Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’s first of three Dallas episodes aired last week with a surprise cameo–by Chomsky! “That guy’s hot!” exclaimed Carson Kressley as guitarist Glen Reynolds shook it for the camera during a sweat-soaked rendition of “15 Minutes to Rock,” performed for the Sigma Chi fraternity at…
These twitchy, tuneful Canadians have taken so long to follow up Make Up the Breakdown, the excellent album Sub Pop released in 2002 (and Reprise reissued the next year), that skeptics have begun wondering if there’s still enough interest in the new dance-rock to support Elevator, Hot Hot Heat’s third…
Suspended Animation lacks all semblance of melody, structure and sanity, but that’s not why it fails. The fourth album from avant-metal band Fantômas, which includes members of The Melvins, Slayer and Mr. Bungle, fails because it’s an utter slap in the face to the 0.001 percent of listeners who give…
The 42 songs on this three-CD Yo La Tengo career retrospective aren’t sequenced chronologically, but it wouldn’t much matter if they were. The two-decade tale of Hoboken, New Jersey’s finest indie rock band resists a linear celebration; rather than an evolutionary journey, it’s one of vast eclecticism and experimentation, wherein…
Saturday afternoon at Denton’s WakeUp Fest was full of sunny skies and cool breezes, and if Deep Ellum hadn’t stolen focus with its Arts Festival, perhaps more people would’ve driven out to enjoy the bizarre musical cross section. Country stalwarts The Gourds and manic-depressive punk-rockers The Riverboat Gamblers provided headliner…
Saturday’s Wall of Sound local music festival reads like my dream birthday party. If the show only featured the spacey synth-rock of Midlake and Red Monroe, the ultra-loud blasts of Record Hop and The Golden Falcons and the catchy Brit-pop of The Hourly Radio and Black Tie Dynasty, I’d already…
Looking and sounding like the bastard sons of Brian Setzer and the late Joe Strummer, Tiger Army offers an enjoyably rough and thuggish variant on rockabilly. In other words, it’s not just hairstyles and attitude. Add in singer Nick 13’s Danzig-esque roar, and you have some wonderfully fresh takes on…
Brad Paisley, who headlines this radio-station lollapalooza, is one of Nashville’s most likable stars. He sings about domestic squabbles and drinking too much and wacky Hollywood celebrities but gives the everyday a ring of uncommon grace–the way your wife falls asleep on your arm and makes your limb fall asleep,…
Blame it on global warming or the tap water. Blame it on health care or G-dubs. Whoever’s at fault, Canada is simply kicking our ass these days when it comes to producing compelling indie rock acts. The latest from Montreal’s Stars, Set Yourself on Fire, is a sophisticated collection that…
Despite the impassioned hyperventilations of the New York media and the nationwide blogosphere, the UK hip-hop offshoot known as grime has yet to make much of a commercial impact in the United States. Aficionados insist that the release of the excellent new Run the Road compilation may change that; the…
It took the jury less than three hours to deliberate, and that included lunch. Defendant Jesse Chaddock, 28, was declared guilty of engaging in organized criminal activity for his part in a July 26 beating at the Gypsy Tea Room. It came as no surprise. That morning, during closing arguments,…
For years, Will Sheff had been searching for a subject around which to build an entire album. He wrote his first two with unifying themes in mind: 2001’s Don’t Fall in Love With Everyone You See, with its country-spurred murder ballads, was the band’s “earth” record; 2003’s Down the River…
The Tah-Dahs’ Web site once offered the following philosophy: “If you don’t like to dance, you’re going to die alone.” Hard science has yet to hold this out, but you have to admit they’ve got something there. Dancing is that liberating, all-too-rare event in local pop-rock music, an oppressively self-conscious…
The time has come: The 2005 Dallas Observer Music Awards ballot can be found in this issue, on page 70. Vote with your heart–and your pen. You may also vote online, of course, but however you choose to vote, do so only once. Ballot stuffers will be publicly mocked. The…
Colin Meloy wanted to be a novelist. His songs have an antique literary quality, as if they should arrive in a bound tome, smelling sweetly of dust and mold. With the Decemberists’ first two albums, Castaways and Cutouts and Her Majesty the Decemberists, Meloy placed tales of chimney sweeps and…
A decade after he redefined a post-grunge alt-rock counterculture with a two-bit accidental call to arms called “Loser,” is there a musical stone 34-year-old Beck Hansen hasn’t turned over, or at least tried to? He’s done everything from bongwater-stain hip-hop to yellow-latex pop-funk to dirty-leaves folk-blues to Laurel Canyon strum-rock…
South San Gabriel’s The Carlton Chronicles is the greatest concept album about a kitty ever made. Granted, singer Will Johnson is probably the first to write nine songs from a pet’s perspective, but the man known for hundreds of songs in SSG and Centro-matic has turned his cat’s stories of…
Denton’s heaviest steel-wielders thrash like Slayer with the sneer of hardcore outfit Suicidal Tendencies, but it takes a few listens to regain thought processes necessary to, well, think that far. What sticks in my mind are the guitars foaming at the mouth for knife-war rhythms on “Built Like Danzig, Face…
Joyfully reminiscent of John Hiatt’s Bring the Family period, Denton’s Rodney Parker plays country with just enough grit to escape any comparisons to Nashville schlock. Country and folk rarely offer the punch and integrity Parker applies to the majority of this fine release. Blow the Soot Out has much in…
Posters were missing, the kitchen had vanished and the girls’ bathroom sink lay shattered on the floor, but the Barley House drunks kept the kegs, bottle openers and speakers working for one more night before moving to Yale Boulevard on Friday. Rather than end the bar’s 12-year stand with a…
Collin Herring is a little nervous. He fiddles with the butt of a cigarette, twisting and bending until it’s just a pile of debris on the table next to his beer. “A month ago, we had 900 hits on our Web site,” he says, adjusting his glasses. “Now we’ve had…
“This is like The Apprentice for indie rock bands,” said Stars lead singer Torquil Campbell at the band’s afternoon showcase at Emo’s. It’s probably an apt description of how it felt to be onstage, one of roughly a gajillion bands, screaming your vocal cords raw at 3 p.m. for a…
