Cover Story
Soothe Your Stress With These Five Decadent CBD Brands
More than just tinctures
COP25: Housing Rights and Climate Change
Where two crises – climate and housing – meet: “Catastrophe.”
Keeping Life Queer in 2020
A Guide to Gifting Queerly for the coming decade
One in a Crowd: “A Grievance With Gravity”
Help this local short about feeling out of place raise essential funds
COP25: Members of Frontline Communities Describe Life in a Sacrifice Zone
VIDEO: Permian Basin residents on how the landscape has altered
Defense Bar Faults Court-at-Law 4 on Backlog, Impartiality
Interim judge of family violence court responds to questions
Advocates Push District Attorney to “No Call” Biased Cops
Criminal justice groups ask Moore to box out untrustworthy officers
Another Survivor Comes Forward Against Travis County D.A.
Change.org petition calls for the removal of Margaret Moore
Moody Center Groundbreaking Promises the Finest Arena in the NCAA
Nashville act soundtracks Erwin Center replacement kickoff
Old Settler’s Rolls Out 2020 Lineup
Tanya Tucker, Head & the Heart, Sam Bush & Jade Bird soundtrack campout
AFS Hires Production Veteran to Run Austin Studios
Community media expert Martin Jones to oversee new era
COP25: Faith and the Climate
VIDEO: What faith leaders are doing to advocate for change
Bettie Pvnk Graduates Top of Her Drag Class
Sabel Scities teaches drag fundamentals to up-and-coming performers
COP25: A Three-Way Tie for “Fossil of the Day” Award at the UN Climate Change Conference
VIDEO: Which country is the best at being the worst?
COP25: When It Comes to Climate Change, What Does “Loss and Damage” Mean?
VIDEO: Texas Impact unveils Climate Policy 101
COP25: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Addresses UN Climate Change Conference
VIDEO: U.S. Congressional delegation in Madrid for climate talks
Urgent Charity Fundraiser for Local Film Critic
Silent auction includes rare Mondo prints, signed Exorcist script
Counterprogramming Black Friday on This Week’s The Austin Chronicle Show
Wild Bill’s Honky Tonk Holidaze in studio, plus Co-Lab’s “Texas Toast”
Day Trips & Beyond: December Events Roundup
Plenty of fun still to be had in 2019
21 Bridges
Chadwick Boseman brings Manhattan to a halt as a corruption-busting cop
Dark Waters
Todd Haynes’ courtroom drama is a true-life environmental horror
Knives Out
Cunning if slight murder mystery revives the whodunit
Queen & Slim
Tragic romance with a Black Lives Matter message
Marriage Story
Driver and Johansson are note perfect as a couple falling apart
Fall Platters
East Austin’s Quinlan McAfee, 18, continues where he left off on last November’s explosive debut mixtape Stain or Starve. Now backed by Elliott Grainge’s label TenThousand Projects (home to rappers Tekashi 6ix9ine and Trippie Redd), one of the city’s brightest rhymers cheerily brags and admonishes throughout sophomore mixtape 4NUN. The 10-track, 26-minute project contains four…
Day Trips: Nuestra Señora del Rosario Mission
Mission ruins recall Spanish Texas
Austin at Large: Be Thankful for What We’ve Got
Sometimes, the grinding slog of government bears tasty fruit
The Austin Music Poll Innovates in 2020
Write-in, wrong. The Music Poll goes multiple choice.
Fall Platters
Luxurious full-length debut from Austin “boogie/modern funk” outfit the Vapor Caves – vocalist Yadira Brown (Keeper, 10yr, Lax) and producer BoomBaptist (Andrew Thaggard) – Feel Yourself carries on with a devilish wink, a crooked smile, and delicious basslines. Taking inspiration from Seventies/Eighties proto electro-funk acts Roger Troutman and Zapp, Mtume, and Slave, Thaggard employs his…
Soocer Watch
Another big piece in place this week for Austin FC, as Claudio Reyna announced Thursday (Nov. 21) that he was leaving his job as the only sporting director New York City FC has ever had “to accept the exciting opportunity to once again be part of an expansion club.” Reyna’s credentials are impeccable: A longtime…
Headlines
No Voting Here: University Democrats, Austin Young Democrats, the Texas College Democrats, and others announced a federal lawsuit Tuesday against the 2019 Legislature’s prohibition on temporary mobile voting locations, which meant the closing of roaming sites that helped folks like students, the elderly, and those with limited means of transportation. In October, the Texas Democratic…
Co-Lab Projects’ “Texas Toast” Dishes Up a Heapin’ Helping
This group exhibition looks at the food that means the most to us
Fall Platters
David Longoria’s Longriver ripples music that you sink into. Like his previous outfit the Black, Bob Dylan serves as unavoidable touchstone in Longoria’s nasal twinge and hard harmonica riffs, but whereas his former band oriented toward rootsy garage rock, Longriver slips into contemplative folk. Easing rolling opener “When the Ark was Building Noah” and the…
The Luv Doc: Sex and the White American Male
White guys ruin everything. Why wouldn’t they ruin sex?
Quote of the Week
“God uses imperfect people through history. King David wasn’t perfect. Saul wasn’t perfect. Solomon wasn’t perfect.” – Our own former Gov. Rick Perry, providing some context for his claim that Donald Trump is “the chosen one” ordained by God to be president.
For Patients With Opioid Use Disorders, the B-Team Offers Help
Dell Seton Medical Center’s “Buprenorphine Team” and its innovative approach to addiction
Fall Platters
Montopolis’ stirring The Legend of Big Bend is original music that stands alone, while remaining part of a broader visual project wherein filmmaker David Barrow shot hours of footage with Big Bend as his subject, documenting its details and telling its secrets in a ruggedly sumptuous time-lapse video. Bandleader Justin Sherburn and visual artist Emily…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Fully 7% of global CO2 emissions are due to cement production. Legend has it that the Queen Mary was supposed to be named the Queen Victoria, but when a Cunard executive told George V that their latest ocean liner was to be named for “the greatest English queen,” the king assumed they were speaking of…
Equality Texas Names New CEO
Ricardo Martinez will takeover the advocacy organization on Dec. 1
Grief, Anger, Activism Follow AISD’s Move to Close Schools
Lingering questions over unreleased equity report fuel frustration
Fall Platters
After seemingly packing up their guitar and drums despite the popularity of lone 2011 LP Bikini, Not in the Face surprised local fanatics with Phase this fall. The dynamic duo of suave cowboy Jonathan Terrell and hard-hitting beat-keeper Wes Cargal returns precisely to form with their quartet on gutter slick anthems of bad love and…
Austin Shakespeare’s As You Like It
An Austin-infused Arden is more poetic license than artistic alchemy
Kind Clinic Leader Recognized for Her HIV Work
Cynthia Brinson receives Texas Academy of Family Physicians Public Health Award
Fall Platters
Behind 2017’s self-titled debut, Hans Gruber & the Die Hards – spastic vocalist TJ Robinson, drummer Chris Thompson, bassist/trombonist Kurt Armstrong, guitarist/trumpeter/keyboardist Hans Emanuelson, and tenor saxophonist/co-vocalist Rosey Armstrong – bridged the chasms between hardcore, punk, pop, and ska. With the second in what will apparently be a numerical series of full-lengths, these skacore wiseguys…
Beerthoven’s Czechs Mix
This program of music by three Czech composers made big music feel right at home in the state where everything’s bigger
Public Notice: Motherless Austin
Building a better city, but at what cost?
Austin’s Best Food and Drink Events This Week
Dinner parties, farmers’ markets, beer, wine, and more for the week of November 27, 2019
Fall Platters
The debut album from Nolan Potter’s Nightmare Band sounds like a long-lost private press from the early Seventies. Analog production warmth, breathy harmonies, and a guileless fusion of gnarly guitar riffs, old-fashioned synthesizers, and flute riffs hearken back to a time when psychedelia evolved into progressive rock. Only some keyboards and cheeky titles like “Singing…
“Work Play Money Love What It Is What Could Be Both Neither Art Design” at Northern-Southern
This intersection of art and design traffics in graphic and sculptural brilliance
Fall Platters
“Rocket 88” is Ike Turner’s contribution to the birth of rock & roll. Then there’s the Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer, the first programmable drum machine that wound up driving Eighties albums from Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” to all manner of early hip-hop classics. Once you dig the etymology of local garage genius John Schooley’s latest…
Vixen’s Wedding
Stay for the pork ribs vindaloo; go for more information
Qmmunity: Grateful for You, Grateful for Queers
Plus, Jenny Hoyston’s new tunes and the world premiere of Austin’s all-trans revue
Fall Platters
Veteran jazz trumpeter Jeff Lofton demonstrates his versatility and range at every breath. “You Blues You Lose” looks back to Kind of Blue-era Miles Davis, while “NOLA Beat” employs a funky N’awlins groove. Even when the punches aren’t telegraphed, the program shifts plenty of gears. The Austinite’s cover of “What a Little Moonlight Can Do”…
Fall Platters
Tugged by a through line of reliable, nod-along melodies, Austin tag team Charlie Martin and Will Taylor open windows on their third LP. Where past works enshroud in a bedroom hum, indie-pop clarity clears the hazy Hovvdy headspace on Heavy Lifter. Brighter compositions match the lyrical demands of more specified storytelling, most vividly on piano-led…
Fall Platters
Susan Gibson’s songwriting doesn’t pull any punches. Hook-laden and emotionally sharp, the Wimberley songwriter’s first full-length of new songs since 2011’s Tightrope delivers the kind of character portraits and narratives that elevated her “Wide Open Spaces” to Dixie Chicks-level success. The real treat of The Hard Stuff is the range of melody beyond most singer-songwriters,…
Fall Platters
Madi Meeks’ 2018 debut EP pulled heavily from country-tinged singer-songwriter arrangements to prop up delicate melodies. Keyboards and punchy pop grounds her eponymous follow-up LP, a sharp departure in tone, but her precocious alto still gets top billing. Over 10 moody tracks, Madi Meeks demonstrates a natural ability to let understated verses swell to radio-ready…
Fall Platters
Simultaneously released with the sparser Fair-Weather Friends, Tex Smith’s Kinfolk mines an earnest core, whether in the restless “Traveling Tune” and “Now It’s Time to Go” or the soothing ode to his late producer Seth Gibbs on the title track. The song wrangler’s voice flows direct and tender, from the Johnny Cash-touched “Old Paper Bags”…
Fall Platters
Jeremy Nail conducts massive power through the smallest sparks. Third LP in four years, Ghost follows last year’s calmingly defiant Live Oak with his comfort-wrapped, understated vocals and patient arrangements, yet lifts with an overall brighter, more hopeful outlook. From the meditative musings of the full moon floating over “Clarksville” to the heavy exhale of…
Fall Platters
Space cowboy Garrett T. Capps builds upon last year’s In the Shadows (Again) by expanding his San Antonio brand of cosmic country. The second installment of a purported trilogy kicks out from the dance halls for more hard-driving and hard-twanged ballads. Electric guitar swirls “Sunday Sun,” while “A Beauty in the Horizon” rambles affectionately. Jamie…
City Council Gets a Breather Before LDC Frenzy
The dais faces a marathon of meetings covering everything from the land use code to APD racism
Fall Platters
Over the course of seven albums and nearly 25 years, Austin trio Fastball has created timeless playful rock constructions that fit into the musical landscape just as easily today as they did in 1995. The hitmakers’ second album in two years, The Help Machine delivers on that ability once again with big, rock-ready flourishes slicked…
Fall Platters
Crooning and swooning, Christine Smith’s piano ballads deliver a winking and weary cabaret pop, melancholy without melodrama. From the light touch of “You Can’t Hurt Me Anymore” and “Feels Like Yesterday” to the dark, fiery “Trying Not to Fall in Love” and swelling bittersweet title track, the local singer crafts her own binding for the…
APD Racial Bias Controversy Now Includes Lawsuit
Suit alleges “a pattern and practice of discriminating against African Americans”
Fall Platters
Schoolteacher, singer-songwriter/guitarist, assemblage artist Larry Seaman announced his local entry into music via the Farfisa-flavored Standing Waves, the most definitively New Wave of all the Raul’s-era acts. His edgy sensibility has sharpened over time through a series of bands (Last Straw, Violet Crown, Seaman’s Quartet), leading to this solo work. Varying shades of guitar rock…
ATX Film News: Fundraisers and a Special Delivery Scare Package
Is Austin giving the world the next Game of Thrones?
March 2020 Election Ticker
Noises from the primary
Fall Platters
On his debut solo long-player, the co-founder of extended moodmakers Balmorhea paints an insulated picture of shadows as underlit as the mysterious album cover’s midnight mountain by Awoiska van der Molen. Muller tames tapes from his recent peregrinations to trace the route of Lower River, an Ambien union of intercontinental field recordings and Austin studio…
New Web Series Gentrified Reveals the Reality of Displaced East Austin
When home isn’t home anymore
New Housing Rules Benefit Project Transitions
Affordability Unlocked helps the AIDS services organization triple its housing stock
Fall Platters
Known for raucous live performances, Casio porn-punks Hug find a home on vinyl for the first time in their now-infrequent two-plus decades of existence. Curated by local percussionist and experimental stalwart Thor Harris for Joyful Noise’s White Label Series (he joins fellow 2019 curators St. Vincent and Thurston Moore), the compilation pulls in 11 of…
Behind the Scenes at the Centre Pompidou’s Tribute to Richard Linklater
An American in Paris
Too Many Voters, or Too Few? We’ll Know by March!
Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir works with the Texas secretary of state to troubleshoot the “fleeing voter” problem
Blues Boy Hubbard Passes at 85
Guitarist and bandleader elemental to Eastside music history
