Hard to believe that it’s been over three decades since John Flansburgh and John Linnell first started playing music as They Might Be Giants. What started as two nerds and a drum machine has slowly evolved into a multi-media company with two distinct divisions: indie rock and children’s music. Speaking…
Canadian band, Dragonette has had a big year so far. The electro-pop act has been nominated for a Juno award (a Canadian music award, for those not familiar with music on-goings north of the border), they’ve scored some serious commercial publicity by recording the theme song to “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood”…
The foundation of Justin Timberlake’s fame–broad-based and consistent and weirdly resistant to automatic internet backlash–is that it came, originally, from looking this ridiculous, and he seems to accept that. That’s the only thing I can come up with to explain just how many people I heard talking about his appearance…
Kenny Loggins is in a country band. If you don’t believe me, watch the Today Show until they’ve cycled through all the other people who are promoting big 30th-anniversary tours and new country albums on the Today Show. It’s called the Blue Sky Riders, and they’re playing SXSW on March…
For drummer John Moloney, joining Chelsea Light Moving was a dream come true. He had already been a backup musician on a couple of solo efforts from Thurston Moore; and when the legendary guitarist from Sonic Youth asked Moloney to be involved with a new band, the drummer never hesitated…
“We used to play here. This was my introduction to a lot of local music,” says Moody Fuqua, sitting in front of Crown and Harp. He’s referring to the days when the bar was The Cavern, when it was a staple of the Dallas music community. It never changed owners,…
Unsatisfied with simply recording in a top-notch studio in Copenhagen, the members of Efterklang decided to head to the Arctic island of Piramida to create their album of the same name. Using the desolate climate as inspiration, the band used field recordings as the basis for each track. These dudes…
Last week, with no apparent malice intended, the Stone Temple Pilots forced us to confront the fact that there was more than one Stone Temple Pilot out there, firing Scott Weiland for–I’m just speculating here–being Scott Weiland, or writing something called “Sex Type Thing,” or (and this is just Scott…
Like most Smiths fans under 30, I think I heard about Morrissey being pissed off for some reason or another before I’d heard him croon over a single perfect Johnny Marr riff. He’s a self-consciously difficult figure to ignore once he’s wedged himself into the news, a stout British guy…
If you’ve found yourself at Beauty Bar on a Thursday night anytime within the last few months, you are already well aware that there is no one in the city of Dallas who can turn a party up like DJ Sober and Picnictyme can. Though Will Rhoten (aka DJ Sober)…
In what has become a yearly tradition, the Dropkick Murphys make their way through town just before St. Patrick’s Day. Their date in town is usually near to the dates of the Flogging Molly Dallas stop and to the North Texas Irish Festival. No one can ever claim that Metroplex…
You might not recognize Jeff Ryan’s name, but you’ve probably heard his drumming on a number of acclaimed releases in the past few years. Playing on albums by Sarah Jaffe, St. Vincent, Pleasant Grove and Crushed Stars, he’s also had time to do an ambient side project called Myopic. Myopic’s…
I don’t know how much else Madonna and Silvio Berlusconi have in common–her extremely visible fight against aging is going much better than his–but here’s one connection: This weekend Italy voted in an election that’s serving as a referendum on a decade of economic stagnation caused by, among other things,…
Junius used to be a band from Boston. That’s where they formed almost a decade ago. But then leader Joseph Martinez wanted to start a family, so he decided to go back to where he grew up. So for the past three years, Junius has been a Dallas band. Well,…
Mississippi native and former lead-singer for the successful Squirrel Nut Zippers, Jimbo Mathus, shows his true southern self on his latest, excellent album, White Buffalo. While his old band brought attention back to Swing music for a while in the late 1990’s, it’s now tough to imagine Mathus ever being…
New Dallas resident Lizza Connor is a mom on a musical mission. This former Nashville songwriter is branching out from her usual country and folk genre to write children’s music. Connor’s new album Commander Salamander contains 13 whimsical songs that encourage healthy lifestyle for children through good nutrition, physical activity,…
Besides learning that “begravningsplats” is Swedish for graveyard, talking to Axel Sjöberg, drummer for the Swedish rock band of the same name, was both fascinating and a bit unnerving. Not only does the guy sound exactly like Dirk Nowitzki, but just when I thought the language issue was going to…
Although the music of Ra Ra Riot has been described as baroque pop, it’s not nearly as pretentious as that might imply. Hailing from Brooklyn (by way of Syracuse), this intriguing five-piece has been making classically-tinged indie rock for the better part of seven years. And with each successive release,…
SXSW is bringing in their youngest performer ever; her name is Marlhy Murphy and she happens to be from the great city of Dallas. See her in action on Sonicbids. Murphy and bandmate Lydia Night came together to form their band Pretty Little Demons and will be playing this year…
For over 20 years, the Mother Hips have expertly offered a soulful, psychedelic sound that just seems to flow in the Northern Californian waters. Although it’s been a while since the band’s last album, the groove-tastic Pacific Central Dust, was released in 2009, word has it that a new album…
Against all odds, the 2013 Grammys are not irrelevant–or, if you believe they’ve always been irrelevant, they’ve not become more irrelevant. They haven’t become more relevant, either, to be sure; their recent attempt to rationalize the increasingly abstruse and parochial categories was worthwhile–I suppose we can do without Best Rock…
Holly Williams, the 31 year old granddaughter of the iconic Hank Williams, has grown into a formidable artist all her own. Unlike her off-his-rocker dad and her crazy-ass half-brother, Hank Williams III, Holly hasn’t really dabbled in the stone-cold honky-tonk sounds that her family has been making for decades. She…
