Even before the heavy guitars kick in, San Antonio trio Girl in a Coma shows more dimension than we’ve heard since the days when the word punk meant not only the Ramones but also Talking Heads and Patti Smith. When the guitars start to race, the chords stay colorful and…
Urban songbird JoJo is not yet legal—nor is the bulk of her fan base—but her undeniably catchy hip-pop repertoire transcends a mere teenage audience. Her self-penned songs carry the watermark of R&B while packing a pop punch; streetwise backbeats and an urban twang separate her from her Disney-bred cohorts. But…
In the band’s namesake Sydney Pollack film, desperate contestants in a dance marathon push their bodies to the limit in order to capture a cash prize. Drop by the Cavern tonight, and you may just find yourself channeling that kind of energy, bopping and ca-chunking your body to the musical…
Backward baseball cap-wearing white boys of Dallas, rejoice! Kottonmouth Kings and Tech N9ne have teamed up for a summer tour, and they are coming to town and bringing their friends. Fans of Kottonmouth Kings will have the opportunity to hear live versions of some of their favorite hip-hop tracks about…
In April, Brooklyn indie-rock outfit The Ladybug Transistor lost their drummer, San Fadyl, when he suffered asthma-related complications at his home in Zurich, Switzerland. Though the band’s sixth album, Can’t Wait Another Day, had been conceived before Fadyl’s passing, it’s easy to interpret this powerfully unsentimental work as a eulogy…
With striking looks, a voluptuous frame and a personality that’s both sexy and serious, dancehall singer Ce’Cile has a good chance of being reggae’s new starlet. She’s already the center of gossip, à la Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, in the Jamaican press—rumors of who she’s dating and if she’s…
In his brilliant analysis of Emerson, Lake and Palmer, legendary critic Dave Marsh wrote that quality music could never come simply by force-feeding the complexities of classical music through rock and roll amplifiers. Although many have tried (with practicably bloated results) to fuse Beethoven and Chuck Berry, it wasn’t until…
Billiard Bar Mad Mexicans 6 p.m. Nominated for Best Latin/Tejano Mad, as in mad funky. Mad, as in mad rockin’. Mad, as in…well, sometimes just pissed off. Mixing equal parts hard rock riffs, Latin rhythms and hip-hop-speckled vocals, the Mad Mexicans provide as much flavor as a bowl of mole…
he following are excerpts from the comments section on the local music blog www.WeShotJR.com. The comments refer to a blog entry about a Denton band, Matthew and the Arrogant Sea. They’re “The Biggest Local Band You’ve Never Heard Of,” according to the entry, written by WSJR’s blogmeister, who goes by…
Over the rumble of kettle drums, farty blasts of trombone and kid sis Martha’s wailing—quite literally—about “fire and brimstone,” Rufus Wainwright repeats a straightforward question on Release the Stars’ opening number: “Do I disappoint you?” Oh, silly Rufus, it’s not that you disappoint so much as you exhaust. Three friggin’…
Early in the ’00s, when progressive rap ensembles like OutKast and the Roots ruminated on hip-hop’s post-millennial direction, they produced records in an avant-garde vein purposely intended to evolve the music. Most of the eclectic efforts (particularly Phrenology and Stankonia) emerging from these noble intentions actually succeeded, quiet as kept…
At some point in rock ‘n’ roll, creativity got confused with originality—bands and singers were suspect if their songs weren’t self-penned. Performers recording others’ songs were seen as less “genuine” by the terminally hip. That kind of thinking is responsible for tons of rock albums containing two or three great…
At a recent performance, Fort Worth’s Collin Herring announced that he was picking up his newest CD from the pressing plant in a matter of days. Sadly, it has been more than two years since The Other Side of Kindness, Herring’s fantastic sophomore effort, set critics’ tongues a-wagging with its…
Listening to Sarah Reddington’s debut full-length, All Our Friends Have Gone Missing, one hears a band bursting with potential. From the lovely slacker twang of “A Girl and Her Grocer” to the Pavement-esque crescendo of “I Had a Bad Dream,” it’s clear the young Denton group has the sad-eyed stoner…
The Hymns’ singer/guitarist Brian Harding is often compared to Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy or Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus. In a pinch, there’s a bit of Britt Daniel in there too. And it’s true, Harding’s nasal slacker wail incorporates bits and pieces of those-who-shalt-be-worshiped-by-rock-critics. But to me Harding echoes less these modern voices…
Every music lover has a line beyond which material that had been intriguing becomes self-indulgent. On In Glorious Times, the Museum members don’t just cross this line, they flip back and forth over it like Carly Patterson on angel dust, daring listeners to decide from one moment to the next…
Dance-rock, dance-punk, electroclash—if you’re honest, you have to admit that 90 percent of it is about as sexy as a silicone implant. But is this supposed to be dance music for people who can’t dance, or by people who can’t dance? “I think No. 2,” says singer and guitarist Scott…
Too often the whole garage band shtick proves as thin as a pasty lead singer’s skin. Oh sure, worshipping Iggy and Nuggets and the Troggs (side note: what’s with the two g’s?) is all fine and dandy, but the music ultimately has to be, er, about music. Too many bands…
Refreshingly retro, this Canadian sextet makes old-school metal that should thrill those mining their (foggy) teen years for memories of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. Vocalist Jamie Hooper is a shrieker of the highest order, but he does maintain a semblance of comprehensibility that sets him apart from many in…
The musical output of these Canadian twins inevitably carries with it a vaguely alien air. One can just imagine Tegan & Sara in Montreal and Vancouver, respectively, engaging in some seizure-like sibling communication and spontaneously birthing The Con. Nothing so medievally weird happened, of course, although it would make a…
Let’s just clear some things up here concerning the Dallas Observer Music Awards. There’s been a lot of, er, intense feedback concerning this year’s ballot. The main concerns appear to be: 1) Some categories contain up to 10 nominees, while others only have a few; 2) Some nominees don’t match…
Every now and then there comes a pivotal character in any culture, someone who disrupts the norm. Some people call them prophets. In hip-hop, we call him Nas. Since his emergence in 1991 with a verse on Main Source’s “Live at the Barbecue,” heads knew they weren’t ready for God’s…
