On her new In Exile Deo, professional indie babe Juliana Hatfield makes a serious move away from the scrappy guitar-pop of her college-radio past toward the mature songcraft of the Aimee Mann set. You know what this means: slower tempos, lots of keyboards, a handful of metaphors so painful I’ll…
The Boys Named Sue aren’t your average cover band. Sure, they have a set list chock-full of titles you’d expect–“Crazy Arms,” “Ramblin’ Man,” “Wurlitzer Prize.” But it’s not these classics that set them apart. After all, how many other bands will segue into a Good Charlotte song in the middle…
In their first venture since 2002’s In Violet Light, the Tragically Hip still sound like art students living with their parents–rough, lacking production and sweating in their faded black T-shirts. Though more distinctive than interesting, the album grew on me from song to song (that is, minus the first song,…
The impressively résuméd indie-rock guitarist Jimmy LaValle–he’s spent time with Tristeza, the Black Heart Procession and GoGoGo Airheart–has released a handful of iffy solo records as the Album Leaf, a name that’s basically provided cover while he noodled in his bedroom like Enya in a denim jacket. To make In…
When we last left Marah in 2002, the Philadelphia band had blown its shot at minor-league music success. After building a cult fan base with two solid roots-rock albums, the group released Float Away With the Friday Night Gods, a bloated arena-rocker that left fans baffled and records unsold. Perhaps…
Though die-hard fans will surely love it, A Ghost Is Born lacks much of the trilling beauty of the band’s 2002 triumph, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. This is probably to the satisfaction of front man Jeff Tweedy, whose guitar is starting to echo the ragged glory of Neil Young on his…
Jonathan Richman has always been like that geeky, art-loving, shy, witty, multilingual, politically active teacher you have a crush on. Or he’s been like the only person who really understands how you feel and puts it into pop songs. Either way, Not So Much to be Loved as to Love…
Any writer who dares suggest that Mike Skinner, the Brit behind The Streets, is something less than a primitive genius would undoubtedly get the frigid-shoulder treatment at a critics’ roundtable. Reviewers on both sides of the pond worked themselves into a lather over Original Pirate Material, Skinner’s 2002 full-length debut,…
I’d been meaning to catch Theatre Fire’s live show for months, but stuff kept coming up. You know, laundry, house renovations. That one night, I really did have to work early the next day. When I arrived at Club Dada on Saturday night, I chugged a beer and hoped that…
There are good bands that write well-crafted songs and play them capably, even managing to inject their heads and hearts into the process. And that’s fine. More than you could reasonably expect from drums and wires. More than most of their colleagues can muster. Then there are the great bands,…
No matter what part of town you’re driving in, you will hear the same thing at every stoplight: the flesh-trembling drone of a nearby bass system. Whether it’s Highland Park or South Dallas, Eminem or OutKast, rap music blasts out of cars everywhere. Rap’s current mass appeal–not only the sound,…
I’m driving to Arlington to visit my friend for the last time. Tomorrow she will die, which is something I’ve been trying not to think about since I heard the diagnosis a year ago. But things have gotten worse fast, and now the magnificent woman I once knew is sinking…
“Clap your hands all you sexy people!” Prince told the audience. And people, we were not sexy. We were geeks through and through, slapping high fives and dancing with the finesse of a tipsy 5-year-old, whooping with every familiar riff. And yet, the beautiful thing about Prince was that it…
Have you seen the Austin City Limits Festival lineup? Bam, someone grew up fast. This year’s roster includes such beloved indie acts as the Pixies, Wilco, Modest Mouse, Neko Case and My Morning Jacket, along with such marquee names as Pat Green, Dashboard Confessional and Sheryl Crow. The festival is…
After a six-year hiatus, the Beastie Boys return with To the 5 Boroughs and alternately position themselves as pop-culture bottom feeders and political pedants. While anti-Bush screeds “That’s It That’s All” and “Time to Build” come across as heavy-handed, the terse “Open Letter to NYC” does manage to channel that…
The best you can say of the third solo record from Brian Wilson–third, that is, after one bootlegged fiasco and one ditched “comeback”–is that it doesn’t further diminish his legacy. It is what it is, which is to say it strains to suggest in spots what he once was so…
The Magnetic Fields’ i is no 69 Love Songs. Keep that in mind, and you’ll enjoy it more. Like that magnificent three-disc album, i is a concept record with 14 songs whose titles begin with the letter “I.” Front man Stephin Merritt relishes this kind of challenge and restraint, which…
With its neon liner notes, choppy guitar hooks, synth noise and “Fuck. Art. Let’s fuck” attitude, Pink Grease’s debut EP, All Over You, was as trendy as a star tattoo, but it still managed to conjure the smutty, chaotic intent of the new-new wave movement. Comparatively, this anticipated full-length is…
A Dallas native who recently returned to the area after living in California for the past three years, Havergal–the one-man band of Ryan Murphy–is also returning to record stores with a sophomore effort that treasures sparseness and repetition over traditional structures. The Bright Eyes-esque highlight “Drowned Men” runs on a…
Erykah Badu’s Black Forest Theater is flat-out happening. I’m not just talking about the gorgeous renovated South Dallas movie theater (1920 Martin Luther King Blvd.)–with better sound and lighting (and attitude) than most any spot in Deep Ellum–but the music. Let’s start with Common Folk, second on Wednesday night’s bill…
As usual, it’s a pretty good time for a visit from Patti Smith, the punk poetess with a song for every cultural and geopolitical shake-up the world can throw at itself. Trampin’, her ninth album, finds Smith musing on war and peace and its avatars; if it gets a little…
If you’ve ever daydreamed that Ben Folds would hook up with the guys from Weezer to record an album (and, really, who hasn’t?), then boy do I have a band for you: Piebald! Don’t let the third-wave ska-style name throw you off–they’re a peppy, punky, piano-flecked foursome from Boston that’s…
