bryan carroll

Recent Actions

• Posted Local Music is Sexy with TV Torso, The Low Lows, Many More [Tonight at The Mohawk & Club Deville, Free!] to Austinist
  So you missed last night's Bleet Up, the first event leading up to what will surely prove to be the best Fun Fun Fun Fest of all time. Well fear not, music-loving citizen: you have an excellent opportunity to redeem yourself tonight by attending, and definitely not, in any way, shape, or fashion missing, the greatest installment of Local Music is Sexy yet. Even better than the Bleet Up ('cause it's free!), Austinist will take over both stages of the Mohawk and the outside stage Club Deville tonight to present sets by some of our city’s finest practitioners of the rock and roll—not to mention disorderly marching music—to help you celebrate the imminence of the only fest that offers you fun in triplicate.
  
  The music starts at 8pm following the early-ish After the Jump blogger panel (featuring Austinist's own music editor Paige Maguire), and runs until midnight. We’re keeping mum, but there may or may not be a few surprises in store for those who stick around the Mohawk’s inside stage after the clock strikes 12. Let’s run this down one more time: free, sexy, local, music. Those are the makings of a definite must-attend event in our book. Follow the jump for a complete list of bands and set times, and we'll see you tonight!
• Posted Review: Brazos' Phosphorescent Blues to Austinist
  Brazos’ debut LPs has been in the works for a while now. It’s been two years since principal member Martin Crane released the first EPs to fly the Brazos banner, A City Just as Tall and Feeding Frenzy, which he wrote and recorded entirely on his own. The fact that those EPs were essentially bedroom recording projects, coupled with the two year absence of any new material during which Crane assembled a (mostly) steady lineup for the band, may account for why Phosphorescent Blues is such a compelling departure from the original Brazos recordings. The album is beautifully recorded, and filled, for lack of a better phrase, with a kind of joyful nostalgia—both for the past and the future, if that’s even possible.
• Posted Fun Fest Artist Profiles: The Strange Boys and Torche to Austinist
  Local heroes and In The Red-signees The Strange Boys will bring their 60s pastiche and summer fun party vibe to Fun Fun Fun Fest’s yellow stage on Sunday afternoon. While The Strange Boys do seem to fit into the lately omnipresent, and as some may argue, moribund lo-fi garage pop genre, they also manage to transcend many of their contemporaries.
• Posted Preview: The Legendary, Incomparable Pogues [Tonight at Stubbs] to Austinist
  What is left to say that hasn’t been said, written, or sung about this motley crew? Rumors of Shane MacGowan’s death have been greatly exaggerated, and 27 years on from their founding, The Pogues remain one of the rare bands that deserve to be on anyone’s “see before you die” list. The fact that we have an opportunity to witness the London troupe reunited with talisman Shane MacGowan at the helm is somewhat miraculous—after MacGowan was dismissed from the group in 1991 for his erratic and unreliable behavior, the band experimented for a brief time with Joe Strummer and then original member Spider Stacy on vocals before fizzling out temporarily in 1996. Most assumed the group would be relegated to the history books at that point, but the original members (including MacGowan, minus bass player Cait O’Riordan) reunited briefly in 2001, and since then have gradually worked their way up to playing several dates a year.
• Posted Fun Fest Artist Profiles: Night Marchers and Melt-Banana to Austinist
  Let’s turn our attention now to a pair of bands we’re excited to see on the first day of Fun Fest's aught nine edition, San Diego’s Night Marchers and Tokyo’s Melt-Banana. Both groups, despite playing two very different styles of music, are touring veterans with highly respectable punk pedigrees.