“The Death of Us,” the opening cut on The New Amsterdams’ notable new release Story Like a Scar, is music so open and lonely that it almost had to come out of the Midwest. Kansas native Matt Pryor’s frail tenor graces the rootsy accompaniment like a cool breeze across a…
Arlington’s Man Factory has been building momentum in concert for the past year, throwing enjoyable, oddball twee-pop shows that are filled with equal parts promise and sloppiness. Which half of the equation wins out on the young quintet’s first official release? Hard to say. On their contributions to the Boyfriend…
Rap granddaddies don’t get the same benefits as their rock counterparts–names like Big Daddy Kane and Young MC won’t move a crowd these days the way the Rolling Stones or Gang of Four do. But if you’re coming on two decades in the rap game, and you’re still as hard…
“Sunday living/Seven days a week”–so goes one chorus on the debut of Austin’s Brothers and Sisters, Texas’ newest and brightest purveyors of easygoing ’60s-style country-rock. In concert, the band more than lives up to their name, mixing the family-style harmonies of the Mamas and the Papas with the chiming guitars…
You gotta give Hank III credit for being almost all things to all people. To some, he’s the genetic reincarnation of his grandpa. Or he’s as much an appealing contrarian as his dad, Hank Jr. He’s even the ultimate country punk–a soused and pilled-up Gen XXX nightmare inflicted on NashVegas…
Real quick: Dallas Observer Music Awards should’a-won Bosque Brown promises new songs at this gig; in addition, Austin’s Tenlons Fort is a lovely match for BB, with elaborate, country-tinged folk that dabbles in Beach Boys-style pop as well. And the grilled cheese at the AllGood is the best in town…
Even with his hearing at risk, Pete Townshend would still go to shows by AC/DC, claiming the rush of sound and volume was an aphrodisiac, loudness as an assault and a reward. Japan’s Mono offers that same kind of visceral thrill with lengthy and thunderously loud instrumentals that touch on…
Endure a few run-throughs of Pomp and Circumstance, make sure your tassel is on the correct side of your cap and ready your flask for the after-party at the rich kids lake house. Its a graduation, baby. Most years, the theme of the Dallas Observer Music Awards is an afterthought,…
A few songs before the cautionary tale about a man who loses everything to booze, Blueprint laughingly de-scribes his own drunken forays into club-land. He vows, “No calling women ‘bitches’ just to prove that I’m a man,” then later jokes about slapping a broad’s ass hoping to get laid. Immediately…
You like me, you really like me: Opening the DOMA nomination process to the public always results in a few anonymous gems. And even though nobody cast any write-in votes for Alf, Jesus or Laura Miller, a few suspect items did pop up. First off, I must be totally out…
And the winners are: Now that you’ve read the official awards results, you should probably get to seeing the winning acts onstage, right? Quite a few have gigs this weekend, so enough with the witty introductions; here’s a handy DOMA winner list for your nighttime enjoyment. Boys Named Sue: Friday,…
“Won’t need no shadow man runnin’ the government/Won’t need no stinkin’ war!” From the first lines of “After the Garden,” the first track on Living With War, it’s clear that we’re dealing with a Neil Young we haven’t heard from in some time–angry, loud and ferociously vital, old age and…
Confusion? Naw. The point on this 14-track slammer by the Denton-born, Austin-based Gamblers is as clear as a middle-finger salute with one fist and a roundhouse from the other. With producer Andrew “Mudrock” Murdock tightening and buffing the sound up from the somewhat more anarchic crackle of their last two…
Like a janitor carting off hunks of the obsolete office equipment he’s always rhapsodizing over, bearded central-Californian techno-mystic Jason Lytle has finally pulled the plug on Grandaddy, the shaggy dream-pop combo he’s led since 1992. Just Like the Fambly Cat, the band’s fourth full-length, will be its last. As final…
Don’t dismiss Sunset Rubdown as a side project to Wolf Parade and Frog Eyes. Lead singer Spencer Krug’s other two bands are better-known among the indie-rock cognoscenti, but if this album’s any indication, Krug thinks it should be the other way around. While Shut Up has a basement-recording ambience to…
The best thing about Essex Green? It’s always summer on its songs, and you’re 15 and in love for the first time all over again. Cannibal Sea, the third full-length from this Brooklyn trio of Sasha Bell, Chris Ziter and Jeff Baron, is wall-to-wall angelic harmonies, jangling guitars, bubbling synths…
Glancing at the names, one might surmise this is a psycho-core cannibal-metal sickfest. Not quite, as Blood on the Wall is surprisingly more of a raw, quirky, Pixies/Pavement-influenced offering who are fine in their own right. But opener Psychic Ills is the real prize here, featuring hypnotic bass grooves, tasty…
If the guys in Spock’s Beard had gone to my high school, there is no doubt they would have received severe and painful admonishment for being the proverbial “band geeks.” Taking their name from the Star Trek episode where Captain Kirk and crew inhabit a parallel universe and do battle…
The comparisons to Dido and Joss Stone that surround KT Tunstall are inevitable. She’s British and pretty, she sings wonderfully and she was successful right out of the gate, but similarities to her countrywomen end there. Whereas Dido and Stone are content to mine one stylistic vein, Tunstall has dynamited…
Despite her fair skin and mostly bright disposition, dark is an apt word for Kristy Kruger. As the Dallas songwriter talks about her burgeoning career in local music, one that has been a long time coming, she has to pause to shield the sun coming in through a store window…
When he was 30, Mark E. Smith, iconoclastic front man for the Fall, wrote “Living Too Late,” an odd reflection on mortality where he sang of crows’ feet ingrained on his face. Now almost 50, one of rock’s most original and recognizable voices sees no reason to reflect or dwell…
When I picked up The Pete Best Band’s Live at the Adelphi, the hipster at the cash register smirked behind his foggy glasses. Having once been a record clerk myself, I knew what the clerk was thinking: “This sad sack must be one of those Beatlesheads, actually buying a record…
