Results tagged “shadowstags”

Mike Booher looks like a rock star until he smiles. Tall and lanky, shaggy black hair, smoking a cigarette outside his practice room, he is a throwback to the Ramones. Then he grins, waves, and he’s the friendly guy everyone loves. Who just happens to be the front man for Austin’s much-hyped Zykos.

* Image from www.damienjurado.com

, rather (because up until we did this brief write-up, we didn’t care what they looked like, but they look really bookish, as expected). The music is what piqued our curiosity. They have a sound that harkens back to when MTV was new, confused, unfocused, and absolutely brilliant with unchecked creative energy. Even if the songs had no real substance to them (chicks, being broke, young life, drugs, whipping it, whatever Men at Work were trying to do). Plus, they sport patched-elbow tweed jackets and irreverent facial hair. And as played out as that is for some bands, these guys appear to pull it off. Proper.

Back when we lived up in Nueva York, we kept hearing about these crazy “Gypsy-Punk” assholes who appeared out of nowhere, presumably from the general vicinity of The Ukraine. Their shows were rumored to be complete sweat-fests of insane, mobish crowds that moved to the circus-like music with a singular, beast-like quality. Their singer, reputed to have some Brian Jones sort of charm over the masses, moved from song to song in a live show,...

Scott Biram is like Tom Waits in a meshback with lots of side-story between songs and a gruff whisky slur. Hold up. That’s really just Tom Waits in a meshback. Except Tom Waits never got hit head-on by an 18-wheeler at highway speed. Biram’s an Austin native who goes solo on the stage, where he spins grim yarns of lost lust/love, fumbling with the evils of humanity, and chasing the desire to do whatever the...

Hello Forward Russia! [Forgive us for not doing the Spanish exclamations on that one, even though it's part of their shtick, but we don’t know the “special keys” for that, so okay then.] Coming straight out of Leeds and kicking ass since 2004, this quatro has a reputation for stirring the shit and getting the monkeys to stop holding up the wall. We're going to take the lame route and just start naming other bands...

* Image from theowls.net/press.htm

* Image from www.healthywhitebaby.net

One of our favorite parts of SXSW Music last year was only tangentially related to the thousand-plus bands in town -- it was Flatstock 6, a three-day gigposter show over at the Austin Convention Center that featured some of the world's most talented screen printers (we snagged a limited-edition print of the cover of Michael Chabon's The Final Solution, as well as some classic Flaming Lips show posters). And this South by, they're coming...

A few weeks ago, local bands and filmmakers were asked to submit their music videos for consideration in this year's inaugural Texas Indie Music Video Festival. Tonight the selected works are being shown at the Drafthouse Downtown, brought to us by End of an Ear and Emo's. The list of chosen videos includes some of our favorite regional acts, including now-defunct Canoe, Peter & the Wolf, and Okkervil River. Check the full listing after...