The Castanets have been a fixture in weird folk for years, with Ray Raposa lately dipping further into country music. His latest is entitled Texas Rose, the Beasts, and the Thaw, out on Asthmatic Kitty records, and he's playing The Mohawk tonight. more ›

Tori Amos is playing Saturday night at the Long Center, part of a tour to promote her new album, Abnormally Attracted to Sin. It's a concept album following Amos' life-long subjects: women, religion, power and sin. It harps on that desire in all of us (or at least most of us here in Austin) to want what's bad or different or obviously wrong for us. A trait so trite, yet so innate in us all. more ›

sEvery once in a while an Important Movie comes along - a movie with the potential to revolutionize the way we see other parts of the world. The Stoning of Soraya M., opening July 24, is one of these movies. This story is excellent and the performances are flawless, but more important is the way it opens up another world—a world we don’t often bother to notice or even try to understand. This is what makes it pecial. more ›

This year's Blue Genie Art Bazaar is months away, but the event's organizers are accepting applications through Friday, September 4th. Prospective vendors can fill out an application packet online and selected artists will be notified on October 2nd. The bazaar will again be held at the Monarch Events Center and will run from December 2nd through Christmas eve. more ›

Peanut Butter and Jelly. Soda and Ice Cream. Rice and Curry. Sure there are plenty of things that work incredibly well in unison. Transmission Entertainment and Gatti’s Pizza? Why not! Transmission has teamed up with Gattisjingle.com (yes, that’s right) to organize quite an event for today’s youth, tomorrow’s rock stars, and old fogies like you and I -- this Sunday, Red 7 hosts the Under 21 Party featuring sets by Orion Belts, Mucho Gusto and Mother Falcon. Besides live music from three talented local bands boasting members in the U-21 demographic, there will be a screening of Empire Records, giveaways from the likes of Frank and Domy Books, Gatti’s pizza of course, and plenty of pool and arcade games to further enhance the good times. There will also be a raffle to win a pair of tickets to November’s Fun Fun Fun Fest at Waterloo Park, featuring Jesus Lizard and many more. more ›

The tools of Molina’s choosing, including dobro and lapsteel guitars, are especially evocative of an aching loss, so its natural that Josephine be his most country influenced album yet. It’s also comparatively stripped-down, so the listener seems confronted with an empty horizon, at every turn expressing something missing. This would all be belabored and depressing- that is, if it weren’t so simply beautiful. more ›

Brooklyn's Pterodactyl play frenetic, razor-sharp fuzz rock, sounding something like Unwound or maybe even Feels-era Animal Collective played at 45 instead of 33. Their latest record, Worldwild is out now on Jagjaguwar, and features Joe and Matt, Zach (Ex Models, Knyfe Hyts, the Seconds), and Jesse (Twin Powers, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth). more ›

For now, stick to the beloved celebrations of the 80's, with a truly enticing one scheduled for this Saturday at Scoot Inn. Foot Patrol has previously dazzled us with many a Prince cover. This evening, the local funk outfit takes a stab at hits from the 80's. We’ve been promised renditions of 20 songs from the decade, including “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and “Don’t You (Forget About Me).” But that’s not all, not even close to it. There is a costume contest. And should you go all out and bust out the Molly Ringwald or Andrew McCarthy in you, there is a John Hughes themed photo-booth courtesy of Jounetsu Photography. Wow! Plus DJ Mahealani will be on hand to spin many, many more songs we love. The $10 price of admission might be considered a tad steep but it’s all for the noble cause of aiding a talented local band put its best foot forward -- the cover charge will go towards helping Foot Patrol fund its first N.Y.C. tour. more ›

Austin Bat Cave, a non-profit writing and tutoring center for kids, is hosting two free summer camps during these last few precious weeks of summer vacation. The organization focuses on connecting a diverse population of young writers and learners with a vibrant community of adult volunteers in Austin. more ›

Stellastarr*’s brand of 21st century new-wave contains plenty of ingenious riffs, catchy melodies, and passionately delivered chorus’ but the Brooklyn band continues to fly somewhat under the radar, never quite attaining the widespread acclaim their talent merits. The band’s self-titled debut dropped in 2003 with memorable ditties such as “In The Walls,” “Jenny,” and and “My Coco; 2005’s Harmonies For The Haunted was an equally stellar record and included gems like “Sweet Troubled Soul” and “Lost In Time.” Stellastarr*’s latest effort Civilized (released on July 7th) arrived nearly four years after Harmonies but the band stays true to form, delivering instant gratifiers (“Freak Out”), distressed pleas (“Warchild”), and wistful odes (“Sonja Cries”) via another impressive collection of pulsating rock songs. more ›

44 people, including rabbis and politicians, were arrested in a NJ corruption sting yesterday. Should Professor Gates have been more polite to the cops who showed up at his door? While her fans still adore her, it looks like less everyday Americans give a hoot about Palin. Budget Lodge near Rundberg on IH35 comes to an agreement with the city; neighbors hope that leads to less crime in the area. Low water levels mean long-ago dumped cars can be recovered from Lake Travis. Shanghai officials to couples: please have two babies. Bruce Campbell a hit at Comic-Con, chats about Burn Notice. more ›

A couple of weeks ago Warren and I went to see the movie Moon, sort of a thematic mash-up of that old classic Gaslight meets the Disney flick Parent Trap meets Castaway with a dash of A Boy and His Dog thrown in and some sub-themes that might’ve been derived from Bowie’s Major Tom and Elton’s Rocket Man. That I was able to gather all this from the film is a testament to my ability to multi-task. While it’s true I sometimes purposefully multi-task in the theater—yes, I can knit in the dark—in this case I found myself unintentionally and unhappily tri-tasking. Because the couple sitting next to us WOULD NOT SHUT THE FUCK UP. more ›

What’s the Deal: At Herm’s helm is Dubliner Kevin Connolly, and while he tends to steer his musical craft a little erratically through the chop bouncing between feelings and sounds on his debut album, Monsters, released this year, the independent- minded tunes can all stand tall and strong on their own. They might even prefer it. Connolly and his Hermanos, a backing band he sometimes records and plays shows with, create a wide range of dark blues, melodic and jangled rock, and touching indie folk. more ›

• Texas continues to ignore that whole "separation of church and state" thing.
• Ohio politician seems to think abortion should be decided by men.
• Obama: police who arrested Henry Louis Gates, Jr. "acted stupidly."

It turns out the person behind the Great Aggie Locker Room Caper isn't a Longhorn after all. Police used surveillance tape to nab the person who broke into the Texas A&M football complex this week, stealing equipment and leaving behind the message, "The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You" written in athletic tape. more ›

The school was hosting the one-year anniversary of "Trae Day," a celebration honoring local rapper Frazier "Trae" Thompson III and meant to promote community service and voter registration, when gunfire erupted from the parking lot near the TSU stadium. Subsequent incidents took place off campus at a nearby intersection. more ›

Cass McCombs has mastered the spell of casting spare, hazy instrumentation that creates a space just tangible enough for the listener to become lost in. But “Dreams Come True Girl” simply sets the bar outlandishly high, even by the time Karen Black’s guest vocals make an entrance late in the song, sun-drenched and conjuring Lolita. more ›

It’s interesting that White Denim, a band that’s already joined the vanguard of recent Austin attention-grabbers (Shearwater, Harlem, Black Joe Lewis, et al.), has yet to see a physical release of their music supported with even a modicum of distribution in their home state. That’s set to change on October 20th, when Downtown Music will finally release Fits, the band’s second (third if you count their UK debut Workout Holiday) and most adventurous LP domestically. Actually, adventurous is an understatement: it’s head-spinning how much they pack into the record’s economical 37 minutes. Fits is a short but dense blast of moody, psychedelic soul that careens from hard-edged funk and breezy soul, to straight up psych rock with flourishes of jazz and dub. It manages to be in nine places at once without feeling directionless or schizophrenic. The trio is incredibly tight, and the song structures and time changes are so fascinating that you have to occasionally stop and ask yourself, how the hell are they doing this? However they conjured it up, Fits is an excellent, occasionally face-melting rock album that deserves to be played loudly and often by many more people than are currently familiar with it. more ›

Austin-based artist and musician Amy Cook is the subject of a new documentary called Amy Cook: The Spaces In Between, which will be released and aired July 22nd through August 21 on the Documentary Channel. The film features the songwriter's last tour, her upcoming album (produced by Alejandro Escovedo) and her relationship with hotelier Liz Lambert. more ›

Photos courtesy Steve Hopson. more ›

When one writer critically examines another respected author, readers should be skeptical. In Notes on Sontag, Phillip Lopate reflects on Susan Sontag’s essays, book-length nonfiction and fiction. He works from his strength as a personal essayist: intimate, balanced, and a generalist. Lopate’s appreciation of literature keeps the focus on her writing and not her personality. In fact, he cautions this is not, “Thank God,” a biography. He does, however, interweave some personal encounters with this fellow New Yorker. More significantly, he digs deeply into her writing. He quotes widely and at length from her body of work. And he chooses wisely. Look at this Sontag gem from an essay on Nazi symbols: “The color is black, the material is leather, the seduction is beauty, the justification is honesty, the aim is ecstasy, the fantasy is death.” Throughout, Lopate writes honestly, as readers should expect from an essayist, on her strengths and weaknesses as a writer. more ›

The El Chile chain of restaurants plans to open its second El Chilito taqueria in South Austin this August, taking over the corner site previously occupied by Gypsy's Italian Bistro. more ›

If you only knew them as dots on a map, you might expect Austin and San Antonio to be very similar. With downtowns a mere 70 miles apart, you would be correct in assuming they share similar geographies and climates. Studying the map further you would note both cities are bisected by rivers and, depending on how detailed the map, you might also see that while Austin has lined its river with hike and bike trails, San Antonio has surrounded its water feature with restaurants and bars. While this would seem to imply San Antonio is the hipper, cooler place, you do not need me to tell you it is not. MTV has yet to shoot a season of “The Real World” in a pimped-out mansion on the Riverwalk. There is no “San Antonioist” blog. Indeed, for all of its layered history and cultures, San Antonio as it exists today is a much less compelling place than its younger sibling to the north. more ›

• Police investigating West Campus deaths as double homicide
• LULAC may sue City of Austin to force single-member district elections
• LCRA trying to address long-range water needs for Austin area

It’s a site Native Americans came to for healing and—perhaps more awesomely—where Robert Redford learned to swim. But the millions-year-old Barton Springs pool will be closing for six to eight months thanks to something frustratingly man-made: holes in the concrete bypass culvert. more ›

A City of Austin sponsored class that promises an insider’s view of local government along with hands-on experience will be offered beginning in September. It is a quick overview of Austin's 31 departments. The cost: a couple of hours of class time for 10 weeks. The instructors: Executive team members like the assistant managers, City staff, and Department Directors. The class is not only a reverse show-and-tell, but also an opportunity to find people who might be interested in serving later as volunteers. For example, here is one of the application questions: In what ways would you like to be a community leader in Austin in the next five years? And, for the skeptics out there, this should only cost the city around $2,500 in printing costs. more ›

Meet The Harlequins. They're indie and they're Austin, but there's something else. Representing the epitome of raw sound and hearty emotion, their folky beats seep into the pores of everything present during a live performance. Setting up their tunes on a creative territory amid American electric rock and indie rock's mellowest tunes, the Harlequins formed in 2007. The group — vocalist/keyboardist Hunter Bates, guitarist Joe Mader and drummer Tyler Wiethorn - touch on influences as varied as 80s jangle pop to the sonic experimentation of Wilco, the Wrens, and My Morning Jacket. more ›

he Top Ten from this summer's season of So You Think You Can Dance will be making a stop in Austin this fall. The judges on the show insist that this fifth season's dancers are the best they've had on the show, and come October 27, you can be the judge as to how well they perform live. more ›

It’s normally not a huge surprise when a dance club or watering hole on Sixth Street proper switches names, ownership, or even format. Aces Lounge on Sixth and San Jacinto Blvd. is just one such example, having been through a number of changes over the years. From Icon to Inferno to Austin’s own Hard Rock Cafe, the bar has run the gamut in terms of modifications. Transformations on Red River St. (from Sixth to Tenth) tend to be less frequent. Sure, the location that is currently The Mohawk, now firmly entrenched as a key player on the street, once played its fair share of musical chairs (Caucus Club, Le Privelege, Velvet Spade). But of late, the Red River District, which is home to the most prolific stretch of live music venues in town, has been sustained by quite a few resilient clubs (Beerland, Red Eyed Fly, Headhunters, Club de Ville, Elysium) and consolidated by emerging venues (Red 7, Creekside Live, Beauty Bar). And with enhancements of their own, Emo’s and Stubb’s continue to march on as well. If you noticed one prominent bar missing in that who’s who of Austin venues, it’s Room 710. The home of Tia Carrera Happy Hours and the place to catch shows from a slew of tireless local acts like Pong, Foot Patrol, and Golden Hornet Project, to name a few, is shutting its doors on August 2nd. more ›

The Austonian is a residential skyscraper currently under construction in Austin at the corner of Congress Avenue and Second Street. It is already the tallest building in Austin and upon completion in 2009 will be 683 feet tall with 56 floors. When these photographs were taken, construction was up to the 52rd floor. The shots were taken on the 51st floor. more ›

There's plenty of speculation about who C3 will book to replace Beastie Boys, who canceled their remaining 2009 tour dates yesterday morning. The Beasties were also scheduled to perform at Lollapalooza, and have been replace there by Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Since Lolla and ACL are both C3 Presents productions, it seems likely that ACL will also get YYYs in the open headliner slot. more ›

When Lance Armstrong all but conceded a Tour de France victory to teammate Alberto Contador after Sunday's mountain stage, reaction was divided into the two camps that follow most any news about Armstrong: those offering unconditional support and those ready to slice him up with cutting opinions.

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The Beastie Boys have announced some news that preempts their performance at this year's ACL Festival. The good news, it seems, is that Yauch's doctors have caught it early, and are referring to the situation as "treatable." The release of their upcoming record, The Hot Sauce Committee Pt 1 has also been postponed. more ›

In case you were wondering how the eBay sale of the Hamburger Bed turned out, we received news from Kayla Kromer, the bed's creator, that it sold for over $3,000 to an out of town buyer. Comedian Neil Hamburger, who had a show at Emo's on Friday, put in a huge last minute push for the giant sandwich's sale by taking promo pictures and posting about it online. As for what the future holds for Kromer? She is working on a new bed, and she promises to let us know about its forthcoming "big reveal". In the meantime, she gave us three clues - it's round, from a movie, and not food. "So everyone's dreams of a Hot Dog bed are going to have to be self-realized," Kromer encourages. more ›

The Drive-By Professor talks wise in your ear on philosophy, art, science, and other non-profitable acts of genius. The declarations voiced by The DBP do not reflect those of anyone else in the Ist network. While The Orchid Thief, a fascinating effort in personal journalism, probably is best known as the inspiration for Charlie Kaufman's book-mutilating film Adaptation, Susan Orlean's study of orchid obsession covers everything from mid-century Florida land-scams to irresponsible adventuring to the seedy underbelly of plant collecting to the complexities of botany, hybridization, and cloning. Citing the orchid as evolution's most prized plant (orchids do not self-pollinate, thus requiring them to adapt especially crazily to their environment so as to avoid extinction), perhaps the most notable acclaim I can give this sometimes-meandering book is that, after all, it was captivating enough to get a dude to read 300 pages about flowers. more ›

• Obama pushes on with health reform, Republicans push back
• US Military searches for captured Afghanistan soldier
• Six (more or less) out of 10 (approximately) economists say recession could be kinda sorta maybe easing... or not.

There's a Save Austin Music meeting tonight at 7 p.m. If you can't attend physically at 3708 Woodbury Dr. (behind Ruta Maya & Penn Field, S. Congress & Ben White), join them online here. more ›

Some may recall the incident that occurred in El Paso in late June, where five gay men were ordered to leave a Chico's Tacos restaurant by security guards because two of the men kissed each other. When they refused to leave, the police were called. A rookie officer arrived on the scene and cited a Texas sodomy law that had been struck down in 2003 by the United States Supreme Court. more ›

Neiliyo is pretty hard to ignore when rapping along to hyper electronic dance beats while rockin' some Ray Bans, fratty attire and boat shoes sans socks. His popularity, charm and mastery of the mix table have landed him in the semi-finals for the Last Band Standing Contest. He's just an arm's reach away from the grand prize, a slot at Lollapalooza in August. Voting ends today for the semi-finals and the top two bands compete at the final event in Chicago. more ›