Modest Mouse

Last Night: Grizzly Bear at House of Blues

Grizzly Bear House of Blues April 9, 2013 The best move that Grizzly Bear made Tuesday night was possibly their only move. What I imagined to be electric-light squids danced high and low in time as lights flashed in bursts, the band frozen silhouettes in the foreground. The music was at moments po ... More >>

Coachella 2013 Takes It Back to the '90s

Coachella, the Only Music Festival That Matters (or so we're told), announced its 2013 lineup late Thursday night, no holograms or Rolling Stones included. Instead, two beloved '90s UK acts whose popularity in the U.S. is spotty at best, Blur and the Stone Roses, headline the first night of the tw ... More >>

Curated Festivals and the Changing Face of Summer Entertainment

While most Texans are spending their Friday counting down to ACL or speculating about the Fun Fun Fun Fest line up, I find myself thinking about a festival north of our fair state. We're halfway through June and that means that the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos infomercial should be dropping any da ... More >>

Readers Poll: The Most Underrated Rock Albums Of The '90s

For this week's readers poll, I asked our Facebook and Twitter chums their choices for the most underrated and unsung albums of the '90s. We all agree on things like Nevermind, Harvest Moon, Mezzanine, The Soft Bulletin, Odelay and OK Computer, but what about albums that fall through the cracks of ... More >>

Last Night: Young The Giant At Warehouse Live

Young The Giant Warehouse Live March 22, 2012 Young The Giant's gig Thursday night sold out weeks before they even hit town, moving away from it's previous locale, Fitzgerald's, to the larger confines of Warehouse Live, and still managed to also sell out that venue. All of this happened virtually ... More >>

Put On A Happy Face: 6 Ex-Emos Who Found More Success By Being Happy

Emo. The word conjures so many images. For your average American, it will make them think of black eyeliner, wrist-cutting, and essentially hair metal for the '00s. For hardcore kids, they'll think of Jawbreaker. But either way you slice it, emo has had its ups and downs as a genre and has changed ... More >>

Give It Away: Music We're Gifting to Friends for Christmas

​We're a generous bunch at Rocks Off. We just give and give and give until it hurts, and then we give some more. That's just how we roll. And when we give, well, it may seem obvious, but we tend to give the gift of music. Our friends and family are appreciative, though we do think grandma is j ... More >>

Montrose Winter Social: Festival of Sound Checks

Photos by Barry Sigman​For more pics from the inaugural Montrose Winter Social, check out our slideshow. The years spent organizing and attending a number of live music events have taught us several valuable lessons: 1) the line-up will inevitably change the second after being finalized and s ... More >>

Grouplove

Buddy Holly Raves On Into 21st Century

​Lonesome Onry and Mean's buddy doesn't like the new tribute to Buddy Holly, Rave On, which features a major-league lineup of artists ranging from Sir Paul McCartney, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, and Graham Nash to youngsters like Modest Mouse, My Morning Jacket, Black Keys and the unlikely inclusio ... More >>

The 25 Most Influential Bands Of The '90s

Trent Reznor, you know, before the Oscar and all the weightlifting. ​As a music writer, we are asked constantly to compare the new with the old, to decipher the periphery where modern bands' influences come from to understand where we are going and what we are seeing. We can hear everything Ke ... More >>

Save Ferris: Pop-Culture Origins Of 16 Famous Band Names

Groovehouse​This one's for the pop-culture junkies. For those who, like us, are tickled by all forms of pop media, whether it be literature, film or music... this list encompasses them all. A surprisingly high quantity of bands have named themselves after books, songs, and films; some are obvi ... More >>

KTRU Outdoor Show

Top 10 Recent TV-Show Soundtracks

​A few choice adjectives come to mind when musing on bawdy Eastbound & Down character Kenny Powers. "Inspiring" is not one of them. However, as Rocks Off watched this week's season finale of the side-splitting HBO series, we were pleasantly surprised as we heard indie troubadour Kurt Vile's a ... More >>

Fun Fun Fun Fest: A Pocket Guide To Rocks Off's Picks

All photos courtesy funfunfunfest.comCall us crazy, but we think we may not be seeing Craig after this weekend.​Tonight Rocks Off heads to Austin to cover our third festival this year in the capitol city, Fun Fun Fun Fest. This is also our second trip to the festival in Waterloo Park. Think AC ... More >>

Cymbals Eat Guitars

Love and Theft

The decade with no name left behind plenty of memorable music.

Tonight: Florida Indie Beach Boys Surfer Blood Sail Into Mango's

​Florida-based indie kids Surfer Blood pull into Mango's tonight, touring ahead of their upcoming Astro Coast LP. The band was recently anointed by Rolling Stone's online feature "Hype Monitor" as "bright and booming and hooky as FM radio in the late '70s." Rocks Off can hear traces of early "Blue ... More >>

Brand New

Want to Levitate the Pentagon? These Songs Might Help

​On this date in 1967, some 50,000 protesters marched on the Pentagon with the intention of levitating it and exorcising any "evil spirits" within. The effort was led by Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman, poet Allen Ginberg, and Ed Sanders and satirically-minded rockers the Fugs. As we all know, th ... More >>

Yourself and The Air

A Chat with Steve Scalice of Dean's Credit Clothing

Photo by Sarah RufkaSteve Scalice, who has co-owned and run Dean's Credit Clothing downtown for ten years, is the sole owner of the new Dean's in Montrose, a roomier version of the retro lounge. "The biggest difference between this Dean's and downtown right now is we don't have the clothes -- yet. T ... More >>

Lonesome Onry and Mean: Another Record Store Day at Cactus Music

Cactus Music and the Record Ranch is having another Record Store Day Saturday, with a lineup of events that borders on serious party happening. The highlight of the day will be a live appearance by red-hot San Antonio band The Krayolas (above). San Antonio's oldest and most respected rockero outfit ... More >>

Smiths Reunion Rumored at Morrissey's Jones Hall Show

Strangeways, here they come: Rocks Off has learned that former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr has requested passes for his ex-bandmate Morrissey's sold-out April 11 show at Jones Hall, leading to speculation that the two will perform onstage together for the first time since the influential Manch ... More >>

Aftermath: DeVotchKa at Warehouse Live

Photos by Mark C. AustinIt's always nice to see a band that respects its elders, and Denver's DeVotchKa has taken Van Morrison's "Into the Mystic" promise "I wanna rock your gypsy soul" to heart. Finding the seam between Old World traveler tunes and contemporary indie-rock, the quartet (and a ... More >>

The pAper chAse

Grammy-nominated music producer fronts sinister Dallas rock quartet

Andy Rourke

Aftermath: The Black Keys at Meridian

Soul Day at ACL: I Feel Good!

Tonight: Starbucks Mixed Media Series at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

A Classic-Rock-Free Morning

Wolf Parade: At Mount Zoomer

The Wayback Machine

Yesterday Afternoon: Westheimer Block Party at Numbers, Mango's and Avant Garden

SXSW: Carbon/Silicon, Ting Tings, Santogold, MGMT, The Cribs, White Rabbits, Supersuckers and Robyn

Our Favorite Albums of 2007

Panning for gold in an avalanche of 2007 releases

Modest Mouse

We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank CD review

Slay Bells

An X-mas mixtape from hell

Independence Day

What's indie rock? Who cares? Here's ten great CDs that will blow you away, no matter your definition

Let There Be Rock

Ten albums that make it easy to avoid fretting about your old-fashioned, Rockist ways

Marrying the Mainstream

White men learned to dance, and the emoting was as thick as the eyeliner on the year's best pop-rock records

Marrying the Mainstream

White men learned to dance, and the emoting was as thick as the eyeliner on the year's best pop-rock records

Playbill

How Long, Oh, Lord, How Long

Another outpost of crap plops onto the Houston dial, as this open letter reveals

Playbill

Modest Mouse

Good News for People Who Love Bad News (Epic)

Modest Mouse

Friday, July 25

Ugly Casanova

Saturday, July 6

Sad Like Crazy

Love Songs to Death (Ojet)

Average John