I used to obsess about lyrics. I methodically scrawled them across every surface I could find, particularly high school book covers; I was sure those words were this magical key that could help me unlock the frustrating, perplexing mysteries of the world. Obviously, that didn’t happen, but even now I can recite the lyrics to any pre-Black Album Metallica…
Ten years is a long time to be in a band. It’s like dog years. I’ve never been in a band for ten years — the band I’m in now has had the name for that long, but only one of the guys has been in the band the whole time… So like I said, ten years is a long time, and that’s something to celebrate…
Well, now. Six years after their debut, Digital Nozzle, and long after I’d figured the duo (Stefan Mach and Jordan Brady) had gone their separate ways (and yeah, it sounds like they had, at least in the physical sense), Lisa’s Sons are finally back with the followup…
Outside the gates of FPSF 2014 were members of the Communist Party of America passing out one-sheet pamphlets and issuing their warnings. Outside the gates were Wu-Tang Fans, too poor or too smart to enter…
Somewhere in the not-too-distant now, aliens will/are/have invaded the world via a meteor landing in continental Europe. Aliens with the ability to replay periods of time (roughly 24-48 hours) over and over again, making them largely invincible. Or at least they were, until press officer William Cage (Tom Cruise) finds himself an unlikely front-line soldier…
Funeral Horse frontman/guitarist Paul Bearer, aka Paul Chavez, aka Walter Carlos, is something of an enigma to me. I’ve met the guy a few times over the years, live and electronically, and each time he’s been doing something seemingly completely different, sometimes using a different name, and every damn one of those things has been pretty great. First there was the sadly-overlooked art-punk/New Wave trio Art Institute; then came along sleazy, gritty gutterpunks…
Houston, yes, we’re rocking these days! There must have been four concerts I wanted to attend on this particular night, but I chose the Catch Fever Shiny Eyes CD release party…
I’ve been a fanatic fan of a singer named Jimmy Gnecco for 15 years now. Gnecco is the singer of the band OURS that made its debut back in 1999 with Distorted Lullabies and has done four albums plus a Jimmy Gnecco solo album…
In the six years or so I have been following The Tontons, I’ve seen them play at least two dozen times, but I’ve never actually sat down to interview any of their band members…
In our preparation for Space City Rock‘s coverage of FPSF 2014, I realized that New York City Queens were holed up in the studio tracking their third LP, tentatively titled Glass House, set for release this fall. What a great chance for me to make an excuse to sneak in to hear some tracks in progress…
It’s 5:00PM on a Sunday, and I may have woken Gregg Higgins from Venomous Maximus. He won’t say. “Sometimes I don’t even know what day it is, either,” he adds, almost seeming to brag…
Yes! It was a Monday night at a packed House of Blues with one of my favorite bands of the last five years, Manchester Orchestra. It was a great start to an incredible fortnight of music that would include HAIM and Mogwai later in the week and a long list of bands…
I’ve always been a little disheartened by the state of the blues here in sweaty, grimy Houston, Texas, the town I call home. Unless you’re a serious student of the genre (or, you know, actually live here, and maybe not even then), odds are pretty good you’ve got no idea…
After Band of Skulls last release, 2012’s Sweet Sour, which I liked a fair bit but didn’t quite love, I’ve been looking forward to seeing where the band would be headed next. I’d kind of assumed they’d stick with the heavy stuff for Himalayan, their brand-new followup, with plenty more of that sludgy guitar and those sneering vocals; and don’t get me wrong…
HAIM finally made their first trip to Houston, and after seeing them at Austin City Limits Festival in October, I had the date marked on my calendar months in advance. I’ve been a fan since early 2013 when I heard them by chance on satellite radio and I’ve been kicking myself ever since…
Ah, anticipation; sometimes, I hate you, when you string me along and make me wait eagerly for something that turns out to not be very good at all. But then sometimes, just sometimes, you deliver. It’s a little odd to be listening now to the cleaned-up, finished version of the last place you look’s latest EP, Rip It Out, because it feels like I’ve been listening to these songs for a few years now…
It was about four tracks into Scottish postrock quintet Mogwai’s most recent release, Rave Tapes, when it hits me: the mainstream has passed the band by. No, scratch that; the mainstream hasn’t zoomed past Mogwai, but rather has swallowed the band whole…
I’ve been seriously intrigued by Twin Forks since they released their first shot across the bow late last year in the form of a self-titled EP, hoping that the band’s full-length would live up to the EP’s substantial, grin-inducing promise. Granted, it’d be all too easy to dismiss the whole Twin Forks project as yet another bunch of indie-rockers trying to “rediscover” their country-rock roots…
Last week at the Woodlands Pavilion was, for me at least, a tale of two bands. It was the best of bands, it was the worst of bands. Well, maybe that’s harsh, but I did come away from the show scratching my head…
This is a tough review to write, because the performance left me absolutely speechless. For the unknowing, Sharon Jones spent most of 2013 fighting cancer. Therefore, I’d expected that her high-energy shows of the past would remain in the past, but this night proved me so wrong…
Roy Zimmerman is on the cutting edge of political satire in America. Like Stephen Colbert’s facetious TV persona, Zimmerman works with irony at the highest levels, playing with words and ideas…
I should know to always leave a little extra time between getting to a show and actually expecting to get in, but as usual, I was running on time instead of early. That nearly made me late — there was quite a line forming at about 4:30…
Welcome to my “Baker’s Dozen of Must See (Relatively) New Acts at SXSW 2014” Blog, if you’re heading to Austin this week…and why wouldn’t you be? I mean, we’re all teachers who get Spring Break off, right?…
I’ve only ever been to Beaumont once, so I can’t claim to know what it’s like to come from there, not exactly. What I do know, however, is what it’s like to come from a dead-end, soul-destroying town with no obvious future beyond a low-wage job or the military; that’s what it was like where I went to high school, and I and nearly everyone else I know from those days got the hell out as soon as we could…
The dreaded common cold. It came out of nowhere, only two weeks after I endured the flu and one day into my Thanksgiving vacation. But it didn’t stop me from heading out to a sold-out House of Blues to see one of 2013’s feverish break-out synthpop bands, CHVRCHES…
From across the land they come, the nerds, the geeks, the professionals, and the hobbyists. The computer programmers and the computer deriders, the chess pros and the chess amateurs, all seeking the answer to that age-old question: can you teach a computer to play that game of chess? A word of warning right from the outset: this movie is not for everyone…
My reason for going to Buzzfest, aside from photography, stems from an interesting summer I had this year learning Stone Temple Pilots basslines. I became a Rob DeLeo (bassist of STP) fanatic during this time, getting down about 18 songs of theirs note-by-note. I briefly joined a Stone Temple Pilots tribute band…
Rarely have I seen an album title as apt as Omotai’s Fresh Hell; and no, not because it’s bad by any stretch of the imagination, but because of the images of menace and dread it conjures up. There’s a weird sense of foreboding you get while listening, like something truly, ineffably horrible is waiting for you, just around the next corner, and it’s going to get you no matter what you do. It’s your destiny, inescapable…
Raise your hands high, people, and your heads, too; throw ’em back, eyes closed tight, with a look of blissful joy plastered across your face. Feel the heat of the lights on your face as they explode outwards from the stage, and the physical impact of the music as it slams against your chest…
There’s always been an ’80s influence apparent in the Wild Moccasins’ music, it’s true. With new album 88 92, however, they’re flying their neon-colored flag proudly, even spelling it out explicitly in the album title. There’s a serious New Wave feel to the whole thing…
Art is reinvention; at least, it should be, if everything’s working like it’s meant to. Sometimes, though, that reinvention can catch us observer-type people completely by surprise. Like, say, when SCR learned that You(genious)…
It’s always nice when somebody not only exceeds your expectations but beats them into the pavement with a length of lead pipe, leaving ’em bleeding and unconscious as they walk away. And yeah, that’s…
I’m a very, very recent convert to Baton Rouge band Moon Honey (formerly known as Twin Killers, by the by, in case you’ve seen that on bills with The Manichean or other like-minded folks), but now…
From tomorrow, Saturday, November 23rd, through Sunday, November 24th, downtown Houston will once again play host to one of the coolest, most unique street festivals this city sees out of a fairly big pile of events each year…
It feels a little weird to say, but y’know, what I like best about Beg Upon The Light, Houston-bred doom-/dark-metallers Venomous Maximus’s first full-length album, is, um, the slow, quiet stuff. I know, I know — that’s a pretty damn…
First things first: yes, Dessa is a member of the ever-awesome Doomtree hip-hop collective out of Minneapolis, but that doesn’t mean she’s a rapper. Actually, scratch that; that doesn’t mean she’s just a rapper. She’s something else entirely…
I’d been wanting to say something on this little site about Fox & Cats for some time now, but while I procrastinated and got wrapped up in other things, the duo (Josh Willems on guitar and vocals and Nicole Wiggington on drums) continued right…
Relationships are difficult things to handle; even the good ones, the ones that are worthwhile, take work and pain and struggle. And I’m not even talking about relationships with spouses or partners or whatever, but any relationship…
To put it simply, Magnus Karlsson’s Freefall is an exquisite work of melodic metal. I really can’t emphasize that enough. The songs are satisfyingly heavy, with plenty of guitar pyrotechnics and double-bass drumming, but they have a sense of melody that is stunning…
On April 8, 2009, four individuals from Somalia boarded the cargo vessel Maersk Alabama, marking the first time a U.S.-flagged vessel became subject to an act of piracy in a century. Over the next four days, the drama of the capture played out in real-time for American audiences, as the pirates abandoned the ship aboard its lifeboat with its captain, Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks), as hostage, attempting to make for the coast of Africa…
