Buried halfway through this North Carolina band’s fine debut is “To Be Denied,” a mid-tempo ballad, a figuratively dead man’s bitter summary of a failed relationship and a song Ryan Adams wishes he had written. “You said that you had changed all of the locks/But I’d already lost my keys,”…

New Year’s Eve without the Old 97’s? Well, it’s a day early this time around, so let’s hope Rhett and Murry made the right plane reservations. Expect the same 97’s set as every year before–solid, fun and loud, even if predictable–but there’s a big difference this year, as Shibboleth is…

A pair of major-label misfires confused longtime fans and turned this bone-crunching Massachusetts quartet into so much pop pabulum, but Cave In has righted their thunderous course with the recent Perfect Pitch Black. Never content to simply play along with the often-generic metal genre, Cave In mixes progressive touches a…

Best thing I’ve heard all year? That would have to be this fantastic EP’s opening cut, “The Commander Thinks Aloud,” in which the Long Winters’ enigmatic frontman John Roderick caterwauls over a symphonic mess of a song. While obscurely tackling the two NASA shuttle disasters, Roderick stakes a claim on…

The unlikely fusion of rockabilly and gothic punk has produced some freakish results (Dallas’ own Ghoultown comes to mind), but Austin’s Hotrod Hillbillies only nibble at the nether regions of the mascara and tombstone crowd. The trio’s debut Under the Texas Sky is country punk saturated in Budweiser and infused…

If beauty is a result of tragedy, then Swedish indie whiz kid Dag Rosenqvist has picked the right name for his band. His heavily processed, static-based compositions may have little in common with the site of a Texas racial tragedy, but the pure emotion Jasper TX wrenches in this dense…

At nearly 60, Robert Fripp continues to be an enigmatic asshole. Twenty years ago, he claimed that guitar gods Clapton and Beck didn’t even know how to hold a pick. And while fronting whatever incarnation of King Crimson he chose to gather around him, he proved that he did. Fripp…

Truth be told, most blues-related Christmas gifts are depressing and not just because they’re the blues. Current players seem content to substitute instrumental finagling for true passion, but several late-year releases from pioneers of the genre are here to make 12-bar melancholy sound good during the holidays. The best of…

Though their name conjures up images of half-century-old pickers and grinners crowding a dilapidated front porch, the youthful and lively South Austin Jug Band adds some much needed rock grit to the new-grass sensibilities inherent in acoustic roots music. Sophomore album Dark and Weary World is country-folk with just as…

Former Meat Puppets leader Curt Kirkwood has spent much of his post-Puppet time in semi-retirement, occasionally venturing out into his adopted home of Austin to thrill small audiences with his impressive guitarwork and charmingly muddled vocals. But after a brief (and pointless) attempt to resurrect the Meat Puppets with Texans…

For a decade, Fort Worth native Andrew Kenny has led some form of the American Analog Set, Austin’s greatest contributor of ambient pop. But the body can only take so many cramped, smelly van drives across America, and with some members having family obligations, this coming Wednesday’s stop at Trees…

Blessed with a commanding voice reminiscent of Chrissie Hynde, Kansas City native Michelle Anthony offers a bluesy take on alt-country, full of cynical wit and post-relationship regret. Now residing in Austin and finishing up her sophomore effort, Anthony’s mix of urban soul and rural twang should appeal to fans of…

The best rock show of the week starts early at the Cavern, when Detroit’s Hard Lessons open the night like a Pabst. Agostino Visocchi’s guitars and howls are loud and foaming, but the synthesizers and cooing vocals from organ player Korin Cox make the trio’s garage-infused bite go down smoothly…

In a rare instance where musical guest stars contributed something more than their names to a sticker slapped on the CD, Styrofoam’s 2004 album, Nothing Lost, actually put Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard and American Analog Set’s Andrew Kenny to productive use. But don’t worry about the lack of…

Rarely do genres blend and cross-pollinate as fruitfully as on We’re Already There, Mazarin’s gracefully noisy barrage of neo-electronic pop and retro-psychedelia. Four years in the making, Quentin Stolzfus and crew have leaped past the somewhat dated stoner buzz of their two previous releases to concentrate on writing full, concrete…

Poorly recorded with oddly muffled vocals and an overemphasized, enthusiastic audience, Jackson Browne’s late-in-the-game “unplugged” recording will come as a shock to all who thought the well-tanned West Coast icon had retired or simply become irrelevant. At 57, Browne brings a morose sense of purpose to 12 songs spanning his…

If you want to see both Broken Social Scene and the Stars, two of Canada’s hottest indie-rock darlings, then you better hope DART builds a super-speed rail line in the next few days. On Friday, the Stars are opening for Death Cab for Cutie at the Ridglea Theatre in Fort…

Corrine Silguero tells her story with wary optimism, maintaining hope that her musical future will finally become reliable. A local blues diva who finds solace in the music of Big Mama Thornton, Bessie Smith and Muddy Waters, the 47-year-old is about to begin a weekly residency at Tio Joe’s on…

Tristan Bechet and Christopher Pravdica, veterans of New York’s Flux Information Society, one of the city’s seminal techno bands, regrouped as Services to mix a little more rock in with all of the computers. Using a cut-and-paste editing technique clearly imitative of Zappa, the pair piece together tape loops and…

Put that copy of “The Monster Mash” away, Pops. We hate when backyard haunted house organizers bore kids’ ears on Halloween with cheesy sound effects and campy songs. Instead, why not scare the Father, Son and Holy Ghost out of the little buggers? Create a truly haunted house with these…

“With music, you think it’s a young man’s game,” local country crooner Darryl Lee Rush says. “But at 39, it’s like I can finally make some moves.” With his graying beard and receding hairline, Rush looks more like a middle school teacher than a country up-and-comer, but his dark eyes…

Amy Rigby’s 1996 solo debut, Diary of a Mod Housewife, was an acclaimed assimilation of pop, country and folk. Rigby’s fifth and most recent effort, Little Fugitive, quickly recorded in two days in New York City, abandons the rural influence, concentrating instead on roughed-up, deliberate pop-rock. Whether it’s a somber-yet-witty…