Gang Gang Dance, Venus X and Shane Dada September 28, 2011 Better than: not paying attention and missing something clever. Sly is the word that best sums up last night’s show at Dada, which saw two groups from New York City presenting a seamless two-hour-plus performance of avant-garde electronic and…
Blink-182, My Chemical Romance, Matt & KimGexa Energy PavilionSeptember 27, 2011Better than: seeing SR-71 right now. They’re a little older and wiser at this point, but make no mistake: On the night in which their new album, Neighborhoods, earned its release, Blink-182 proved themselves still crass as ever. Never mind…
Panda Bear, Silent Diane, BotanyGranada TheaterSeptember 27, 2011Better than: staring into a blinking strobe light while listening to anything else. In some regards, it’s kind of hard to see why Noah Lennox, the man behind Panda Bear, is the king of the blogosphere these days. It’s not like the guy…
If you’ve been to a themed DJ night like The Lollipop Shoppe or The Smoke, chances are good you either saw Scott McCullough DJing or dancing on the floor. These days, he does a regular Wednesday night gig at La Grange called The Thing?, showcasing plenty of Northern soul along with…
ErasureHouse of BluesSeptember 25, 2011Better than: Staying home and watching The Tank, The Swan, and The Balloon Live. Roadies placed mysterious steaming white ceramic mugs on the Gargoyle-infested, Gothic-looking stage at the House of Blues. What could it be? Apple cider? Coffee? Tea? Questions abounded as techno music thumped over…
Neon Indian, Com Truise Granada Theater September 25, 2011 Better than: a heat wave. Com Truise and Neon Indian each took the stage of the Granada Theater Saturday night as a pair of the flag-bearers championing the genre of chillwave. What amounted to a state of the union address of…
A little bonus to last night’s Horrors’ show at The Prophet Bar: Keyboardist Tom Cowan was nice enough to share some of his first show experiences. The very first show he remembers seeing is a little different from the ones we normally hear about. For starters, he wasn’t taken to…
The Horrors, StepkidsProphet Bar — Big RoomSeptember 20, 2011Better than: unpleasant surprises. The Horror’s new, third album, Skying, is hardly revelatory. But it’s decent enough. The same can be said of their live show, which came to the Prophet Bar’s big room in Deep Ellum last night…
Ume might be an Austin-based trio, but they play Dallas enough that it would be easy to think they’re based here. They last came through in late July, opening for Mission of Burma. They’ll be back on Thursday, September 29, at Trees in support of their recent album, Phantoms. Bassist…
Billy Joe ShaverBilly Bob’s Texas in Fort WorthSeptember 17, 2011Better than: many of the overly polished country whippersnappers who like to throw around the word “outlaw” these days. Calling Billy Joe Shaver a character is a bit of an understatement. The country legend’s life reads like one of the outlaw-themed…
TV on the Radio & Broken Social Scene House of Blues September 16, 2011 Better than: having a ticket with a “rain or shine” guarantee from the box office, only to have it cancelled at the last minute. As a general rule, when two bands with large fan bases of…
Carolina Chocolate Drops, The Fox & The Bird, Mikldrive Granada Theater September 16, 2011 Better than: having my concert hopes dashed due to rain (Sorry, Explosions in the Sky ticket-holders). When at their best, concerts are far more than a simple equation of an artist performing while people watch them…
Agnostic Front, The Hoodrats, The Mongoloids, Naysayer, Powertrip Trees September 18th, 2011 Better than: driving home hungover, sunburnt, and dehydrated from a long weekend at ACL. If you needed a reminder of how old school hardcore hasn’t been tainted by pandering, last night’s Agnostic Front show was just that. The…
Arcade Fire Austin City Limits Music Festival September 18, 2011 Better than: having to sit through an Eagles set at the end of ACL. On Sunday Night at Zilker Park, the largest crowd of the weekend converged on the Bud Light stage, where Arcade Fire was scheduled to play the one and…
And just like that, the heat returned. The hot sun beat down on the wet grass, creating an inescapable humidity in Zilker Park on Sunday. As such, the people came prepared to sweat it out. The same guys hawking ponchos yesterday now had packets of sunscreen for sale at a “discount”…
My Morning JacketAMD Stage — Austin City LimitsSeptember 17, 2011Better than: about 99 percent of any other concerts I’ve ever seen. Is My Morning Jacket the best live band on the planet? In the universe? They sounded like it on Saturday night at Austin City Limits Music Festival as they…
Kanye WestBud Light Stage — Austin City LimitsSeptember 16, 2011Better than: what you probably heard about the show, unless you heard it from Kanye. It didn’t take long for Kanye West to buy into his own hype last night, as he headlined the first night of the 2011 Austin City…
Coldplay AMD Stage — Austin City LimitsSeptember 16, 2011 Better than: waiting for Coldplay to release a Greatest Hits album. It would be a pretty hipster thing to say that the Coldplay show at Austin City Limits Music Festival on Friday was cheesy and overly sincere. But you won’t actually…
Bright Eyes with First Aid Kit Palladium Ballroom Thursday, September 15, 2011 Better than: what everyone around the office predicted, including the gent who penned our preview in this week’s paper. Not long into Bright Eyes’ opening salvo at the Palladium last night, a faithfully folksy version of “Four Winds,”…
Smith Westerns, SundressDadaSeptember 14, 2011Better than: High School Musical. “Sorry, you guys,” a flustered Cullen Omori, the band’s 21-year-old frontman and eldest member, appealed to the crowd. “All our shit just broke. Simultaneously.”He and the rest of his band crouched on the stage floor, fiddling here, plugging and unplugging there…
Explosions in the Sky returns to Dallas this week for its first area performance in a few years. In turn, it’s looking like one of the most-anticipated shows of the year — mostly because, yes, with the instrumental, four-piece Austin post-rock outfit playing the outdoor Strauss Square in the AT&T…
Bon Iver, Kathleen Edwards Winspear Opera House September 12, 2011 Better than: seeing this (or any other) show outside in the reinvigorated heat-wave. Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon has left the log cabin. Hell, judging by the full-on rock show that took place in the magnificent Winspear Opera House last night, it’s…
