1. Good Records Good Mornings w/ DJ CEE PEE (Cavern)
We haven't been to this thing yet, but we're planning on stopping by tonight to see if we like it. The DJ is the manager at Good Records, and from what we gather there are three reasons to give it a shot: 1) his list of bands he likes on his Myspace page 2) free food at midnight 3) what the hell else are you gonna do on Monday night? Sleep?

Maybe we didn't catch it the first time we checked, or maybe they were just added to the list. Either way the Strange Boys are playing SXSW this year. No word as to when or where of course, but we'll let you know as soon as we find out. Good to see that there is at least ONE good Dallas band playing.

Part of the reason this blog was started was to bitch about Dallas and be funny as shit and way cooler than you. Another reason was to learn more about local music, and to see if there were any good bands in Dallas that we didn't know about before. So you'll have to excuse us if you've already heard of Red Monroe. We hadn't until recently, and we actually listened to them for the first time today. The influences are nothing new I guess... Mercury Rev, Echo and the Bunnymen, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Joy Division. But shit, no one in Dallas is referencing these kind of post-punk/goth/ psyche bands and doing it any better than these guys. Before we heard them, we had seen their name around town here and there, so a lot of you might have already heard of them, listened to them, and made up your mind about them. Or maybe not. For those that haven't, take a little journey over to their Myspace page and listen. Fans of the aforementioned bands as well as those that fancy the shoegaze thing will probably dig it. They've got a show on Feb. 11th at the Curtain Club in Dallas and we're going. So should you.

Sounds like something interesting is going on at Rubber Gloves tonight, and it involves a person who has played drums with Neutral Milk Hotel and Broadcast to name a few. We think this means that it will probably be quality. Here is a Myspace message we got about it earlier this evening:

"Jeremy Barnes, who is still perhaps best known as the drummer for Neutral Milk Hotel, has not allowed the grass to grow beneath his feet during that outfit's continuing period of inactivity. After working with his post-NMH group Bablicon, Barnes has seen spot duty with Bright Eyes, the Gerbils, and Broadcast, and for the past few years has apparently been living life as something of an itinerant minstrel.Over the course of his journeys-- in the past year alone he's lived in England, Prague, and New Mexico-- Barnes has accumulated fragments of ethnic folk dialects from seemingly every region on the atlas, and now as ringleader of A Hawk and a Hacksaw he ambitiously attempts to fuse these varied tongues into a unified, coherent vocabulary. Darkness at Noon, the second album from AHAAH, is a frenetic, dizzying pastiche of Eastern European folk, klezmer, mariachi, Appalachian fiddle music, and evocative jazz. And though Barnes and company fail to bring this bewildering array of streams into confluence, the album contains enough flashes of such melodic invention and daredevil instrumentation that armchair travelers can't help but be drawn to the group's exotic scrapbook"

Some short films will also be showing during the performance.

Not much happening tonight. However, there will be short Wild in the Streets Dj set at Hailey's tonight, starting at 1230 and going till 2. There are some bands playing first, and we've never heard of them... so we recommend going to Hailey's for a night cap. See you on the flipsh...

So sorry about all that. We got our virus situation under control. There was something called a Trojan Vundo program that was fucking our shit up hard core. We've got most of the problems fixed, and we're pretty much officially up and running again. We'll do an It List for today, along with maybe another record review or sumpin, and then resume our regular programming on Monday. Thanks for your patience.

JR

I'm using my friend's computer. I have a virus on mine and I can't use it. Things will be up and running on Sunday. No posts until then. Thanks.

Do you want to make a new and better life for yourself? These guys can help. Lets go to the Gap.

1. The Party w/ DJ Nature (Rubber Gloves Denton)
So getting people in Dallas to drive up to Denton is like pulling teeth, but you should really go up to Rubber Gloves some Wed. night and check out DJ nature so you can see what the buzz is about. The guy played with MIA for shit's sake. Nuff said.

2. Faux Fox (Hailey's Denton)
They're opening for Some Girls, which we've never heard, so we recommend stopping by early to catch an interesting local band and then over to Rubber Gloves for drinks and such.

3. 80's Night DJ G (Cavern)

Well... its not very often that a show (especially one on a weeknight) turns out to be everything I hoped for. Akron Family at Andy's in Denton last night was one such rare occasion. Wow. Thats really the only thing I can say, and everyone who was there last night knows exactly what I'm talking about. This actually was one of the best shows I've seen in a very long time. The band's energy was contagious, forcing otherwise stoic hipsters and art majors to jump around, shout, and basically forget that they were supposed to be acting cool. They played songs from both of the albums they put out this year, and the band freely went back and forth between quiet, soulful folk and loud, feedback laced freak out psyche jam sessions with eyes closed and bodies moving, all the time seemingly forgetting that they were the ones onstage playing instruments, lost in a trance of their own creation. And not only could these gentlemen play their instruments, they could fucking SING. All of them. And all of them did sing, seemingly all the time, harmonizing and shouting their way through a set that they described as "folk music," but in truth had about as much in common with Joan Baez as David Bowie does with Bob Dylan.

The truly awe inspiring moment came at the end when all four band members jumped off stage, went into the crowd, and closed the set with a chanting and dancing circle, repeating the mantra "Love and space" while they sang, played guitar and watched the crown around them completely loose themselves in the moment. It was a joyful, surreal, and transcendent experience, and one that left a huge smile on just about every face in the room including mine. If you hadn't seem them play on the stage, you wouldn't have been able to tell who was in the band and who was a fan, as everyone seemed to be contributing to the finale with singing, shouting, stomping or clapping along. Not to sound like some goddamn hippie but it was truly an experience, an event, a happening. It was more than you would ever expect from a hip, pitchfork approved Brooklyn band, having much more to do with 1967 than 1977 without going anywhere close to lame jam band or hippie revivalist territory. And if you can't dig that, man, well I really just feel sorry for you.

So what in the name of fuck is up with the Dallas Music Fest (just look at all these awesome bands like Drowning Pool!)? Maybe there are some good bands playing that we don't know about, but other than Eat Avery's Bones we didn't recognize a single one that we like. As if Deep Ellum didn't have a bad enough rap as it is, these people had to go and schedule a frat boy Nu Metal daterape crapfest right in the heart of a neighborhood that doesn't need any more shit than it already has. So instead of putting in the work and listening to these bands to figure out if any are actually worth going to see, we've decided to go through the list of performers and decide what some of them probably sound like anyway, without the whole listening to them thing. Here are some thoughts:

1. Deus Ex Machina: The lead singer got kicked out of UNT, where he majored in literature and Chillin', after they found out he cheated on his SAT. He quoted some greek drama one time at a party and got a hand job, so he was like "fuck it dude, I'm startin a band. Dues Ex Machina forever motherfucker!"

2. Strangleweed: These guys will kick your ass if you short them on a sack

3. Shiver Tree: Have you ever thought about seasons, and how they affect your feelings? These guys have

4. Shallow Promise: The best way to deal with the memory of that really horrible time in your life where your dad made you transfer to Plano West from Plano Senior is to SCREAM ABOUT IT AND PLAY POWER CHORDS!

5. Chasing February: These guys... oh, fuck it. Emo bands are too easy.

JR

So these guys (and girl) are young (like not old enough to drink, and one isn't old enough to vote), and the recording quality on this track leaves something to be desired since its really just a demo. But its a fun song, and it reminds us a little of The Fall if they all took speed and were fronted by Milo from the Descendents. Fans of the Mae Shi will probably dig this. Listen to it a couple times.... its only like a minute long anyway, and you'll realize that EAB are a young Denton band with some promise.

Here it is: "Sweater Petter"

1. Akron Family (Andy's Denton)
We've written about these guys like a hundred times in the past few weeks. Here is one example. We're going to try our best to make it out there tonight, but Denton is a long way from home... again if anyone is going to the show and wants to take pictures for us, let us know.

2. Lost Generation with DJ Mwanza (Cavern)
If you're gonna stay in Dallas and want to hear good music that you really won't hear anywhere else, head to the Cavern tonight and make Tuesday the new Thursday.

So we know that Gorilla vs Bear already posted one of these tracks, but Jade Tree sent this to us and we like it, so we're posting it too. The album is called Rocinate and the song is called "Valencia's Dying Dream," and its comes out today. The press release says that they sound like Brian Eno, Talk Talk, and The Notwist, but somehow fails to mention the Beta Band, which we think is the closest comparison. And also, at least one of the band members appears to be from Oklahoma, which is like North Texas minus the literacy. So theres your relevancy, jerk.

MP3

So doing some background research for this review has inevitably led me to Prefix Mag, and I've noticed that whoever reviewed this record for them referred to it as a "Pop Masterpiece." A few minutes before this, I was over at Pitchfork where I read their reviewer's proclamation that some of the songs on Feels remind him of Buddy Holly. I might agree with these statements if I heard them at a dinner party and either didn't have time to think about them or wasn't really listening in the first place, but I'm not at a dinner party. Instead I'm sitting in my room listening to Feels on headphones as I read reviews (and now begin to type this one), and I have to say that listening to this album is in no way, shape or form like listening to a "Pop Masterpiece."

Sure, Feels is poppier than anything else Animal Collective has ever done. But thats mostly because of the first two songs. Yes, you can hear the Beach Boys influence in "Did You See the Words." But thats more or less the only song on the record that sounds in any way like traditional pop rock. Of course, "Turns Into Something" sort of sounds like a number from some musical that you would never see. But its comes off like it was written by Ken Kesey and performed by the Merry Pranksters. And ok, "Bees" sounds a little like Everything Must Pass era George Harrison, but it really sounds like a George Harrison song being covered by Jandek. And thats why its good. And thats why Animal Collective is good. At its core this music is floating, ethereal, and spacey experimental soundscape with a slight pinch of post punk self awareness added in so that you know these guys aren't a bunch of jackasses from the UNT jazz program or something. Theres also a slight pinch of 60's sunshine psyche pop. But its slight.

This is what keeps Animal Collective from being just another indie rock band while also keeping them out of the "difficult listen, over your head" category. Rarely does a record full of songs with such strange structures (or lack thereof), and an almost complete lack of choruses get itself so thoroughly stuck in your head. And rarely does a record that can be so catchy at times also challenge the listener as often as Feels does. Its a balance that few bands ever even think about, and one that is certainly hard to maintain. The little touches of pop in Feels keep you coming back for more, but the healthy helping of avant garde keeps you interested, and even dares you to finally go listen to that Jandek record that you're never been able to sit through.