Animal Collective

The Five Best Songs That Sample the Beatles

Pop and R&B superstar Frank Ocean has recently opened up to MTV News that he's been on a Beatles and Beach Boys binge when seeking inspiration for his upcoming second full-length record. While it's not exactly surprising to hear of a young artist gorging himself on Beatles classics for ideas, it is ... More >>

Top 10 Educated Guesses for Free Press Summer Fest

Tomorrow, we will know who will be playing the fifth annual Free Press Summer Fest June 1 and 2 in Eleanor Tinsley Park. We know this because Monday, our rivals over at the Houston Chronicle revealed that they will have an exclusive announcement of the FPSF lineup sometime Thursday, thanks to what w ... More >>

Craig Hlavaty's 10 Best Houston Albums of 2012

It's that time of year -- or at least it has been since, like, November -- for rock writers to show everyone else how cool they think they are with their year-end best-of lists. How obscure can you get? How controversial can you be with your choices? "If only Honey Boo Boo released album that I co ... More >>

Paul McCartney's Wonderful, Bizarre McCartney II

10 Totally Played Out Wedding Songs That Will Still Pack the Dance Floor at Your Reception

Years ago, a wedding planner told me the basis of a successful wedding is remembering that primarily the ceremony is for the bride, the food is for the groom, the photos are for the family and the music is for the friends. While not 100 percent accurate, it does form the basis of a pretty successful ... More >>

Catching Up With Austin Smith of A Sea Es

Tonight at 9 p.m., Fitzgerald's begins your torrid, drunken Halloween weekend with a free show featuring A Sea Es, Mystery Flavor, Poor Pilate and Candy Coated Mothership. Free for those of drinking age, that is. There will also be a $500 costume contest, great giveaways and, you know, tacos. Head ... More >>

Zach Adams of The Pass & Provisions on Switchblade Swizzles

This week we asked readers who they'd like to see profiled in upcoming editions of Bartender Chat. Zach Adams was not only mentioned multiple times, he also happens to be working behind the bar at The Pass & Provisions, which just opened. A new chef-driven concept from Seth Siegel-Gardner and Terren ... More >>

A July 4 Playlist That Goes Boom!

July 4 is truly America's national holiday, because it combines two of the country's grandest traditions: Taking the day off work and blowing shit up. Because freedom isn't free, fireworks and other explosives are embedded in America's formative myths and our national character. Also, they're pretty ... More >>

A Sea Es

Deep Thoughts

Benjamin Wesley follows a gig with the renowned Jandek with his own CD release.

In Prog We Trust: Five Progressive Rock Bands You Hate, But Shouldn't

There are some forms of music that struggle to find critical acclaim while others are loved by critics but universally dismissed by the public. Then, there is another group that, despite a loyal and sometimes massive cult following, are disliked by critics and everyday music fans alike. Meet prog-r ... More >>

Gang Gang Dance

2 Become 1: Musical Match-Ups We'd Like To See

​Kanye "Hitler" West and Jay-Z released their (overused music writer word alert) epic Watch the Throne album this week, to mostly great reviews. This fall the first fruits from the recently announced Lou Reed/Metallica collaboration should be on the store shelves, which still sorta weirds us o ... More >>

Who Will Write The First "Osama Is Dead" Hit Song?

​Now that more details are starting to emerge about Sunday's Navy SEAL helicopter raid that resulted in the death of Osama Bin Laden and several members of the al-Qaeda jefe's entourage - especially how the months-long planning and 40-minute firefight was planned in total secrecy, and executed ... More >>

SXSW: Hunx Shows Off His Junk At Red 7

Craig Hlavaty​It's a proud day when we can write a headline like that, especially for a band as fun as Hunx & His Punx, who played a cherry mid-evening set as Red 7 on Saturday night. During a SXSW so far which has seen us walk out of many venues after hearing way too many Vampire Weekend and ... More >>

Kids These Days...

Rocks Off is following our sister Houston Press blogs into the choppy waters of "Comment of the Day," choosing a comment or a handful of comments from the previous day we find especially enlightening, infuriating or just plain hilarious. We're glad our readers have opinions, whatever they are, about ... More >>

Backmasking Bieber, Black Keys, Kanye, Etc.: What Do You Hear?

​"It's my sweet Satan ... Oh I will sing because I live with Satan." "Turn me on, dead man." "Turned out nice again." "Eat donkey crap." Every since the beginning of rock and roll, listeners and disgruntled parents alike have been searching for hidden meanings in music. Was Paul dead, w ... More >>

Start Wearing Purple: No Bullies Allowed

​Bullies suck. Growing up, Craig's Hlist watched a lot of kids in school getting the brunt of the, quote-unquote, "cooler" people giving them hell for being big, gay, handicapped or just smart. They would start fights, make up songs or stories about them, or find ways to embarrass them in fr ... More >>

FAIL: ABBA, Animal Collective, Diddy, Pete Doherty

Photo illustrations by John Seaborn Gray​Hooray! Now Your Feet Are Boring, Too!: A clothing designer called Keep took a whole bunch of ecstasy (probably) and then invited Animal Collective's Avery Tare to design some shoes for them. By "design," we of course mean "scribble on some plain beige ... More >>

Will The Real Fun Fun Fun Fest Lineup Please Stand Up?

Marc BrubakerMetallagher at Fun Fun Fest 2009​Lots of late-night intrigue in the Twitterverse, as anticipation for the announcement of the lineup for Fun Fun Fun Fest 2010 builds to a boil. Late Wednesday, Austin blog Party Ends published a list including Animal Collective, Gang Gang Dance, Ga ... More >>

The 7 Most Polarizing Albums In Recent Memory

​This Monday night, MGMT hits the House Of Blues behind new album Congratulations, which has been getting one of the most tepid responses for a new album by a buzz band in recent media memory. The people that jumped on the bandwagon in 2008 after the Brooklyn-based then-duo released Oracular Spect ... More >>

Solange Knowles Admits She's A "Blipster"

​ As a white thirtysomething male who digs Merle Haggard, Al Green and Skynyrd, Rocks Off is well aware our hipster cred is pretty much in the toilet. Even the bands we do like that were once considered at least kinda "cool" - Wilco, Spoon, Phoenix - now share air time with Jack Johnson and the Da ... More >>

He Said She Said: 10 Artists Who Never Got Their Due

In the course of music history, some bands get that extra push by pop culture and become uber-iconic, while others, though just as deserving, go largely unnoticed except by those who choose to dig even deeper. For every Elvis Presley, there is a seedier Carl Perkins off to the side. David Bowie get ... More >>

Rocks Off's 2010 Predictions: The Fate of Owl City, Chingo Bling vs. Chamillionaire, the Next Twilight Soundtrack and Madchester In Katy

www.flickr.com/photos/dherholz/​ Adam Young of Owl City will mystify the scientific community, yet surprise no one in the music community, when he is hacked in half in a freak sawmill accident, and it's discovered he is filled with gummi bears. The Arcade Fire/Flaming Lips feud is resolved when ... More >>

Previewing the Year Ahead In Local Releases

​ 2010 looks like it's going to be a banner year for music in general. We can look forward to a new Arcade Fire opus, another Spoon outing, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and a Beach House record that is already getting Animal Collective-like buzz. Rocks Off is chomping a ... More >>

Critiquing the Critics

Readers disagree with our statement that the AP's rock critics are assholes.

Uprising

2009 wasn't a great year for albums, but songs were a different story.

The AP's Year-End Album List Proves What We Already Knew: Rock Critics Are Assholes

​Rocks Off has previously lamented the dearth of critically popular acts that truly rock many times. We just can't get over the fact that adding distortion to your guitar is a virtual guarantee you won't get scads of rock critics jizzing all over you with steamy loads of orgasmic praise (unless yo ... More >>

Defending the Jonas Brothers: You Got a Problem With That?

​We have spent days wrestling throw pillows and chain-smoking cigarettes in the sun, sweatily contemplating why it is that we can't hate the Jonas Brothers. We can honestly say this isn't some crass devil's advocate playing rock journalist devilry. We can't find a reasonable flaw in the wares they ... More >>

Friday Night Noise: Indian Jewelry and Prurient

Indian Jewelry, "Seasonal Economy" At its gnarliest, Houston's Indian Jewelry reminds Friday Night Noise of that brief period a few years back where James Toth was transitioning away from being part of being the "Wooden Wand" part of the "Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice" equation, towards the "s ... More >>

Aftermath: Yanni at Toyota Center

Craig Hlavaty Words like pageantry, wonderment, and spectacle aren't used very much in the Aftermath lexicon. It's hard to divvy out those special labels when we are covering bleeding dudes in bondage gear half-raping each other on stage, the weekly parade of washed-up alt-rock groups making another ... More >>

Don't Ever Count Britney Out — Just Like These Others.

Back in Black

Bam, It's Kam!

Houston's genre-hopping indie darling eyes SXSW

Young Mammals Chow Down on First LP Carrots

Dynamically Yours

Aftermath: Annuals at Walter's On Washington

Photos by Liz Countryman If you could squeeze music from the udders of a cow, pour it a cup, mix in equal parts chocolate sauce and broken up pieces of stained glass stolen from the Vatican, drink it while on the down-slope of a roller-coaster, go home and sit on the back-porch and listen to your gr ... More >>

Moments the Grammy Awards Would Rather Forget

Soy Bombed

Recent Super Bowl Halftime Highlights and Lowlights

Backfield in Motion

Dave Wrangler Mauls Animal Collective, Stands Up Ludacris

Houston mash-up master Dave Wrangler recently remixed Animal Collective's "My Girls," from the Brooklyn buzzmongers' brand-new Merriweather Post Pavilion, for German Web site Byte.fm. It's something of a hit - "Since I put it out, I've had numerous inquiries for DJ bookings all over the country ... More >>

Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavilion

www.myanimalhome.net

Think Buckcherry Has Mellowed? Crazy Bitch...

All Lit Up Again

Tonight: Danielson at Walter's on Washington

The career of Daniel Smith, leader and mastermind of Danielson, has a strange irony: his music promotes spiritual healing, oneness and love, but by and large, his audience has been attracted by its joyous perversity. Smith sings exclusively in a high, squeaky voice, and his twee, disorientingly ad ... More >>

No Age: Nouns

MGMT, Yeasayer

Local Motion

Animal Collective, Strawberry Jam

CD Review

Local Motion

Dodos

concert preview

The Shins

Wincing the Night Away

Ariel Pink, Belong, Slovak Republic

7 p.m. Thursday, March 2, The Proletariat, 903 Richmond, 713-523-1199.

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