Last Night: Youth Brigade, The Hellions, The Broadsiders

Last Night: Youth Brigade, The Hellions, The Broadsiders Double Wide November 3, 2011 Better than: watching Another State of Mind and trying to figure out which parts were staged. Before they paid a visit to Austin for Fun Fun Fun Fest, Los Angeles hardcore punk legends Youth Brigade were kind…

Five Sad Bastard Songs From 2011 (And When To Use Them)

We’re just on the cusp of a time change. Oh, you know what that means. You know. It means: it’ll get darker soon, the clouds will hang gray and low in the sky, and it’ll be bone cold. Unless it’s not cold because Texas is like an overcooked pizza. Anyway,…

The Angelus

Few records conjure up such specific imagery as Denton act The Angelus do on their long-awaited debut album, On A Dark & Barren Land. Listening to it, you could swear that lead singer Emil Rapstine has lived his life alone on a desolate, rural landscape in the l800s. Doom-ridden songs…

Method Man, Curren$y, Big K.R.I.T., Smoke DZA

The Smoker’s Club Tour comes to Dallas this month, featuring two of the most popular names in underground hip-hop. New Orleans weed-rapper Curren$y has built a large following over the past few years for his mellowed-out rhymes and spacey instrumentals, releasing a string of solid albums and mixtapes at a…

Cancer Can’t Stop We Were Promised Jetpacks.

There is never a convenient time to get cancer. It doesn’t matter what age you are or where you are in life; no one wants this roadblock. And, worse, when it comes to lymphoma, it can happen to anyone, regardless of his or her health. But when Michael Palmer, guitarist…

Cloud Nothings, Sealion, Soviet

Cleveland’s Cloud Nothings is the solo project of one Dylan Baldi, who is 19 and dropped out of college to focus on writing scrambling, buzzing, lo-fi pop-punk tunes, many of which were composed and recorded in his parents’ basement. Baldi’s full-length debut hyperactively clashes sugary melodies with blasting, spazzing guitars…

Tinariwen

There’s so much great music coming out of Mali these days, but it’s the nomadic Saharan collective Tinariwen who conjure the most inexorably compelling spells. The music of these Tuareg warriors (several of them fought as rebel soldiers) came to wide attention with their 2009 album Imidiwan: Companions and an…

Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, James McMurtry

Jason Isbell has finally established himself as something more than a former Drive-By Trucker. With the release of his third studio album Here We Rest on April 12, he and his band the 400 Unit have moved on — right into their old territory. Last fall, Isbell brought a twang-rock…

Midlake’s Bar Classes Up Denton’s Square

Few Dentonites — perhaps even few regulars of Andy’s Bar — have ever walked through the door located just slightly to the right of the entrance of the long-running rock club on the Square. In its tenure as the Ernest Room, the spot above Andy’s was used only sparingly as…

The Beauty in Ra Ra Riot’s Sound

Indie-rock fans may be used to seeing a cellist sharing a stage with the drums and guitar by now, but they’re definitely not used to seeing one who looks like Alexandra Lawn of Ra Ra Riot. In the field of sex-symbol cellists, Lawn has no equal. Understandably, the subject makes…

Deuces, D

Hindsight now tells me that my first night out in Dallas was nothing exceptional. It was just another night on Lowest Greenville Avenue in early 2008 — a good time for that part of town, no doubt. It was late January, and I’d just arrived in Dallas from Colorado Springs…

Neon Indian to Join Brooklyn’s The Antlers on Forthcoming EP

This year’s Burst Apart from Booklyn’s The Antlers is looking really good for our year-end top ten list. The expansive, textured, stoned-out pop goes over even better live than on the record, as we learned when the band passed through town at The Loft last June.About a month before that…