Much has been written about Ume's stage presence. This video for “The Conductor,” an obvious highlight from the trio’s molten Sunshower EP certainly captures the little hurricane that is guitarist Lauren Larson. [video-1]

As keyboardist/vocalist Cody Ground told OTR back in December , Loxsly’s new album, Tomorrow’s Fossils, is a loose concept album: “There's a scientist that experiments with parapsychology and builds a machine that lets him hear other people's thoughts, only it turns out to be this Frankenstein sort of thing. He ends up jumping into the ocean with cement shoes to remove himself from the world.” Here’s a sneak preview of the album’s centerpiece “Battalions.” Loxsly officially releases Tomorrow’s Fossils at Mohawk on May 15. [audio-1]

Mere days before induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Metallica’s Lars Ulrich sat in with the Sword for a rendition of “Freya” in Paris. Ulrich deemed the local Four Horsemen’s Gods of the Earth his favorite album of 2008 in the Dec. 25 issue of Rolling Stone: “I’m a product of British metal – Iron Maiden, Saxon, Angel Witch – and the Sword sound like the definitive new wave of British heave metal.” Take another ride with Ulrich and the Sword on the “Grohlercoaster” with drummer Trivett Wingo’s Chronicle tour diary from last year. Metallica’s Death Magnetic tour touches down in San Antonio at the AT&T Center on September 28. [video-1]

The Chronicle has already weighed in on Bill Callahan’s stellar Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle, but if you haven’t had the chance to check it out, here’s a brief preview in the form of “Eid Ma Clack Shaw.” [audio-1]

Balmorhea drew inspiration for its third album, All Is Wild, All Is Silent (Western Vinyl) from William B. Dewees’ Letters From an Early Settler of Texas to a Friend, published in 1852. This video for “Remembrance” certainly captures the more scenic and rustic qualities of the song, along with a bit of the West Texas mystique that permeates the album. [video-1] The local neoclassical instrumentalists also filmed a session for Seattle’s KEXP during SXSW 2009. Watch Balmorhea perform “Coahuila.” [video-2]

Austin soul-shouters Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears have been in regular rotation on Cincinnati's web-based Woxy since the release of the band's Lost Highway debut, Tell 'Em What Your Name Is, at one point even holding down the station's top spot. “Black Joe really stands out when heard next to our predominately indie rock music mix,” says Woxy Program Director Mike Taylor. “It's music that's rooted in Memphis soul and that resonates. It's not overly hip or trendy.” Woxy set up at Ear Studios during SXSW and recorded a number of local bands, including Black Joe Lewis and the Wooden Birds. All of the sessions are available as free downloads and are linked below. Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears Ume The Wooden Birds The Calm Blue Sea

If you’ve watched local television in the past month or so, you've probably seen Erin Ivey. She’s the pixie dancing and singing amongst the clothes in the Reid’s Cleaners commercial. It’s garnered the singer-songwriter lots of interest and the old "selling out" argument doesn’t apply – you have to use Google to find out it’s her. “I had one woman who said, ‘I hate that commercial,' and I wanted to kiss her," Ivey admits. "I was so fucking happy for the six hours that it took to shoot the commercial that I didn’t smile for two weeks afterward. I’m generally a happy person, but I do have a bit of inner darkness.” Even though she's still relatively unknown, Ivey's adventurousness stands out in a town saturated with singer-songwriters. For example, tomorrow night she’s headlining a bill at the Parish that includes Jon Dee Graham (“He makes me want to smoke cigarettes") and her backing band will be reggae/dub trio the Finest Kind. She also leads Grand Hotel, a combo that sold out the Rollins Theater at the Long Center last fall, performing jazz and swing standards from the 1920s and 1930s. Originally from Maryland, where she was an aspiring Deadhead (my kind of girl), Ivey moved to Austin to attend UT in 1996. She began writing songs on borrowed guitars, spent as much time in France as she could (“I love the language!"), and after college moved between here and Portland, Ore., where her first disc The 11th Floor was recorded. There was also a year spent working in Peoria, Ill., where isolation fueled her muse. Since 2007 she’s released two EPs – the latest, Sweet Little EP, features a remarkable cover of Radiohead’s “Climbing Up the Walls.” Thursday’s show promises to be Ivey’s last appearance for a few months. “I’m going to upper Michigan for the summer,” she explains. “There’s too much going on here in Austin and I need to get away once in a while. I enjoy the solitude.” In the meantime, she’s readying a DVD release of her Long Center appearance, currently available as a digital audio download at her website, and contemplating another full-length disc.

When new Thin Lizzy live disc UK Tour 75 appeared both as an import on Amazon last year and in the pages of Mojo, at least one economic downturnee couldn’t afford the $35 gamble. Then Still Dangerous pounced into the marketplace and between recent reissues, talking with Lizzy axeman Scott Gorham, and being assured by an Austin Record Convention buddy about Amazon’s “new and used” option, it arrived in a boutique Digipak in under a week – last Saturday – for $14, with shipping and handling. Its 78 minutes are priceless. “Yeah, one – testing,” rises Phil Lynott’s voice in the monitors immediately. “Yeah this is our second time here [Derby College of Technology, Derby, England]. Tonight’s gig is going to be recorded, so make a lot of noise. Hear yourselves on the radio.” Course when Lizzy himself says “recorded” his Dublin brogue growls “recarded.” Though UK Tour 75 kicks off with what Gorham calls a “clam,” the sour note opening “Fighting My Way Back,” Lizzy’s still nascent ‘classic’ line-up soon storms the tower, blazing and bucking like only Thin Lizzy could. Gorham marvels at how good the band sounds despite having been together for only over a year, yet all one has to do is amplify the two discs this Lizzy grouping had already cut to nod knowingly at the liner notes herein by the group’s second-in-command, drummer Brian Downey: “Four months later, the Jailbreak album was released and we were into another era.”

I sat on the beach at the Royal Hawaiian late last night, staring at the dark and depthless Pacific as it rolled onto the sands relentlessly. Twenty-five years ago, I’d lived at the famous Waikiki hotel known as the Pink Palace for two weeks while Rollo Banks and I were on our honeymoon. On Saturday, his 67th birthday, I helped spread his ashes. Their sheer weightlessness crushed my heart. It was as idyllic a honeymoon as possible, under the December moon in 1984. We were so completely in love that I am in awe of it even now, a quarter-century later. He’d told me he loved me four days after we first went out, and asked me to marry him four days after that. We were married two months to the day, a romance played out in the pages of the Chronicle. It was the closest to true happiness I’ve ever had, so of course it couldn’t last, poisoned by the heroin addiction that strangled him right up to his death. We were married for 15 years. It’s something I’ve written about often, including the notation that except for a couple of periods of estrangement, we remained close, right up to the end. I write about in part because it’s my history, but also because I am so fucking lucky to have had that man in my life. He wasn’t perfect, but he was perfect for me. Most people never get that lucky, but I did. His obake is always present.