Long, long ago, yours truly was in a band. We weren’t all that good, I’m saddened to admit, but we played some shows, recorded some songs, and had a blast for a while there. We found ourselves part of this amazing little scene and played, a lot of the time, only for ourselves…
Okay, so I know the Ra Ra Riot show tonight up at Fitz is all sold out, but don’t lose hope just yet. You need to head to the other floor of the club, instead; trust me on this, people…
The two guys who make up Foxygen, believe it or not, are kids. No, they really, seriously are; despite all appearances to the contrary, Sam France and Jonathan Rado graduated from high school just a handful of years ago. And trust me, I get why that’s…
A bit of a late-notice thing, I know, but I didn’t want to let this completely slip through the cracks… I’m always happy when cracked chamber-music quartet {Two Star Symphony} poke their heads out from their collective lair, and this time’s no exception; they’re playing a special benefit show…
Don’t be fooled by the gentle, quietly-smiling, lull-you-to-sleep vibe of Ramona Falls’ second album, Prophet: this isn’t music to fall asleep to. At least, not unless you want to dream of singularities and confluences and galaxies…
It’s now Sunday, February 17th, and yep, we’re winding down the weekend, but never fear, there’s still some awesome stuff going on. Here’s what I happen to think looks/sounds cool…
Holy fucking wow, y’all. Here I thought Friday was pretty jam-packed with shows, but it turns out it’s got nothing on Saturday, February 16th. There’s so damn much going on, I’m not entirely sure where to begin, but here goes…
Well, dang. Here we are at the weekend, y’all, and it’s looking mighty crazy out there. In case you haven’t heard, there’s the NBA All-Star Game in town, which means there’re a bunch of parties going on and a whole bunch of celebrities floating around the city…
Yep, it’s true; Badass Weekend is well and truly upon us, and it promises to be pretty fucking amazing. “Yeah, yeah — don’t you say that every damn weekend?” Okay, that’s a good point, but in this case I’m talking about one specific show…
There’s something to Through the Glass, the debut EP from Aussie duo Atlas Genius, that definitely feels like a warning shot, a quick burst to say, “hey, look over here!” It’s good — and yeah, I’ll get back to that, don’t worry — but it feels a little abrupt…
I’ve gotten info about a bunch of different benefit-type shows lately, and while I fully intend to post about all of ’em at some point, this one really grabbed hold of me, in large part because it’s a benefit for awesome, insanely talented cool dude Lucas Gorham, a mainstay of the Houston scene and the […]
Moving on into Saturday, February 9th, now, and damn, it’s going to be a busy day. I won’t be able to make any of tomorrow night’s shows, myself, because the wife’s planned some special pre-Valentine’s Day that she’s being very mysterious about…
Argh. Late, late, late… Sorry for being so quiet this past week or so, y’all — early February is Birthday Time at our house, so most of my waking non-work hours in recent days have been spent running birthday-related errands or shepherding large gaggles of extremely loud 8/9-year-old girls around (with much shrieking)…
At first I wasn’t clear why both the A- and B-sides of the Tontons’ latest 7″, Bones, are both titled, um, “Bones” (“Bones 1” and “Bones 2,” to be specific), but after hearing one roll straight into the other, yeah, I’m starting to get it. I couldn’t tell you if it’s intentional or not, but the two tracks flow together beautifully…
sigh. Friday, February 1st, and I am sorely, sorely behind on the never-timely-to-begin-with weekend rundown, I’m afraid. Apologies for that, folks; been dancing with midgets all evening and am only now able to get back online. But hey, you’ve still got plenty of time to get on off the couch — here we go…
Whoa. Big, big, big night tonight — Saturday, January 26th, that is — with a whole heck of a lot of good shows vying for your attention. Here’s what I think sounds cool, at least…
Here’s how the whole band-life-trajectory thing is supposed to work: start a band just for the hell of it, at first; then realize hey, maybe this is a pretty cool deal, and begin earnestly working at it; work your way onwards and upwards, honing your skills…
Yep, into the weekend, now, and it’s Friday, January 25th, with plenty of cool stuff going on. Here we go…
With all the talk of top-ten lists and whatnot in recent days — it being the start of the new year and all (and yes, our own pile of top-tens are on the way) — it occurs to me that we here at SCR haven’t pointed forwards a whole lot in recent days & months. Meaning that while we talk a lot about bands we love and adore, well, they’re largely bands you’ve already heard about, either here or somewhere else…
Okay, so I probably should have written this up last night, rather than opting for sleep and thus being forced to do this where I am now. Which is sitting in a hotel in Galveston, trying to type quietly in the dark as Munchkin #1 tries to whisper Munchkin #2 to sleep…
On into Friday, January 18th, and while I’d hoped to get a bit of a jump on the cool things that’re happening this here weekend-to-be, well…yeah, it’s Friday already. sigh. Anyway, here goes…
There’s actually a fair amount of stuff going on tonight, despite it being a Thursday (January 17th, to be specific), but the show that knocks me flat on my ass for this evening is over at Rudyard’s, where truly awesome, guitars-on-fire rockers…
Okay, so there’s a lot coming up this weekend — I’m early on the rundown, I know, but trust me, there’s a good-sized pile of good stuff happening. That said, some of it hits a little harder, at least in my case. I’m thinking in particular of the show over at Walter’s this coming Saturday, January 19th…
It’s hard to overvalue the role of Sub Pop in developing my musical tastes. Whether it was Sunny Day Real Estate’s How It Feels to Be Something On or Washed Out’s Within and Without, my musical journey is lined with more than a few Sub Pop…
It’s now Saturday, January 12th, y’all, and as (almost) always, there’s a slew of good, good shows happening tonight in our fair city & the surrounding environs. Here we go…
Yes, folks, it’s now Friday, January 11th, and against all odds, the weekend is indeed upon us. And yes, there’s plenty happening, and a lot of it’s good, especially this evening. Here’s what sounds/looks cool to me…
I’m not trying to take credit; honest, I swear to God I’m not. But when I first put on emo-throwback band Square and Compass’s new full-length, How to Escape, I couldn’t help but give myself a little smile and think, “yes; they listened!”…
Yep, we’re well into Saturday, January 5th, now, and weirdly, things seem a little quiet on the show front (unless, of course, I’m just plain missing a bunch of shows or something, which is a possibility). But hey, what’s on is largely pretty damn good, so don’t miss out. Here we go…
The Escatones make perfect sense for where they’re from. They’re surf-rock, yes, but they’re not surf-rock in the way that bands from places with clear-blue, crystalline water are surf-rock; instead, they’re dirty and messy and weird and a little bit scary…
Damn. This weekend’s really crept up on me, I have to say; I’ve been spending the past few weeks doing other things, and now I’m scrambling to pick up the pieces, both here and at The Day Job. sigh. Hope everybody out there had a good, safe, not-tragic holiday…
It’s a weird bit of irony, to me, that Modest Mouse no longer sounds like Modest Mouse. Over the past few years, they’ve lost that rambling, shambling, feet-shuffling, smart-but-shy-about-it charm they displayed on The Lonesome Crowded West…
First off, let’s not sugar-coat this: this isn’t for everybody. I guarantee that the first (and only) reaction a lot of people will experience when they hear Emmure’s Slave to the Game is going to be to twitch uncontrollably…
Once upon a time, somebody sent me a CD. I was a little reluctant to give it a listen at first, honestly, because at the time it seemed like I’d been inundated with folky female singer/songwriters, and hey, it sure looked like yet another one of those…
On into Sunday now, December 23rd, and while many of us out there (me included) are pretty much fully taken over by holiday-stuff madness at this point, hey, there’re still shows going on, and several of ’em are damn good. Here we go…
It’s Saturday, December 22nd, now, and yours truly’s just having a quiet night at home, savoring Modern Society giving the middle finger to those pesky Mayans and their goofy prophecies and introducing the 8-year-old to Doctor Who. Been that kind of weekend…
Wow. Tonight’s the first night of the weekend, Friday, December 21st, and it’s not only the first day of Christmas/holiday vacation for some of us (okay, fine; mine was yesterday) but also — if you listen to people who think science is all made-up nonsense but paranoid ideas about aliens and magnetic pole reversal…
Yep, running behind, but there’re still a couple of shows well worth checking out tonight, Thursday, December 20th, and I didn’t want to drop the ball completely, at least…
A very music-savvy friend of mine once commented that he thought the secret agenda behind the whole Chicago post-rock wave of the late ’90s was to make jazz palatable to indie-rock kids. After listening to Sunrise and Ammunition’s Tesseract…
Sometimes I dread checking the Webmail the morning, fearing the flood of label/PR emails that’ve come in over the past 24 hours or so and cringing when I see stuff about the weekend just past that I totally dropped the ball on. Sometimes, though, that morning email brings awesomely cool things to my Inbox…
Yeah, I know I’ve been slacking off on the Sunday writeups of late; I’ve just been getting overwhelmed and running out of time, and a lot of recent Sundays have been relatively light, shows-wise, so…well, I skipped ’em…
