Looking back, there probably wasn't a more appropriate patch of weather to be weathered than the intermittent rain and deep, damningly grey clouds that fans had to maneuver underneath on their way the Woodlands Pavilion last Saturday evening. Spirits weren't dampened by one high E string, though. Not only did the mildly adverse meteorological conditions set a suitable tone for the set to come (not to mention the copy of In Rainbows we were warming up to whilst waiting our turn for a space in the White Lot), but it was endearing to see that the multitudes milling towards the venue would have straddled the San Andreas fault line in the middle of the Big One to catch a glimpse of Thom wheedle his internal narrative out of a Rhodes piano until being swallowed alive. Needless to say, we were all looking forward to the show, rain or shine....

We don't think anyone will question our assertion that Radiohead are the most respected and sought-after band in the universe. Ever. After The Bends, OK Computer, and Kid A shorted out the synapses of the entire world, all of us insignificant plebes agreed to elevate them to legend status along with the boys from Liverpool, a few members of the Stones, and Evan Dando. That's it. That is the VIP list for our musical Mount Olympus in its entirety. Thom, Mick, and Evan watching America's Top Model and eating pepperoni pizza Hot Pockets in the inner sanctum of some island-volcano hideout....

After Van Halen, Bruce Springsteen, Radiohead, and Jay-Z all elected to skip Austin on their spring US tours, it's not unreasonable to feel that our music-loving town seems to be off the radar of the arena pop and rock circuit. This despite a perfectly functional (if rather dated) basketball arena smack in the center in town. Thankfully, the Louis Vuitton Don Kanye West agrees with you, and has elected to show Austin some big-production love with a date here at The Frank Erwin Center in late April....

The first segment of Radiohead's North American tour has been announced, and Austin gets the shaft: Houston's Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion will get a show on May 17, and Dallas' Superpages.com Center (!) will host the Brits on May 18. Tickets go on sale Thursday (Valentine's day) via W.A.S.T.E. with general on-sales following on February 16. ...

Our Indieroke night returns this Tuesday to The Mohawk. What started out as a one-off fling with rock stardom has turned into a monthly gathering of like-minded folks craving that fleeting moment of exhilaration. If you haven’t made it to one yet, we strongly recommend getting there in a timely fashion to get your name and song on the list early…and often. (You know who you are!) We will have multiple song list books going forward to ease that pain....

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. ...

Robert Harrison’s forte has always been melodious pop music and his current outfit Future Clouds and Radar is no anomaly. The act’s stellar self-titled album (out now on Star Apple Kingdom) contains boundless hooks and plenty of Beatles-esque psychedelia, and has garnered rave reviews from a plethora of publications such as HARP, Paste, Pop Culture Press, and No Depression. Check out the video for “Dr. No.” here....

Image by LuiSFher Gallo via Cafe Tacvba’s MySpace Cafe TacvbaThursday, December 6La Zona Rosa (612 W. 4th Street)$40, Doors at 7pm, Show at 8pm[info] | [tickets]Pop quiz: name a band that has won multiple Grammys, performed on MTV Unplugged, been compared favorably to Radiohead, played three encores at a recent Lollapalooza, and headlined to 170,000 people at Mexico City's Palacio de los Deportes. If you're thinking U2 or Coldplay, we couldn't blame you. But the......

It's hard to explain in 2007 what it feels like for music to be both uniting and important. Having spent nearly three years of the '90s living in London, it's with honest nostalgia and wonder that we examine Rhino's The Brit Box. The set's mission is rather broad: it attempts to examine the whole of UK indie rock from 1985-1999 and devotes a disc each to '80s indie, shoegaze, Britpop, and the late '90s. One......

Three UT students make national news for getting stuck in local cave. "Well, that's the last time I throw my son a birthday party," said Father. "I'm getting too old for this crap." Radiohead stands to make approximately $9.6 million from sales of their latest record, "In Rainbows." Ex-General who served in Iraq speaks out on the war: "There is no question that America is living a nightmare with no end in sight." Study:......

First things first: we must differentiate between the chutzpah of a band at Radiohead's level of critical distinction and popularity initially releasing their album for donation and making the most revolutionary music industry statement since the dawn of the Internet Age... (big breath) ...and the chutzpah it takes to make truly ground-breaking musical statements. In Rainbows does not employ the latter. Still, one leaves with the impression that the boys from Oxford are convinced that,......

You've probably been bludgeoned to miserable death via hype on this one. Who knows, maybe you even sat motionless and glassy-eyed at your computer, click-clicking your way through the purchase and download process, battling all the while against ever-threatening website overload. Gasp! There's no way in god's green Great Britain that you could pay as much as you want for the new record, is there? Well, yes sir, there is. Radiohead, the mystery marvels......

Welcome to the latest edition of Band Slam!, wherein I navigate the murky waters of Austin's club listings for the best and worst band names playing this week. The only rule: I can't know anything about the actual band, thus limiting my critique strictly to the band's chosen moniker. Let's cook!! Harptallica - Elysium, Friday 10/05 After the Radiohead reggae album, all bets are off as far as taking ultimate creative license with canonized......

Coldplay's Chris Martin recently described Travis as "the band that invented my band and lots of others." That should give most people a solid idea of what to expect when Glasgow's indie-pop quartet stop into Stubb's Thursday night. After debuting with the raucous pub rock album Good Feeling in 1997, the band did an about-face with 1999's The Man Who, a moody, ballad-filled acoustic record produced by Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Beck) that produced several......

Last March, Birmingham, England's Editors made quite an impression on those who attended their packed SXSW showcases. An airtight quartet, the band blazed through their sets with energy and precision. A measured mix of post-punk and UK arena rock, Editors project intensity and a dark mood throughout their recorded output. Their debut album The Back Room went gold and produced four Top 40 singles in the UK, and American hipster mag The Fader liked......

Fridge The Sun (Temporary Residence) Kieran Hebden, Adem and Sam Jeffers have been working hard since 2001's Happiness, though perhaps not with each other. Hebden's Four Tet is almost as prolific as Prefuse spin-offs, and Adem has released one of the greatest folk-pop albums of the decade with Love & Other Planets (2006). Jeffers is no slouch, working hard in the graphic design and web industry, as well as continuing his musical aspirations. As......

Taylor Mills Lullagoodbye (Aquapulse) There’s a new safe word being grunted out of S&M dungeons everywhere, and it is Lullagoodbye. It means slow down, ease up and take fewer risks. Although the album mostly lies within the boundaries of uninspired adult contemporary, at times her voice is filled with smooth, sometimes-sultry melody and a graceful piano whispers like a bedtime story. Then, there’s the added bonus of looking at her staggeringly attractive mug on every......

Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie and Postal Service fame played to a sweaty, sold-out crowd at a sweltering Emo's on Tuesday night. Openers Jonathan Rice and David Bazan (Pedro the Lion) opened the acoustic evening with solid sets and a profuse thanks to Gibbard for giving them the opportunity to tour. Gibbard's set was comprised mostly of Death Cab favorites with a dose of Postal Service thrown in for good measure. In......

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......

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)......

Chris Adams (of Hood) puts forth his first solo effort in the form of Bracken’s We Know About The Need, out now on Anticon. Featuring plenty of lo-fi, down-tempo beats, the album is a montage of assorted sounds, ranging from dub-step to drum n’ bass, mixed and produced every which way. We Know About The Need is equal parts coherence (“Heathens”) and cacophony (“Evil Teeth”), while leaving room for some “normal” standards (“Back On......

Eric Woodruff, formerly of Delay, a space-rock outfit out of Washington, has been churning out material for his new project, Prosser. The final product is a pleasant miasma that's rather hard to classify simply as another offering from a singer-songwriter. He's Matthew Ryan without the gravel and Pinetop Seven without the pathos. Is it alt-country? Is it psych-something? No matter, it doesn't take abbreviated slang music terminology to enjoy the multi-instrumentalist's eponymous debut album.......

Ask any mop-haired kid roaming the UT campus with clingy jeans and just a hint of bong water breath, and said youth will tell you By The End Of Tonight is the hottest thing since Malibu real estate. Lucky for him, and you, they're playing a post-extended-hiatus set at Emo's tonight. The Alvin, TX quartet render layers of messy, metallic instrumental post-rock into songs that meander towards catharsis like a lost baby deer wandering into......

Last weekend was pretty intense show-wise, if you're like us, you're ready to crawl in bed with your headphones and listen to something new from End of an Ear or Waterloo's new release wall. Well, here's what you've got to choose from: The Decemberists The Crane Wife (Capital) Already being described as the album of the year in some circles, Crane Wife marks the Portland-based Decemberists' major label debut with themes familiar to the......

Josh Davis (aka DJ Shadow): began reinventing trip-hop while still in his teens, has amassed the largest collection of vinyl hip-hop in the universe, is buddies with Thom Yorke, and is coming to Austin this Sunday. Stubb's will host the genre-annihilating wunderkind in what is sure to be one of the more eclectic performances of the year. A master of production and musical collage, DJ Shadow has impressed his way into collaborations with the......

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......

Lots of random music news today. Let's get to it before ACL Fest's lineup gets announced on Thursday and we forget about this stuff: - Prefuse 73 has cancelled his Austin appearance later this month due to a serious illness. A note on Prefuse's Myspace page makes it sound as though the health issues are pretty severe. Pitchfork reports that the shows may be rescheduled later this year. - Bloc Party has announced a......

You may have heard that a certain filmmaker is in town for his own personal film fest. Well, he's also making national news, as Quentin Tarantino has reportedly agreed to come on board to direct the new biopic chronicling the life and times of Jimi Hendrix. The film, which has been stalled in development deals for what seems to be ages, has the approval of Hendrix's brother Leon and Jimi's estate. In ACL News......

Jeff Buckley didn't seem to be of this world. And just as soon as he came to be appreciated by it, he was gone. Buckley composed and played some of the most gut-wrenchingly beautiful songs of the past 25 years. He was a raging poet who sang of the beauty and ache of the world with such passion that it is often-times hard to listen to any one of his songs without having every......