Music
It’s Hip to Be Square
HearsayI love hipsters, I really do. I know I make fun of ‘em a lot, saying they’re too cool for school, that they’re way too predictable, and that they’re really just grown-up mama’s boys.
Red Scare
Local post-punk rockers deliver a master class in controlled chaos on their new, eponymous album.CAROLINE COLLIER
The five guys in Red Monroe think of themselves primarily as a live act — they say that onstage is where their bombastic post-punk has room to breathe. But their studio work sure hasn’t suffered.
Urizen
The ShowUrizen is a local metal quartet, though “metal” may be too limited a word to describe exactly the kind of racket Urizen makes. Their music also has touches of jazz, Threepenny Opera, and pianistic lounge, among other stuff....
Jason Boland & the Stragglers
Listen UpJason Boland & the Stragglers promote themselves as country outlaws, but if their new c.d. is any indication, they might be in a transition period.
The Burden Brothers
Listen UpNo reason to describe this one in faux-poetic terms or edu-ma-cational journalism. The Burden Brothers’ new album Mercy rocks your backside about 75 percent of the time. As for that remaining 25 percent, you’ll be wondering...
Packing Gatts, Clocking SAT’s
HearsayNerdcore reached its nadir, to use a geeky term, a few years ago, with the debut c.d. from novelty act MC Hawking. The make-believe gangsta rapper took his handle from the theoretical physicist and Lou Gehrig’s Disease su...
Coal Fever
Fort Worth’s James Michael Taylor goes and tells it on Slaughter Mountain.ANTHONY MARIANI
In James Michael Taylor’s new album, Slaughter Mountain, the singer-songwriter persuades us to walk a country mile — and then some — in his scuffed work boots; through coal mines, rivers, and cotton fields; alongside ghos...
Nina Simone
Listen UpThe very concept is a bit jarring: Take one of the most socially conscious, independent, folk-jazz, whatever-style-she-wanted-to-sing artists from the 1960s. Ask some of today’s top DJ’s, producers, and new voices to remix ...
Bonnie “Prince” Billy
Listen UpMultitalented artist Will Oldham has kept busy over the past couple of years.
The Evangelicals
The ShowAny band that opens an album with a minute-long instrumental prelude of squiggling, squealing synth guitar lines — and calls it “Mouthful of Skeletons” to boot — is either A) dangerously smitten with Radiohead, or B) to...