True to the album title, the songs on the latest from Chicago’s Low Skies all address love, but don’t play it to set the mood for a romantic evening. All the Love I Could Find chronicles the bleakest consequences of love, confronting painful loneliness and juvenile obsession at a snail’s…
It’s easier to dance without Foucault looming over your shoulder. If only the bands of the recent dance-punk scare had reached for Scottish funk-pop boys Apb rather than Leeds theoreticians Gang of Four, they might have grasped something. Not that Apb have much on Gang of Four except guilelessness, but…
In 1972, David Bowie gave Ian Hunter a song called “All the Young Dudes” and talked the reclusive, bitter Hunter into resurrecting the literate and tragically unsuccessful Mott the Hoople. For better and worse, Bowie turned the band into the forefathers of glam, complete with knee-high boots and a fashionable…
Even though they’re meant to celebrate songs, let’s face it–most musical boxed sets wind up becoming coffee-table books. Thankfully, the five-disc The Life and Music of Richard Thompson is for the British singer/songwriter/guitar-hero what Tracks was for Springsteen: a compulsively listenable trove of unreleased work that complements, and often outshines,…
Whether a Mekon, a Waco Brother or solo, Jon Langford’s three-decade commitment to the proletarian aesthetic of punk and roots has never wavered. His hoarse, Strummeresque hue and cry has proven equally adept at anthem shouting, dub-inflected pop and ageless Americana. Gold Brick, while decidedly rootsy, features elements from throughout…
On occasion, butt-nasty venue Tom Cat’s lands shows so fitting for its out-of-the-way underground status that I’m simultaneously baffled and impressed. Wednesday’s hip-hop showcase is a perfect example, touting under-the-radar MCs like MED, Count Bass D and, most important, Percee P, a 35-year-old veteran who still hasn’t released a debut…
At its peak, Stereolab was among the most distinctive combos on the planet. Throughout a succession of discs capped by 1996’s unimpeachable Emperor Tomato Ketchup, the act, led by multi-instrumentalist Tim Gane and beguiling French-born singer Laetitia Sadier, offered up an irresistible blend of electro-dabblings, twisted kitsch and left-wing ideology…
Dilated Peoples is the rap equivalent of a Honda–nothing fancy, just a solid, dependable ride that’s as reliable as Rip Hamilton curling off a screen. You know when you step into a DP show that you’ll get thoughtful lyrics inspired by soul snippets bouncing off of dusted boom bap. You…
In “Django’s Lullaby,” gypsy songman Jerry Jeff Walker sings about his young son to a sappy-sweet good-night melody. “I hope the music that I play while he’s dreaming stays with him all the rest of his days,” he sings. Well, it’s been 20 years since Jerry Jeff recorded that song,…
After amping it up on World Without Tears and Live @ The Fillmore, Lucinda Williams brings it all back home to her folkie roots. By stripping her stage show down to just her and masterful guitar foil Doug Pettibone (as much the star of the aforementioned albums as Williams herself)…
On the very morning of this interview with Albert Hammond Jr., one of the two guitarists in the Strokes, there appeared in The New York Times a review of that band’s March 1 performance at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City. The Times’ music critic Kelefa Sanneh opened the…
My dream version of spring break–less shirtlessness, more music and just as much drinking–is officially underway in Austin. I’ll talk about our city’s presence at the South by Southwest Music Festival in next week’s full review (and the impatient can find daily fest updates this week at Unfair Park, the…
Word to your motha: TexasGigs.com has been hosting some very cool local music content lately; in particular, ever since we pleaded with site founder Cindy Chaffin to hook her portable recording rig directly into concert soundboards, her bootlegs are sounding dramatically better. (Yes, we’re taking credit for it, even if…
Dallas has always had its fair share of DJ and production talent; with that in mind, it’s no small compliment to call Demarkus Lewis the hottest hometown house DJ/producer working the club circuit. With multiple releases on labels such as Moods & Grooves, Bluem, Roam and Alluv Recordings, Lewis has…
If you ever see a high school chemistry teacher kidnapped by a burly, drug-crazed sociopath and a conflicted seductress, and then you recognize the haunting guitars and echoing keyboards that complement the action, don’t panic. You’re not flipping out, though watching the movie Good Chemistry wouldn’t be considered “normal” behavior,…
No band in indie rock today has a more bad-ass name than this Austin quintet’s. Say it with relish: I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness. Makes you just wanna break up with somebody, doesn’t it? The bad-assness doesn’t stop at their name, either, like with that other noisy five-piece…
Something is wrong with society when the most impish bands of the ’90s start making resonant social statements. But on Under a Billion Suns, Mudhoney has proven itself even more vexed and pissed than Green Day or NOFX. Partly, it’s the sound: Oxidized slabs of guitar psychedelia evoke messy times…
Hank Williams’ grandson has a problem with Nashville. His two-disc Straight to Hell swipes at “pop country,” guys who “write those hit songs down at PolyGram” and women who need “more dick down on Music Row.” And that’s not even counting Hank III’s dismissal of Kid Rock: “He’s a Yank,…
While retro dilettantes remain stuck in the vintage boutiques, modeling anything that looks cute, Saturday Looks Good to Me has more than fashion on its mind. The band is dedicated to two specific ’60s crushes: spare, groovy soul and lilted, Bacharach-ish pop. Fred Thomas’ troupe of upper-Midwest indie stalwarts has…
Rarely does a band continue to adjust its vision in more creative ways than the Appleseed Cast. After growing out of the confining emo genre, this Kansas-based quartet continues to tackle innovative sounds and arrangements on their dense and satisfying new effort, Peregrine. Sporting yet another new drummer, the band…
R. Kelly must love it when media outlets poke fun at him. Lord knows I’ve reveled in the comedy afforded by both an alleged underage sexual encounter and an episodic soap-opera single (“Crapped in the Closet,” July 7, 2005), as have most people utterly baffled by how the Chicago native…
Brooklyn-based Rainer Maria used to be one of late-’90s emo’s most frustrating bands. They could make music that spoke powerfully and eloquently of the struggle to keep afloat in the overflowing waters of teenage romance, but they could also succumb to those waters and sound like the most hilariously overheated…
