The Shins

The Best Concerts In Houston This Weekend: Bruce & Kelly, KTRU Outdoor Show, etc.

Bruce Robison & Kelly Willis McGonigel's Mucky Duck, March 8 Spouses tempting fate by naming their new record Cheater's Game? Nah, just the "First Couple of Texas Country Music" rewarding fans with the couple's first-ever full-album collaboration, to go with any number of guest spots on each other' ... More >>

Friday Night: Andrew Bird at House of Blues

Andrew Bird House of Blues October 12, 2012 Once in a while, I think it's healthy for critics to step outside of their comfort zone and challenge themselves by tackling an assignment that is foreign to them, to test their powers of observation and analysis in a neutral environment. It's easy to rev ... More >>

Last Night: The Shins at House of Blues

The Shins House of Blues October 10, 2012 People give the Shins a hard time. Hard to say if it's because they're so closely associated with Garden State - which, all these years later, was a pretty smug, annoying little movie - of if their gentle brand of psychedelic popcraft makes some people unco ... More >>

5 Bands to Avoid & 5 Bands to See at This Year's ACL

If you are lucky enough to be going to ACL this weekend, you have no doubt been sitting in front of your concert schedule plotting your movements for this coming weekend. Alternately if you are missing out on ACL, a lot of the bands playing have been through Houston lately, or will be in town this ... More >>

The 5 Best Shows In Houston This Week: Big Business, Garbage, The Shins, etc.

Big Business Warehouse Live (Studio), Monday Since 2003, the twosome of drummer-yelper Coady Willis and bassist-howler Jared Warren (give or take a guitarist) has been making a perfect sludgy mess as Big Business. They ended up joining Melvins Buzz Osbourne and Dale Crover along the way, both live ... More >>

The Shins

Moving Day: 5 Albums I Just Can't Quit

Reconsidering a lifetime of musical choices is a funny business. My first musical purchase? The Maxi Single for Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now). First proper album purchase? Amy Grant's 1991 classic, Heart In Motion. Before I lose any degree of credibility, let's move on. For the past m ... More >>

Katy's Point to Infinity Wins Spot on Lollapalooza Stage

This is one of those stories that can't help raise even the most cynical journalist's cockles a few degrees: Band fresh out of high school, with a disposition as sunny as its melodic brand of pop-rock, wins a spot at one of America's biggest, most important music festivals. Any Hollywood producer wo ... More >>

True Believers and Other Local Releases

Bonna-What?: How 7 U.S. Music Festivals Got Their Names

This whole week, the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, featuring the Black Keys, Radiohead, Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg, Pulp, At the Drive-In, the Shins, AVICII, David Guetta and maybe one or two others, will be all anyone who follows music these days will be talking about. Then early next week, it' ... More >>

SXSW: Tom Morello, A Vigilant And Emphatic Nightwatchman

Besides Music World Gospel, New West Records is probably the most locally connected sub-major record label, and owner/partial Houstonian George Fontaine has long worn his heart on his sleeve about local music in general and recent New West additions the Wild Moccasins, Robert Ellis, Buxton and Grand ... More >>

Alert: SXSW Coverage Ahead -- 50 Cent And Much More

"What I want from each and every one of you is a hard-target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse in that area." -- Tommy Lee Jones, The Fugitive You don't have to spend much time at South By Southwest to know that all of the above building ... More >>

9 Cool & Cheap Things To Do This Weekend

Dozens of local rock, blues, jazz, folk and jam acts take over Dan Electro's Guitar Bar in the Heights for the completely free annual South by Due East festival, tonight through Monday. Door times are 5 p.m. Tonight and Monday, 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. DJ duo Ceeplus Bad Knives and Mr. Castillo ... More >>

In Ten Years, Will Indie Be Remembered Like Nu-Metal?

​What exactly do you remember from the summer of 2002? Stop and think -- of the music on the radio, the CDs you were most excited for, who won the Grammy for Best Album, and so on. What exactly stands out from 10 years ago? If you find that your answer is "Not much," then you're probably l ... More >>

Pop Rocks: The Worst Part Of Parenting? The TV Shows.

Don't believe the hype.​Being a parent is tough, especially when the kids are toddler age or thereabouts. You're basically on 24-7 suicide watch while the little hobgoblins cram everything they find into their mouths and clamber to the top of the bookshelves, while at the same time you try to ... More >>

Top 10 Songs Famous Because Of A Movie

​Wednesday night, surf-guitar hero Dick Dale played to a packed Continental Club, in what Rocks Off's buddy Lonesome Onry and Mean and several others have since said was one of the best shows they've ever seen. The song that sent everyone home with their ears ringing and their fingers on fire ... More >>

Nobunny

Does "Indie Rock" Mean Anything At All Anymore?

​Our colleague Shea Serrano has been doing brisk business with his Rap Round Table blogs, corralling local hip-hoppers into talking about events in their scene and in the world at large. No topics are off limits, and everyone is willing to talk. So Rocks Off decided it was time for Houston's ... More >>

SXSW Aftermath: Mexican Spazz-Punk, Sulky Broken Bells, Spoon In The Pocket

Photos by Craig HlavatyMexico's scuzzy Hong Kong Blood Opera​ We stopped off Red River at Barbarella to see Mexico City's Hong Kong Blood Opera, decent Blood Brothers-style spazz-punk, buoyed by electrics and plenty of howling by the band's co-singers. If anything, they engaged the crowd and we hu ... More >>

One Wolf

Love and Theft

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

He Said She Said: "Fuck You Owl City" and the other Worst Songs of the Decade

Sweet Jeebus, this decade had some awful pop music. You would think the Lord would spare us a little in light of all the terrorist attacks and hurricanes we got this past period. Where the past ten year cycles had disco, new wave, and classic West Coast hip-hop to sate the aural thirsts of Top 40 li ... More >>

He Said She Said: Music From the Past Decade of Our Lives, Part 2

​ She Said remembers being a little kid, thinking to herself, In the year 2000, you're going to be 20 YEARS OLD. Thinking of how old that would feel like and how far away it seemed. In truth, She Said feels no different today than she did ten years ago, but one look at her musical tastes over the ... More >>

(Don't) Book 'Em, Dano: 42 Artists Who Have Absolutely No Business Touring Together

​ When Rocks Off received word last week that indie duo The Big Pink was embarking on a 2010 tour with NYC's A Place to Bury Strangers, our initial thought was, "Cool," followed closely by, "Ew." For once, there's a promo poster we really have no desire to see. But then our next thought was, "Coul ... More >>

Strange Fruit

Shins sideman Eric Johnson's Fruit Bats is a side project no longer.

Tonight: Margo & the Nuclear So and So's at the Mink

Matt Costa: Unfamiliar Faces

No Age: Nouns

Our Favorite Albums of 2007

Panning for gold in an avalanche of 2007 releases

2007 Music Year in Review

Speaking of Umbrellas...It's Bumbershoot Time

Confessions of a Classic Rock Whore, or One Man’s Journey

Houston Radio Still Sucks

David Sadof shares his dream station with Racket

The Shins

Wincing the Night Away

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin

Broom

Juices Flowing

Best Albums of the Year, 2006 Part II

Cred Sheet

Stuff you need to know to avoid musical ostracism

Going Batty

The Mountain Goats, with Crystal Skulls

Thursday, March 24, at Mary Jane's Fat Cat, 4216 Washington Avenue, 713-869-5263

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

Trend-Spotting

In a scandal-ridden election year, the year's top ten music stories were all about winning the popular vote

Yin and Yang

The killing of Dimebag Darrell rains on Michael Haaga's Continental Club Plus and Minus Show parade

Yes, You Can

In the Garden State, home is where Zach Braff's heart is

Playbill

Dweebs Shall Inherit the Earth

Seattle's Death Cab for Cutie is four geeks with chic

Drat!

Racket proposes a rock radio revolution. Clear Channel beats him to the punch.

The End Is Near

The day of the Locust is at hand

The Shins

Chutes Too Narrow (Sub Pop)