I’ve been a Coheed fan for a long time…pretty much since they played that club tour opening up for Thursday several years ago. I scooped up a copy of Second Stage Turbine Blade after their set, and was immediately hooked…
Are you nostalgic for the man made neon colors of the 1980s? Do you like songs written by committee? Would you like to support the Gulfstream (jet) habits of a barefoot billionaire? Will you settle for 27 lifestyle songs formerly about permanent vacation, now adapted for the lifeless pursuit of a retirement that will never come?…
Hard though it might be to imagine, the new split-7″ release by Houston stoner-sludge-rock dudes the Linus Pauling Quartet and Austinite psych-rock heroes ST37 kind of took me by surprise, in good ways and bad. First off, the Quartet’s track, “Monster,” eschews the band’s trademark thundering guitar attack…
Two and a half years ago, when it was known as the Zero Arrow Theatre, Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley were in this very space as performers in Sxip Shirey‘s variety revue…
Easy Rider at Houston Worldfest Film Festival’s Tribute to Dennis Hopper: Dennis Hopper’s “Billy” and Peter Fonda’s “Captain America” make enough profit from a one-time cocaine deal that they are finally able to set out riding their custom motorcycles…
Go buy this album. Right now. Don’t bother reading this review. Honestly, the time it takes you to read this could be better served searching the internet for a good deal on Astro Coast. For the rest of you who enjoy reading a poorly reasoned and misinformed review, continue on…
Earthless is a power trio from San Diego that plays instrumental Japanese-style psychedelic rock. The band features Nebula guitarist Isaiah Mitchell, Electric Nazarene bass player Mike Eginton, and Rocket from the Crypt/Hot Snakes/Clikitat Ikatowi drummer Mario Rubalcaba…
It’s been four years since Midlake’s very successful The Trials of Van Occupanther put the Denton quintet on the indie rock map. Fans who’ve been chomping at the bit for new material can now rejoice, as the former UNT jazz students have released their newest album…
Finding the balance between accessible and original isn’t easy, but Los Fancy Free have managed to do it. Every song on their new album, Never Greens Vol. 1, is instantly listenable and holds your attention to the very end…
Sleepwalking Through The Mekong is more than just an inside look at a band and its music; it’s an inside look at a different culture. I’ve seen several DVDs that bands have put out, and I must say that I think this one from Dengue Fever is probably my favorite…
Luke Franks Or The Federalists play gentle indie folk-pop, and on their album The Way We Ran, Franks has the unfortunate problem of sounding like Dave Matthews. Their music isn’t as bad as Dave Matthews’ is — it has more of a Ryan Adams quality…
Don’t let the first 20 seconds of Almost and Always fool you — this isn’t Norah Jones’ new album. And it’s neither Simon nor Garfunkel. It’s David Mead. And it’s his fifth album since 1999. David Mead is a singer-songwriter whose music gives off a feel of early-’70s folk rock…
Glorytellers is Geoff Farina’s (Karate, Secret Stars) roots project. More folk-oriented than anything else he’s done, Atone is a beautiful, mature album, with lots of his interesting details in the band parts. The Glorytellers are probably the best complement for his delicate singing style yet…
If indie-rock could talk and if you got it drunk and just let it talk for a few hours, at that point, in the twilight of conversation, when neither party is really listening any more, but more helping each other to fill the void of silence…
To paraphrase the great comedy Blazing Saddles, “What in the Wide Wide World of Sports is this?” HORSE the band is a quintet of musicians from California that specialize in something called “Nintendocore”…
Honestly, it’s apparent right from the first stagger-stomp second of opening track “What the Misanthrope Said” which way Omotai’s Peace Through Fear is going to go: heavy, thundering, hammer-like slabs of sound crushing you to the floor while the gods look on, laughing, from high, high above…
Patti Smith came to the University of Houston Monday night before last to read from her new book Just Kids and play songs from her 40+ years on the New York music scene. The show was advertised as $5 at the door, and no one would get turned away…
It seems that being a musician these days is more about finesse than power. Where volume may have sufficed more than a decade ago, the listening public has softened and heightened their musical palette. Beach House‘s recent success…
The first Saturday in April brought a tour by Los Angeles instrumental metal band Red Sparowes to the cozy environs of Rudyard’s pub, where they were joined by Boston tourmates Doomriders…
This band must really hate writers. How else can you explain naming your band “The Ultra Siberian Pant Factory”? Length and depth of syllables aside, the inclusion of “Pant” and not “Pants,” like it should be, is a mother-humper…
Perhaps one of the most-hyped bands of 2010, Beach House belies its sedate, ambient piety with energetic and really, really loud performances. Teen Dream was released in early 2010 and set the course for Beach House’s current aesthetic departure from their previous albums’ output…
So, I’ve seen Dead To The World several times now, but I only recently procured their CD at a Röcbar show, and the best thing about it to me was that I recognized some of the songs immediately, so a major pro for this band is the strong continuity between their live and recorded music…
It’s funny, but while The Jonx do generally come off as a “serious” band — the flat-sounding talk-singing, the complex structures, the furious, almost jam-y feel to some of the songs — one of my favorite things about ’em is their almost subversive playfulness…
The Cleveland-dwelling duo of Nicole Barrile and Sam Meister, better known as mr. Gnome, are honestly one of those bands that have to be witnessed live and in-person to truly be believed. Without seeing the pair onstage, both band members pounding away on their respective instruments…
“Quest For Fire”? Really? That’s the band name you decided on? I mean, why not at least do one of those 12-word names, or something with “wolf” in that all the hipsters dig? With a name like this, everyone is going to think that you are 1) a group of archaeologists doing authentic Cro-Magnon music…
The British indie-folk band’s follow-up to its highly successful debut album wasn’t quite what I expected, but I love it nonetheless. The First Days of Spring for the most part leaves behind the toe-tapping tunes we came to love on Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down…
Nothing ruins a good idea more than poor execution, a point exemplified by “fusion” concepts. The world is full of them: the “Southwest eggroll,” hybrid cars less efficient than cars from the 1980s, countless movie sequels, etc. It takes a determined bit of genius to merge two concepts…
“Mutha Fuckin’ Kings of Thrash.” That’s the moniker that Warbeast should start billing themselves as. This band of Texas thrash luminaries walked into Walter’s and laid waste to all in attendance…
I was sweating. I had pulled duty as Space City Rock representative at the Take Action Tour as it pulled into House of Blues one recent Monday night. The Take Action Tour is the signature event…
News on the March are one of those bands that tends to leave me feeling tongue-tied and at a loss for adequate words to describe what they really, truly sound like. “They’re, um, kind of old-timey-sounding?…
There’s an awesomely free, effortless feel to Miike Snow’s eponymous debut, so much so that you can practically hear the roguish grins and collective shrug — Miike Snow feels not like a trio of musicians setting out to “make” something, but instead just letting everything spill out and grabbing onto whatever sounds good…
It’s funny, but until I heard Freelance Whales’ Weathervanes, it’d never really occurred to me how much influence Ben Gibbard’s had on music; I mean, the guy’s an icon, these days, both for Death Cab and The Postal Service, but all of a sudden I’m seeing threads connecting folks like Freelance Whales…
Starting with the percolation of New York’s pan-disciplinary No Wave phenomenon in the late ’70s, a small but steadily-expanding space has been cleared out for female musicians in the tradition of rock guitar. Groups like the Bush Tetras, Ut, and the various permutations of James Chance’s bands…
So I’ve kind of gone about this bass-ackwards, to be up-front about it, but honestly, I’m now thinking maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. You see, I got a hold of a copy of the Hell City Kings’ 2009 LP, The Road to Damnation…
A dream Asleep was throwing their video release party Sunday night at Rocbar. I had been feening to see this thing since singer Mike Seals texted me saying that they were shooting a video for their first single…
When I first heard I’d be talking to Kyle Turley about his debut album, I thought to myself, “Remember what Billy Bob Thornton did to that Canadian DJ.” But Kyle Turley isn’t like that…
First a brief note to explain the existence of this interview. In summer 2008, I was assigned by another publication to do an interview with Amy Rigby and Wreckless Eric in advance of their show in Houston to promote their first album together. The interview was supposed to run…
It took me until a full minute into “Workin’ Hard” to get it. I’d been enjoying 2, the aptly-titled second album from Retribution Gospel Choir, definitely, right from the first ringing chords of “Hide It Away,” but I didn’t really get it…
Wow. It’s always a funny thing when you’ve heard a band before, liked the bits and pieces you’ve run across, and been curious to hear more, and then when you finally do get a glimpse of the full picture, as it were, you realize that you’d previously had no freaking idea what they were really about…
The last time I saw The Lonely H, they were playing Rudyard’s on a weeknight, capping an entertaining-yet-oddball bill of local bands that sounded nothing like ’em and pretty much playing to a quarter-packed house at best…
