Reviewing Vetiver’s latest release, Tight Knit, has been a most pleasant experience. Self-classified as “Thrash/Black Metal/Christian Rap”on their MySpace page — proof positive the band does have a sense of humor — the band tends to get tagged as “Freak Folk” or “crippled pigeon music” by reviewers…
In the overflowing racks of DVDs at your local record store, the subject of stoner rock has long been neglected. The void has now been filled, however, with the release of Such Hawks Such Hounds. The film is the culmination of three years work by John Srebalus…
There’s a lot to like on La Snacks’ Newfangled EP, with all its throwback-ness to my own personal indie-rock heyday, when Pavement was great, The Pixies and Sebadoh were gods, and Spoon weren’t famous yet. It’s got a great, fuck-it-all looseness to it…
From Autumn To Ashes’ Live at Looney Tunes captures the band’s classics in their live form for the fans, giving in to the all-out jams of post-hardcore and metal. It has the energy and atttiude of any other band and, at that same time, it has a personal feel that’s rarely recorded live…
I once had to make the agonizing drive from Houston to Los Angeles in one sitting. From the grueling scorch of land between San Antonio and El Paso through the mind-hell that is Arizona, I really wish that I’d had Blackwood Company’s debut album, Forbidden Fruit, with me…
I’ll admit I didn’t have high hopes for this album, a CD-R with a laser-printed CD sleeve and an unwieldy, pretentious-sounding name; I figured it was headed for a quick listen and then a toss on the ever-growing pile on the desk…
Yep, it’s late-breaking update time — we’ve got a bunch of good new stuff up this week, in typical kinda-timely fashion… First up is a nice little chat with Toby Butler of The Duke Spirit, courtesy of Houston Calling (which you should really be reading, btw, if you don’t already) headman and SCR contributor David […]
If history has taught us anything, it’s that bad things come in threes. Billy Mays, Michael Jackson, and Farah Fawcett all died in the same week — in fact, they died within three days of one another. Coincidence, no. Cosmic law…
Back in 1998, Rawkus Records released Black Star, featuring the iconic debut of Mos Def and Talib Kweli as the hip-hop duo Black Star. One year later, Mos Def released his critically acclaimed solo album, Black on Both Sides, solidifying himself as a socially aware and truly gifted MC…
A bit of a late notice on this one, I know — just got back from some much-needed Galveston vacationizing and realized that holy freaking crap, that Mos Def show is tonight (Wed., August 19th, you calendrically-impaired people), with Jay Electronica (about whom I know zero) over at the House of Blues. And yes, this […]
I’ve always thought of The Velvet Underground as a band that was less about songs and more about a general feeling, a kind of sleepy-yet-restless nervousness that’s raw and wide-open and pretty much uniquely urban. To this kid from partly-rural central Texas, the VU was like the sound of Noo Yawk…
Yep, it’s true — after what seems like quite a while, local garage-rock(-ish) supergroup Guitars is finally officially releasing their debut full-length, White Night White Night, this afternoon around 3PM or so (I’ve seen a couple of different times so far) up at Cactus Music. Not sure just how it’ll go, but I think it’s […]
If you miss the classic rock of the ’70s before it got caught up in the hit-making machinery of AOR radio, or you recently discovered the musical gems hidden in your parent’s album collection, then Concrete Class, by The Lonely H, is an album you’ll want to hear…
Topless at the ARCO Arena is the first album from Wonderlick since their eponymous release in 2002. With two former members of Too Much Joy in the band, it’s tempting to skip breezily over the pretty surface of this album and chalk it up as another tongue-in-cheek record…
I usually come across four types of bands: the bands that impress you with their musical technicality; the bands you feel sorry for, knowing that this is their passion but that it’s probably time for them to hang it up; the bands that get you fired up and make you want to put your fist through something…
Let me start off by saying that I’ve never seen this much variety in a single record; I have to compliment Mr. Schutz for his combination of jazz, blues, lullaby-type songs, and Spanish flair. I think Gemini has the potential to be a good record, but without any sort of general theme at all…
There’s something fascinating to me about the ties between music and place — how a certain sound, song, or voice can immediately evoke somewhere you’ve been, something you’ve seen, and immediately pull you inexorably back to the exact moment when you first experienced it…
It’s hard to resist the temptation to compare Floridians (er, Floridian, at this point) One Small Step For Landmines and the significantly better-known Dashboard Confessional. Beyond the geographic kinship, both are shifting band/solo acts focused around punk-rock-bred guys playing hearts-on-sleeves…
Franz Ferdinand’s Tonight is the Scottish rockers’ third release since their inception in 2002. Released in January of this year, the album is at best hit-and-miss. I have to admit that musically, it’s worse than I expected. While at times there are some solid jams on display and somewhat creative rhythms at work…
Foreign Cinema’s Non-Synchronous Sound EP is pretty low-key. The four songs, “Arbitrary Map Mode,” “At the Bottom of the Deep Blue Sea,” “Ice Machine,” and “Lovers and Killers,” have creative names but little to offer in the creative department, as far as the music goes…
If you’re a fan of The Faint, you’re either going to really love this album or really hate it. The sound is actually so similar it kind of freaks me out at times; however, I’d say I fall into the category of Faint fans that really love this album…
Judas Priest’s new live CD, A Touch of Evil:Live, is a nice little payoff for diehard fans. The 11 tracks that make up the release are all songs that have not been previously recorded live, and this is saying something considering that the band has something like 30 live albums in their career…
Yep, yep, yep — in-between the ultra-short-notice posts I’ve been slapping up here lately, there’s been quite a bit of new stuff going on on the site, and I’m damned proud of the current pile, I have to say… First up, thanks to new-ish Austin-based contributor Chris G., we’ve got a cool preview-type thing for […]
This may possibly be the worst DVD that I have ever seen. Seriously. I was actually really excited to watch it and hear some great music, but I was very disappointed. The DVD was cheaply made and just consists of the band Arab on Radar carrying around a camcorder…
Patrick Wolf is back, with his quirky music and colorful image (he’s currently a bleached blonde), and his new album is sure to impress his loyal fans. The Bachelor is filled with Patrick Wolf’s characteristic violas and voice with vibrato…
I hear people lament about the lack of talent in Houston all the time, and I always have to look at them like, “what are you talking about?” Houston is teeming with great talent; just stop watching NCIS for a night and get out to see a show…
The Loud Wars is one of those albums that makes me want to go dig out an album I used to play ’til it felt like the CD player laser would burn out; in this case, the album they make me want to go grab is The Dismemberment Plan’s 2001 classic, Change…
Reel Big Fish’s Fame, Fortune and Fornication is no Born to Run or Pet Sounds, it’s true, but so what? There’s nothing wrong with having a little fun, and I enjoy a good ska cover song as much as anybody…
With a voyeuristic fixation on meandering, psychedelic soundscapes, Austin band The Able Sea has released a debut album to satisfy that taste. From start to finish, let there be no confusion: this self-titled work is well-primed to make you feel windswept, to hypnotize you. Listener, beware. The Able Sea is a trio, including Robert Pierson, […]
Have you ever had someone tell you they saw a great live band, and you’re like, “what the hell does that even mean?” Well, I’ve been watching YouTube videos of Oh No Forest Fires after receiving their The War On Geometry EP, and I think I’ve found the definitive answer on that…
Damn…feels like I’m doing this more & more lately…sigh. Just got a bunch of new reviews up on the site, including (most crucially for the moment) a writeup of the new one by palindromic Illinoians So Many Dynamos, The Loud Wars. My knee-jerk initial reaction was, “okay, so they sound like The Dismemberment Plan; I […]
My Education is an instrumental rock band from Austin. On their fourth album, Bad Vibrations, they seamlessly blend pastoral-sounding violin in with epic rock anthems. Their songs blend pastoral Dirty Three ideas with a more lyrical Mono into a sound of their own…
I think I’ve cracked it. It took me a while to get my head around it, but I think the best way to look at RX Bandits isn’t as a reggae+X band — like I’d always instinctively wanted to see them ’til now — but as a damn talented prog-rock band that just happens to pull in reggae, dub, punk, metal…
Another last-minuter — I’d been trying to write up the new RX Bandits album for the better part of a week, without much success, but I finally, at the last freaking second, managed to get it up there. Check out the review up here, if you feel like it. Basically, I found myself enjoying the […]
On Back and Fourth, soft-voiced singer/songwriter Pete Yorn comes off almost like a musical chameleon, to the point where I’m at first not entirely sure what to make of the guy. He starts off with gently determined, heavily folk-influenced country on “Don’t Wanna Cry”…
Got some cool new reviews up, some just in time for the weekned-ness. There’s a review of the really new 7″ from countrified indie-popsters Buxton, which’ll be released at a cool-ass show tonight at Mango’s — I’ve been digging the hell out of A-side “Feathers”, in particular, but both sides are darn good. Full review […]
The Antlers’ ambient and elegiac debut, Hospice, has generated a veritable buzz from indie sites and bloggers alike since its online release in late June. For the most part, it’s been received well — some even going as far to say that Hospice is the best album released in 2009 so far…
You ever fall hard for somebody who you know is really, truly not your type, but there’s something weirdly attractive about them, some quirky thing that makes you look past what your brain’s telling you and convince yourself they’re The One for you?…
When I was in middle school, my musical abilities could be summed up by a few stagnant years of piano lessons and proud ownership of first chair in the band’s trumpet section. When the Tiny Masters of Today were in middle school, on the other hand, David Bowie was calling their music “genius”…
It’s not my favorite album, but it’s good. That’s what I would say if I had to sum up in one sentence what I thought of Handsome Furs’ newest release, Face Control. This indie-rock band from Montreal, Canada is comprised of husband/wife duo Dan Boeckner…
