1998 - Austin Town Hall

Brand New Music from The Dears

May 16, 2017 nathan.lankford Leave a comment

I still remember seeing the Dears at the Parish in 2009; I remember thinking that no one had owned the stage quite like Murray Lightburn…I still think that to this day. They just released the second single from Times Infinity Volume Two…the companion piece to Volume One that was released in 2015; these songs were recorded in the same session. Despite Lightburn’s claim that these songs were “during an unmistakable sense of unease” you can still hear the band holding onto hope. Even the spirit of the song survives, with an upbeat vibe from the bouncing percussion. Still, the winner will always be Murray’s pipes. Always. Look for the the new LP on July 14th via Dangerbird and Paperbag.

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Fresh Music from Black Twig

January 8, 2016 nathan.lankford Leave a comment

It’s a fresh year, so why not start it off with some fresh tunes from Finland and Black Twig. We’ve enjoyed what this band has had to offer before now, but this might be the best work they’ve completed. There’s a casual approach, just filling the song with these sliding alternative guitar chords that cut through your speakers; it sounds like a modern spin on some of the tunes we got from Teenage Fanclub. Vocals sit perfectly in the mix, providing the perfect emotional draw for listeners…never getting in the way of the instruments. Their third album, Blaze on a Plain, will be released by Soliti in April of this year; sounds like it’s going to be a helluva record.

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Friday Top 5: Music Technologies

February 4, 2011 jon.goodrich 3 comments

1998. The sweet sounds of Savage Garden on the radio. The warm assurance of knowing the stock market will continue to go up forever. A time of wonder. Those memories seem so faint now. After the Y2K epidemic caused our government to collapse and the America’s secret zombie program was inadvertently unleashed, the situation- I think we can admit now- got a little hairy.

For a while there the walking dead feasted on the brains of the living and wrought havoc on everything in their path. But hey, at least American Idol was good. I loved zombie Paula Abdul! Now that I think about it, that may have just been regular Paula Abdul. Those times were great, but I’m glad our benevolent overlord Stephen Colbert was able to defeat the zombie menace and piece together the somewhat functional government we have today. It’s possible I’m not remembering the past correctly. Savage Garden could never have actually been popular. Right?

Luckily, when I’m feel nostalgic for the turn of the century I can just hop in my 1998 automobile. The interior seems modern enough, but if you look just above the CD player you’ll see something mind blowing. It’s what the ancients referred to as a “tape player.” You see, back before music was just a series of 0’s and 1’s being read by a computer, there were these little tapes that held reels, and on those reels there was music. Crazy right? Crazier still, I continue to use this wacky contraption. Only now, I plug my phone (which is really a pocket camera/mp3 player/super computer, WTF!) into a device which goes directly in the tape deck. Then, I hear the music. Glorious music. The faint hiss of the tape deck and music.