Results tagged “muse”

Here’s the scene: It’s late in the evening on a Saturday night, and there’s a line full of 16-to-30-year-olds wrapped around the block extending away from the large black door of the New Brookland Tavern in Columbia, South Carolina. Tonight, local, epic, electronic rock band Baumer is playing, and it’s going to be a packed house. A sizable portion of those dance party hungry hipsters clad in t-shirts both black and neon waiting in queue will not even make the capacity cut-off point. But, many of them will stand outside for a good portion of the set, listening from the street. Inside, as Baumer heats up, the cramped crowd bounces and sweats to New Order-inspired electronics, indie rock guitars and a bold voice not unlike that of Muse singer Matthew Bellamy. This isn’t a rarety for the band; it’s every time they play a show in their hometown.

Brighton's indie rock quartet have come a long way since 2003's The Decline of British Sea Power. The band's eccentric catalog has evolved through familiar Britpop idiosyncrasies on their debut, eased into more global pop hooks on the follow-up, Open Season, and now enters the great big world of stadium rockin' indie with this year's Do You Like Rock Music?

Like the disaffected grunge movement. Nobody could really find a way to bank off it, at least not until Ethan Hawke and Eddy Vedder came along. Then the music and film execs got a hard-on so big, it bumped into Kurt Cobain’s elbow while he was cleaning his shotgun.

Looks like ACL Fest organizers have chosen Groundhog Day to release their mildly discounted multi-passes. 3-day passes priced at $150 including service charges are on sale now at ACLFest.com.

This project is a direct response to Austin’s lack of world-class entertainment infrastructure, and it’s a bold attempt to bridge the gap between a mid-level entertainment industry with huge potential (which Austin is) and a mature industry with world-class production facilities and creative professionals (which Austin, says Villa Muse, could be).

Presidential Primaries: Hillary and Mitt Romney take Nevada, McCain takes South Carolina.

A sad week for LAist as they lose their trusted and amazing editor Tony Pierce to the LA Times, but what a blast his last week was. He shared his 25 Favorite CDs of 2007 and wrote a great review of just a good movie, No Country For Old Men. At UCLA, thousands of students celebrated the end of their quarter by running around campus in their undies (lots of photos in a two-part photo essay, one, two). That wasn't the only photo essay either: Joss Whedon/Mutant Enemy friends and Star Trek actors all joined in at the Writers Strike and KROQ's Almost Acoustic Christmas brought two nights of amazing bands that included Avenged Sevenfold, Linkin Park (Part I), Modest Mouse, Muse, Spoon and The Killers (Part II). Not only is L.A. a great music town, it has just been named the best city for bookish types. For those who are looking for something a little more active, American Gladiators are back (yes!) and if that's not enough, how about a Christmas gift of action and adventure?

What’s the Deal: They’re a local grand, alterna-pop group that has come from out of nowhere with a sound that’s just quirky enough for indie rock fans and also highly marketable. Their upcoming debut album, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, recorded and produced by local Lars Goransson arrives soon, and if they play their cards right the group will be set for certain heat-seeker status. Don’t hold it against them that the title is so very close to Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Sonically, the two don’t share many similarities. Soaring vocals hijack the focal point of many of the songs with their sometimes Muse-esque method, and spacey keyboards fill out the four-piece rock sound nicely.

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan blames President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for efforts to mislead the public about the role of White House aides in leaking the identity of a CIA operative. Police Chief: "Missing Student Ignored Due to Race." A drunken man broke into a central London park and attempted to have sex with a fence: Daniel French, 24, made "sexual motions" towards metal railings in Leicester Square Gardens...

Photo by Will Pate on flickrInteractive + ScreenBurn The preliminary list of Interactive panels has been released, and includes topics like "The Great Debate: Is Web 2.0 Bulls#!t?", "The Porn Police: Know the Rules," and "The Suxorz: The Worst Ten Social Media Ad Campaigns of 2007." [Preliminary List] Additional, several panels for the gaming-centric ScreenBurn fest have been revealed. These include "The Future Virtual World Game Development: Rise of the Indies," "You Are Here: Gaming...

UPDATE: NME is also reporting that Muse will play at Stubb's on Sunday night, we'll have details as they emerge. A lot of this might be old news for ticket holders who have been scurrying around trying to figure out how they're going to be compensated for their White Stripes @ Stubb's tickets, but it's true: Muse's performance has been moved up, and they will now occupy the White Stripes' slot, while the rest...

Every fall, Austin looks forward to ACL Fest, and each year, there's always a point where two of your favorite bands are playing on different sides of the park at the exact same time. ACL Band Clash is a weekly series in which Austinist scribes Paige Maguire and Tom Thornton examine the worst ACL scheduling clashes, and try to provide good advice on finding a resolution. Well, good advice might be a stretch, but...

You know how Texas has those new Film Incentives dollars to throw around now? Well, they're not limited to movies and Friday Night Lights only. The gaming industry gets a piece of that, too. And since there are over 50 gaming studios already in Austin (not to mention the availability of increasingly slick development/programming courses) it's a given that gaming will continue to blow up here in the Capitol City. But all that's a major...

This morning marks the release of the ACL 2007 schedule grid. This is probably the most stressful day of the year for the avid ACL festivalgoer, as hopes of seeing every act one likes are dashed when seeing how many of your favorite bands are playing at the exact same time. It's impossible to program such a big festival without a couple of conflicts, but three stand out to us this year as particularly...

Manic Street Preachers - Send Away The Tigers: Over a decade removed from their masterpiece Everything Must Go, the Manics seem to finally return to the stadium-rock sounds of that album on Send Away The Tigers. While not as strong as Everything, the new album has several bright spots, most notably the so-cheesy-it's-awesome duet "Your Love Alone Is Not Enough" with The Cardigans' Nina Persson. While there are some awfully clunky lyrics ("I'm just a patsy for your love..."), and an occasional guitar line that sounds way too much like "Sweet Child O' Mine", this is a return to what the Manics do best: talking personal politics and rocking some Welsh angst. It's what Muse might hope to sound like if they weren't writing about spaceships and the apocalypse and such.

Kris Racer's album, has quietly garnered a noticeable amount of praise recently, and we're pleased that he's stopping by this evening to play some songs for us. Sweet, shaky vocals and delicate acoustics define Racer's release, which will appeal to fans of early Built to Spill, Halo Benders, and, incidentally, dozens of other bands that play this type of purposefully off-kilter indie pop. Racer is perfect mixtape material for beginning an imperfect courtship: tender lyrics, sensitive (but mostly out of tune) harmonies, casual screw-ups and an alluring sort of underdog vibe leave their stamp boldly throughout all the songs. Check him out tonight at The Green Muse with Hollywood Gossip and others, and bring your little sister.

After a month of guesswork, the ACL Fest lineup is here. And it's quite a good one. While the wild speculation of headliners like Neil Young and Stevie Wonder once again proved false, the key items one sees this year are depth and balance. Having spent yesterday looking over the roster, we have the following observations on the 2007 edition of ACL. The Good: A Great Top 10. Had you told us that we'd...

As we mentioned Monday, a new development is launching near Webberville 15 minutes east of Austin that could put our city on the worldwide film, television and music production map at long last. A designer's sketch of Villa Muse Studios, the production zone that forms the core of Villa Muse and constitutes Phase One of the Villa Muse project. It’s called Villa Muse, a sort of self-sufficient creative-industry village that’ll consist of some of the...

My chemical romance brought their Black Parade Tour to the AT&T Center in San Antonio last night. Openers Muse made sure the crowd was prepared for over-the-top drama-angst pop with a healthy dose of high intensity guitar wizardry....

So much urban development is happening in Austin, we barely have time to hit the highlights. We'd love to offer more fulsome coverage, but we need help. If you are interested in writing urban development posts for Austinist.com, email urban(@)austinist.com (remove the parenthesis) with a few sample posts and some information about yourself and why you want to write for Austinist.com. Villa Muse Development: Villa Muse (shown right) is a proposed 681-acre mixed-used development...

It’s only fair in today’s fast paced world that a share of high profile stadium rockers counters the growing success of indie bands. The Killers play the Frank Erwin Center these days while fellow “take over the world” hopefuls, My Chemical Romance have their sights set on similar success with the last year’s The Black Parade. A grand concept album with a dark storyline (largely about a dying cancer patient’s retrospective of his life),...

Rocket, Quiet Company, Blackholicus, and Golden AX squared off at Room 710 last night in a friendly LA versus Austin Battle-of-the-Bands, and Austin you came out on top. LAist held their SXSW party at the Red River mainstay and brought two bands to "compete" against a pair of local groups for a free Sunday night show that started with the My Morning Jacket-esque Quiet Company (who should change their names because they're anything but...

The second album curse has felled bands both big (The Killers) and small (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah) in recent months. The short attention span and indie band hype created by the music blogger community only add to the pressure of the big follow-up. It is a relief, then, to report that Bloc Party emerge relatively unscathed on A Weekend In The City, their follow-up to 2005's wonderful Silent Alarm. A wider (and louder) sonic palate and reach has emerged from the band, as they attempt to grow yet retain what we enjoyed about them to begin with.

We have discovered yet another wonderful entry in the “if you’re too tired or broke or claustrophobic or agoraphobic to make it to ACL” music alternatives. La club and radio DJ Paul V. will be airing his Smash Mix of ACL indie bands on Indie 103.1FM tonight at 7:30pm. Mix and Tracklisting: Flaming Lips vs. Massive Attack - Unfinished YeahYeahpathy (DJ Paul V. mashup) Deadboy & The Elephantmen - Stop, I’m Already Dead Muse -...

Didn’t want to spend your hard-earned cash for ACL ducats this year? Or maybe you have to work, and can’t get away from that computer to which you’re chained. Whatever the case may be, if you aren’t heading down to Zilker Park this weekend, you can still catch several of the ACL performances broadcast live over the intranets. AT&T will be airing exclusive content at their Blue Room portal beginning tomorrow with the first...

Only one more week and I'll be waking up in Austin, ready to put on an entire bottle of sunscreen and head out to Zilker Park for my favorite music festival in the world. I know you guys may have thought I forgot about you - but I've been hard at work on my Austin City Limits Festival Preview Page, trying to wrap up the project before the festival actually starts. From today through...

God, we're so sick of Snakes on a Plane that we want to kill anyone and everyone that makes a "something on a something" joke. But then we realized that there was no way we could ever win this fight, and, hell, if you can't beat them, we might as well join them. And with that, you have the theme of this weeks' Gothamist network post. Austinist makes it easy for us, with Candidate on...

Due to some odd twist of fate—or some serious demographic research—several major/minor art-rock figures are releasing albums today. These artists run the gamut from graceful (Thom Yorke) to chaotic (TV On The Radio) to I’ll-have-whatever-they’re-having (Muse). Let’s take a look: THOM YORKE-THE ERASER Thom Yorke once quipped that, in the United Nations that is Radiohead, he plays America—the joke being that, while he doesn’t have all the ideas (or talent), he sets the aesthetic...

It's only June, but there is already some lineup shuffling happening over at ACL Fest. Let's start with the bad news: Irish singer/songwriter Damien Rice has departed from the bill, and no official reason has been given. All is not lost, though: Rice is still playing The Backyard in early July with Fiona Apple and David Garza. In better news, UK Britrockers Muse have joined the lineup, meaning that those who pined for Radiohead...

Local: Travis County Commissioners on Tuesday approved a controversial 1,800-home Hill Country development project known as Sweetwater. Sweetwater will cover roughly 1,000 acres with its main entrance at the intersection of Texas 71 and Bee Creek Road. Residents and environmentalists have said the area is already stressed by booming development. Christy Muse, executive director of the Hill Country Alliance, said that "questionable" actions by the commissioners allowed the project to fall under the state's...