Music Stories [BLEARY-EYED ROCK] It’s 5 am on election night, and Ryan Barber is just getting home from his job as sound guy at Kelly’s Olympian. The presidential race was called hours ago, and the Pony V   More

Music When Austin City Limits Music Festival began in 2002, it lasted two days and attracted close to 40,000 fans. Wilco, Shawn Colvin and hometown guitar hero Gary Clark Jr. occupied a bill of 70-some acts. Clark, responsible for this year’s most memorable set, was just a high-schooler, eager to play on a big stage in a festival with an unpredict...   More

Album Reviews [BEDROOM FOLK] There’s a sense of quiet Western solitude in Cait Olds’ work. The Portland-via-California songwriter recorded full-length debut Prison City at Materials to Outlet, Jake Kelly’s    More

Album Reviews [PARENTAL PUNK] Collaboration cures what ails you. Corin Tucker took this for granted in the immediate wake of Sleater-Kinney’s breakup, evidenced by the Portlander’s introverted approach on   More

Music Yeasayer at the Crystal Ballroom, August 31, 2012
In all honesty, the fans were wrong: Daughn Gibson doesn’t sound like Crash Test Dummies. He also doesn’t sound quite like the National. Instead, the former drug-rock artist is a sophisticated collage artist, one who prefers unlikely merges—namely, R&B with twang.

Yes, he s...   More

Music Two weeks ago, I knew nothing about Bubu music. In fact, I still no very little. My depiction of the West African sound was a generalized and largely Americanized one, influenced by the likes of Dirty Projectors’ David Longstreth, Paul Simon, and the Very Best. Sure, there is common ground shared by these domestic acts with Sierra Leone’s Janka Nabay, but the differences between the two are gr...   More

Top 5 Replacements tribute (Star Theater, Wednesday)Chase a screening of the excellent Color Me Obsessed with a musical tribute to the band that made rock ’n’ roll cool again.Joey Porter does Sly and th   More

Music He’s been all over the radio dial lately, fitting because that’s the format his early '60s-era sound used to break through. He’s also spilling a rare and succinct batch of retro rock ‘n’ roll that’s not just turning heads, but affixing them to his every move. But that’s not why I visited the Bunk Bar Saturday night. My interest resided in that howling, ever-eccentric, Little Richar...   More

Music Co-founder of late-'70s Australian band the Go-Betweens, Robert Forster knows a thing or two about independent rock. Here is his description of UK breakout band Allo Darlin’, something I understand fully after seeing the quartet live: “The music they make is indie pop, a simple label but one hard to pin down in an ever-expanding indie scene that gobbles up genres and spits out mutations at a ...   More

Music MIraculously, the days are only getting hotter. The car is telling us that it’s 113 degrees in Palm Springs, just before noon on Sunday. The car is probably wrong, calibrated incorrectly from the get-go, but it doesn’t matter. People aren’t even going to church, and people love them some church. The Coachella crowd has acclimated by now. Parking lots are completely full and it’s the bigge...   More