Explosives-Three Ring Circus: Power pop before power pop was cool.  Wandering onto the Austin scene in 1979 at the legendary Raul’s Club. Freddie Steady Krc, Cam King, and Waller Collie all wrote and all played with a tight urgency that lacked the rage of the musical contemporaries but maintained the gloriously jangly garage rhythm and melody inspired by Beatles, Stones and other musical heroes. Their new album includes the entirety of their 1982, Restless Natives, along with all other official Explosives studio releases, plus two live bonus tracks and a bonus DVD capturing the band in its garage rock jungle glory. 4.5 McRipock’s.

www.myspace.com/explosivesaustin Read the rest of this entry »

Flatcar Rattlers–Which side Are You On?: A rowdy bluegrass band with a touch of Grime mixes up rootsy, backwoods Appalachia with fast punk rock to create a sound all their own. With six members form six states, they eventually made the journey to Austin and became ranked as one of the top ten Best New Bands and Best Bluegrass Banks per the Austin Chronicle’s 2008-2009 Music Poll. They released their first studio album on 11/28 at the Scoot Inn with appearances including the Lonesome Heroes, American Graveyard and The Bread. The Rattlers take hold of the listener and stick them on a ride that blows right off the tracks. 6.0 McRiprock’s. www.myspace.com/FlatCarRattlers.
Dertybird--Pure Analog: Cultivating thier mix of Muscle Shoals Soul and Hill Country/Swamp Blues into a new blend of Southern Vinyl Rock. The release of this album is a fresh starting point for the band, after releasing a self-titled EP and a regional tour. The album allows for a stronger foothold and step forward to building thier fan base. Dertybird is Clayton Colvin and JT Holt. They fuse Clayton’s soulful, honest MuscleShoals influence with JT’s raw, gut-bucket guitar riffs. Trademarked by solid, gutsy vocals with tight arrangments and a tasteful Southern Rock sound with searing slide guitar they began to march their way to branding themselves in markets throughout the South. The alubm was recorded to a 2″ tape and mixed live at NestRecording in South Austin. They hoped to give the listener an “in the room” sound and experience so the bass, drums and rhythm guitar were cut live in one session. The most radio-friendly tune on the album is “People Change,” however other tracks have impressive hooks and arrangements. Read the rest of this entry »

Rick Poss & Folk Medicine—From Greenville to Clarksville:  Born in Greenville, TX and raised in Bryan, Poss cut his teeth listening to Texas Blues legends Mance Lipscomb, Lightin’ Hopkins, Freddie King, Albert Collins, “Gatemouth” Brown and others. He says, “I used to sneak in Liberty Hall in Houston and check out every blues-slinger that came through there—Learned an awful lot from them all.”  He became a regular visitor to the Mance Lipscomb home after catching a monthly coffeehouse gig that Lipscomb did in Bryan.  He recorded from From Greenville to Clarksville at Allan Gill’s East Studio in Austin. The players are all good friends and longtime music associates including Rick Richards, David Carroll, Alan Reizner, Glover Gill, Mike Reynolds and Allan Gills. The recording has a live feel and almost all the songs are inspired by novels and movies from Depression-era America. www.rickposs.com.  5.0 McRiprock’s.

Zane Williams–The Right Place: A self-described “late bloomer,” Williams admits, that after moving to Nashville in 1999 it took him nine years to find his musical soul and sound. And it sounded a whole lot like Texas. Williams honed his songwriting and performing skills on the road at over 500 colleges nationwide and claimed top honors from the John Lennon and Nashville Songwriter’s Association song contests. Now residing in McKinney, TX, he brought on board writer/producer Radney Foster to record this album. www.myspace.com/zanewillaims

4.0 McRiprock’s

Darling New Neighbors—Rocket: Eclectic without being diluted and genre-mixing without getting lost, Darling New Neighbors create a sound with compositions that fall fast and loose playing along the soft-hard smash like The Pixies and lo-fi contemporaries, the Vivian Girls. Read the rest of this entry »

The Shondes—The Red Sea: Formed in 2006 after violinist Elijah Oberman and bassist Louisa Rachel Solomon’s former band broke up, they recruited guitarist and friend Ian Brannigan while the three attended The New School in NYC. Read the rest of this entry »

Chris Marshall—EP Starting Out: Chris Marshall describes his music as “uniquely American.” Hailing from Portland, OR he his newest release was put out on August 11, 2009. He likens his influences to the sounds of Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash in the spirit of Elvis with poetic and literary influence such as Walt Whitman C.S. Lewis and Soren Kierkegaard which infuse throughout the songwriting on this EP. Read the rest of this entry »

Monument to No One—Self Titled: A local alternative rock band, heavily influence by the mid-90’s space rock of Hum and Failure, this band combines the psychedelic guitar arrangements reminiscent of the early Smashing Pumpkins with the edgy melodic grooves of grunge-era area rock. Read the rest of this entry »

The New Time—An Incomplete History: John Davidson, a native Alaskan took the jump and settled in Philly in 2007. Before getting to the Big Philly he spent some time in PA taking up the night shift at the local newspaper in the heart of PA’s former coal belt. Between writing stories that were often heart breaking, Davidson met sports editor and accordionist Joe Petrucci and the two began playing at a local tavern where they met Matt Guza, a washboard player and multi-instrumentalist, eventually all moving to Philly. Read the rest of this entry »

The Wiyos—Broken Land Bell: The Wiyos own a signature sound and it’s that of a 1920s-1930s country blues, western swing and experimental pop blend. Not only that, but they include the sounds of NYC beat boxer Adam Matta and the talents of circus and theater composer Sxip Shirley, so really, when it comes down to it, the album includes the warm sounds of all the touch-points of America’s musical history. Read the rest of this entry »

Quiet Company—Everyone You Love Will Be Happy Soon: With Taylor Muse on vocals and piano, guitars, organs, synthesizers, glockenspiel, harmonica, banjo, and percussion,Tommy Blank on guitars, electric piano, organs, synthesizers, glockenspiel, vocals and melodica, Matt Parmenter on bass, vocals, piano, and Jeff Weathers on drums Quiet Company is complete. Read the rest of this entry »

14. Lee Fields and the Expressions—My World: Dust off your soul shoes because you’re about to get slapped in the face with some. Four years in the making and My World finally surfaces.  Lee Fields is 100% pasteurized, cold on ice, but easy to drink heated up soul. And he sings it. The funk and soul community gave Fields the honorary “legendary” status due to his solid series of soul, rare 7’ singles (and one LP) recorded and released on his own labels in the 1970s. Truth & Soul, a New York label/production group decided to showcase his talents with a brand new album of deep beating soul ballads that will show those that believe in soul what soul really is. Truth & Soul rose from South Fire’s ashes in 2004 and the label wanted to record a soul record modeled after the perfect funk and soul of bands like The Moments, The Delfonics, and the Stylistics had created, but with a more modern twist. Lee Fields and the Expressions have created a unique and personal sound that holds a candle to the bands that they set out to emulate, however, they’ve created in the process, a sound that goes way beyond carbon copying music from the 70s. Although the formula may have remained the same, the style has been adapted a bit for younger ears whose debut to soul began with one Ms. Winehouse instead of Otis. With the original “James Brown” sound, and thirty years of retrospection that has colored this cross-generational melding of the odds, it comes out classic to produce an album of damn straight soul music with one of the legends who made it all possible. www.myspace.com/leefields Read the rest of this entry »

McRiprock’s 20 Albums You Don’t Want to Miss II (albums eight through thirteen)

This is a Top Twenty list of my (and Dud’s) favorite albums of late 2008-2009 that shouldn’t be missed—Austinites and beyond. You don’t like them? I don’t give a shit. I’m just giving you some suggestions. Why the change in format? Well, CD submissions have been slow, so send your music in, put a stamp on it, address it to us and watch your review get posted on AD, bitches. Simple, really. So to fill the time, here’s some albums that were and were not reviewed that should definitely be on your “to buy” or at least “to listen” or maybe even if you’re lucky “to go see” list. They are all badass and in no particular order. This is the second installment list. Two down, one to go. Look for last week’s post for the first seven on the Top Twenty list. Sound good? Fuck yeah it does. Read the rest of this entry »

McRiprock’s Twenty Albums You Don’t Want to Miss I (albums one-seven)

Don’t worry, I’m not doing a Michael Jackson tribute here, as much as his shit rocked, he didn’t make the Top Twenty. This is a Top Twenty list of my (and Dud’s) favorite albums of late 2008-2009 that shouldn’t be missed—Austinites and beyond. You don’t like them? I don’t give a shit. I’m just giving you some suggestions. Why the change in format? Well, CD submissions have been slow– so send your music in, put a stamp on it, address it to us and watch your review get posted on AD, bitches. Simple, really. So to fill the time, here’s some albums that were and were not reviewed that should definitely be on your “to buy” or at least “to listen” or maybe even if you’re lucky “to go see” list.

They are all badass and in no particular order. We’ll start with the first seven on the Top Twenty list and next week post another group. Sound good? You bet. Read the rest of this entry »

Flounders Without Eyes—What’s the Rush: Flounders has six singers and songwriters who contribute to the album and take it far past its jam band genre. Read the rest of this entry »

The Invincible Czars–Fortissimo: Austin’s “everything and the kitchen sink” rockers have become known for projects as outrageous as their name would suggest. Read the rest of this entry »

High Ceiling—Illusions: High Ceiling fuses the classic Roots, Rock and Reggae sound of groups like Easy Star Allstars or UB40 with unpredictable instrumental jam band tangents similar to bands like Tea Leaf Green. Read the rest of this entry »

Phil Lee–So Long, It’s Been Good To Know You: Nashville singer, songwriter releases his first solo album departing from the Mighty King of Love. Read the rest of this entry »

Jeremy Nail and The Incidents–Self-Titled: Heart on your sleeve rock and roll meets Americana. Based in Austin, they celebrated their release of their self-titled EP on Saturday, May 22nd at the Belmont. Read the rest of this entry »

La Snacks–Newfangled: La Snacks got its start in the good ol’ town of Beaumont, TX under a different name with a more punkish sound with front man Robert Segovia pushing schoolmates to accompany him on stage and get loud. Read the rest of this entry »

by Bree Perlman

$200 million was spent on Terminator Salvation. They should have fed Africa. This was a story that did not need to be told, and with its shoddy execution, weak plot, and down right bad acting, should never have been. The entire thing seems like an afterthought, an appendix to the several video games available on the website (which also seem to have more personality), and the endless marketing opportunities that surround a painful bastardization of the original machines vs. man cult classic.

The film starts off with a ridiculously convoluted subplot that threatens to suck out all important substances from your brain. Never mind, you do your best to pay attention and make sense of it all until you realize about 30 minutes in that it really doesn’t matter either way and in fact, the possibility of a Muppet mating with Barney while eating their curds and whey and waiting for that cute little spider thing to come along would have been just as plausible a scenario to get the this movie rolling. And by rolling, I mean getting to the part where-we-can-spend-our-overblown-budget-on-blowing-shit-up. Which, after the initial set up, is pretty much all that happens and goes something like this: 2 lines of wooden, nonsensical dialogue, 10 minute blow shit up sequence, music swell, and repeat. The special effects are admittedly “cool as hell” (my inner preteen’s words). Creatively choreographed action scenes will have you jumping out of your seat. More than once I felt compelled to double check and make sure someone hadn’t slipped me those blue and red cardboard glasses as I dodged left and right to avoid the giant pieces of metal coming straight for me. Now if only the actors plodding mindlessly through their scenes could have demonstrated even a hint of that kind of animation. A particularly disappointing Blair Williams (played by Moon Bloodgood), dressed in Urban Outfitters-esque jewelry (one of several styling missteps, Markus’s “distressed” t-shirt being another) and perfect white teeth, is of little more use to the Resistance than those talking Mannequins in the Old Navy commercials. Linda Hamilton she is not, as she mutters something about kicking ass, right before the three slovenly men the threat was intended for overtake her in what appears to be the beginning of a gang rape.

“I’ll be Back” (please, don’t bother). “Come with me if you want to live” (I hoped they wouldn’t) and a naked rubbery -looking computer-engineered Arnold (unintended comic genius) are all hard evidence that this is in fact related to the original, but their haphazard delivery and random existence had many exasperated audience members glancing at each other with the same helpless WTF? expression on their faces. If this is the best the Terminator franchise has to offer, I’m rooting for the machines.