarian folk band…

Ghostcar is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Priding themselves on the fleeting nature of their “sightings,” the inevitable cycle for this longtime local cosmic jazz juggernaut is a short string of mind-blowing performances, only to disappear from sight. No sooner had the improvisational troupe emerged this summer with a fiery row of…

Saturday, October 21, at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios, Denton

California’s the Briefs provide punk rock with just the kind of kick in the ass the genre has needed for so long. With the continued regurgitation of pop/punk of the Green Day variety and the ascension of a seemingly endless parade of faceless emo bands, punk rock has sadly become…

It’s always a good sign when guys who use “brothers” in their name are actually brothers. Noel and Hollis McKay are fifth-generation Texans who revel in the best things the state has to offer: food, a frosty beverage and an honest twang. Their impressive sophomore effort, Cold Beer and Hot…

There’s an unspoken requirement for guitar-strumming English majors to develop a penchant for lyricism that’s worthy of canonization in Norton’s Anthology. The Decemberists’ Colin Meloy creates candid characters, as Charles Dickens did, in the same manner that Will Johnson, of Centro-matic fame, conveys the distinctly Southern grotesque of William Faulkner…

This has been a banner year for the ’80s underground, most notably in the Great State, where after nigh on 20 years away, Austin weirdo rock heroes Scratch Acid reunited last month. With that in mind, Laptop Deathmatch/Lost Generation general Mwanza Dover has added a new wrinkle to his annual…

Broken Social Scene: exhibit #246d of why Canada might stand to be a little closer right now to the ages-old American ideals of freedom and cooperation. Riding the crest of the feel-good tsunami of 2004’s out-of-nowhere indie smash You Forgot It in People, this huge collective of up to a…

Audiences generally respond better to the familiar than the new at big rock shows, but Wilco fans are smart enough to savor new material as Jeff Tweedy and company work them out live before heading to the studio in November. Recent set lists show the band mixing three or four…

Recycling AC/DC riffs has not proven as popular as it was in the ’80s and ’90s, as many contemporary metal heads have chosen double snare drum deviltry (along with Cookie Monster meets Beelzebub vocalizing) as the path toward the darker side. Los Angeles’ Buckcherry happily go against that trend, embracing…

Just back from a mini-tour that included a stop at the Midpoint Music Festival in Cincinnati, Fort Worth’s the Cut*off is back in the studio, recording the follow-up to their excellent Rorschach EP. The new recording sessions, helmed by (who else) Salim Nourallah, should offer more of the amiable grunge/alt-rock…

Resembling an advertisement for vibrant prophylactics, the billboards promoting the Blue Man Group bring to mind either a colorful way to promote birth control or some kind of sadistic cult gone horribly awry. But according to one current member of the performance art attraction, there is something fundamentally philosophical about…