Critic's Notebook

It’s free. Starts at 8. Doors at 7. Then read my interview with Rhett Miller about the new disc in the Observer tomorrow. –Pete Freedman…

Guy Forsyth (Deana Mason) Quirky Austin singer-songwriter Guy Forsyth is taking the idea behind CD release parties to new heights…or lows, depending on your perspective. Sure, it’s understandable for a band from our metroplex to play release shows in Dallas, Ft. Worth and Denton because they might want to help…

The Toadies (Jason Janik) We’d been speculating on this a lot lately, but now it’s confirmed: The Toadies’ new album, No Deliverance, will be released on August 19. You can read Spin’s exclusive interview with Vaden Todd Lewis on the first Toadies album in seven years here…but I’ll warn you,…

The new Green Day album. Sorta. It’s not up on The Loft’s Web site or its Myspace yet, but Billboard reports that, just eight days from today, Green Day’s alter ego act, Foxboro Hot Tubs, who made some radio waves before it was confirmed that the two acts were one…

Your Ozzfest 2008 poster. …is that your fans get really uppity and ungrateful. The backlash has already begun on Ozzfest–or so it would appear in the comments section of the Ozzfest blog where the one-day Dallas show was announced. It ain’t pretty, folks. There’s a lot of “Fuck Dallas,” “Fuck…

Metallica makes its Ozzfest debut this year, too. The rumors started a while back, but now it’s been confirmed, with all the details worked out: Ozzfest 2008 will be a one-day music festival held in Dallas (not a two-day, two-city fest as was originally believed). It’ll take place in Frisco…

We didn’t make it out to see the Raconteurs earlier this month. We hit up the Kanye West show instead. So, we were pretty pleased when we came across a few videos from the House of Blues show — especially the one featuring the cover of ZZ Top’s “Cheap Sunglasses.”…

Black Tie Dynasty will love you forever if you make this your MySpace image.We’ve got locals on TV, grubbing for MySpace attention and offering up new music. Dive in. Those who watched One Tree Hill may have done a double take when you heard “Elephants As Big As Whales” by…

Gorilla Vs. Bear reports that The Polyphonic Spree’s Tim DeLaughter is working the score for Visioneers, a dark comedy about exploding people, apparently. Check it. –Pete Freedman…

Though he claims not to be as materialistic as most mainstream rappers, South Dallas rapper Big Tuck manages to rap about Escalades and rims on a few tracks. So he should feel right at home checking out the lowriders, custom cars and models when he isn’t performing and signing autographs…

Just got word that The CW network, The O.C.-wannabe Gossip Girl and Dallas’ own Lisa Loeb–or a trifecta clubs editor Jesse Hughey calls “The Holy Trinity of ‘Who Cares?'”–are set to join forces tonight on your television sets during the 7 o’clock hour. Loeb’s guest-starring role on the show takes…

Spend your whole weekend waiting for, reading and re-reading The New York Times’ Denton article? Well, here’s what you missed (and what you didn’t) around town over the weekend: The “pop punk” quartet LoveHateHero rolled through The Door last Saturday on its current nationwide tour. The band’s melodies feature, “pop-sensibility…

Hey, now! The travel section of yesterday’s New York Times has sweet little profile of the little d in it, and it gets all “Is Denton the Next Austin?” while namedropping a bunch of local acts and even including a media player with songs from Midlake, Sarah Jaffe, The Baptist…

What you missed on DC9 this week as you sat around marveling at how much you actually enjoyed Iron Man… – We told you about Strawberry Fields’ move and what it meant for the future of the store’s DIY concerts. – We let you know about a certain icon’s upcoming…

Go ahead and set your iPods to the over-used but somehow still uplifting anthem “Clocks.” Because, ladies and gents, Coldplay’s coming back to town. According to the press release that arrived in our mailbox this afternoon, the “Viva La Vida” tour (same name as the upcoming album which, unfortunately, doesn’t…

The Black Crowes land in Addison. Does Addison have good taste in music? That’s debatable, judging by this lineup, but this weekend’s food and music festival, Taste Addison, has certainly managed to secure some big names for this year’s festival, including Friday performers Switchfoot and Gavin DeGraw and Saturday headliners…

How often do we get mail from bands? Often. How often do we get an actual hand-written letter from a band? Pretty damned rarely. I remember an inspirational greeting card from witty songstress Laura Palmer around last November and Daniel Folmer has been known to keep us updated on new…

Fort Worth singer/songwriter Tim Halperin plays his final area show this Friday at the Chicken Ranch, a club located in the Stockyards. The TCU student will then be off to his hometown of Omaha for a few months to reconnect with his roots. “The guys I used to play with…

Odd that these guys wrote “You’ll Never Make It.” (Chapman Baehler) California’s Pennywise has been playing its brand of working man’s punk for nearly 20 years now, and the members show little sign of slowing down. Even after the 1996 suicide of original member Jim Thirsk, the band soldiered on,…

This is not the Sloppyworld sound system. This is just a tribute. John Freeman’s had himself a rough 2008 so far, between opening Sloppyworld, perhaps closing Sloppyworld, definitely closing Sloppyworld and trying to scrounge up the money to pay Sloppyworld’s leftover bills. Now, just four months before he heads off…

Ozzy knows how to give his mama some love.OK, boys and girls, Mother’s Day is this Sunday. That means you’ve got a mere day and a half to come up with something sweet for that lady who raised you (and maybe your grandma, too? She probably rules, too). In the…

OK, so this isn’t really news, per se–anyone who’s been to the Palladium recently has seen this on the venue’s TV screens–but My Morning Jacket, who our sister paper LA Weekly just deemed the “best live band in the world,” officially announced today its upcoming August 23 show at the…