My first interview subjects are Kenny Hopkins and Steve Wells from the up-and-coming Houston indie/psychedelic rock band Featherface. Featherface are everything a young Houston indie-rock band should be…
The first time I stumbled across Athens/Asheville gang Reptar, I honestly had no idea what the hell was happening. I walked into their debut EP, Oblangle Fizz, Y’all, pretty much blind…
I’m just going to come right out and say it, folks: Omotai isn’t really a “band.” What they are, rather, is some sort of massive sonic beast birthed beneath the crust of the planet, way down where it’s dark and hot and inhuman…
It’s been a busy couple of years for Houston-dwelling post-emo rockers the last place you look. After lurking under the radar a while and releasing debut full-length The Lies We Tell Ourselves to mixed reviews, in 2009 they released a vastly different followup…
After having played together for about a year, Yello Echo have still managed to remain mostly unheard of, for reasons I can’t fathom. When I first saw them playing at an art exhibit opening a few weeks ago, I was quite literally staring…
Believe it or not, I can remember the first time I heard The Smoking Popes. I was in college, and one afternoon I ran into a friend who was DJing at the college radio station, a friend who happened to be completely freaking out, ecstatic over this awesome, incredible song he’d just heard…
The fourth in my ongoing series of Caroline Sessions interviews; this one features Runaway Sun and Tim Qualls, along with the standard free BBQ and beer. It’s sure to be a great show with these two…
For the second on-the-road Caroline Session, Melissa Savcic and File Under Jeff played last Sunday at the Spacetaker ARC. Despite the occasional interruption by a passing train, they both played solid sets…
I was never in marching band. It wasn’t that I hated the brass or snare or tuba, nothing like that — it’s just that I saw all those poor bastards practicing outside on the parking lot tarmac in the Texas afternoon heat, wearing those hideous, heavy woolen uniforms…
Chris Becker is a recent addition to the Houston avant-garde music scene. He’s an electronic musician and a composer whose work ranges from improvised pieces for silent films to hour-long compositions for ballet and contemporary dance…
Thursday January 20, 2011 was not only my birthday but it was also the day Underoath started their Headlining winter Disambiguation tour. I had an interview with Keyboardist Chris Dudley at 6 but La June and I decided to arrive earlier. At that time it seemed like a good idea but after sitting outside in the freezing cold; it wasn’t a good idea after all.
Houston has always, always had awesome, amazing bands. Screw the naysayers; it’s the honest-to-God truth. Even in the lean times, even when 99.9% of this city thought “Houston music” was pretty much ZZ Top, Destiny’s Child, and nothing else…
In 2004, award-winning film maker Reggie “Bird” Oliver visited DJ Screw‘s grave with Screw’s mother a week before her death and promised her he’d do whatever he could to tell the world about her son’s accomplishments…
“Everything I do is guided by DJ Screw. 100% of it. I do exactly what he would have done.” I was talking to DJ Lil’ Randy of the Screwed Up Click from his small studio…
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…
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…
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…
Of all the bands I’ve run across in the past year, few have made as huge an impression as Brooklynites Freelance Whales. I went into the band’s debut album, Weathervanes, totally blind, expecting throwaway Pitchfork-friendly pop…
On Friday, November 12th, at Diverseworks, the Catastrophic Theatre will debut the world premier of their adaptation of Pixies singer Black Francis‘ concept album Bluefinger, titled Bluefinger: the Fall and Rise of Herman Brood…
With the release of their second album, Disconnect from Desire, School of Seven Bells has added a little bit of an edge to their delicate brand of dream-pop…
It’s funny, but the memory had gotten totally and completely buried, deep in the base of my brain. It wasn’t until I put Burn Berlin Burn, the 1997 double-EP opus from Berlin-bred, raw-as-hell electro-noise slam-punks Atari Teenage Riot on the player once again…
Another one I’m woefully behind on mentioning here, I’m afraid… There’s a Battle of the Bands show going on tomorrow at the Warehouse Live, sponsored by this Ford Fiesta Movement thing, and it sounds pretty damn cool. The gist is that a decent-sized pile of local Houston bands — some of whom I’m already a […]
Meant to talk about this in detail long before now, but other stuff’s been pressing down on me (some of which you’ll hopefully be able to see the fruits of very soon), and it’s kind of slipped down the pile — sorry ’bout that, y’all. My lame slowness is made worse by the fact that […]
I’ve raved before in this here thing about Cleveland’s mr. Gnome and their idiosyncratic, hypnotically awesome amalgam of noisy rawk, metal sludge, ethereal vocals, and trip-hop groove, but dammit, I’m going to do it again right here, at least briefly. The band’s playing tonight (Thursday, April 8th) up at Rudyard’s, and trust me when I […]
The Cleveland-dwelling duo of Nicole Barrile and Sam Meister, better known as mr. Gnome, are honestly one of those bands that have to be witnessed live and in-person to truly be believed. Without seeing the pair onstage, both band members pounding away on their respective instruments…
sigh. Okay, so I know this is really, truly after-the-fact, shows-wise — Munchkin #1 and I ended up spending the bulk of our day at Comicpalooza, so that kinda ate into my usual last-minute posting time — but I wanted to get it up here anyway. The main reason is because I finally, finally got […]
News on the March are one of those bands that tends to leave me feeling tongue-tied and at a loss for adequate words to describe what they really, truly sound like. “They’re, um, kind of old-timey-sounding?…
Starting with the percolation of New York’s pan-disciplinary No Wave phenomenon in the late ’70s, a small but steadily-expanding space has been cleared out for female musicians in the tradition of rock guitar. Groups like the Bush Tetras, Ut, and the various permutations of James Chance’s bands…
When I first heard I’d be talking to Kyle Turley about his debut album, I thought to myself, “Remember what Billy Bob Thornton did to that Canadian DJ.” But Kyle Turley isn’t like that…
First a brief note to explain the existence of this interview. In summer 2008, I was assigned by another publication to do an interview with Amy Rigby and Wreckless Eric in advance of their show in Houston to promote their first album together. The interview was supposed to run…
Got a really good show up at Rudyard’s tonight (Wed., February 17th), with Port Angeles, Washington-bred retro-rockers The Lonely H chugging back through town for the third(?) time in about a year. I caught ’em the last time they played here, I believe (also at Rudz), and even though they were playing late, to a […]
Gotten a bunch of cool new stuff up on the site recently, so I wanted to point to it and let everybody bask in the wonderment… First and foremost, I did a writeup this week for an EP sent to me a while back by local boys Giant Battle Monster, entitled Giant Battle Monster vs. […]
First a brief note to explain the existence of this interview. In summer 2008, I was assigned by another publication to do an interview with Amy Rigby and Wreckless Eric in advance of their show…
Modern day visionaries, like the Rupert Murdochs and the Warren Buffetts, have exceptional antennas for business. However, few can boast that they’ve clothed a generation and, through music, forged a sociopolitical movement…
Sunday now (December 13th, to be precise), and tonight’s got me fairly excited, actually, even in comparison to the last couple of nights, primarily because of the first thing on the list below, the show at Walter’s with Seattle duo The Dutchess & the Duke. I was able to chat a bit on the phone […]
fter hearing She’s the Dutchess, He’s the Duke, last year’s debut album by Seattle-dwellers Jesse Lortz and Kimberly Morrison, aka The Dutchess & the Duke, I’ll admit I was a bit worried. Not for me, no, but for singer, songwriter, and guitarist Lortz…
Been needing to do this for a looooong time; I’m way behind on my updates, sadly… The up-and-coming goes first, this time out — awesomely talented country-rockers The Literary Greats are playing the release show for their second full-length, Ocean, Meet The Valley, this coming Saturday, Nov. 14th. It’s the same night as the Block […]
Every once in a long while, I run across a band — generally, it seems, by accident — that totally and completely blows me away. They come seemingly out of nowhere, play like they’ve never done anything else in their lives…
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 […]
Great though it was, the Free Press Summerfest brought with it a couple of bad, bad pieces of bad news for Houston music-scene fans. I’ve already moaned about Joe Mathlete‘s announcement that The Mathletes won’t be doing any shows for the forseeable future, but I missed the set from The McKenzies early on Day 2 […]
