Dew-Scented, Invocation
You can usually judge a metal band by its name. A good band name will allow you to easily identify them with their genre. The first time I saw the name “Dew-Scented,” I assumed that they would have a Gothic/romantic sound…
Caddywhompus, Remainder
It had to happen, honestly; with guitarist/vocalist Chris Rehm and drummer Sean Hart’s previous “main band,” The Riff Tiffs, apparently going the way of the dodo, what started out as a side project to occupy time while away at college has morphed into a real-deal band…
K.Flay, K.Flay
Inspired by other female artists such as Liz Phair and Mary J. Blige, as well as her father’s classic rock records, K.Flay is an example of genre-hopping gone very, very right…
The Sour Notes, Hot Pink Flares
It seems like every time I see or hear Austinites The Sour Notes, they’re a different band. Okay, that’s not exactly true — they’re always the same “band,” but said band seems to be doing something at least slightly different each damn time…
Holy Grail, Crisis In Utopia
When the Age of the Guitar Gods died, back in the mid-’90s, I wasn’t all that sad about it. I’ve always only been a mediocre guitarist myself, so I selfishly embraced the Cobain-/Mudhoney-ian ethos of just pounding the fuck out of your guitar…
The Mahas, Dead of Night
I have to admit it: when I caught The Mahas live, back in the summer at the Free Press Summerfest, I wasn’t all that impressed. They weren’t bad, by any means, but as they banged on their guitars and yelled to a relatively sparse crowd…
Pujol, Alive At The Same Time
Beneath the scruffy, raggedy-edged surface of Alive At The Same Time, the new EP from frontman/guitarist/singer Daniel Pujol’s eponymous band, there beats a steel-shiny power-pop heart. At least, that’s sure how it looks from the first two tracks…
My Education, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
Question: when was the last time you listened to a soundtrack? Better yet, when was the last time you listened to the soundtrack of a silent film? If you answered anything but “never” for the last question, then consider yourself a pathological liar not fit for civil society…sort of…
Dogtooth
Premiering at the MFAH December 16-19, director Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Dogtooth is the family unit as Madagascar. An isolated, claustrophobic, continental island where familiar situations play out counter-clockwise…
Rooftops, A Forest of Polarity
I have a bit of a knee-jerk negative reaction to instrumental rock bands. Let’s face it — “instrumental rock” can be code for “stoned late-night jam sessions.” That’s why Bellingham, Wash., math-rock band Rooftops was such a pleasant surprise…
Iron & Wine, Walking Far From Home
Wait, wait…who am I listening to, again? I’d heard rumors of a stylistic shift happening in the Iron & Wine camp, with frontman/songwriter Sam Beam moving away from his trademark downhome, low-key folk, but looking back, I honestly had no idea…
Art Institute, First in a series of audio demonstrations
Let’s be up-front about it: if you’re looking for polish, Art Institute’s First in a series of audio demonstrations doesn’t have it. Not much of it, at least. In fact, the band consciously seems to shy away from today’s hyperproduced sounds…
Golden Triangle, Double Jointer
Golden Triangle borrows its sound from the White Stripes, crossed with a bit of that wall-of-sound feel of Sonic Youth. On Double Jointer, their debut, the band thrashes along at garage-punk tempos, but the vocals are woozy-sounding, sort of like Janet Bean if she’d been drinking…
Awesome New Republic, Rational Geographic Volume 1
Now, I had picked this up because the artist had seemed vaguely familiar, and I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised to hear ANR’s unique mix of guitar drones, power-pop synths, and pitched vocals; it strangely seems to work…
Written on December 4, 2010 | Posted in Reviews
Librarians, Present Passed
Librarians are an indie psychedelic/pop band from West Virginia. Present Passed, released earlier this year on Postfact Records, is a follow-up to 2006’s Alright Easy Candy Stranger and captures beautifully — although at times boringly — the band’s unique version…
Wails, Wails
There’s a bit of a head-fake going on with “Lucky,” the opening track for the self-titled debut EP from Houston trio Wails. The song starts off fuzzy and hazy, with rising-falling guitars and staticky drums that sound like they fell right off a Darling Buds B-side…
Boxing Gym
In 2007, director Frederick Wiseman applied his renowned cinema verité to Austin, Texas’ Lord’s Gym. Without interviews or narrators, Wiseman employs the patience of a Buddha, waiting for events to unfold around him…
7 Miles from the Sun, 7 Miles from the Sun EP
I was needing something a little laidback and trippy to just unwind a bit. It had been a busy, slightly stressful couple of weeks for me lately, when I came across 7 Miles from the Sun’s self-titled EP. It was just five tracks, but five tracks of slightly acoustic, spacey, instrumental noodling…
Written on November 30, 2010 | Posted in Reviews
Ólöf Arnalds, Innundir Skinni
Much as I like lyrics in general, I’m fully of the opinion that at the end of the day, you don’t really need them. At least, you don’t necessarily need to be able to understand them to be able to get the emotion behind them…
Well & Goode, Well & Goode
So, the two-song 7″ Well & Goode is supposedly the product of a mysterious, possibly psychotic duo of adopted Irishmen, Upton O. Goode and Midas Wells, who stalked power-pop hero Brendan Benson over the course of his last overseas tour…
Javelin, No Mas
Javelin’s sound is remarkably broad. Much more broad than most bands. Javelin, a duo based in New York, likes to try doing just about anything. Their sound revolves around samplers and keyboards and has a digital groove to it, but that’s about the only defining quality…
Born Liars, Fast Songs Is All We Know
Just when I think I’ve got the Born Liars all figured out, have ’em pegged down neatly on the Great Big Board of Bands as a no-frills garage-punk band and not much else — and hell, that’s great right there — they go and change on me…
Roky Moon & BOLT, Roky Moon & BOLT
There’s a point early in Roky Moon & BOLT where you can feel the change, like a switch being flipped. Suddenly, it feels less like you’re listening to an album by a rock band and more like you’re listening to/watching some quirky, sidewise-smirking musical about a mythic rock band…
Soul Kitchen
Tonight at the MFAH, Soul Kitchen premieres, as part of the museum’s Premieres: Contemporary World Cinema series…
Wolf Parade, EXPO 86
Wolf Parade’s music has always been a little bit all over the place. Their penchant for reverb-drenched vocals and brash, buzzing guitar has always kept them on the messier side of indie-rock. This messiness isn’t necessarily a bad thing…
Featherface, It Comes Electric
With It Comes Electric, Featherface does the near-impossible — in my book, at least — by taking loose-limbed, organic, all-over-the-map psych-rock and marrying it to full-on, wide-grinning, right-in-your-ear arena-pop…
What Cheer? Brigade, We Blow You Suck
What Cheer? Brigade is a 19-piece brass band that borrows from Bollywood, balkan, New Orleans, and samba, and rev everything up to the level of punk rock, in a similar way to Mucca Pazza or other marching bands. The tunes on their debut, We Blow You Suck…
Houston’s Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the Bayou City, by John Nova Lomax
John Nova Lomax‘s hero, the late, great Sig Byrd, wrote about Houston in a way that made the city feel downright intimate. Tiny, in fact. The city was smaller then, in the 1950s, but as he spent mornings downtown, afternoons in the then-nearer suburbs…
Future Islands, Undressed
Listening to Future Islands’ Undressed EP, I feel like I’ve inadvertently walked in on a weird scene in a dimly-lit, avant-garde coffee bar somewhere in the dingy, half-arty part of a city that’s not this one but is perhaps cooler, or more pretentious…
Opposite Day, Mandukhai EP
The Mandukhai EP marks Opposite Day’s latest release; they regard it as an EP even though it has nine tracks. What’s so impressive about these guys is to see their growth from disc to disc. Mandukhai marks a crowning achievement to me…
Opposite Day, Unlike a Virgin: The Immaculate Collection
The last time I saw Opposite Day in concert, guitarist/singer Sam Arnold started playing this riff that was so scintillating familiar, yet I couldn’t quite place it. The next thing I knew, they broke out into a rendition of the greatest song ever written…
Written on November 8, 2010 | Posted in Reviews
Opposite Day, What is is?
I like the guys from Opposite Day. I really do. Up in Austin, these guys are kind of local legends. With Sam Arnold on guitar and vocals, Greg Yancey on bass, and Pat Kennedy on drums, they’ve enjoyed a longevity that evades many bands…
Written on November 8, 2010 | Posted in Reviews
Goldspot, And The Elephant Is Dancing
Goldspot’s And The Elephant Is Dancing is one of those albums to always keep nearby to call on for good times or for comfort on those crappy days when everything seems to be falling apart. Siddhartha Khosla’s clear, sweet voice, a broad vocal range…
Deastro, Growers
Deastro creator Randolph Chabot started recording songs in his parents’ basement in Detroit when he was in high school — the usual story of an optimistic young musician. The music he made in those formative years isn’t quite usual, though…
Ketch Harbour Wolves, Anachronisms
For my money, the true talent of Ketch Harbour Wolves lies in the way the band’s able to ride a fine, fine line between swooning, majestic, synth-tinged, Britpop-influenced romanticism and rough-hewn, rural-sounding, half-jangly rootsy indie-rock, evoking both at once…
Jeans Team, Ding Dong
This compilation of the well established techno gang, teaches us that loops and simple 4-x-4 kicks never go out of style, and that’s what this record has…style. It’s probably very unlikely that this duo is popular outside of Germany, especially in the United States…
Written on November 1, 2010 | Posted in Reviews
The Chinese Stars, Heaven on Speed Dial
I saw The Chinese Stars — formed out of the ashes of Arab on Radar in 2003 — play about five year ago at Mary Jane’s Fat Cat, with The Mean Reds and The Blood Brothers. I remember them being a loud and heavy dance-punk band, and their third studio album, Heaven on Speed Dial…
Funeral Party, Bootleg EP
On the Bootleg EP, Funeral Party is a curious mix of warble and gossip from the likes of NME; its fans consist of a wide range of kids who listen to their music because it’s the latest, because it’s “new and original”…
Written on October 30, 2010 | Posted in Reviews
listenlisten, “dog”
After listening to “dog”, the second full-length from listenlisten, several times now, I think I’m starting to understand. I was surprised at first, because after 2009’s Hymns From Rhodesia, I was expecting something, well, something a bit more grand, really…
Clinging To The Trees of a Forest Fire, Songs of Ill Hope and Desperation
If you have ever been to the palatial worldwide headquarters of Space City Rock, you know of the plethora of CDs that litter the mail room. With so many to choose from, it can be tough to decide on which ones to listen to. Being the metal guru that I am, any cover that has a dragon…
