Nick Courtright

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• Posted Austinist & WOXY Present Awesomeness: Mountain Goats & Final Fantasy at Antone's to Austinist
  Little introduction is needed for that maven of cult followership, that original espouser of the effed narrative, that yelper of the adventures of the disturbed you know all too well, The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle. Fashioning tales ranging from the intensely Biblical to the intensely meth-addled, Darnielle has been passionately plying his trade since he burst onto the underground scene with a scad of early-aughts cassette recordings that made his unique voice and narrative gift a must-know for any aspiring music tastemaker. Getting the Antone's crowd ready for Darnielle is an act just as worthy of attention, Canada's everywhere-you-look go-to man on the strings, Owen Pallett, whose one man tour de force, Final Fantasy, is sure to please.
• Posted Bibles and Rhymes: An Interview with Why?'s Yoni Wolf to Austinist
  Despite its confoundingly inquisitive band name and general unclassifiability, the Bay Area/Cincinnati hip hop/indie act Why? has built quite the niche for themselves, satisfying those with a love for rhyme and meticulous, tightly-wound musicianship. Toss in a lyric sheet of ear-catching revelations regarding the human psyche's underbelly so disarmingly honest they'd make even your most offensive friends blush, and what you have is a cocktail for one of today's most intriguing and singular outfits. Still riding high off the breakthrough that was last year's Alopecia, Why? is now supporting its latest release, the well-received Eskimo Snow. Out of respect for this, and for the band's performance at Fun Fun Fun Fest this afternoon, we hooked up for a phone call with Why? frontman and wordsmith Yoni Wolf to talk about persona, mowing lawns, and the Bible's breeziest book.
• Posted FFFF Interview w/ Sweet, Sweet Racket: Times New Viking to Austinist
  Few bands do a better job tossing catchy melodies and choruses into such a mucky stew of noise and deliberately crappy recording techniques than Columbus, Ohio's Times New Viking. The trio, critically-lauded yet still dodging most of the mainstream love they probably deserve, is riding high on perhaps their crispest and most complete LP yet, Born Again Revisited, a batch of concoctions that sticks in the mind even though about 80% of its words are unintelligible. In preparation for their performance (which, if their other concerts are any indication, will be a nonstop onslaught of energy) at Fun Fun Fun Fest this Saturday, we shot some questions across the internet at Times New Viking, and guitarist Jared Phillips shot back some answers, including this little nugget: "fuck art." Enjoy.
• Posted FFFF Interview with a Mad Genius: Destroyer's Dan Bejar to Austinist
  Dan Bejar of Destroyer—who moonlights with the Spencer Krug and Carey Mercer supergroup Swan Lake, as well as the Neko Case and A.C. Newman supergroup The New Pornographers—is known as a writing virtuoso, one of those few and proud and usually-called-crazy in music who bring true artfulness to the words themselves, and not just the instrumentation. Inspired by his upcoming appearance at Fun Fun Fun Fest, we thought there’d be few better things than to give Dan an opportunity to jot a few things down, so we shipped off to him a handful of questions and said have at it. And he did, and delightfully so, citing Lorca and the Duino Elegies, his prejudice for Wallace Stevens over Robert Frost, how fucked most musicians would be if they had to truly worry about lyrics, and why maybe someday he’d write a book if only he weren’t “a complete stranger to real work.” Needless to say, when he takes the Yellow stage at 8:45 on Day One of Fun Fest, we’ll be in the audience, following every word.
• Posted Icon Alert! Built to Spill & Dinosaur Jr. Shall Rock Stubb's Saturday to Austinist
  For a little while there it seemed Built to Spill was fading into the background, that the mountain of awesomeness that was their 90s output had become but a memory of a fonder and more Clinton-esque era, and that the dog days of the aughts had put a damper on the six string noodling of the exceptionally liberal and ever-modest Doug Martsch. And then, when the expectations had reached a valley unlike any the band had seen since flannel shirts were all the rage, they dropped on us, seemingly out of nowhere, There Is No Enemy, quite possibly the best BTS release of the decade. This album, from top to bottom, feels like a resurgence of hope for the most famous band from Idaho (Idaho?), and the catchiness and energy of new tunes such as "Good Ol' Boredom" and "Aisle 13" means that it won't just be the old songs getting the crowd fired up. Basically, the show this Saturday night at Stubb's is not one to pass up, even if you've seen the bearded Martsch work his tenor before.