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Dive Bars
A handcrafted tour of the best, most obscure places to lean on a stool in Houston.
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Getting Off
Attorney Tyler Flood says he wins 80 percent of his clients' DWI trials, even if they were 100 percent drunk as a skunk.
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Ghost Riders
In Houston, bicycling is known as a killer sport.
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Houston's Choice for Mayor
Black Guy, Rich White Guy, Lesbian or Hispanic Republican
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Burgers and Hash
Lola, a modern diner in the Heights is dishing up some top-notch Texas short-order cooking.
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BBQ Buffet
Korea Garden Grille offers a stellar selection of barbecue items in unlimited quantities — and new and interesting ways to eat them.
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Looking for a Bull Market
Killen's Steakhouse in suburban Pearland is probably best during boom times.
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Dive Bars
A handcrafted tour of the best, most obscure places to lean on a stool in Houston.
-
Burgers and Hash
Lola, a modern diner in the Heights is dishing up some top-notch Texas short-order cooking.
-
Houston's Choice for Mayor
Black Guy, Rich White Guy, Lesbian or Hispanic Republican
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Hayes Carll
Published on April 08, 2008 at 12:18pm
I suspect there is a contingent that will howl long and loud that Hayes Carll's third album (and first on the Lost Highway label) is too slick, too Nashville, not raw enough. In their way they will be right, but I don't want to get into that argument. To these ears, Carll and producer Brad Jones have done exactly what the label hired them to do: point a musical arrow at the sweet spot core of Carll's audience and let the ripples work their way out from there. Carll dances with what brung him here: his above-average sense of humor, a respect for the raggedness of the minstrel life and a love for poets like van Zandt, Clark and Eaglesmith. "Bad Liver and a Broken Heart" is as roadhouse Texas country as it gets, "Willing to Love Again" will be played at weddings for years to come, and "She Left Me For Jesus," which the edgiest alternative radio stations are going to play like an advertisement for the Second Coming, swerves dangerously across the line between irony and blasphemy like a drunk at the wheel of a Greyhound bus (and Carll's attitude says, "If you don't get it, screw you"). It's a no-brainer why Jones and Carll recut "It's a Shame" with a more commercial country sound: some Nashville heavyweight is eventually going to cut that song. Folks who didn't like or get Carll before aren't likely to be convinced by this record, but people who dig his sense of humor and his plaintive "why me" vocals are gonna play the hell out of it whether the critics like it or not.
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