Dine Out, Do Good
Three delicious ways to give back this weekend
Fantastic Fest Gets Arty
First titles, plus Nicolas Winding Refn on exploitation
Proposed City Budget Unveiled
Staff presents FY2016 $3.5 billion “All Funds” budget
Robert Kurtzman Invades Garth Manor
FX legend talks Evil Dead 2
Hearing or Anti-Abortion Attack?
AG leads criminal and civil investigation of Planned Parenthood
It’s Grub Trivia Time Again
Test your culinary knowledge for prizes and fame
Nina on Netflix
Simone leads a chorus of music docs streaming online
Artist Shawn Camp Offers a Hint of Light in the Darkness
New exhibition at Northern-Southern breathes in the Aphotic Zone
AISD Trustee Passes
Robert Schneider, 13-year board incumbent, dies
Zimmerman Sues City
District 6 Council member challenges campaign finance law
aGLIFF Announces Lineup
Austin’s favorite LGBTQ fest drops next month
SXSW Eco Lineup Grows
Monsanto Q&A added to growing speaker list
DVDanger: A Bad Case of the Sequels
Retreads, remakes, and do-overs rule the home releases
Good Field Swears It’s Just “Business”
Pop foursome welcome new disc with cable-ready song clip
Pranom Pop-Up Comes to Austin
California street food chef cooking weekly
SXSW Interactive Announces Several Featured Speakers
You have seven months to let this sink in
Fun Fun Fun Comedy: Your Lineup Is…
For the 10th fest, “FFF” can stand for “familiar funny folk”
Judge to Feds: Obey the Law
Orders Department of Justice to begin releasing children and mothers
Antonelli’s Adult Summer Camp
Cheese House hosting fun, informative classes
Adam Silver To Headline SXsports
NBA Commissioner will serve as track’s Opening Featured Speaker
Don’t Bother to RSVP
Almanza not happy with Mathias’ choice of reception location
Drift Toward a Perfect Coffee Experience
New biannual magazine is a java junkie’s dream come true
News Roundup: Balancing Act
Grand jury declines to indict officer for Nov. 28 shooting
One in a Crowd: Sir Doug and the Genuine Texas Cosmic Groove
Kickstarter appeal of new film about Austin legend
Gettin’ Hot Under the Collar
Hotter Than Hell Burlesque revs up I-35
Food-o-File: Friday Lagniappe
A little extra Austin food news
First Look: Lick Burnet
Ice cream makers serve up a new location
Judge Confirms Pressley Sanctions
Defeated candidate and attorney dinged for $98 grand
Raise Your Glass to National Tequila Day
Here’s where to celebrate
Abbott Launches Investigation Into Planned Parenthood
Texas GOP jump to attack PP after sting videos surface
Tangerine
Indie drama shot with an iPhone provides a riveting take on two transgender BFFs
Pixels
Ever wish you could pixelate Adam Sandler?
Southpaw
This boxer’s story is familiar, but Jake Gyllenhaal is all new
The Vatican Tapes
Pray for us; it’s exorcism time again
Heaven Knows What
Semi-fictional drama about a 19-year-old heroin addict by the Safdie brothers
Headlines
Eric Lee Ray died while in custody of the Travis County Jail on Monday morning at approximately 2:26am. Ray, 53, was arrested for trespassing onto an estranged family member’s property. The sheriff’s office said that no evidence of foul play currently exists in the case, though a final determination won’t be made until the Medical…
Protect and Preserve
How can we keep Austin’s cultural heritage authentic?
Summer Loving
Tee Double Gas Mask (Kinetic Global Media Group) Continuing his album-a-year strategy, the inexhaustible Tee Double stays the course on Gas Mask, a mixed bag of circuitous messages, detours, and straight lines. The local rapper/advocate/producer born Terrany Johnson jumps in with bloody ferocity by citing an ongoing lack of emceeing in “Global Extinction”: “If I…
Losing It at the Movies
AFS Programming Director Chale Nafus on a life in film
UT Takes on Confederate Statues
After public input, university plans to consider options, including removal
Cities to Love: Austin Preservation Experts Weigh In
Austin experts throw in their two cents on which cities are the best at preserving cultural heritage
Summer Loving
Peter Keane Rural Electrification (Littlehat.com) More than a decade’s passed since we’ve heard from onetime Boston folk circuit celebrant Peter Keane. The Harvard-educated UT librarian since the mid-Nineties here tackles pre-World War II blues from Jimmie Rodgers, Elizabeth Cotten, Mississippi John Hurt, and others more obscure in a style similar to Jorma Kaukonen – solo…
Summer Loving
George Carver Small Art (Shrub Music) Self-proclaimed music for grownups, Carver’s songs and poems of arty backgrounds result in alternately serious, humorous, and always delightful outcomes. Musically, he lands between the introspective prettiness of Austin’s Erin Ivey and the off-kilter jazz of Tom Waits. He borrows disarmingly from the Flemish poet Wannes Van de Velde…
Beside the Point: Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of Ignorance
As we become submerged in factless policy-making, a request to return to reason
The Cartography of Home: Austin’s Atlas
The Chronicle talks to Ann Armstrong of map project Austin’s Atlas about the local preservation tool
Summer Loving
Josh Buckley Blind Side of the Heart This Boston transplant’s sophomore effort hearkens influences like Ryan Adams (“April Fool”), and infers an appreciation for Gram Parsons (“Angel From Liberty”). It’s country rock with an ache, one that doesn’t fade, yet never proves debilitating. Infectious enough to deny cliche, its clean production by Buckley proves more…
Summer Loving
Robert Banta Angeline (Asp) A White Horse regular, Robert Banta wears his roots-rock proudly. His eight-song debut leans hard toward the country side of the barroom, with the title track recalling Dave Alvin at his most lonesome. Meanwhile, local Christy Hays plays X’s Exene Cervenka to Banta’s John Doe on the taut love ballad “Together,…
Summer Loving
Second 2,500-word buffet on first- and second-quarter local releases
Summer Loving
Bob Cheevers On Earth as It Is in Austin (Private Angel) Cheevers’ second effort since moving to Texas from Nashville in 2008 features collaborations with 14 local musicians, Warren Hood, Kevin Welch, and Will Sexton among them. Making music for more than 50 years brands Cheevers a veteran at the songwriting game, yet these Earth/Austin…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
According to the New York Police Department, public urination in New York City occurs most frequently in Corona, Queens, and Williamsburg, Brooklyn. During World War II, the BBC news started using a recording of Big Ben to announce the time. It had previously broadcast Big Ben live. German physicists had been able to tell London…
A Gathering of Promises
UK POV on Texas’s psychedelic birth
The Luv Doc: Great, Satisfying Sex
Sometimes you need to give turn-by-turn directions to O-town
Summer Loving
Crooks Wildfire On its debut long-player, 2012’s The Rain Will Come, Crooks hit on the perfect complement to their hard country when Flaco Jiménez’s accordion spiced up “Heart Achin’ Town.” Now with Anthony Ortiz Jr. firmly planted behind the squeeze box, the local sextet’s sophomore LP fulfills the Tex-Mex potential they’ve built toward. Wildfire ignites…
A Little Darkness on My Back
A talented cast and band evoke the Man in Black in TexARTS’ Johnny Cash musical
ATX Flashback
F-Systems Four Flies on Grey Velvet Formed in 1979, F-Systems became one of Austin’s earliest DIY bands. Hip enough to reference Dario Argento in a song title, but accessible enough to garner the occasional spin on KLBJ, the combo cut-and-pasted from both punk and New Wave in the brief window before the antagonistic demarcation between…
Closer
This 7 Towers production shows the disconnect between love and sex, and the pitfalls of confusing the two
Summer Loving
The Hex Dispensers III (Alien Snatch! Records) The most funereal album of 2015 comes crafted by a band walking a tightrope over the chasm connecting the Wipers and the Misfits since 2007. Ten tracks bristle with propulsive energy, grimy guitars, and enough melody and hooks to fuel an AM radio afternoon in 1965. Yet the…
Food-o-File
Fond farewells and new beginnings
Gay Place: Reverse Peristalsis
This week’s theme: Nineties and barf!
Summer Loving
Institute Catharsis (Sacred Bones) Self-hatred can be a powerful artistic statement. Hate police, hate the government, hate the church, hate your woman – those are well-trod avenues of punk virulence. Directing that animosity inward, as Moses Brown does throughout these locals’ debut full-length, resonates with unique potency. Institute’s singer declares his emptiness on lead-off salvo…
Using Their Noodles
Two local eateries make an art out of hand-pulled pasta
Built by Women, for Women
Women’s community center provides resources, meeting space
“Robert Therrien”
The sculptor invites viewers to reconsider physical space with objects much larger and smaller than normal
Summer Loving
Pataphysics My Phone’s About to Die (Pecan Crazy) The New Wave revivalism practiced by Patrick Healy and company dodges easy veneration at every turn. Pataphysics resemble scatter-happy scamps whose dramatic play involves setting fire to action figures. The local fivepiece enters a cultural salvage yard and builds a nitrous-infused atmosphere from snatches of hardcore Devo,…
Texas French Bread
Two steps forward, one step back at Texas French Bread
Demand for Rape Kits High
SafePlace is receiving two to three requests per day
Day Trips: Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, Taos, N.M.
Take a walk with a wild view across the seventh-highest bridge in the U.S.
Summer Loving
Breakdancing Ronald Reagan J.C. (Confessions of a Cyberbully) (CTC Records) There’s no wrong way to enjoy music, but can wrong music be enjoyed? J.C. (Confessions of a Cyberbully), the seventh album from Breakdancing Ronald Reagan, demonstrates that songs without beauty can at least be better than sitting alone in your shitty apartment. Austin noise veteran…
Playing With Fire
Austinites tame the flames on television
Eastside Hotel, Round Two
The would-be developers of a proposed hotel on the city’s Eastside are geared up for round two in their battle to get their project built – a plan that’s galvanized neighborhood opposition – as they prepare an appeal asking City Council to reverse an earlier rejection of their conditional use permit application by the Planning…
Soccer Watch
The Austin Aztex finally got their offense untracked last Friday, blasting Arizona United, 4-1, their most complete game of the season. The four goals were the most they’ve scored this season, and equaled their output from the previous eight games combined. The win leaves the Aztex still in 11th place in the USL Western Conference,…
Summer Loving
Boan Mentiras (Holodeck) In the age of bedroom synth albums, the art of electronic minimalism has worn thin. Those once entranced by looped electro quirk and garbled vox now expect magic formulas, taking some of the mystery out of it along the way. Austin duo Boan takes another whack at that formula – and pulls…
Playback
Are Red 7 and Red Eyed Fly merging? That and whatever happened to the Strange Boys answered in this week’s music news.
“Drivers Are Pissed”
Possible lawsuit on the horizon as City Council quietly passes taxicab amendment
Feel the Burn
Austin author and wildland firefighter Mary Pauline Lowry takes readers inside the fire line in her novel Wildfire
Summer Loving
The Natural Valley of the Sphinx Supernatural Those bemoaning that Austin is ebbing weirdness, soul, etc. need to hear the story of Austinite Josh White, aka the Sphinx. Something of a Svengali among the younger musicians’ set, he composed “folk-Buddhist-bluegrass-country.” Passing away in October 2012, he left one recording of a live show and a…
Classic Game Fest Returns
In our day, controllers had one button, and we liked it
APD Officer Fired, Again
Williams faces indefinite suspension after “mishandling” domestic distrubance call
Wildfire: A Novel
Vivid imagery and a rapid pace make this debut novel about wildland firefighters fun as hell to read
Summer Loving
The Midgetmen Hobbytown How old are these guys – 40? And they work tech jobs with benefits like health insurance, vacation, sick days, and boundless dual-screen monitors? Not punk. Yet bawdy bassist Marc Perlman asserts on the album’s title track, “Note to self, this punk’s not dead!” So what if some of Hobbytown’s 10 tracks…
A Walk on the Wild Side
Sundance fave Tangerine is loud and proud
Pulling From TEA Report, Ratliff Argues Public Schools Better Than Charters
Ratliff gets rebuke from federal education heads for saying public schools outperform charters
Oops!
In last week’s “Food-o-File” column, we incorrectly reported that Joshua Thomas was a sous chef at Le Bernadin. Thomas actually was employed as a cook there when he began his career after culinary school. In addition, we stated that Thomas was the food and beverage director at Hyatt Lost Pines. He was actually the chef…
Summer Loving
The Sideshow Tragedy Capital (Old Soul) Continuing the honed-down duo trajectory of 2012’s Persona, the Sideshow Tragedy’s fifth LP optimizes for impact. The local guitar/drum combo cuts hard biting blues, but Capital spins its wheels stylistically with little variation across the nine tracks. Jeremy Harrell’s driving beat pushes the songs forward as Nathan Singleton’s guitar…
Building a Better GED
After a sharp drop in test-takers, Texas requests a new test
Quote of the Week
“Baby livers for Lamborghinis. It seems that’s what Planned Parenthood has come to. #tcot #Life #PPSSellsBabyParts.” – Gov. Greg Abbott getting in on the Planned Parenthood bashing
Live From Cowboy Portland
Showtime premieres an Austin-based stand-up show, SXSW Comedy With W. Kamau Bell
Summer Loving
Sour Bridges After three albums, Austin’s Sour Bridges has dialed in an effervescent blend of bluegrass and happy rock. The piano- and drum-infused string band’s vocal harmonies are stunning, their compositions are crafty, and the amusing accounts of Southern living are penned with grace and clarity. Unfortunately, the geeky Americana styling they’ve dubbed “browngrass” remains…
The Hightower Report
Why does the GOP hate poor people?
