It’s a long way from Lubbock to Nashville, but Wade Bowen has made the trip with integrity and roots unharmed. His latest, Lost Hotel, is country with a bluesy, rebel spirit, rural music about simple concerns that is never condescending. “God Bless This Town,” the leadoff single, is a hit…
Ed Anderson leads this Illinois alt-country outfit with the same kind of weary optimism that Brent Best once did with the late, great Slobberbone. Featuring a cleaner sound but an equally drunken aesthetic, Backyard Tire Fire’s Bar Room Semantics is the little brother to Slobberbone’s Everything You Thought Was Right…
Brooklyn-based We Are Scientists are not scientists, even though they play the part of the geeky, lab-coat type; their complete lack of self-importance, in fact, makes their dance-punk rise above what their loftier peers churn out. Compare them to the Bravery or the Killers if you want–everyone else does–but they’re…
If you want your reunion tours full of spiritual enlightenment, regained perspective and mended relationships, go watch an Eagles DVD. You won’t get those qualities from the Toadies’ first concert since dissolving in 2001. In fact, you probably won’t get a reunion tour at all. The band’s final lineup–Vaden Todd…
Tae Quon, D’oh: Calls to AAT HQ are usually from annoying PR reps begging for their terrible emo-funk-fusion band to receive coverage, so it’s not often we get calls like this: “Hi, this is Tommy Quon. I wanted to talk to you about a few projects I’m working on, and…
On January 25, 2006, former Creed lead singer Scott Stapp spoke to the Dallas Observer, among other publications, in a conference call to promote his new solo album, The Great Divide, and an accompanying spring tour. In that chat, Stapp dismissed rumors and allegations about improper behavior reported in Rolling…
Bands with the most rabid, enduring followings hover on the periphery of the pop world. They maintain an alliance with obsessive music lovers and connect with their fans because they’re obsessive music lovers themselves. One such indie fave is Scottish band Belle and Sebastian, who projects an aesthetic somewhere between…
Mixing pop and politics, he asks me what the use is/I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses. –Billy Bragg, “Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards” Bragg answers his own query by packaging his artistic crisis in a funny, rollicking, singsong pop tune. But if Bragg struggled with mixing pop…
Every time writers gush about Neko Case, they pull out a list of classic country singers like Lynn, Parton and Cline, all of whom were always more famous for their voices than their words. In that respect, such comparisons miss the point–they nail her towering voice and country influences, but…
Listeners unacquainted with such late-’60s cult classics as Something Else and The Village Green Preservation Society might hear in Ray Davies’ music imitations of the many British pop acts who’ve imitated him. At several points throughout Other People’s Lives, the first solo studio album in the former Kinks frontman’s four-decade…
Is Scott Herren gunning to become the Ryan Adams of slice-and-dice electronica? Like Adams, who released three alt-country albums last year, the Barcelona-based musician behind Prefuse 73 has been making records lately like the Keebler elves make cookies; since 2003, he’s issued four LPs and a joint EP with the…
The only thing the three Dallas acts on last Wednesday’s Callithump Productions bill at the Darkside Lounge had in common was an invite to SXSW. Nothing musically linked the sleepy-time guitarwork of Crushed Stars, the manic, confessional rap of Pikahsso and the Strange Boys’ whiny-voiced garage punk, and the pre-fest…
Last year, Green Day yanked its back catalog from Lookout Records due to unpaid royalties. This year, Ted Leo becomes the Bay City label’s latest defector, jumping ship to sign with Touch & Go in Chicago. It’s not the Green Day-level big-label leap critics have expected, though that expectation is…
New Hampshire native Matt Pond formed the band Matt Pond PA in the late ’90s while living in Philadelphia. Not much romance to it, but that straightforward attitude is typical of the singer-songwriter’s career. Since 2000, Pond and his changing lineup have released five albums of chamber-pop, culminating last fall…
Despite the atmospheric experimentation and dark lyrics that dominate much of their work, Skeletons and the Girl-Faced Boys are really a pop band underneath the layers of noise and blips built around their otherwise sunny, R&B-influenced synth-pop. Taking cues from the Sea and Cake, Arthur Russell and Silver Apples, the…
With a deep appreciation for legends of jazz, soul and funk as well as a keen eye for contemporary talent, Timothy Parker (aka Gift of Gab) and partner Chief Xcel have incorporated into their brainy Blackalicious mix talents as diverse as Gil-Scott Heron, George Clinton, ?uestlove and Zack de la…
Former Dallasite Nick Wright is the odd duck behind Dogme 95. Songs on his recently released thematic gem The Regal Beagle are the hypothetical musings on what a singer-songwriter might have come up with if he went to the Galapagos with Darwin. Brash and wonderfully pretentious, Wright’s dense melodies and…
Want to commemorate Centro-matic’s 10-year anniversary? Pick a date, any date. There’s the hazy “late April or early May 1995” in which guitarist, singer and songwriter Will Johnson wrote and recorded his first solo song, “My Test.” There’s also March 22, 1997, when the band’s current four-piece incarnation, a lineup…
If 2003 was the year that indie kids started dancing, DJ Nature might make 2006 the year that DFW hipsters finally get the memo. At the Party, his Wednesday night residency at Rubber Gloves, Nature highlights the latest tracks from genres that have recently dominated club scenes in New York,…
Van Morrison has been called many things: mystical poet, New Age guru, reclusive genius. Above all those, he’s a guy who doesn’t bother with the formalities of promotion or touring, making his March 6 concert at Nokia Theater quite special–it will be his first metroplex stop in more than two…
What’s the price of fame? For Sheryl Crow, it was a body count in the wake of her debut, Tuesday Night Music Club. When her record label was reluctant to release her first stab at an album that she cut with producer-to-the-stars Hugh Padgham, the one-time back-up singer was brought…
When local bands hype new singles, I have trouble holding back laughter. Really, a single? Do unsigned artists expect their songs to get played on 102.1 The Edge, the only modern-rock radio station in Dallas? It’s hard enough to crack the indie-minded Adventure Club playlist, let alone regular rotation (unless,…
