If you’ve heard The Apples in Stereo, then you can probably guess that they put on a pretty good live show. The most accessibly poppy group of the now legendary Elephant 6 collective, they’ve been creating feel-good songs…
Written on November 30, 2010 | Posted in
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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…
Written on November 30, 2010 | Posted in
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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
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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…
Written on November 29, 2010 | Posted in
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A very cool new-ish local label, run (I think) by the Digital Warehaus guys, and one that’s got pretty wide-ranging (and excellent) tastes in music…
Written on November 29, 2010 | Posted in
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Richmond, TX.
Written on November 29, 2010 | Posted in
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I’ll be honest: when I first heard about Roky Moon & BOLT (then just known as “BOLT,” all caps), I thought it sounded fun, but I seriously doubted it would last. It seemed like one of those one-off things a bunch of scenesters do when they get bored…
Written on November 27, 2010 | Posted in
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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…
Written on November 27, 2010 | Posted in
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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…
Written on November 27, 2010 | Posted in
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Senses Fail rocked the stage in the “Out With The In Crowd” tour at Warehouse Live. The New Jersey post-hardcore band toured with Bayside, Title Fight, and last but not least, Balance and Composure…
Written on November 26, 2010 | Posted in
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Hey, all — one insane weekend coming up (yeesh…don’t y’all band people go visit your families & whatnot for Thanksgiving?), but unfortunately, I’m kinda short on time to talk about it all, so I’m going to have to run through the next three days (Fri.-Sun., November 26th-28th) real quickly…
Written on November 26, 2010 | Posted in
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Turkey Day today, and a time to be thankful for all kinds of stuff — hopefully everybody out there’s having a good time (or planning to, anyway) with their loved ones… If you’re not planning on spending the evening on the couch, feeling bloated & hanging out with the family unit…
Written on November 25, 2010 | Posted in
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Ah, damn. Thanksgiving’s supposed to be a time for good news, not bombs dropped off-handedly like this… Got word earlier today that Houston-/Austin-dwelling “stoner-pop” hero {Arthur Yoria} will soon be forsaking H-town…
Written on November 24, 2010 | Posted in
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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…
Written on November 24, 2010 | Posted in
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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…
Written on November 24, 2010 | Posted in
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Tonight at the MFAH, Soul Kitchen premieres, as part of the museum’s Premieres: Contemporary World Cinema series…
Written on November 23, 2010 | Posted in
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Just in time for all the Thanksgiving madness, folks, we’ve got another very cool giveaway deal over here at SCR: we’ve got two tickets to go see Brendan Benson (and headliners The Posies and openers Aqueduct, too, obviously) this coming Saturday, November 27th…
Written on November 23, 2010 | Posted in
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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…
Written on November 22, 2010 | Posted in
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Last day of the weekend, Sunday, November 21st, and there’s still plenty going on… I’m afraid I’ve got some house-y stuff to do, so I’ve got to make it a bit quick; here goes…
Written on November 21, 2010 | Posted in
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Spring, TX. Press: “press” at “groundslothmedia dot com” Customer Service: “store” at “groundslothmedia dot com” Sales: “wholesale” at “groundslothmedia dot com”
Written on November 20, 2010 | Posted in
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Ah, cool; I’d heard about this particular label many moons ago now, but then they dropped off my radar, at least… Glad to see they’re still around; while I wasn’t looking, they’ve steadily put out release after release of mostly old-school-style punk rock…
Written on November 20, 2010 | Posted in
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Hadn’t heard about this before now, and that’s a shame, because it sounds very cool. Tomorrow (11/20) is the next date for the Houston Re-Market…
Written on November 20, 2010 | Posted in
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Day 2 of a fairly show-packed weekend — coming up on Saturday, November 20th, and it definitely is a busy day, all ’round. Here goes…
Written on November 20, 2010 | Posted in
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Damn. Tonight’s another busy-as-hell Friday (November 19th, to be precise), and there is a ton of stuff going on, a lot of it awesomely good. Here goes…
Written on November 19, 2010 | Posted in
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A few months back, Passion Pit stopped by our fair city and brought with them the relatively unknown BRAHMS. A wonderful show overall, but it was BRAHMS who served as the perfect foil for Passion Pit’s sugary sweet, love-stricken beats…
Written on November 19, 2010 | Posted in
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Another of those H-town things that sound damn, damn cool and that I’ve always meant to check out… This coming Saturday and Sunday, November 20th & 21st, is the Houston installment of the Via Colori Street Painting Festival, once again benefiting the Center for Hearing and Speech…
Written on November 19, 2010 | Posted in
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What? It’s Thursday, seriously? You couldn’t tell it by looking at the schedule, I swear… There’s a crap-ton of good-sounding stuff going on tonight; I don’t have the brainpower left to talk about all of it, but here’s what looks cool…
Written on November 18, 2010 | Posted in
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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…
Written on November 17, 2010 | Posted in
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An hour didn’t seem so long to wait once we entered the Senses Fail tour bus. La June and I had arrived promptly at 3 o’clock, looking for someone to speak to about the interview we had set up at 4…
Written on November 17, 2010 | Posted in
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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…
Written on November 17, 2010 | Posted in
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Okay, this is pretty awesome. Got this early in the AM; I honestly had no idea these cartoons-with-robo-voice things had become an honest-to-God meme, but yep, the {KTRU} sale is now part of it…
Written on November 17, 2010 | Posted in
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I know it’s been a little while since I posted anything about the possible sale of student-run, student-founded Rice University radio station {KTRU} to the University of Houston. And yeah, I’ll admit it — after UH actually signed on the line that’s dotted…
Written on November 17, 2010 | Posted in
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Giveaway time, folks… Paul Haggis-directed thriller The Next Three Days (from Lionsgate) opens this weekend, and it looks pretty damn neat, at least to me; I’m not familiar with the movie Haggis is remaking, French film Pour Elle, but I like the general plot line quite a bit…
Written on November 16, 2010 | Posted in
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Bluefinger, the play based on the Black Francis concept album, starring Matt Kelly as Herman Brood and Michael Haaga as Black Francis opened this past weekend…
Written on November 15, 2010 | Posted in
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Well, it ain’t as crazy as it’s been, but tonight, Sunday, November 14th, still has some cool-sounding shows going on. Here’s what I’m liking at the moment…
Written on November 14, 2010 | Posted in
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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…
Written on November 13, 2010 | Posted in
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Holy crap. There are an insane number of cool-sounding shows going on tomorrow, Saturday, November 13th — I mean, seriously, a shitload of good shows, so many I’m pretty sure I’m missing some. Here goes…
Written on November 13, 2010 | Posted in
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Every so often, a group of musicians walk on the stage and really owns every aspect of the performance. They have a magnetic energy that attracts people from both poles and anywhere in between, causing them to migrate…
Written on November 13, 2010 | Posted in
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Ah, crap — I knew I was forgetting something in my intro to the weekend rundown… In case you haven’t been paying attention, writer Creg Lovett has been working his ass off to cover this weekend’s debut…
Written on November 12, 2010 | Posted in
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Busy, busy, busy weekend upon us, y’all, so here’s a first taste of what’s going on… Before I get there though, a bit of possibly-depressing news — if you hadn’t heard already, Joanna Newsom‘s show this evening…
Written on November 12, 2010 | Posted in
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