Ask anyone involved in the underground rock scene what the future portends, and there’s a good chance they’ll sing the praises of emo, post-rock, post-hardcore, or whatever names happen to be in vogue at the moment. Call it what you will, indie rock–and all of its outgrowths–has proved its staying…
Death Cab for Cutie are welcoming winter with open arms. Witness: Within the last few months, singer Ben Gibbard got hit by a car while riding his bike. Guitarist Chris Walla broke his foot. Bassist Nick Harmer was blinded for a few days when a cable whipped him in the…
“It’s like my mind is this constant movie,” Damien Jurado says on the phone from his home in Seattle, a few hours before he heads to work at a local daycare. “My mind is always developing certain characters. It’s just like any other writer; you get these ideas, like little…
The alternative venue at the moment is the Elbow Room on Gaston Avenue, just on the cusp of Deep Ellum, previously thought to be little more than a beer-and-billiards joint–a good hang, but not much more. For the past few months, however, it’s been the center of Dallas’ burgeoning instrumental…
Now that Radiohead’s Kid A has topped the pops, it’s tempting to proclaim the long musical drought at an end; for one moment, at least, art-rock has mounted the charge and proudly planted its flag, right into (Milli Va)Nelly’s ski vest. Never mind that Kid A is only half of…
What will ultimately save Bratmobile from the riot girl ghetto of early ’90s commercial nostalgia can be summed up in one word: balls. While their original peers were shrill and dogmatic, Bratmobile was too immediate in learning not to give a fuck. The three-woman band–formed in Eugene, Oregon, lead by…
Back in the day, rappers never dedicated songs to their favorite guns, never rapped about beating fools up, and never even cursed on their records. Now, Dilated Peoples are out to bring hip-hop back to its simpler, less aggro roots. Though the music on The Platform doesn’t sound particularly old…
We all know the story, even if we haven’t seen the movie. There’s no more classic tale in rock of both an artist’s and a woman’s survival than Tina Turner’s, and it’s more than a little satisfying that when all is said and done, it looks like mean old Ike’s…
Bob and Sally Ackerman are sterling examples of Hometown Syndrome. The greatest husband-wife duo since Mickey and Sylvia, this local Dallas duo has built an audience a hundred times bigger in Europe than in its own back yard. They play up their Texas origins every summer in France, Switzerland, Germany…
This is a superb album by a songwriter who chooses to sit out the rat race of performing and the club circuit. Sandy Knox sounds too good not to be onstage. Soulful and heartbreaking, even when she gets weepy, this tough chick lays her life out on the line. You…
Doug Sulpy and Ray Schweighardt’s book Get Back: The Unauthorized Chronicle of the Beatles’ Let it Be Disaster contains the sort of minutiae that gives a hard-on to the hard-core. The 332-page book, published last year, is less a narrative than an autopsy constructed from bootlegged outtakes made during the…
Sam Prekop is painting when I call at the appointed time. And, as unromantic as it sounds, he’s on deadline. In need of 15 paintings for a solo exhibition, Prekop has a definite plan: Don’t try anything revolutionary, just paint what works. “It’s a little bit weird now, working toward…
Genuine musical objectivity is tough to come by, since most listeners, try as they might, can’t help but bring biases to what they hear. Sometimes these predispositions are personal; for instance, my beloved can no longer listen to the Beach Boys’ “Help Me, Rhonda” without displeasure, because it was playing…
Joe Jackson has never competed with anyone save himself; the man leapt from genre to genre with the dexterity of Spider-Man, caring little about the critical barbs below. He jumped the jive long before desperate careerists dug up Louis Prima and Louis Jordan; he strung himself up in the orchestral…
Milwaukee and San Diego are, respectively, not that far and pretty damned far from Chicago. Yet you wouldn’t know that from the sound of the latest records by Pele and Tristeza. Both bands bank on the Windy City’s current calling card–in short, the noodly, guitar-based instrumental music a friend calls…
From the first funky track (Shakey Ground) on the new Fishbone album, Psychotic Friends Nuttwerx, theres a sneaky notion that somehow this labyrinthine-titled disc is going to pay tribute to Sly & the Family Stone (even though its a remake of an old Temptations hit). That assumption is confirmed three…
Ben Harper may be a young man, but he surely seems to be an old soul. Sure, there were light moments on his ’94 debut, Welcome to the Cruel World (chiefly the two-stepping, trash-talking “Mama’s Got a Girlfriend Now”), but it was songs such as “Like a King”–which brought the…
Since we haven’t had regular access to television in almost a year–during which time a couple of sets died tragically in the line of duty at the hands of our fourplex’s sub-Amish wiring–we’re not entirely sure what the kids are watching these days. Nothing is Must See TV any more:…
A key line on Ultimate Fakebook’s major label debut, This Will Be Laughing Week, goes like this: “I remember when the backbeat wasn’t programmed in and heroes were still human.” Sure, it’s an obvious swipe at whatever mainstream music you despise the most, but in the case of Ultimate Fakebook,…
Jad Fair is one of rock’s true oddballs. Almost childlike in his approach to music (he doesn’t know how to read music and isn’t capable of naming guitar chords), Fair was the leader of the ’80s cult band Half Japanese. With his brother David, Fair created a world of low-fi…
A few years back, when the Mighty Mighty Bosstones appeared on the KISS tribute record, Kiss My Ass, the pairing seemed so incongruous as to be slightly silly. Their cover of “Detroit Rock City” worked all right, with horns amusingly taking the place of Ace Frehley’s justifiably famous, haunting guitar…
The most remarkable thing about Elliott’s 1998 debut, U.S. Songs, was its packaging. The disc came enclosed in a grayish silver slipcase that folded open to reveal two pristine booklets with liner notes and beautiful photographs. It almost didn’t matter that the loud guitars and whiny vocals weren’t as evocative…
