I’ve always been a little disheartened by the state of the blues here in sweaty, grimy Houston, Texas, the town I call home. Unless you’re a serious student of the genre (or, you know, actually live here, and maybe not even then), odds are pretty good you’ve got no idea…
After Band of Skulls last release, 2012’s Sweet Sour, which I liked a fair bit but didn’t quite love, I’ve been looking forward to seeing where the band would be headed next. I’d kind of assumed they’d stick with the heavy stuff for Himalayan, their brand-new followup, with plenty more of that sludgy guitar and those sneering vocals; and don’t get me wrong…
Ah, anticipation; sometimes, I hate you, when you string me along and make me wait eagerly for something that turns out to not be very good at all. But then sometimes, just sometimes, you deliver. It’s a little odd to be listening now to the cleaned-up, finished version of the last place you look’s latest EP, Rip It Out, because it feels like I’ve been listening to these songs for a few years now…
It was about four tracks into Scottish postrock quintet Mogwai’s most recent release, Rave Tapes, when it hits me: the mainstream has passed the band by. No, scratch that; the mainstream hasn’t zoomed past Mogwai, but rather has swallowed the band whole…
I’ve been seriously intrigued by Twin Forks since they released their first shot across the bow late last year in the form of a self-titled EP, hoping that the band’s full-length would live up to the EP’s substantial, grin-inducing promise. Granted, it’d be all too easy to dismiss the whole Twin Forks project as yet another bunch of indie-rockers trying to “rediscover” their country-rock roots…
I’ve only ever been to Beaumont once, so I can’t claim to know what it’s like to come from there, not exactly. What I do know, however, is what it’s like to come from a dead-end, soul-destroying town with no obvious future beyond a low-wage job or the military; that’s what it was like where I went to high school, and I and nearly everyone else I know from those days got the hell out as soon as we could…
From across the land they come, the nerds, the geeks, the professionals, and the hobbyists. The computer programmers and the computer deriders, the chess pros and the chess amateurs, all seeking the answer to that age-old question: can you teach a computer to play that game of chess? A word of warning right from the outset: this movie is not for everyone…
I’m not entirely sure why I first started listening to the genre of music dubbed “shoegaze,” nor can I really explain to you in words what “shoegaze” means exactly. I do know, however, that along with bands such as Music for Headphones and Bloody Knives, The Consolation Project is definitely a name that has made me a fan of shoegaze. I also like to think of shoegaze as being another name for what I refer to as “Breakfast Club bands,” which means pretty much what it says…
Rarely have I seen an album title as apt as Omotai’s Fresh Hell; and no, not because it’s bad by any stretch of the imagination, but because of the images of menace and dread it conjures up. There’s a weird sense of foreboding you get while listening, like something truly, ineffably horrible is waiting for you, just around the next corner, and it’s going to get you no matter what you do. It’s your destiny, inescapable…
Raise your hands high, people, and your heads, too; throw ’em back, eyes closed tight, with a look of blissful joy plastered across your face. Feel the heat of the lights on your face as they explode outwards from the stage, and the physical impact of the music as it slams against your chest…
There’s always been an ’80s influence apparent in the Wild Moccasins’ music, it’s true. With new album 88 92, however, they’re flying their neon-colored flag proudly, even spelling it out explicitly in the album title. There’s a serious New Wave feel to the whole thing…
It’s always nice when somebody not only exceeds your expectations but beats them into the pavement with a length of lead pipe, leaving ’em bleeding and unconscious as they walk away. And yeah, that’s…
I’m a very, very recent convert to Baton Rouge band Moon Honey (formerly known as Twin Killers, by the by, in case you’ve seen that on bills with The Manichean or other like-minded folks), but now…
It feels a little weird to say, but y’know, what I like best about Beg Upon The Light, Houston-bred doom-/dark-metallers Venomous Maximus’s first full-length album, is, um, the slow, quiet stuff. I know, I know — that’s a pretty damn…
First things first: yes, Dessa is a member of the ever-awesome Doomtree hip-hop collective out of Minneapolis, but that doesn’t mean she’s a rapper. Actually, scratch that; that doesn’t mean she’s just a rapper. She’s something else entirely…
I’d been wanting to say something on this little site about Fox & Cats for some time now, but while I procrastinated and got wrapped up in other things, the duo (Josh Willems on guitar and vocals and Nicole Wiggington on drums) continued right…
Relationships are difficult things to handle; even the good ones, the ones that are worthwhile, take work and pain and struggle. And I’m not even talking about relationships with spouses or partners or whatever, but any relationship…
To put it simply, Magnus Karlsson’s Freefall is an exquisite work of melodic metal. I really can’t emphasize that enough. The songs are satisfyingly heavy, with plenty of guitar pyrotechnics and double-bass drumming, but they have a sense of melody that is stunning…
On April 8, 2009, four individuals from Somalia boarded the cargo vessel Maersk Alabama, marking the first time a U.S.-flagged vessel became subject to an act of piracy in a century. Over the next four days, the drama of the capture played out in real-time for American audiences, as the pirates abandoned the ship aboard its lifeboat with its captain, Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks), as hostage, attempting to make for the coast of Africa…
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…
Luc Besson‘s The Family is filled with his signature visual wit, boasting occasionally sharp satire aimed equally at both sides of the Atlantic, but he lets us down in the end, through the deadly combination of broad characters…
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…
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…
Before the turn of the 21st Century, in what I like to refer to as the Happy-Go-Lucky Nineties (at least for music), there were different times in music. Sarah McLachlin started a female gathering called Lilith Fair, which if I remember correctly…
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…
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…
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…
