Music

The band somehow achieved our goal of leaving Tucson by 10 a.m., and we headed back through Phoenix and west on I-10 for Los Angeles. The drive took us through the extreme desolation of the Arizona and California desert, finally relenting as we began to approach L.A. Though, as it…

Last week, when the official word finally came out of Osbourne camp that this year’s Ozzfest would be a one-day, one-off festival to be held in, of all places, here—or, near here, rather—in Frisco, no one was all that surprised. Anyone who, in the weeks leading up to the announcement,…

The recipe for recording a successful sophomore album begins with a bottle of cheap wine…sort of. In Ladyhawk’s case, it starts with the band’s beloved quick-fire sangria (cheap wine, juice and Sprite), a drafty house without electricity or plumbing and—to answer your question—a bucket in which to piss. More than…

If there’s one thing the self-satisfied, liberal, tofu-munching, cappuccino-sipping, in vitro fertilization-using coastal elite hate, it’s Fox News. The Rupert Murdoch-owned home to such neoconservative mouthpieces as Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity is known for cheerleading the Iraq war and not finding John McCain sufficiently right-wing. It even has the…

Their hellbent country-punk theatrics suggest the offspring of Tim Kasher and David Eugene Edwards. A combination of The Good Life’s conceptual psycho-dramas and 16 Horsepower’s Pentecostal fury, Murder by Death’s latest album, Red of Tooth and Claw, brings all the band’s elements into tight focus and cooks it at 425…

Duffy is like a kinder, gentler Amy Winehouse: Her blond hair, English-rose complexion and the lack of any real edge to her music ensures marketability. Witness the use of “Mercy,” her international smash, in numerous commercials prior to her debut release. But Duffy’s story doesn’t begin and end here. There…

Doing justice to an artist with the gravitas of Tom Waits is a challenge for any singer, much less a 23-year-old actress making her musical debut. But that’s exactly what Scarlett Johansson and her hip rock cohort attempt on Anywhere I Lay My Head, a collection of 10 Waits covers…

With 100 songs clocking in at just shy of five hours, Sony’s latest dip into Willie Nelson’s fathomless catalog—a four-CD behemoth timed to coincide with the release of Joe Nick Patoski’s bio Willie Nelson: An Epic Life and the Red Headed Stranger’s 75th birthday on April 30—this boxed set goes…

Alejandro Escovedo’s acclaimed 2006 album The Boxing Mirror ran the gamut of moods from melancholy to self-doubt, an appropriate response to his hepatitis C-related 2003 brush with death. So how will he react to recovery? Well, by looking back—and rocking out. Escovedo describes his upcoming Real Animal as a retrospective…

When a 16-year-old Charlie Sexton released his debut, Pictures for Pleasure, way back in 1985, most predicted that the singer-songwriter was on his way to major stardom. Tall and handsome, Sexton parlayed his early acclaim into a cameo appearance in the hit film Thelma and Louise. But, oddly, Sexton’s striking…

Jez Willis and Tim Garbutt, the two DJs collectively known as Utah Saints, are the antithesis of prolific. Though the pair has scored numerous movie and television themes and remixed songs for artists as diverse as Blondie, Hawkwind and The Osmonds (!), they’ve only managed to release two albums since…

After a hiatus of three years, Dallas promotions collective Nice People last month resurrected Knowledge, its regular series of hip-hop concerts. The first go-round kept the spotlight squarely on Dallas. For this second edition, though, Nice People’s reach is extending to bring some Austin musicians to town—though there are still…

If you’ve been to a show in Denton or seen a Denton band recently, there’s a good chance you’ve also seen the work of visual artist and printmaker Nevada Hill. Hill’s intricate, hand-drawn images can be seen on record covers and posters for bands such as Record Hop, Dust Congress…

Bedford’s Chris Rivers has just released his second effort, New Meaning to Lonesome, a CD that thankfully continues the singer’s old-school devotion to hardcore honky-tonk of the Haggard/Jennings variety. Eschewing mullet and trenchcoat, Rivers makes country music the old-fashioned way: with more fiddle and less bombast. For going on two…