It’s been five years since the critically-acclaimed Broken Social Scene, and expectations are high for the eponymous band. So, how do you follow up your most successful album, and more so, how do you pull of the three-peat without rehashing your previous two albums in hopes recapturing the same success?…
What do you get when you combine five musically gifted musicians who play the fiddle, upright bass, mandolin, guitar, and banjo? If you’re thinking a bluegrass band, you’re wrong…
There are times when music can just be a side note, something you turn on because you’d rather deal with any type of distraction than the loneliness of oppressive silence and wonder why your life still sucks, even though that could just be me self-projecting…
There is that saying of what once was old is now new again, and it’s proven true by the newest musical export from Sweden, Sunaglare. This band draws its most obvious influence from retro-rockers The Hellacopters; it’s that sound of fuzz-laden stoner-rock, a la Fu Manchu or Nebula…
When KTRU Local Show co-host Ian Wells handed me a copy of KTRU Live Vol. 2, the second in the “KTRU Live” series (two discs wrapped in a cool, halfway-DIY cardboard sleeve with sweet, quirky art by DJ/artist Lindsey Simard), back at this year’s Summerfest…
First be warned that I write this review with extreme prejudice. A dream Asleep and Skeleton Dick are two of my top favorite bands…
I first saw Yvette Barwood and Devora F, the two ladies of Barefoot for Native, at SXSW, and then was fortunate to see them again as they came through Houston and did a show at Dean’s…
Seattle indie-rock trio Elba’s An Avalanche is a promising CD of eleven songs full of quick, bright-sounding guitars that carry on in a poppy way, along with the occasional more laidback number. The vocals are nice and complimentary to the music, and the songs are played in a major key…
Normally, I get pretty annoyed when a songwriter just comes out and tells you what a song’s about; to my mind, that takes some of the joy out of the music, removing the personal interpretation completely from the equation. I mean, sure, if you think a song’s about X…
Alex Brown Church – maybe more commonly known as Sea Wolf – and friends are back and just as good as ever with the release of “White Water, White Bloom,” last year. This album follows a very successful debut EP, “Go to the River before it Runs Too Low” and full-length “Leaves in the River,” both released in 2007, and follows in similar style and sound as previous releases…
More than anything else, From the Last Day I Saw You is a manifesto. And really, it feels fitting that as they make their final(?) bow and step off into the wings, Tambersauro should unleash something just like this, tossing aside the oblique lyrics and instrumentals…
Jimmy LaValle’s fifth solo album, A Chorus of Storytellers, is a calm trip into his soul. This CD will soothe you, but not in a reassuring, uplifting kind of way. LaValle started in the ’90s, and since then has appeared on The OC soundtrack…
Jack Conte’s Sleep in Color EP surprised me, with its rich, multi-faceted effects. Such a short endeavor could’ve easily gone unnoticed, but this one packs a lot into five songs. Each one involves a multitude of instruments, with a melody backed by various other parts…
I screwed up Kelli Scarr’s CD, and honestly, now I’m kind of glad I did. Not the actual CD, mind you, but the copy of Piece that I’m currently listening to — apparently I managed to mix up the track order pretty severely when I burned the disc so I could listen to it in the car…
Literature’s Tour EP is four tracks’ worth of indie-rock: somewhat sloppy vocals that go in and out of tune and well-crafted guitar parts with meaningful lyrics. The band is comprised of five young men from Austin who decorated their CD with a brown and white horse sticker…
Lost and Found and Lost is a twelve-track indie album, released last year to relieve those diehard fans of Baltimore, MD’s The Seldon Plan, who’d been patiently awaiting a follow up to 2007’s Collective Now. Michael Nestor and Dawn Dineen from the core band sing…
Jon Sebastian’s band Paper The Operator gives insight into the mind of a man with an indie-rock agenda and a fun-loving heart. There is some slight vibrato in his soft soothing voice, sounding a bit like Rivers Cuomo circa “Only in Dreams” or “Butterfly”…
On Tiny Vipers’ striking second album, Life on Earth, Jesy Fortino expands on her distinctive sound. Her songs are more songlike than on the previous album, although the core of the sound is still the same — it’s still just her voice and guitar, but she’s developing her melodies more…
This may well be as good as Twilight is ever going to get, and as it turns out that’s not too shabby. So Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) is really into vampires. Well, a vampire (Edward Cullen). So much so that she wants nothing more to become one…
Right from the start of Logan (and the band’s previous EP, Chub, too), I caught myself betting the collective record collections of The Gary’s Dave Norwood, Paul Warner, and Trey Pool look a heck of a lot like, well, mine. And as the album unfolds, I found myself nodding and grinning…
I’ve been looking at this all wrong. My initial instinct, based on the band’s youth and cheery energy as much as on their knack for similarly cheery, shiny-sweet pop songs, is to applaud The Wild Moccasins for finally breaking out of the “kiddie-pop” niche…
Matt Bartram does not create accessible music. There is nothing on Left to Memory that you can tap your toes to or sing along with, no catchy choruses or get-stuck-in-your-head riffs. If you’ve been bred on the under-three-minute, four-chords-and-a-melody song…
There is nothing like a band where the drummer sings, especially when it’s a girl. In Point Juncture, WA, the sweet, silky, alto voice of Amanda Spring complements the clear tenor voice of Victor Nash. Both singers take the lead on certain songs and sing back up on others…
Few things are as constant as America’s need for cultural nostalgia. We Americans collectively loved the flower power revival of the mid-1990s and the recent movie remakes of classic 1980s cartoons. In fact, even our environmental disasters are rehashed 1980s tragedies (Ixtoc I, anyone?)…
I’ve heard a lot about indie dance-punk band Gossip (formerly known as The Gossip) for some time, but never gave them a listen until 2009’s Music for Men. The album is the band’s fourth studio album and has sold over one million copies worldwide since its release last June…
I am so glad Pandora exists. Not the world of James Cameron’s Avatar, but the online radio station. Thanks to it, I discovered Porcupine Tree, and subsequently found The Pineapple Thief…
I can’t believe Tom Cruise movies have gotten old-fashioned. That’s not right. What I should say is: I can’t believe movie stars have gotten old-fashioned. But they have, and the proof is in Knight and Day‘s pudding…
Good songwriters are a dime a dozen, so it’s become difficult to pick out the ones that are truly worth your time and money. And the whole acoustic alternative/indie folk genre has almost become a joke because of all the generically good-but-not-great artists it churns out regularly. Because of that, it might be easy to disregard Brazos’ Phosphorescent Blues after a cursory listen…
If you’d told me a decade ago that in ten years’ time I’d be reading an honest-to-God book written by a guy in a Houston indie band — heck, about not only said band but about the music scene here in general — well, I’d have laughed you out of the room…
While I’m pretty sure that’s not what it’s talking about, the A-side of the new 7-inch single from retro-rockers Paris Falls, “Big Surprise,” actually does find itself a little ways off from what I’ve come to think of as the band’s main musical neighborhood…
There is nothing about B L A C K I E that is not singular. Despite his undeniable affinity and devotion to his native geography and his home in Chemical City (Pasadena) in particular, the solo endeavor of the man born Michael LaCour stands out as stark as the all-caps-with-spaces typography of his name…
The only time I’d ever seen or heard LIMB before now, the “band” consisted solely of primary instigator James Templeton, a laptop, a vintage-looking keyboard, a mixer, and a bunch of effects pedals. And while it was interesting, definitely, I can’t claim that it blew me away…
Music or theater? That’s the conundrum that hits me most frequently when listening to The Manichean’s self-titled debut EP: is this a band, or a theater troupe? Going by the EP itself, the answer may be “both.” It may be comprised of actual songs, but The Manichean strikes me as being far closer to an old-time radio play…
MC Chris is a hilarious white hardcore rapper, one who reminds me of Eminem because of his high-pitched voice and his amazing sense of humor. His new album, MC Chris Goes To Hell, is easily the funniest rap album I’ve ever heard, but beyond the humor…
Bright Works and Baton, the first EP by Cast Spells, is something to be played at a summer barbeque or other such lazy social event. It’s bright and pleasant, and it’s not one of those that has to “grow on you,” or that requires a “refined taste” in music…
Although they are “passionate about the blues tradition and hate following the rules,” I wasn’t really impressed by Black Smokers’ music; they could tighten it up a bit. They definitely have an edgy, European-wish-they-were-American rock sound, with underlying country tones…
Eivind Opsvik and Aaron Jennings continue to cover new ground on their third album, A Dream I Used to Remember. More straightforward than their previous projects, it mostly leaves behind the electronic tones and processing of their previous records for more of a traditional band sound…
In spite of the bright, sparkling melodies, wonderfully “round”-sounding notes, and sweet, village-harmony backing vocals, there’s a deep, tragic sense of sadness and loss to Tinariwen’s Imidiwan (which translates as “Companions” in the band’s native language, Tamashek; hence the subtitle)…
The film opens Somewhere In Mexico, with gangsters interrogating Hannibal (Liam Neeson in a bewildering rubber nose). Somewhere Else In Mexico, Bosco Albert Baracus (or B.A., a perfectly cast Quentin “Rampage” Jackson) races cops in a Lamborghini…
The best way to describe this CD is to say that it’s industrial, with influences from Skinny Puppy and older Ministry but with a well-thought-out Goth overtone. The scraping backgrounds, voice track overdubs, and soft and droning synthesizer beats meld into a grimy, overloaded, distorted-guitar sound…
