Consider this truth: Liars has produced a solid new album. With three respectable records and a national tour with indie favorites Interpol behind them, Liars’ should be prepared to greet new and old fans and much well-deserved attention. Liars is a haunting unraveling…
From out of the wilds of Deer Park, Texas, comes…well, the biggest surprise I got this past holiday season, at least. On their self-titled debut EP, these three young guys initially come off like shaggy-haired, countrified cousins to the whole garage-rock crew, bands like The Datsuns, The Hives, The Von Bondies…
I can tell you that I, at least, didn’t see it coming. I mean, who’d have thought that from what was once the biggest rock trio in the world, the member who’d go on to the most enduring, maybe even most influential rock stardom would be…the drummer? The hell?…
Dang, two updates in a week; must be on a roll (okay, technically the last update was for stuff that went up last week, but still…). This time out we’ve got a brand-spankin’-new interview with La Porte’s own Buxton, who’ll be releasing their 2nd full-length — as we’ve mentioned here before — this coming Saturday, […]
Seattle group Denelian is making music that somehow has elements of ’80s-retro, garage, and euro-inflicted dance music, but it’s fun and energetic. Their August 2007 Demo CD-R contains three self-recorded songs that’re of decent enough quality, although the levels do clash at times…
New year, new reviews — got ’em up late last week… It’s a good batch, too; we’ve got local indie-folkies Papermoons, with a review of their cool debut(?) 7″ up here. The band’s playing this coming Saturday, January 19th up at Walter’s on Washington, with Buxton, By the End of Tonight, & Ghost Mountain, and […]
Do you remember being a little kid and listening to tapes (how ancient is that?) in the car that taught you the alphabet or all fifty states and stuff like that? And how it was really cheesy-sounding music that was probably programmed on a Casiotone…
Why do I keep doing this to myself with this band? I’d enjoyed what I’d heard of Saves The Day’s older stuff, so when Stay What You Are came out, I picked it up, mostly on the strength of “At Your Funeral”…and promptly discovered that the rest of the album was just “eh,” at best…
Phame is a rapper from San Francisco. His delivery is dense and staccato — he squeezes lots of words into each phrase, and each syllable is precisely placed. While the rhythm of the words sounds spontaneous, however, his delivery of the words themselves can be limited — he raps them all the same way, which ends up sounding a little flat…
Okay, so I’ve put off listening to Papermoons self-titled debut 7″ for a little while now. I could be scrupulously honest and talk about how I’m a lazy ass who forgets things, or wax poetic about how having a kid and no longer having the space/time to review stuff…
I had the pleasure of hearing Crosby Loggins open for Joe Bonamassa at the Stafford Centre in the Houston area back in October 2007. That pleasure was only further enhanced by my first spin of his debut CD, We All Go Home…
Boy, did this CD get into the right hands! From what I’ve heard and read, I’m super impressed with the band Japanther from Brooklyn — they’ve played shows at art studios, put on punk rock operas with big puppets, played on a floating platform at a giant indoor pool, and just put on some crazy shows at more typical club venues…
Listening to Empires and Milk is like breathing. It’s easy to forget that you’re even listening, so environmentally permeating is the sonic wash. That such an organic feel evolves from keyboards, computers, and sound loops, with very few acoustic instruments or unprocessed sounds…
There are enough claps and chorus singers on “Brunettes Against Bubblegum Youth,” the first track of The Brunettes’ Structure and Cosmetics to make up for any failings on the rest of the album. That leads right into “Stereo (Mono Mono),” however, and the album’s true colors start to show…
Merry Chrismahanukwanzaamas to all! We here at SCR HQ are currently hip-deep in holiday insanity, with bellies full of cookies & eggnog & wassail & whatnot, but I didn’t want to leave y’all hanging & wondering, “hey, what the hell happened to Space City since November?” We are still here, yes, and before the actual […]
The band Tempo No Tempo from Oakland, California, walks the line between rock music and dance music, which is a noble but tricky frontier. To me, being a fan much more so of the rock side of music, it just gets dangerous when the synthesizers start to take over. And adding to that, dance music lyrics…
I reviewed The Story Of’s 2006 EP, foothill highway appalachian road, falling in love with it while travelling in Europe last summer. The album fit perfectly with the wonderful freedom and self-awareness I was enjoying: I was living life, unrestrained by work or the real world, exploring my own giddiness…
Collusion, a recent six-cut EP from Dallas-based band 1000 Miles From Home, features Zac Carrington (lead vocals/guitar), Jeff Widman (guitar/vocals), Eddie Castillo (lead guitar), Chris Bender (bass), and Keith Mitchell (drums). The bandmates originally hail from different US cities in all geographical directions…
On this single, Austin space-rock band My Education takes a piece of music originally written for piano and strings in the late 1970s and puts their own, updated — albeit somewhat traditional — spin on it. The result, “Spiegel im Spiegel,” is a peaceful, melodic song that ignores the traditional quiet-loud-quiet formula…
Okay, so this is going to be a little weird. I’m sitting here reviewing three CDs that you’re not real likely to ever be able to hear or find, in spite of how good they are, because, well, they were released in super-limited-edition sets of 13 (I think?) and only sold for a week apiece…
By calling his album Rhymes and Beats, Gnotes sets himself to a higher standard by putting the emphasis on the musical material of the album. (If he’d called the album Dollaz and Hos, for example, he might be able to slack off a bit…)
Caalma is the stage name of Mark Steven McCraw, a one-man show from our very own Pasadena, Texas. Even if you change your mind is his first full-length release, and he also has some acoustic stuff available on the Caalma Website. He’s currently recruiting band members while working on his next album…
Between their last record and their new one, co-songwriter Mat Brooke left Band of Horses. This left guitarist/vocalist Ben Bridwell with the challenge of continuing the band on his own. On their new record, Cease to Begin, the overall sound of the band hasn’t changed…
Fresh off the heels of recently winning Best International Rock EP from Toronto Exclusive Magazine, New York-based rock group Moment Theory and their self-titled mini-collection of original songs was truly an award-winning listen in my book…
Hey, all — hope everybody out there had a good Turkey Day and didn’t get too festively plump in the process… I know we already did one update this week, but we’ve got a few more new reviews up, including one for new holiday-ish movie This Christmas, one of the new (and surprisingly good) odds-and-ends […]
Jon Fritz’s When It’s Over begins with relaxing acoustic melodies and flows into pieces that have a bit of a soft rock feel mixed with a country flavor and a coffeehouse aftertaste. The first song might pack a little more punch if it were a bit shorter, as it’s very enjoyable but doesn’t quite end in time…
Okay, so I caught an abridged version of Copeland this fall when they opened for The Rentals, and I could’ve sworn frontman/songwriter/main guy Aaron Marsh said the band would have a new album out very soon. Now that I’ve got Dressed Up & In Line in hand, I’m not sure this is it…
Can you believe all the amazing bands these two little labels have? I mean, just on this comp alone you can find: Antony and the Johnsons, Danielson, Okkervil River, Magnolia Electric Co., Jens Lekman, and Black Mountain. These two little labels are turning into the Sub Pop of new Americana indie-rock…
Calgary’s The Cape May is part of the current Canadian Invasion that’s sweeping the US, and their sound on Glass Mountain Roads is like Slint or Rex fronted by Will Oldham. They have an interesting combination of songwriterly melodies and indie-rock backbone…
I guess in this age of everything-anytime, I shouldn’t be real surprised that a band from deep-rural Georgia (Acworth, according to the Myspace) sounds so, well, urban. Moros Eros’s Jealous Me Was Killed By Curiousity betrays only a teeny-tiny hint…
Put up two new reviews this afternoon, so they’d be up & readable & all in time for the especially neat bands in question to hit H-town this week (more later, hopefully)… First, tonight we’ve got Georgia boys Moros Eros playing tonight (Tues., 11/20, if you’re keeping track) up in Spring at the ever-lovely(?) Javajazz […]
Ah. Thank God for that occasional compulsion I get to do at least a little bit of research, ’cause now all the pieces have fallen into place in my head. I knew the four guys in H-town’s Stadium — guitarist/vocalist Jeff Stilwell, bassist Stephen Henderson…
The Mad Caddies play ska and reggae with a Clash-style punk core, and Keep It Going is their fifth album (although, if the world were fair, they wouldn’t have any). Their songs carry on the Fat Wreck tradition of irritating and sappy attempted-anthems…
A little late for this week, I know; what’re you gonna do, eh? Anyway, we’ve just posted a real-live interview with H-town-by-way-of-Katrina prog-metal outfit Rustler — they haven’t been in town long, really, but they’ve already made quite an impact, and their debut EP, Phonetic Whips, gets me frantically air-drumming and head-banging every time. Plus, […]
Richard Hawley has been around for longer than you think. Richard’s been here the whole time, in the corner of your mind, in the corner of your room. It’s easy to see, though, why artists such as Hawley are quickly looked over are passed over. We’re not talking about some hunky white guy…
“Where did you go when I needed you most?” — it’s a fitting lyric from The Challenger Deep, a post-punk/sludge band from San Diego who recently released their self-titled debut EP but then had to split up when family responsibilities called their guitarist/vocalist back home to the East coast…
Camarada should be charged with the crime of Attempted Emo. Or maybe Assault with a Deadly Weapon, ’cause listening to it nearly killed me. On King in the Dark, the band’s debut album, the singer thinks everything is a big power ballad and sings accordingly…
I’ve fought with it and I’ve fought with it, so now I’m just gonna say it: Bottomless Pit sound a heck of a lot like Silkworm. And I mean, seriously, how could they avoid it? With two out of four ex-members of that band onboard, Tim Midgett and Andy Cohen…
Something To Cry About begins and ends with what sound like European cowbells; ocean sounds, city soundscapes, and nocturnal insects float in and out, connecting the songs. Auralift’s co-founder Ben Hargrove suggests that there is no overarching theme…
Damn. I’ll admit it: I may’ve been a bit hard on the Linus Pauling crew over the years. I’ve always liked the guys, definitely, they’ve always seemed nice and friendly and all that, and they’ve been supportive of the Houston scene since before I even came here…
