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ACL Music Fest Friday Reviews

Fool’s Gold Leave No Trace (I Am Sound) The eponymous 2009 debut from Fool’s Gold approached Afro-pop and Caribbean funk with a collective zeal, crafting a Third World dance party in a California basement. Refined into a quintet after two years of touring, the band broadens its appeal on Leave No Trace, threading the needle…

by Austin Powell

ACL Music Fest Saturday Reviews

Preservation Hall Jazz Band & the Del McCoury Band American Legacies (McCoury Music) These two paragons of traditional American music making music together might not sound like a good idea, but jazz and bluegrass possess more similarities than many realize. Anyone familiar with the Travelin’ McCourys recent collaboration with the Lee Boys, a sacred steel…

by Jim Caligiuri

ACL Music Fest Sunday Reviews

Gomez Whatever’s on Your Mind (ATO) We’re supposed to be impressed that Gomez, with members now scattered from Great Britain to Los Angeles, did all of the collaboration for this seventh album via the Internet. This innovative approach to making music did not extend itself to the actual music. Case in point: “Equalize” could have…

by Melanie Haupt

ACL Music Fest Friday Reviews

Smith Westerns Dye It Blonde (Fat Possum) The Smith Westerns’ 2009 debut delivered a fuzzed, swaggering update to T. Rex and Mott the Hoople-tinged glam, captured mostly in the scrawny Chicago-based group’s lackadaisical teenage charm. The challenge for their sophomore outing was thus to mature sonically without losing the youthful glow, a tension measured in…

by Doug Freeman

ACL Music Fest Saturday Reviews

The Antlers Burst Apart (Frenchkiss) The Antlers’ emotionally devastating full-length Hospice (2009), the band’s debut as a trio as opposed to frontman Peter Silberman’s solo act under that same moniker, left the Brooklyn threesome with a lot to live up to. To that end, Silberman and company revisit certain aural territory, like deploying the same…

by Melanie Haupt

ACL Music Fest Sunday Reviews

Social Distortion Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes (Epitaph) Mommy’s favorite little SoCal monsters may have slowed their personal tempos a fraction, but this seventh studio album proves you can take the man out of the punk but you can’t take punk outta Mike Ness. The leather-hided and Jack-‘n’-Coke-voiced Ness has only improved with age, like…

by Marc Savlov

ACL Music Fest Friday Reviews

Foster the People Torches (Columbia) Kickass debut, a recipe: the Dandy Warhols’ glam nihilism, Passion Pit-style dance beats, and Animal Collective experimentation. Shake vigorously, pour over ice, and garnish with dreamy 1960s harmonies impaled on one of those plastic sword thingies. Voilà, you’ve got Torches, an arsenic-laced fizzy lemonade cocktail. Right now the L.A. indie-rock…

by Melanie Haupt

ACL Music Fest Saturday Reviews

Black Dub (Jive) Aside from producing U2, Bob Dylan, and Neil Young, Daniel Lanois is a notable guitarist and songwriter. His new project includes multi-instrumentalist/singer Trixie Whitley, daughter of the late modern bluesman Chris Whitley, and the adventurous rhythm section of drummer Brian Blade and bassist Daryl Johnson. Dub, a dreamy form of reggae, is…

by Jim Caligiuri

ACL Music Fest Friday Reviews

Kanye West & Jay-Z Watch the Throne (Roc-a-Fella/Def Jam) Like Dwyane Wade and LeBron James, Kanye West and Jay-Z understand the advantages of titans teaming together. The difference here is that hip-hop knows no salary cap, leaving rap’s most successful artist and foremost pop icon free to stack Watch the Throne any way they see…

by Chase Hoffberger

Phases & Stages

St. Vincent Strange Mercy (4AD) St. Vincent’s appeal might be likened to Anne Taintor’s illustration of a 1950s trophy wife hoisting a dinner platter, the text reading, “The secret ingredient is resentment.” There’s a friction and duality to Dallas-reared Annie Clark’s suspenseful character sketches, rigidly composed but easy to shatter, a feat evidenced by recent…

by Austin Powell

Magic Trip

This doc about Ken Kesey’s famed bus goes all over the place but never seems to end up anywhere all that revelatory.

by Marc Savlov

Meme Weavers

Did two Austin Web designers tap into our unconscious desire to replicate stock photos? Nah – they’re just having a laugh.

by Cindy Widner

Phases & Stages

Jackie DeShannon When You Walk in the Room (RockBeat) Jackie DeShannon’s 50-year legacy as a singer (“What the World Needs Now Is Love”) and songwriter (“When You Walk in the Room”) of innovative folk-pop hybrids is stunning. Never as celebrated as Carole King, DeShannon revisits her hits here, some written with Sharon Sheeley of “Poor…

by Margaret Moser

Applause

Danish actor Paprika Steen’s turn as a fresh-from-rehab alcoholic is a tour de force performance.

by Marc Savlov

BMI Stage

Friday Shows Hudson Moore 11:15am-noon If it’s local buzz you’re seeking, Fort Worth native Hudson Moore moving here is a good start. His debut, Fireworks, shoots off Texas alt.country rock just as warm and appealing as a Friday in the park. Ha Ha Tonka 12:45-1:30pm Bloodshot Records roots rockers Ha Ha Tonka delivered one of…

by Margaret Moser

Phases & Stages

Glen Campbell Ghost on the Canvas (Surfdog) The “Rhinestone Cowboy” makes no secret of his incipient Alzheimer’s and Ghost as his poignant swan song. Lavish with sentimental tunes befitting his patented countrypolitan appeal and troubled past, its songwriters, including Jakob Dylan (“Nothing but the Whole Wide World”), Paul Westerberg, and Robert Pollard, rise to the…

by Margaret Moser

ACL Aftershows

Thursday 15 North Mississippi Allstars, Antone’s Pretty Lights, Nas, Run DMT, =Austin Music Hall Delta Spirit, J. Roddy Walston & the Business, Futurebirds, Emo’s Friday 16 Gary Clark Jr., California Wildebeest, Antone’s Federico Aubele, the Beauty Bar Twin Shadow, Cut Copy DJ set, Theophilus London, Diamond Rings, Wax, Emo’s Jon Pardi, Lamberts Skrillex, Chiddy Bang,…

by Chronicle Staff

Phases & Stages

Connie Smith Long Line of Heartaches (Sugar Hill) If Connie Smith wanted to impress, she’d have hired Jack White. Instead, Smith, who made her name when Nashville, Tenn., queens wore cotton-candy hair and Tammy Wynette headed the pack, teamed with Marty Stuart for pure, rich, no-frills country music in which love and life are played…

by Margaret Moser

Headlines

� No City Council meeting today, but council on Monday passed the city’s 2011-2012 budget in one long session, largely using the time to debate which priorities should be funded out of a $1.6 million surplus from Austin Energy, with police and parks emerging as winners. See “City Hall Hustle,” and “Budget in Plain Sight.”…

by Chronicle Staff

Restaurants Near Zilker

Estimated meal cost per person: $ = <$10 $$ = $10-25 $$$ = $25-40 $$$$ = $40+ 1) TEX-MEX: Chuy’s With hubcaps, colored lights, and a velvet Elvis, this is Austin-style Tex-Mex at its tacky, funky best. It’s almost always busy, but the creamy queso and chips are worth the wait. 1728 Barton Springs Rd.,…

by Chronicle Staff

Circumstance

This Iranian film about two girls who begin a secret relationship is as much a political statement as it is a love story.

by Marc Savlov

Phases & Stages

Richard Buckner Our Blood (Merge) The rut Richard Buckner has dug himself is exquisite. Our Blood, the innovative singer-songwriter and former local’s first disc in five years, develops a sound sculpted around heavily strummed guitar and old keyboards, adding odd percussion by Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley and atmospheric pedal steel from Buddy Cage of the…

by Jim Caligiuri

Drive

Ryan Gosling plays a getaway driver in this seductive mix of brooding arthouse and heist-gone-to-hell genre picture.

by Kimberley Jones

ACL Music Fest Sunday Reviews

Yellow Ostrich The Mistress (Barsuk) Following three EPs, Alex Schaaf’s one-man melding machine sustains its jagged lo-fi psych-folk across his Yellow Ostrich debut LP, contorting loops like a stripped-down Dirty Projectors. “Libraries burn fast/When there is no past,” chants Schaaf atop a mesmerizing chorus on “Libraries,” and there’s a sense of creative destruction and reassembly…

by Doug Freeman

Phases & Stages

Fountains of Wayne Sky Full of Holes (Yep Roc) Ivy All Hours (Nettwerk) If only Fountain of Wayne’s overdue follow-up to 2007’s Traffic and Weather were as strong as its first three bursts of distinctively seasonal East Coast pop. “The Summer Place” conjures a well-balanced mix of sun-warmed hooks and harrowing undertones in its depiction…

by Greg Beets

Quote of the Week

“There has never been, in the history of aviation, a case of a chair and a desk going down in a ball of flames.” – Mayor Lee Leffingwell, a former pilot, attacking Council Member Bill Spelman’s proposal to reallocate police resources as overly academic

by Chronicle Staff

ACL Music Fest Sunday Reviews

The Greencards The Brick Album (Darling Street) It’s called The Brick Album because the band invited its fan base to donate or “buy a brick” in support of the recording. And yet, the Greencards’ fifth disc isn’t so much about expanding on the former locals’ tricky newgrass folk-pop as it is about digging in the…

by Jim Caligiuri

ACL Music Fest Sunday Reviews

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. It’s a Corporate World (Warner Bros.) One would be forgiven for expecting more schlock than awe from Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.’s major label full-length, especially given their name and all-out ‘Merica- and NASCAR-themed live show. It’s a Corporate World is not without its playfulness, but what emerges most is restraint and…

by Doug Freeman

ACL Music Fest Friday Reviews

An Horse Walls (Mom + Pop) Do you have to know a band’s backstory for them to make sense? No, but in the case of An Horse, it doesn’t hurt. “Base-less and bass-less” is the liner notes pun, since the Australian guitar/drum duo wrote their sophomore effort by email between Melbourne and Montreal. Walls thus…

by Richard Whittaker

ACL Music Fest Sunday Reviews

The Head & the Heart (Sub Pop) It’s impossible to ignore the Mumford & Sons in this Seattle sextet, a sound that itself was a watered-down take on the Avett Brothers’ Americana. Jonathan Russell and Josiah Johnson’s vocals carry the same gentle grit of their British brethren, bent atop poppier piano runs on opening shots…

by Doug Freeman

ACL Music Fest Friday Reviews

Theophilus London Timez Are Weird These Days (Reprise) In the closing hook to “All Around the World,” Brooklyn’s Theophilus London sings, “We’re back to making music like it’s 1964.” That’s a head-scratcher in the context of London’s major label debut, Timez Are Weird These Days, which has an aesthetic so firmly wired in modern electro-pop…

by Chase Hoffberger

ACL Music Fest Saturday Reviews

Telekinesis 12 Desperate Straight Lines (Merge) The title of Telekinesis’ second album, 12 Desperate Straight Lines, sounds like a recovery program for struggling songwriters. In the past two years, Michael Benjamin Lerner lost his band, van, and the girlfriend that inspired the long-distance romance of Telekinesis’ self-titled 2009 debut. His strength lies in the ability…

by Austin Powell

ACL Music Fest Sunday Reviews

Joseph Arthur The Graduation Ceremony (Lonely Astronaut) Conjuring sound songcraft through technological hoops for more than 15 years, Joseph Arthur’s eighth studio album negotiates a weird tension between seasoned polish and rank greenness. The standouts – including dreamy, plaintive opener “Out on a Limb,” which paints a melancholy watercolor of longing and loss, and “Watch…

by Melanie Haupt

Austin Eats: The Lineup

Aquarelle Austin’s Pizza Bess Bistro on Pecan The Best Wurst Boomerang’s Pies Children of the Kettle Corn Freebirds World Burrito Garrido’s Lonesome Dove Western Bistro Tim Love’s Love Shack Mandola’s Italian Market Mangia Pizza Maudie’s Mighty Cone Odd Duck Farm to Trailer Olivia P. Terry’s Burger Stand pureheart The Salt Lick Stubb’s Bar-B-Q Torchy’s Tacos…

by Chronicle Staff

ACL Music Fest Friday Reviews

Wild Beasts Smother (Domino) England’s Wild Beasts require an all-in devotion to appreciate. On third LP Smother, Hayden Thorpe’s trilling tenor torques with an Antony-esque emotion that’s not easily ingested, its overt sexual tension requiring submission to appreciate. Opener “Lion’s Share” foreplays awkwardly between staccato verse and a wailing chorus, but the electro-paced beats of…

by Doug Freeman

ACL Music Fest Saturday Reviews

The Moondoggies Tidelands (Hardly Art) A large, blurry rock flanked by obscuring fog that juts from a glassy body of water, with its reflection revealing the rock in sharp focus as backgrounded by a forest of evergreens, the cover art on this bearded Seattle quartet’s sophomore release is an apt metaphor for Tidelands. As a…

by Melanie Haupt

ACL Music Fest Sunday Reviews

Elbow Build a Rocket Boys! (Fiction) Lush, ascendant, electronically detailed eight-minute opener “The Birds” sets the stage for this English quintet’s fifth LP and first since 2008’s Mercury Prize-winning The Seldom Seen Kid. Contemporarily, think Radiohead. In archaic terms, recall early ancestors Genesis, only without all the progressive clutter. The first time Guy Garvey says…

by Raoul Hernandez

Luv Doc Recommends: Austin Corn Lovers Fiesta

One thing’s for certain: Dyslexia is a hibtc. Words are hard enough to understand without having to play a game of mental jumble every time you’re confronted with a line of text. Plus, it’s extra difficult getting the subtext when you’re struggling to get the text – forest for the trees and whatnot. Sometimes the…

by The Luv Doc

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