The sound of R&B radio has been defined by super-producers like Timbaland and the Neptunes for so long that it’s difficult to remember a time when that wasn’t the case. For Teddy Riley (who actually discovered the Neptunes), it’s not such a trick: History might well single him out as…
Japan’s most colorful psyche-rock circus makes its annual Denton visit, just in time to bask in the North Texas rising sun. Sometimes Acid Mothers Temple sounds like 28 guitarists soloing in different rooms, but you haven’t lived until you’ve had a splinter off Kawabata Makoto’s shattered axe hurl inches from…
“I don’t think of us as a Southern rock band,” says Patterson Hood, the main axle of the Drive-By Truckers. Huh? Isn’t this the band that made a two-CD album about Lynyrd Skynyrd called Southern Rock Opera? They boast three guitar players, just like Skynyrd. Hood even hails from “Sweet…
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Sara Beck isn’t an easy read. After all, the Wichita, Kansas-born singer, now living in Austin, mixes the dark and the sweet from the very first strum of her guitar. “BTK Blues,” from her forthcoming record Mold the Gold, devolves rapidly from a…
Two days before the start of Rainer Maria’s most recent tour, singer/bassist Caithlin De Marrais is at home in Brooklyn, enjoying what will be her last days there for several weeks. The band’s latest Catastrophe Keeps Us Together is yet another evolutionary climb for the band, shedding whatever remained of…
If it really is better to burn out than fade away, then Last Beat Studios certainly took the low road. For months, rumors have spread about the slow, quiet death of the huge Deep Ellum recording studio and rehearsal space, and people thought its demise would come in the form…
Dallas’ The Chemistry Set can finally put their recent past to rest on Blue Monsters, their most ambitious record yet. While the band has worked on its sophomore record, the only recent Chem news that has come forth has been about bassist Cory Helms’ fight with cancer, so this album,…
The other night, I got a call from an old high school buddy who wanted to catch up. When we met for dinner, we asked each other the usual questions–jobs, relationships, did you see how fat what’s-his-name got–and then he asked me a point-blank question that, for whatever reason, caught…
You’re Joshin’ me: The 2006 Dallas Observer Music Awards voting period still has another two weeks to go, so tear the ballot out on page 74 or visit dallasobserver.com to cast your vote if you haven’t already. Chances are you don’t need a reminder, though, as nominees have inundated e-mail…
The Undoing of David Wright wears one of its first-ever reviews proudly on its Web site. The quote is taken from a post on a local Christian music message board, calling the Denton band’s live performance “everything that is contrary to peace, a sound mind, God’s order, and love. It…
Ass Clown
If you say the words “Michael Bolton” to most passers-by, two reactions are common: smiles and fond ’80s memories of AC radio hits like “Time, Love and Tenderness” and “How Can We Be Lovers,” or punches to the face. But there’s a third response that’s grown in popularity over the…
For anyone whose limited exposure to the music of Jamaica and West Africa has fostered the impression that reggae is one-dimensional, such a person needs to get his or her ass in line early Monday afternoon at the Granada and be prepared for Burning Spear’s inspiring zeal. If you ask…
In any other city, this review might fall into the cracks–in fact, it’d deserve to. Pleasesuite is not a disc that grabs, throttles or even pinches, and that quality is precisely what makes it fit so well in a Dallasite’s CD player. Philip E. Karnats, now a Chicago resident, did…
What passes for heavy metal these days possesses little of the danger and none of the wit that belonged to true stalwarts of the genre. Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Motorhead, early Metallica–the best of the leather-and-studs crowd always mixed in a good dose of the absurd while overloading songs with…
Toby Keith may not really be a dick, but he plays one on CD. He generally comes across as ultra-smug, as if flaunting his popularity in the faces of intellectual elitists was half the fun of success. Yet the attitudinal aggressiveness that dominates White Trash is vastly preferable to the…
Grand Champeen doesn’t just wear its influences and passions on its sleeves. This Austin combo actually prints ’em up in bold type on a faded tour t-shirt. “Let It Be, Let It Bleed, On the Beach, The Gilded Palace of Sin, Heaven Tonight and The Kids Are Alright” shouts out…
Combine the sex howls and cabaret androgyny of glam rock with the urgency of punk, then throw in some lose-five-pounds-in-one-song ass-shakin’ and you have Celebration. Sean Antanaitis serves as resident monkey-boy, playing just about every instrument (including his own creation, the guitorgan) save drums and wife Katrina Ford’s inimitable voice…
Rumor has it that the major label bigshot who took aside the boys of Irving and told them to choose a “frontman” ended up in critical condition at Cedars Sinai hospital’s emergency wedgie clinic. This is a quintet that doesn’t work without splitting the spotlight, which is probably why they’re…
Conor Meads, vocalist for this San Diego pop-punk quartet, has a fondness for the overwrought theatrics of Elton John and the late Freddie Mercury. Trouble is that his innate ability is more in line with your local high-school punk. Meads and his three cohorts somehow manage to make this dichotomy…
Jana Hunter’s otherworldly voice isn’t exactly what you’d expect to hear coming from a girl raised in Arlington. After appearing on the Devendra Banhart-curated Golden Apples of the Sun compilation, the enigmatic Hunter teamed with the freak-folk king to release both a vinyl split and a full length LP on…
Houston’s Blue October has sold out a spacious venue just weeks after the spectacular 80-some-odd band Wall of Sound Festival did not, proving that the metroplex is confused about which bands suck and which bands don’t. In our ever-vigilant effort to get your heads straight, here are five signs that…
Thirty-three hours after the Wall of Sound Festival 2006 kicked off, I was worn down to a nub. I’d seen roughly 44 acts by Sunday evening. Some were full sets, while others were just one song, but still. A similar sense of fatigue and exhaustion was evident on the faces…
