Gotten a bunch of cool new stuff up on the site recently, so I wanted to point to it and let everybody bask in the wonderment… First and foremost, I did a writeup this week for an EP sent to me a while back by local boys Giant Battle Monster, entitled Giant Battle Monster vs. […]
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…
I write music critiques. I listen to music, digest it, analyze it, and give my opinion in an abstract-yet-demonstrative manner that will hopefully steer you into the arms of sweet musical eargasms and save your ears from the irritability of listening to the crappy stuff…
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…
Okay, to be fair, I can see what this guy is going for. Entirely a cappella, echo-ey vocals, and nature sounds, Let Me Be Your Partner is like a very young Panda Bear with a more downbeat, minimalist sound. But please don’t tell Panda Bear that I compared him to this album…
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”…
Animals As Leaders is the solo project of seven- and eight-string guitarist Tosin Abasi, who has played with such bands as the now-defunct Washington, DC band Reflux and Born of Osiris; I was quite honestly very excited to be reviewing the guy’s debut album as Animals As Leaders…
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…
Got one heck of a weekend coming up, although yours truly will sadly be missing out on all of it — the little guy’s only now beginning to sleep for more than three hours at a time, so that’s taking up a lot of my time, as well as the obligatory Christmas-type par-tays I’ve been […]
Plenty going on this weekend, that’s for sure; it’s kind of turned out to be somewhat of a red-letter couple of days, in fact… And hey, the snow’s mostly melted, it seems like, so you’ve really got no excuse to stay home, right? Sat., December 5th: The Pons/ listenlisten/ The Tontons/ Gretchen Schmaltz @ The […]
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…
Damn, damn, damn. I’m afraid that the snow dazzled and bewildered me, and so I totally forgot about all the awesome shows going on this very evening (Fri., December 4th) while out being pelted with grassy/muddy snowballs by my daughter. Argh. (Okay, and my sleep-deprived brain for some reason thought the freaking show was tomorrow […]
To not know of A dream Asleep means that you are either not completely tapped into Houston’s music scene or you’ve been living in a sulphur glacier on one of Jupiter’s farthest moons eating vegan Taco Bell. They’ve been tearing up the underground circuit…
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…
Philip Vandermost’s Automatic August offers the world another collection of sunny songs from a singer/songwriter. The music is uplifting, for the most part with happy words, but the tunes are always jolly and in a major key…
The Spanish Armada is a five-piece noise-rock band from Boston. On The Spanish Armada, their debut album, their sound borrows heavily from Sonic Youth, and the singer even sounds a little like Thurston Moore…
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…
Weekend’s not over yet, obviously, so there’s still stuff to do these next couple of days. First off, though, we’ve got a bunch of new reviews up on the site, including reviews of stuff by Mew, local songwriter Arthur Yoria, Foreign Born, and local heavy-rocking dudes A dream Asleep, who’re having their CD release show […]
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…
We’ve been waiting for the end of the world for a long time. Frequently polls will suggest that a large percentage of people believe we are living at the end times at any given moment. Books and magazine articles will appear explaining why the Apocalypse is nigh…
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…
The DVD begins with a short film, The Start to This May Be the End to Another, which acts as a documentary of Moneen, showing the band traveling in their tour bus, enduring the typical trials of losing the signal during business calls, excessive gas pumping, and unloading all the heavy gear…
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…
It’s kinda odd describing the San Franciscan band Death Sentence: PANDA! I remember when I was living in L.A. we used to drive past Panda Express and scream, “Stop eating Pandas!” I guess it’s sort of like that, or maybe post-punk, free-jazz, noise-folk…
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…
Baby Gut’s Kissing Disease is a fresh new outlook on the standard garage-punk band of today, seriously. While most people might disagree with their approach — meaning that yeah, some of the songs are kiddish and yes, lacking substanial deep meaning, etc…
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…
Sunday, at Edwards Marquee’s screening of Astro Boy, geek dads brought their children to have their hair styled in the inexplicable dual spikes of the 60 year-old anime icon. Hairdressers were contracted by the studio reps to perform this hilarious task. Once inside, adults fell into two categories and children into one. Some adults were […]
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…
Depending on who’s singing, And The Moneynotes sounds like two different bands. Their EP On The Town, On The Vine consists of four songs, half of which were written by each of their two singer-songwriters. Half of the album, therefore, sounds like an acoustic Gogol Bordello…
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…
