In 1997, Rebecca Gates became the last Spinane, as the departure of longtime musical partner Scott Plouf left her to craft the masterful Arches and Aisles alone. Arches and Aisles would itself become the Spinanes’ epitaph, followed only by The Imp Years, a collection of B-sides and rarities from the…
A dozen listens in, and the only criticism that can be leveled at I Might Be Wrong, Radiohead’s first live outing, is that it’s too short–eight songs in 40 minutes, barely enough time to get a swerve on. It’s disappointing only because Radiohead’s long been the best live rock outfit…
The wearying practice of cranking out local-band compilations has been left to local labels, often working with a theme (cf. Electric Ornaments, Idol Records’ excellent Christmas comp from last year) or with an agenda (promoting their own segment of the “scene” or their own stable of bands). To accuse Summer…
I’ve always believed that the humble Winedale Tavern, a shotgun railroad bar on Lower Greenville, attracts the most democratic mix of humanity of any club in Dallas. Both the homeless and the celebrated sit stool by stool, on even keel, protected by embryonic walls–a room that somehow amplifies the warmer…
From his seventh-floor loft office just south of downtown, The D.O.C. can see his grandmother’s house in West Dallas, just behind the Lew Sterrett Justice Center. From here, he can see it all. The city is his personal model train set. Reunion Tower looms close enough to palm like a…
If you’ve got the time and/or the money and/or the sanity to keep close tabs on America’s bustling indie-rock underground, you no doubt know that quite a few of the scruffy slouches who run things down there are double-dipping in an increasingly shallow artistic gene pool. Simply put, stagnation’s stinking…
The hits keep on coming. Well, depending on your definition of hits. Pleasant Grove is set to release its new album, Auscultation of the Heart, November 26 on Germany’s Glitterhouse Records, the same label that issued an expanded version of the group’s self-titled debut EP last year. Recorded by Matt…
Even the most jaded soul’s at least this bit interested in MJ’s latest–a disc three-plus years in the making, at the cost of some $30-$40 mil. Nostalgists wonder only what happened to the kid they once adored; they shake their head, cluck their tongues and lament how so vital a…
Masta Ace started his career impressively enough: He was a member of the Queensbridge Juice Crew and had first dibs on 1989’s “The Symphony,” arguably the best posse cut ever recorded. He went from Cold Chillin’ records to Delicious Vinyl to almost complete obscurity, leaving a faint trail of radio…
When you’re in a band, living and playing in a college town has one big benefit: Every four years or so, a new crop of students, 18-year-old kids ready for something new, is exposed to your music. At the same time, many of the ones you’ve won over in the…
First, there was Napster, which made it easy for anyone with an Internet connection to get thousands of songs for free. It was one of the Net’s true mass-market hits, landing its 19-year-old creator on the cover of Time while 30 million users traded nearly 3 billion songs a month…
The most beloved album of 2001–and rarely has a release received so much across-the-board praise, at least one without a $100 bill slipped inside–is also the most baffling. The concept of Tori Amos’ Strange Little Girls, having a woman perform songs about women written by men, isn’t exactly novel, though…
For the first time since its 1998 inception, the hard-rocking, shit-talking Family Values Tour isn’t an entirely ironic venture. Sure, the lineup includes adventurously coiffed lunkheads Static-X and hip-hop-admiring lunkheads Linkin Park. But the tour’s two biggest names–nü-metal pilgrims Staind and grunge survivors Stone Temple Pilots–reflect hard rock’s increasingly fractured…
Back in the days when New Order was rising out of the ashes of Joy Division, dark and depressing subject matter in music was still absent enough in mainstream pop music that anyone addressing it in his music stood apart from the crowd. Of course, nowadays everyone’s whining about how…
If you’ll bear with us for a moment, we have a hypothetical we’d like to share. Say a small, no-name label in the Los Angeles suburbs enters into a joint-venture agreement with a much bigger, well-funded label. With the agreement comes expectations, of course; the bigger label wants to see…
Getting married is probably a trip: If you’re in love, vowing the vows can undo that; if you’re not, the legality may tie the knot. And if you’re either member of the Nathan Larson-Nina Persson estate, it can turn a once-dependable musical template inside out. That little truism seemed to…
Just as in World War II, France has spent much of the rock era standing on the sidelines. While England and America carved up most of the Western pop empire between themselves, France was a musical irrelevancy: a land of accordions, Maurice Chevalier, rich cuisine and Jerry Lewis fanatics. But…
If Jenny Toomey were like most musicians, she would only talk about her new album, what it was like to make it, what the songs are about, that kind of thing. And she would be entitled: The double-disc Antidote, her solo debut and first album since Tsunami’s A Brilliant Mistake…
In the beginning, there was the accordion. Puro Conjunto, An Album in Words & Pictures (CMAS Books; distributed by University of Texas Press), a collection of writings and artwork about the traditional Tex-Mex dance music, covers virtually every significant artist the scene has produced. But the real star of the…
One of the most encouraging developments in pop music over the last few years has been the emergence of a mini-movement of artsy, bohemian, female R&B singers. This club–which includes Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill and Macy Gray–is fairly disparate, but it’s united by a singer-songwriter’s commitment to individual…
Nate Fowler used to be our neighbor, back when we both lived at the Turtle Dove Apartments on Matilda and McCommas. This was a couple of years ago, when we thought nothing of living in a joint with a busted hot water pipe, no A/C and a constant pool party…
It hardly seems fair, all these years later, to compare and contrast Farrar with ex-Tupelo honey Jeff Tweedy, especially since Tweedy long ago sprinted past his estranged partner and pal, leaving Farrar to choke on the dust of the back roads of which he’s so fond. Tweedy always was the…
