Deer Park boys The Gold Sounds know how to start off an album, that’s for damn sure. Opener “She Got Me Singin So Low” comes crashing in, so rambunctious and wild you can practically hear singer/bassist Sean Donnelly’s knowing smirk right through the speakers…
When I first heard The Eastern Sea, it was in a live setting, with all guns blazing, and the band turned the club into a grinning, sweaty hoedown/tent revival, ending by inviting everybody in the crowd up on the stage to dance and sing. And it was pretty amazing…
For any national act, playing a hometown gig is a special thing. For their special moment, Scale The Summit got to play to a packed Meridian…
As the single “Mountain Man” moves up the Alternative chart, and “It’s Only Wednesday” takes a ride on an apocalyptic road trip…
The Fiery Furnaces’s eighth album, I’m Going Away, is their rock album — it’s much more linear and stripped down than their previous records, with much less of the crazily proggy stuff. The record is for those people who wish they’d cut out that wanky prog stuff and just rock…
Of the four tracks on Female Demand’s self-titled EP, the one that hits the hardest is the opener, “Sweet Nothing” — it starts off with almost wah-wah-sounding bass and stuttering, barely-restrained drums, then stomps its way into two minutes and change of driving, thundering, bass-and-drums instrumental rawk…
Psychedelia-infused ’60s-retro rock-pop is still in full force. It seems that a new artist in this very creative genre comes out every other week with a good-to-great album. Drug Rug’s latest album, Paint the Fence Invisible, is a beam of sunlight…
When I first encountered Chase Hamblin, my instinct was to shrug and dismiss him as yet another Fab Four fan trying to keep the music he loves alive. While the characterization’s not wrong, though, the dismissal’s a big, big mistake. Rather than just rehash the Beatles for the umpteenth time…
Okay, I give: I’m not entirely sure what to make of Giant Battle Monster’s seven-track EP, Giant Battle Monster vs. The Man With a Gun for a Head. It’s a bewildering, chaotic listen, wedged halfway between mind-melting prog-metal, weird-ass pseudo-screamo…
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…
Modern day visionaries, like the Rupert Murdochs and the Warren Buffetts, have exceptional antennas for business. However, few can boast that they’ve clothed a generation and, through music, forged a sociopolitical movement…
One of the absolute best things about music, good music, is the connected-ness of it. If a band’s doing its job right, you’re able to grasp onto the feelings, the emotions behind the yelled/sung lyrics and roaring guitars; if there’s no connection going on, the guitars and yelling are just that…
They’re coming out of the woodwork. Like any genre, when something gets remotely popular, they come crawling out of the dark like roaches. Even the relatively minute movement known as neo-thrash has experienced the same phenomenon…
In my later years, I have to confess that I’ve taken to cringing whenever a split release comes through my door. Which is sad, because I used to like that sort of thing, honestly; it was the DIY way to go, back in the day, pooling your money with your compatriots in another band…
I’ve listened to the album several times, but it still all kind of blends together — nothing really stands out to me. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a beautiful album worth listening to, and for the genre of music they play, I think they do it well. It’s just that nothing about it says “wow”…
Let’s get straight to the point: Blakroc is genius. It’s rap-rock as it should be. It fills a void that neither rock or rap can adequately address while simultaneously erasing the damage done by the Fred Dursts and Mike Shinodas of the rap-rock world…
Been trying to figure out a way to dance around this, but the more I try, the worse it sounds, so I’ll just come out with it: I’ve been sitting for a little while on The Factory Party’s latest, After Death There Is Nothing, I’ll admit it, partly because, frankly, I really wish I liked it more than I do…
fter hearing She’s the Dutchess, He’s the Duke, last year’s debut album by Seattle-dwellers Jesse Lortz and Kimberly Morrison, aka The Dutchess & the Duke, I’ll admit I was a bit worried. Not for me, no, but for singer, songwriter, and guitarist Lortz…
On In the Belly of a Giant, the appeal — for me, anyway — lies less in the music than in the overall feel of the thing. The music is good, don’t worry, but it’s the downbeat, serious moodiness that really gets me…
I’m betting the folks in mr. Gnome don’t really care too much for boundaries, which goes some way towards explaining the patchwork quilt that is their overall “sound,” grafting together heavy, skullcrushing metal to delicate folkiness to freakout-inducing psych-rock to bent hillbilly rock…
Whoa. What the hell? I knew quirky/cool singer-songwriter guy Arthur Yoria was mixing things up a bit on his latest release, (281), but honestly, when lead-in track “No Messin’ With My Rectum If You Like My Erection” hit the chorus…
To get it out of the way first, the long title to all-male Danish trio Mew’s fifth album comes from their song “Hawaii Dream.” The CD contains two short “intermission” songs between several electronic, optimistic-sounding wonders…
The Life and Times continues in a similar direction as Shiner, frontman Allen Epley’s previous band, combining the tautness of Slint with strangely Beatlesesque anthems. For Tragic Boogie, though, The Life and Times’ second album, the band decided to expand its palette…
When you hear that a band is from Japan, you usually think of an indie-pop girl act getting way too much press. What you don’t expect is Grief of War and their full-on metal assault. While they may be another in a growing list of neo-thrash acts, don’t dismiss these guys…
All those who labeled L.A.’s fresh, ambient pop group Foreign Born a toss-off anthem band (think: U2, Arcade Fire) are surely biting their presumptive tongues right now. Released as a 7″ add-on to the band’s latest LP, Person to Person…
Every once in a long while, I run across a band — generally, it seems, by accident — that totally and completely blows me away. They come seemingly out of nowhere, play like they’ve never done anything else in their lives…
Tortoise wasn’t the first band to receive the “post-rock” tag, but over time they’ve become its most lauded and recognized practitioner. As the term becomes increasingly associated with the crest-and-valley dynamics and soporific emotional outpourings of guitar-based bands…
Natural Forces is Lyle Lovett’s great western road record, the theme of which might be “The Grand Ole Opry on Texas Swing Night.” The song progression suggests a concept album about the life of a traveling musician. Lovett’s songs are sung by strong, if sad, cowboy characters…
As soon as the first rough-edged, blues-rock guitar lick of “That Mountain Yonder” comes in, after a sneakily low-key verse, it’s pretty clear that for their second album, Ocean, Meet The Valley, The Literary Greats weren’t content to keep meandering along the same path…
The big problem with all adaptations into film is “why do them at all?” Oh, it makes perfect sense from a business standpoint — it’s a known quantity that can ameliorate some of the gigantic risk that is studio feature filmmaking. But just in and of itself…
Springfield Riots’ debut EP, Say When, is a bit of an odd duck of an album, in that it rides a line between sweet, Pet Sounds-esque melodies and murky, downcast melancholy; you’ll get a track like opener “Hope and Envy,” which is sweet and languid…
At the end of the day, Art Brut just wouldn’t work without Eddie Argos. I mean no disrespect to the other members of the band, because they’re all fine musicians, and Art Brut vs. Satan is musically a finely-crafted pastiche of everything I love about Britpop…
When you name your band “Unholy,” you have something to live up to. People are going to expect the most demonic, violent, wretched, and evil sound ever. Or, at least, a really good metal band. This quintet from Syracuse, though, is sadly neither…
From August 14-16, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston screened a beautifully restored 35mm print of Z in the Brown Auditorium to sell-out crowds as part of their ongoing Revival Series. Constantin Costa-Gavras’ 40-year-old procedural about an investigating judge…
In a way, I should’ve seen it coming. I mean, looking backwards now, with the dubious benefit of hindsight, it’s like the Teenage Kicks guys wrote it all out in the songs, telegraphing their own demise. And with Uptight, they’ve assembled it all together in one place…
It’s hard to know at first if Sage Francis wants to be taken seriously on his latest mixtape, Sick of Wasting, with song titles like “Masterbate Your Brain” and “Who Farted_pt 1.” Then he comes at you, though, with a purist, traditionalist interpretation of hip-hop…
With El Payaso, it should come as no surprise that Texas’ legendary Johnny Goudie (of Johnny Goudie & The Little Champions) is still rock’n along and just as prolific as ever, albeit this time with a twangy country tinge, happier, pop-rocky explosion…
I can’t entirely put my finger on why, but it always seems to take me quite a while to fully wrap my head around an Arbouretum album. With 2007’s Rites of Uncovering, I found myself compelled to listen and re-listen and re-listen to the disc…
The Whore Moans’ Hello From the Radio Wasteland is an energetic little piece of music from Seattle that sounds ready to take on the world. It consists of passionate singing that leads to screaming by the end of the line, lots of backup vocals to carry on the intensity…
If music is aural communication with the spiritual, then the blues would be its sacred book of hymns. That’s just what the Snake Charmers’ sultry release Been Gone Too Long personifies in spades. As lead singer and songwriter Marie Angell seductively sings…
