Sometimes a show is just a show. That sounds sad, but it’s the truth; not every show is mindblowingly awesome, and even the good ones are just “hey, that was cool”-level good, most of the time. Call me a cynic if you want, but I’ve been to a ton of shows…
Joy and wonder. That’s the key, at least a fair amount of the time — it’s not always what’s most important in music, but when I go looking for new bands or songs or albums to love, what I’m really looking for is that feeling, that wide-eyed…
There are bands that frustrate me because they don’t quite hit the mark, and then there are bands that frustrate me because they do hit the mark but never actually capitalize on it. The Phlegmatics are that second kind of band…
Musically, it’d be very easy to pile The Lonely Wild in with the ever-expanding slew of low-key country-folk acts that seem to be coming out of the woodwork these days. The more I listen to The Sun As It Comes, though, the more compelled…
It’s always kind of nice when a band is exactly what they say they are; there’s no guesswork, no innuendo, no wondering if maybe the band’s trying to make some kind of statement or something. For their part, Night Drive sound just like their name…
Jeoaf Johnson and I go back a few years, to his days as a sound-man at The Mink club on Main Street. As a sound-man, he was friendly and hard-working and known for getting a lot of sound out of a very cheap and temperamental sound system. As a drummer…
I’m relatively new to Tony Harnell. I’d heard of TNT back in the day, but they never made it to my listening radar for one reason or another. The first time I heard him sing was mid-2012, when I bought the self-titled Starbreaker album, a collaboration with Swedish…
Young adult-oriented urban fantasy has gotten so pervasive in the post Harry Potter world that it’s possible to create tick boxes of elements (let’s not say clichés, rather battle-tested storytelling tools) which a successful, or at least popular, series should have…
Vin Diesel and David Twohy‘s Riddick sees the filmmakers and their creation on a search to return the anti-hero to his roots after the operatic excess of his last outing and, despite a few pitfalls along the way, they largely succeed…
High-five from over here, Brand New Hearts dudes; with your self-titled debut EP, you’ve managed to combine two things I’ve sorely been missing into one awesome-looking/-sounding package: guitar-heavy power-pop and cassette tapes…
So, have you ever wondered what the hell it’d sound like if you were to somehow crossbreed Frank Zappa, Austin instro-rock dudes Explosions in the Sky, and Menomena? Well, I make no guarantees, but it just might sound like…
I love breakup albums. It’s a voyeuristic thing on some level, I’m sure, like watching a car wreck or train wreck or whatever — although personally, I’ve never been big on rubbernecking at wrecks like that, for some reason. On another level, though, it’s because, well, I’ve been there…
Some time shortly after the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States, a number of media outlets searching for more “human interest” stories about the meaning behind the first black president stumbled upon the story of Eugene Allen, a White House butler who’d worked for seven different…
Overcoming the Monster is the seventh full-length release from KingBathmat, a prog rock band from England. I came across them earlier this year and downloaded their free six-song sampler, which had one song from each of their…
Not that we need a movie to tell us, but it took a huge amount of talent, skill, and luck for a brash young man to introduce personal computers to the world and build the most successful electronics company in history from nothing. Almost as much talent…
Fans and creators of sci-fi love to talk about the power of the genre being in its ability to use analogy to depict our current world, using its fantastic backdrop to push modern mores and conventional wisdom to extremes in order to test how accurate or worthwhile…
When we think of film noir, we think of few things over and over: Humphrey Bogart, dim lights and dark shadows, Humphrey Bogart (hey, he played Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, what do you want?), thugs with guns, and dames that are never up to any good…
What comes next? It’s the question every storyteller dreads, faced with the blank page or canvas, trying to figure out what should happen to their characters next. How to develop them, what to have happen to them, and why? If you think about it, it’s the question…
Alright, Electric Attitude, I’ll admit it: you got me. You made it work, and you got me, so much so that I’ve been humming along with the songs on Skintight & Solid Gold in my head for a straight week now. And to tell you the truth, I was pretty worried…
My initial interest in The Winery Dogs was due to Mike Portnoy’s involvement. Ever since I first heard him on Neal Morse’s post-Spock’s Beard solo albums, he’s become one of my favorite drummers, and I’ve been slowly trying to acquire…
It’s nearly the same as the first RED, but less so. The filmmakers, and probably the money people behind them, have taken the first film as less of a setup and more in the way of market research for how to make a franchise work…
I’m supposed to be on vacation! And here it is July, and I’m finally finding time to write about my Free Press Summer Festival experience. Right after FPSF I headed out on an incredible California and Oregon trip to surprise my sister for her birthday, as well as see…
Dead people aren’t dead, or at least they’re not taking it lying down. They’re coming back into the world, squeaking through the cracks and trying to keep some semblance of their lives up. And in the process, running the world to rot. Someone’s got to keep them in line…
The highest praise I can give this brand-new self-titled release is to say that this is the very first Queensrÿche purchase I’ve ever made. I’d never really listened to Queensrÿche before the drama of the past year caught my attention, and at first, it was…
Don’t be fooled by The Maine’s collective youthful demeanor, the obligatory hipster-kid haircuts, or the fact that they got their start on pop-punk label Fearless Records — this band isn’t yet another pop-punk-y post-emo gang of kids who grew up wanting to…
And now, for something completely different. Well, mostly. You have to hand it to the Linus Pauling Quartet guys for being one of the most out-and-out contrary bands going; expect one thing from them, and they’re likely to do the opposite…
If there’s anything I’ve learned in all the years I’ve spent doing critical writing, both in college and after, it’s that you can make anything have a theme. Not that everything actually has a theme, mind you, but rather that if you read…
What was I, a person who considers Jeff Buckley’s Grace to be the pinnacle of modern musicianship, doing at a black metal concert? A person whose only real venture into harder music consists of ownership of The Dillinger Escape Plan’s…
Who doesn’t like giant robots? That is the deep, philosophical question at the heart of Guillermo Del Toro‘s Pacific Rim. If the answer that pops into your head is “nobody, obviously,” then this is definitely the movie for you…
When Gary P. Nunn began to play “What I Like About Texas,” I said to Dosey Doe Music Cafe house photographer Dave Clements, “It reminds me of when Ray Wylie plays ‘Redneck Mother’.” “Ray Wylie hates playing ‘Redneck Mother’,” Dave said…
Frankly, reviewing The Migration, the new album from Houston-based instro-metal shredders Scale The Summit, has prove to be a little trickier than I’d thought, primarily because the album’s not so much a collection…
Travis Starnes charts the complete chronology of Marvel Comics on his Website and in his podcast, The Complete Marvel Reading Order (CMRO). He strikes an informative and entertaining balance, with assistance from his brother…
These days, it’s no picnic being a rock band. Hey, quit laughing — I’m serious, dammit. It really isn’t an easy deal lately, I swear, and here’s why: because everybody wants to be in a rock band, and yet fewer and fewer people out there seem to…
First of all: it’s about damn time. I know The Suffers haven’t been around that long, it’s true, but ever since I first ran across ’em in 2011, I’ve been dying to get my hands on an actual, decent-sounding release. Call me paranoid if you want…
Obsidian isn’t Cerulean Part II. The cheerful awkwardness and simple enchantment of Baths’ Cerulean helped push Will Wiesenfeld to the forefront of the glitch-pop scene, and then a more atmospheric but slightly repetitive encore album, Pop Music/False B-sides…
With Bee Corpse Collector, The Ex-Optimists sound like a band resolutely out of time, out of step with anything that’s happening today. To which I have to say: awesome. More power to ’em. They’re not that far retro, of course, skipping…
If you follow any of the music coverage in our fair city, you know Mark C. Austin‘s work, even if you don’t know the man himself. His work’s graced the pages of the {Houston Press}…
“You can’t go home again”; that’s the adage, anyway. Apparently nobody told the guys in Austin indie-rock outfit Quiet Company, however, because they’ve done that very thing. Back in 2006, the band released their debut album…
My, how time flies! Looking through my articles and posts for Space City Rock, I realized that it’s been a long time since I’ve done a Musician to Musician interview. It’s not that I’ve interviewed everyone I’ve wanted to. It’s just that life took over…
Fresh off an appearance on the slightly insane but brilliant cartoon Adventure Time, LA’s experimental producer Steven Ellison, aka Flying Lotus, recently graced Houston with his presence at Warehouse Live…
