The following information won’t surprise anyone who’s opened a Dallas Observer in the past year: I’m no fan of Edgefest 15. Sunday’s music festival is certainly worth talking about, though not merely because of my disdain for the middle-of-the-road bands plucked from 102.1 The Edge’s play lists and thrown on…
Ozone alert: Though you’ll find some complaints about local music festivals (er, festival) on the previous page, we at AAT would be damn fools to ignore a good ol’ summer show full of dirty Dallas rhyme kings. It’s not Fitty, the Game or Juvy, but the Southern Alliance Concert at…
Brett and Rennie Sparks have to be one of the most peculiar couples working in alt-country. She writes the lyrics, he handles the melodies and together, they create twisted and distinctly traditional takes on folk and honky-tonk. Working in the same bizarro-Americana universe as Lambchop and Will Oldham, the Sparks…
Sybris’ powerful two-guitar, drum-pounding pop makes it clear that the band is a band, even if Angela Mullenhour sometimes receives enough focus to sound like a singer-songwriter with backing musicians. Mullenhour at times sounds like she’s croaking her words through tightened throat muscles and around a swollen tongue, a technique…
Husky-voiced thrush Moorer had just about played out the string of her languid left-of-center Nashville country. Her initially great promise had been getting Xeroxed over and over again into fuzziness, but new producer Steve Earle kicks her energy up a few notches as Moorer’s songwriting–previously in collaboration for the most…
In what remains of old Yugoslavia, what most folks call the Balkans, there exists a subculture, a group of wayward gypsies called Romani. Treated poorly by both authorities and the native population, Romani are segregated into inferior schools and restricted from working in worthwhile jobs. Surprisingly, the Romani culture has…
On his second CD, Mississippi native Cory Branan has knifed his name into the alt-country canon. The closest analog here in sound and quality is Ryan Adams’ Heartbreaker, and the 31-year-old Branan shares Adams’ tendency to nestle introspective ballads against full-throttle rockers. The themes of 12 Songs are also inherited…
As a producer, Jim Dickinson has worked with such monuments–the Stones, Aretha, Big Star and, hell, probably Mozart–that you can’t blame him for choosing a humble setting for his own work. But while this spacious set of Southern soul, front-porch country and juke-joint boogie could be called quaint, it’s not…
In 1999 the Constantines formed and within a few short years had become a favorite of indie music listeners and college radio DJs from Alberta to Albuquerque. They also made some fans in the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, who honored the band’s self-titled debut with a Best…
Forget Hooked on Phonics; Japanese rock trio Electric Eel Shock claims to have learned English by listening to Black Sabbath and Judas Priest. Song titles like “I Love Fish but Fish Hate Me” and “Don’t Say Fuck,” both from the group’s recent Beat Me, suggest that the school of rock…
Bobgoblin and Hagfish spent the end of the 20th century taking turns as the “next big thing” to come out of Dallas. Hagfish donned skinny ties and dabbled in playful, middle-finger punk. Bobgoblin executed driving guitar pop, complete with video imagery and jumpsuits. Both bands had their own recipe for…
This week’s big hip-hop shows couldn’t be more different, which is no reason for you to avoid catching both. Boots Riley, main man of Oakland’s the Coup, is hip-hop’s pre-eminent Communist; he raps about putting power in the people’s hands but doesn’t gloss over the specifics like so many backpack…
When Ian McCulloch said that his band’s 1984 release Ocean Rain was the best record ever made, he wasn’t joking. But unlike so many pompous pop prognosticators, McCulloch has always had the chutzpah–and talent–to back up his claims. Since their inception in 1978 until their initial breakup 10 years later,…
As part of a ’70s cultural exchange program with the former Soviet Union, the band selected as most representative of American music was the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. If that selection committee met today, Los Lobos would be the logical choice as American emissaries. For more than 25 years, the…
The story of 37-year-old DJ Iz (Joshua Michael) starts off much like those of other house jocks of his generation: “Growing up in Chicago, blah, blah, blah.” But in 1979, Iz moved to San Jose, far away from the burgeoning house scene of his birth city; there, he soaked up…
“It’s good, good luck,” Memphis-born singer Megan Reilly says. “I really feel like luck is,” and she pauses before finishing the sentence, “necessary.” Probably because she has a lot of it to reflect on: The musicians she’s happened upon in a short half-decade are a publicist’s dream–she roped in members…
Of all the infernal questions to have wormed their way into rock’s subconscious, the merits of David Lee Roth versus Sammy Hagar as front men for Van Halen has to be one of the most dim-witted debates still circulating in frat houses and gentlemen’s clubs across this great land. Let…
Texas Gigs should have a lot to celebrate as of late. The 4-year-old Internet destination won the brand-new Best Web Site award at last month’s Dallas Observer Music Awards; 10 days later, the site’s first national honors came from the EPpy Awards (spearheaded by the reputable Editor & Publisher magazine),…
Spector 45 is a trio in their late teens who revel in the three-chord simplicity and silly, leather-clad fashion sense of the Ramones, but they add a menacing, shit-kicker’s mentality to the fast-paced proceedings. Wonderfully unpretentious, We Wanna Go, the band’s third release, is an immature, funny–but not at all…
Greg Dulli has been churning out sorrowful soul-rock for so long–throughout the 1990s with the Afghan Whigs, and for the past six years with the Twilight Singers–that each new record he makes seems to carry the threat of shtick. Until you hear it, that is: More than any other member…
The men of Minneapolis’ Tapes n Tapes create an indie-rock mlange that recalls at least a dozen acts from the genre’s past–and, relatively speaking, that’s a good thing. Rather than aping a particular group, Josh Grier and company draw from oodles of inspirations, and if they don’t quite individualize each…
Now that’s what I’m talking about–an album title that gets to the point. Thing is, Cex (the perpetually transforming solo project/group/something helmed by Rjyan Kidwell) misleads: AF’s toned-down slew of break beats, synths and poppy guitar melodies sounds more like sonic foreplay than Kidwell’s former albums, which previously focused on…
