Palaxy TracksTwelve Rooms (Peek-a-Boo) After the moody Cedarland, this was to be Palaxy Tracks’ big rock album, a return to the masterful pedal-fests of 2001’s The Long Wind Down, before the band left Austin for Chicago. Not bloody likely. The rollicking drums of “Speech With Animals” are but a red herring, obscuring the opening chapter […]
Michael Chamy
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George Kinney & The Golden Dawn
As George Kinney peered into the crowd that August night at Room 710, he couldn’t see the room full of bodies, because most of them didn’t exist. There was the odd graybeard who was there the last time the Golden Dawn graced the Austin scene 35 years ago, but the rest were unborn spirits in […]
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Texas Platters
CometFeathers From the Wing EP (Spune) Their hiatus wasn’t quite as long as the locals in Halley, but it’s good to have Dallas’ Comet return. One of the shining beacons of the mid-Nineties Texas scene, they disappeared just as dandy 1996 full-length Chandelier Musings gained steam, thereby relegating the missing link between Bedhead and vintage […]
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Planet Rock
ZombiRoom 710, Saturday, March 19 Memo to the Alamo Drafthouse’s Tim League: Get this band down here for Halloween. There’s nobody more fitting to score a John Carpenter or Dario Argento horror classic than Zombi, a pair of Pittsburgh natives with a funereal fixation on the old Italian prog outfit Goblin, whose sole purpose was […]
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Planet Rock
Isis/PelicanEmo’s Annex, Friday, March 18 Friday night’s Hydrahead showcase started out as headbanging heaven, but ended in sheer musical transcendence. After the agro spectacle of These Arms Are Snakes, Chicago fourpiece Pelican shook with their precise instrumental drone-metal. The distortion was dense and saturated to perfection, as is everything on Aaron Turner’s stellar label. Leaping […]
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Live Shots
Red SparowesEmo’s Annex, Friday, March 18 Lately, the best way for indie bands to make a buck is through film or television. Hence, Red Sparowes, a new underground instrumental metal supergroup, might quickly pull off a feat usually reserved for their more radio-friendly brethren – actually turning a profit. If their regional debut at Emo’s […]
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SXSW Records
Dead MeadowFeathers (Matador) Dead Meadow is emblematic of the clever ways in which many outfits in recent years have taken Black Sabbath’s sound and dissected, reassembled, and built upon it like new, hellishly magnificent wings of a crumbling, ancient castle. Similar to Bardo Pond and Comets on Fire, Meadow adds a bit of sweetness to […]
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Phases & Stages
No Idea Festival(Coincident/Spring Garden Music/Ten Pounds to the Sound) It’s every mellow musician’s dream: finding a drummer good enough to know when not to play. That was the level of musicianship on display in Austin during last year’s second annual No Idea Festival, a gathering of far-flung musicians shepherded by local percussionist Chris Cogburn at […]
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Phases & Stages
Rusted ShutRehab (Emperor Jones) Anybody familiar with the drunken riot that is Rusted Shut might suggest that their appeal is limited. On the contrary, anybody with more than a passing interest in distortion would be amazed at the oversaturated, rumbling filth these Houstonian transients cajole from their amps. Rehab is the sophomore album nearly 10 […]
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DVDnds
Cabaret VoltaireDouble Vision Present: Cabaret Voltaire (Mute) With the DVD format, we’re seeing more and more artistically challenging audiovisual projects and reissues of lost material, such as this 1982 work from electronic/industrial pioneers Cabaret Voltaire. The electronic beats are coherent and forward-thrusting – albeit strategically muffled at times – but the end result is still […]
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Reissues
CanMonster Movie (Spoon/Mute)CanSoundtracks (Spoon/Mute)CanTago-Mago (Spoon/Mute)CanEge Bamyasi (Spoon/Mute) Hearing the primal, Oedipal utterings of Malcolm Mooney, it’s easy to imagine the onstage nervous breakdown that led to the singer’s exiting Can after only one album. 1969’s Monster Movie is a razor-sharp, frenzied assault that stands as Can’s most typically rock & roll work in a career […]
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Reissues
WireWire on the Box: 1979 (Pink Flag) After chopping punk rock down to its artsy bones on 1977’s scalding Pink Flag, Wire went in the other direction on the following year’s Chairs Missing, adding sinew, gristle, and melody, building unexpected sonic layers from the ground up. Wire on the Box: 1979, the first in a […]