Justice Tirapelli-Jamail and Cory Sinclair of The Manichean don’t ever, ever do things halfway, apparently. At least, that’s the feeling I get after drifting my way through the band’s latest release, Sakura. It was originally intended to be a quick little tide-you-over EP…
When the old-school beats, dancefloor noise, and tribal-sounding, gorilla-like hoots come in at the start of “Blastoff,” the first track on Reptar’s Oblangle Fizz, Y’all EP (and before you ask: no, I have no idea what the title means)…
I’ve had some misgivings about this one for a while now. To be sure, The Stone Foxes’ Bears & Bulls is well-done — very well-done, in fact, and I’ll get to that in a sec — but… Well, there’s just something about it…
How old are these guys, again? That’s the thought that keeps replaying in my head, over and over again, as I listen to the Folk Family Revival’s debut full-length, Unfolding. It boggles my mind that at least a couple…
The most maddening thing about rootsy pop/rock guys The Literary Greats is just how sneaky they are. They stroll through song after song (three albums’ worth, since 2007) like they’re just there to have fun, smiling the whole damn time…
Most of the time, when I hear about a Houston band that’s got some promise or already sounds pretty cool, it starts small. I’ll hear a song or two online somewhere, or see their set at a festival or something…
It was my sci-fi nerd-ness that suckered me into Charles The Osprey’s debut album Consider, believe it or not. I hadn’t really given the album a whole lot of thought, honestly — at first listen, it was just yet another prog-metal thing…
Rather than mine the pop-punk-y hooks that’ve become the template for the vast majority of punk bands lately, or even really hew close to the garage-rock that’s surged to the surface in recent years, on Deceiver, The Wrong Ones dive straight into the gutter…
To be honest, I feel a little weird here, attempting to coherently talk about pianist/keyboardist Kris Becker’s debut full-length, Inventions. This sounds a little strange, but I generally try to review stuff that I know…
Everybody comes of age some time or another, and if you haven’t learned that from personal experience yet, movies will take the burden off you, because every director makes a coming-of-age film at some time or another, too…
With a name like “Priory,” you could be forgiven for assuming this Portland quartet plays gloomy Goth-metal, or maybe somber, glacial chillwave or something, but you’d be pretty damn distant from the truth. What the band plays, instead…
One of the best rock bands in town right now, Muhammad Ali (also spelled variously “MUHAMMADALi” or “Muhammadali”) are at first glance just this raw, noisy, messy force of nature, howling and hammering away at their instruments to create a furious squall…
When I first listened through The Case Files, the latest release from power-pop/Americana icon Peter Case, I did it blind, just listening to it without reading anything about it beforehand. And that first spin left me somewhat confused…
The more I think about this recent batch of reviews I’m writing for SCR, the more it seems like they are the serialized version of my memoirs entitled How I Incrementally Noticed That I Was Definitely Getting Older. It feels like those types of themes keep popping up…
Everything Lil’ Randy touches turns psychedelic. This is true whether it’s a locally comissioned R&B mixtape or freestyles by local luminaries who come to the DJ Screw protege for his take on his mentor’s Screwtape tradition…
It’s been a busy couple of years for Houston-dwelling post-emo rockers the last place you look. After lurking under the radar a while and releasing debut full-length The Lies We Tell Ourselves to mixed reviews, in 2009 they released a vastly different followup…
After getting drunk, getting drugged, and stealing a tiger, a police car, and a small Asian man — and misplacing their best friend in the process — you would think Phil, Stu, and Alan would have learned…
I hesitate to type this, because I feel like when I do, one of the last sparks of youth left dimly flickering within my soul will be extinguished forevermore. But fuck it…I am so glad I brought earplugs to this show…
The Avalanche Tour onslaught hit Houston April 12th. The Tour brought aboard The Art of Dying, Halestorm, Skillet, Theory of a Deadman, and Stone Sour…
Damn. First off, yes, I do realize it’s been two freaking weeks since the end of this year’s Free Press Summerfest, and a week-and-a-half since the first installment…
After having played together for about a year, Yello Echo have still managed to remain mostly unheard of, for reasons I can’t fathom. When I first saw them playing at an art exhibit opening a few weeks ago, I was quite literally staring…
There is no easy way to describe the experience of listening to Holiday, the latest full-length by Winter Wallace (who, as their Facebook page is careful to note, is a band, not just a singer with backing musicians). On the one hand, there’s the music…
The short version is X-Men: First Class is an excellent return to form after several missteps, capturing everything that made the series great and jettisoning must of the unnecessary stuff. That’s all you really need to know, but if you need more, keep going…
More than anything else, I find myself wanting to point over to fellow gentle indie-folksters Fleet Foxes each time I run through Pepper Rabbit’s debut release, Beauregard; the music made by both bands unfolds slowly and deliberately, warm as a blanket yet still seemingly fragile…
Cormac McCarthy once said the only thing he could ever imagine writing about was life and death, because nothing else would ever be important enough to waste time and words on. I imagine if someone were to ask Terrence Malick that question…
After only the first couple of hours of being at this year’s Free Press Summerfest, I was feeling really freaking old. There was a time when I could pull off an all-day festival in the blistering heat of summer…
Welcome to the Wild New West, folks. Despite their English-derived name, with High Noon Moon, The Tyburn Jig have carved what sure seems to me like a brand-new little musical niche; they’ve wedged themselves in this strange, half-spooky corner…
It’s been a decade now since the last “real” release from California pop-punk icons Face to Face, since way back in 2002 with How to Ruin Everything, and y’know, I was nervous. It’s not a stretch to declare that discovering Face to Face’s Don’t Turn Away shaped…
I’ve been a fan of Greg Dulli for something like two decades now; it’s a little weird to read that line back, but yeah, it’s the truth. I’ve loved the guy’s work since I first heard The Afghan Whigs’ “Retarded,” way back in 1991 or so, followed his career with the Whigs…
Okay, so here’s a funny thing: I know from the band’s bio that these songs began life as folky, singer/songwriter compositions, with frontwoman/guitarist Sarah Hirsch belting ’em out to subdued crowds at coffee houses and whatnot between here and Austin…
Honestly, Asobi Seksu’s Fluorescence hits so many damn touchstones — and seemingly throws in more with every subsequent listen — that I feel like I can barely keep hold of it. Right when I think I’ve got James Hanna and Yuki Chikudate pegged…
The life of Saint Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of the Opus Dei movement, seems ripe for dramatization, regardless of what you may think of his accomplishments. Founded during the Spanish Civil War, Escrivá’s order…
This review isn’t so much about Colour Revolt insomuch as it’s about how much I dislike indie music. Listen, don’t get all defensive if you find indie music the second coming; all it means is that I have different tastes than you…
I have to mention up front that May 6, 2011, ended up being one of the best days of my life thus far, for reasons pretty much unrelated to Wilco and more related to a voicemail I received just before the show…
In 1994, three French explorers delved into the reaches of what became known as the Chauvet Cave in southern France and found one of the world’s great archeological treasures: a group of the oldest, best-preserved…
Listening to Scale The Summit’s latest full-length, The Collective, is less like hearing a band play, honestly, and more like watching some insanely-skilled team of weavers create a tapestry out of laser beams or quantum strings or something…
The realization that “The David Mayfield Parade” band was just David Mayfield hit me harder than when I found out that Soylent Green was people. I first saw David when he was playing bass for his amazing little sister Jessica Lea Mayfield at Walter’s on Washington…
It was freaking genius. The thought didn’t actually hit me ’til the band was underway, honestly, but then it all made beautiful, perfect sense. In the run-up to their official tour kickoff show, Roky Moon & BOLT! let potential show-goers know…
It’s been 14 years since Young Team was released, announcing the debut of post-rock’s then-newest practitioners, Mogwai. Since 1997, the genre has garnered quite a bit of attention in the film and television industry…
When I heard Rind Stars’ 2007 electro-folk debut, Sounds of Fire and Light, I couldn’t wait for the follow up. And when the bass player had a breakdown and left the band, city, and state, I still thought they’d record soon…
