Most Popular
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Barack Obama and Me
It was the year 2000 and I was a young hungry reporter in Chicago covering a young hungry state legislator
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Mescaline on the Mexican Border
Texas is the only state in the country where peyote is sold legally. Really.
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A Prison Cover-up During Hurricane Rita
For days after the storm, inmates in Beaumont lived without A/C, electricity or hot meals. Press releases kept saying everything inside was fine. Guards and prisoners agree — that was nothing but B.S.
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Little Bitty Burger Barn
"It's okay to be little bitty in the big city" is an apt slogan for this new burger joint, where sliders rule
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Ghost Town CFS: Carriage House Cafe
Step back in time — to a spooky old carriage barn with a monster chicken-fried steak
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Barack Obama and Me (253)
It was the year 2000 and I was a young hungry reporter in Chicago covering a young hungry state legislator
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A Prison Cover-up During Hurricane Rita (21)
For days after the storm, inmates in Beaumont lived without A/C, electricity or hot meals. Press releases kept saying everything inside was fine. Guards and prisoners agree — that was nothing but B.S.
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Save Lobo: A Siberian Husky Mix is Sentenced to Die (28)
Why? Because he's big and intimidating and because one family complained about him over and over again
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Are You Hot Enough for Citizen Lounge? (7)
All This Useless Beauty
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HoustonHipHop.com Relaunch Party (5)
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Are You Hot Enough for Citizen Lounge?
All This Useless Beauty
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Tired of the Hype, But That's All There Is
Next month, Houston gets to be a cool kid. But only for a week.
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The improbable redemption of Ashlee Simpson
"La La" Love You
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Rap's Rapidly Vanishing Female MC
The Why Chromosome
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A New Official State Song for Texas?
A case for a new — or different, anyway — state song
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Over the Weekend: Fotos, Dogs and Sausage. And Hannah Montana Too.
08:50AM 03/10/08 -
SXSW from A to Z
01:53AM 03/12/08 -
Spring Training: Draft Dennis Quaid!
02:04AM 03/12/08 -
Jameson’s Rarest Vintage Reserve at $250 a Bottle
12:20PM 03/11/08
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Recent Articles By Scott Faingold
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Tapes 'N Tapes
Q&A with Josh Grier
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Bill Callahan
Bill Callahan will perform on Wednesday, April 18, at the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art, 2402 Munger, 713-926-6368.
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Trans Am
Trans Am will perform on Sunday, April 15, at the Engine Room, 1515 Pease, 713-654-7846.
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Nick Cave
CD Review
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The Red Crayola
Soldier-Talk
National Features
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SF Weekly
The Candidate
Our columnist knows Ralph Nader's running mate all too well.
By Matt Smith -
The Pitch
How Not To Be a Rap Star
First of all, lay off the Ecstasy.
By Nadia Pflaum -
Village Voice
Project Runaway
What becomes a gossip columnist most?
By Michael Musto
It's been more than ten years since the release of Austin music scene vet Kathy McCarty's first solo disc. That CD, Dead Dog's Eyeball, consisted entirely of clever, heartfelt, shiny arrangements of songs written by legendary oddball Austin popsmith Daniel Johnston. The record did quite a bit to raise Johnston's songwriting stock and was itself a dry run for the recent celebrity-studded Discovered Covered Johnston tribute, but McCarty effectively disappeared from the face of the musical earth afterward. Until now.
Eyeball fans and folks who remember McCarty's fab late-'80s art-rock bar band Glass Eye have reason to rejoice with the release of Another Day in the Sun, stuffed as it is with more cleverness, more heartfeltness and more shininess (if a bit less oddballery) than its predecessor. The mood of the songs shifts constantly, from the atmospheric lament of "Obelisk" to the slamming rocker "Basement" to the pastoral, upbeat "Skylarking." Throughout, McCarty's voice soars. There's no other singer like her in rock, and with her thorough blending of technical control and piercing emotion, it would likely be a pleasure to listen to her sing the phone book (or the DSM-IV).
Fortunately, she doesn't have to, and the new CD is as notable for its stockpile of lyrical images as for its sound. McCarty's words range from the ethereal ("the quality of light is one I hardly ever knew / paler than champagne and colder than the moon") to the matter-of-factly cruel ("like a bird into a mirror, mistaking the mirror for the sky / the bird will not recover and the mirror is shattered besides"). The music and the wisdom throughout Another Day certainly seem hard-won, but the spoils are all set to go to anyone who takes the time to listen.
