What a difference five years makes. Shawn Colvin’s 1996 CD, A Few Small Repairs, while cloaked in radio-friendly production, was lyrically full of spit and vitriol, a searing portrait of alienation and divorce that you happened to be able to sing along with. Remember the Grammy-winning “Sunny Came Home” and
Kissinger’s Music is like Pop Rocks candy: sugary, crunchy, and slightly explosive. It shouts Austin Powers: all exaggerated moves, gadgets, sleek cars, mod clothes, and girls, girls, girls. It’s the soundtrack to a mall-kid’s life, an episode of Dawson’s Creek, and a John Hughes film all rolled into one. These
It’s the voice that strikes you first: deep, lugubrious, slightly warbly. Second it’s the songs, the result of years of craning an ear toward the works of writers like Bob Dylan and Townes Van Zandt. Yet Damon Bramblett’s music was first heard by most listeners when Kelly Willis covered “Heaven
Taking cues from their namesake, Ray Davies of the Kinks, Dallas’ Deathray Davies also pay homage to Roky Erickson, Nuggets-era garage bands, and Guided By Voices. The Davies share Voices’ same Brit-invasion worship for interstitial song snippets, but despite those influences they are no ventriloquist act. Two years ago the
A lot of ink has been spilled over Fastball’s success, with 1998’s platinum album All the Pain Money Can Buy, the Grammy nominations, the high-profile tours, and the fact that a few months before the out-of-left-field hit single “The Way” took off, the threesome was still working day jobs in
Three albums in and Denton’s Slobberbone is firing on all cylinders. Brent Best and his band have tamed their “AC/DC of alt-country” comparisons, creating a twelve-song cycle of barn-burning beauty. Recorded at Ardent Studios in Memphis, Everything You Thought Was Right Was Wrong Today brims with the fervor of the
You’d probably never call Knife in the Water’s music “country,” but it certainly evokes country music in the sense that it takes painful and melancholy experiences and turns them into something strangely beautiful. Red River is the Austin quintet’s second release, ten moody and meandering tunes that wash together with
It’s the beginning of a new decade, so like clockwork, it must be time for a new Joe Ely live album. Live Shots (1980) chronicled his tour with the Clash; Live At Liberty Lunch (1990) was a career snapshot that captured the power of his performances. Live At Antone’s, a
HAVING MADE HIS NAME AS A producer, Austin’s Gurf Morlix has finally stepped up to the plate with his solo debut. These eleven originals reflect the music of the artists he’s worked with (Lucinda Williams, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Robert Earl Keen) and the influence of his Southern California cronies Dave
From the album title, one might assume this is the work of an eccentric yet likable wizard. That would be right. Part one-man band, part ringmaster commanding more than a dozen musicians, Halverson stirs up a concoction of blues, gospel, and psychedelia, all held together by his band, the Robinson
Slaid Cleaves is a craftsman. Broke Down, his second national release, is carved and polished just so, the work of someone who has studied his influences: Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams, Bruce Springsteen. Lured to Austin from Portland, Maine, a decade ago by the work of Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Butch Hancock,
There’s a looming spirituality that works its way through the cracks of the Barbers’ second release, You Know How It Is. Perhaps it’s because they recorded in a former Baptist church in Austin, perhaps it’s their Southern roots, as thick as kudzu, perhaps it’s the angelic plinking of Elaine Barber’s
