Aspera
When you first talk to Aspera, you think they’re high. Really high. High as Dr. John was the day he wrote “I Walk on Guilded Splinters.” But after a few minutes, you find they’re actually sober. What’s more, they’re extremely intelligent. It’s just that their manner of speaking is metered,…
No Veiled Threats
“Take that thing off your face!” The command came out of nowhere, but it was loud and it was angry. Heidi spun around to see who was issuing it. There, pulling up in a car behind her, was a stranger — another woman — sticking her head out the driver’s-side window…
Spiritualized
In the four years since Spiritualized’s last album, the cosmos-tripping Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, singer- guitarist Jason Pierce more or less fired the group that helped assemble that drug-fueled landmark and returned to the studio as a one-man band with a lot of hired help. In…
Access Denied
Rodger Peters suffers from a hereditary disease that has left him functionally quadriplegic. If both parents carry the gene, it is passed on to half their offspring, a roulette game his mother and father — a career navy man — have played and lost three times: Both of his younger…
Stereolab
One of indie rock’s most consistent and compelling outfits for more than a decade, Stereolab has finally taken its place alongside the underground’s most venerable elder statesmen. And if the growing frequency with which Stereolab tracks appear in commercials is any barometer of this band’s appeal, the times are now…
Lott of Trouble
October 29 was shaping up to be a fairly typical day for Lott Brooks III, a veteran criminal defense attorney. He made some appearances in the Harris County courthouse and walked over to the shuttle bus stop to head back to his office. And then he was arrested. Brooks spent…
Screw Heads
It’s difficult to listen to this tribute album with a critical ear. (Even more so now since Friday, November 17, marks the first anniversary of DJ Screw’s death.) For each cynical thought that crosses your mind when a rough-and-gruff rapper makes a declaration of love on this collection, a part…
Runoff Worries
There are two ways to analyze the implications of last week’s election on the December 1 mayoral runoff campaign for incumbent Lee P. Brown and At-Large City Councilman Orlando Sanchez. From a statistical angle, Brown could compare the results to his tough runoff victory in 1997 against millionaire Republican Rob…
Karen Poston
Midway between Karen Poston’s central Ohio homestead and her current Austin base is a place called Nashville. Real Bad, Poston’s debut album, is similarly situated between her Midwestern folk and rock roots and her country and western tutelage in Texas. Real Bad suggests favorable comparisons with Loretta Lynn in her…
For Whom Bell Tolls
As the mayor’s race swung into the home stretch last month, the candidate who was first out of the gate started getting disquieting indications that the breaks weren’t going to go his way. City Councilman Chris Bell remembers a blockwalk on the Sunday when his head-to-head debate with opponent Orlando…
Flogging Molly
California’s Flogging Molly is a refreshing respite from a pop music world increasingly saturated with marketing-friendly pseudo-punk bands spewing less-than-lyrical songs about teenage infidelity and parents who just don’t understand. Swagger, Molly’s latest album, is pure drunken Irish emotion that runs the gamut from mature bad day ballads like “Today…
If Six Were Nine
The proud headline greeted readers in the Sunday paper November 4: “Chronicle Now Sixth-Largest Daily.” According to the story, Houston’s Leading Information Source was bigger than all but five newspapers in the country. Which is kind of funny, because everyone else in the business considers the Chronicle to be the…
Poe
Haunted, Poe’s second album, is an exploration of her relationship with her father, the deceased documentarian Tad Danielewski. Using sampled recordings, Poe has lyrical “conversations” with her late father. These are nothing like the postmortem duets Natalie Cole had with her papa years ago, but rather intimate re-evaluations of her…
Letters, November 15
Fishy Business “Scales” of justice: Great article [“Fish Fraud,” by Robb Walsh, November 1], but my reading of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act should most certainly allow a consumer to sue a deceptive restaurant for treble damages plus attorney’s fees. An enterprising attorney could easily compose a class action…
The Magic Touch
Lovely magic, this. An enchanting family classic. If you believe in magic, you’ll love Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. And if you don’t, you will, and you will. True, the hype has been a bit much. And yes, a mad, desperate world choked with reproduction and reprobation could hardly…
Chicken Boy Was Here
“Welcome to Chicken Boy World Headquarters,” reads the large sign over the entry to 24-year-old Michael Andrews’s studio. With its yellow face, droopy eyes, disinterested stare, red cock’s-comb hat and deadpan sense of humor, the Chicken Boy character is the artist’s primary creation and passion. The Chicken Boy experiment is…
Dental Damned
It takes a nimble mind to mix light and dark, to wed humor with treachery, and in Novocaine newcomer David Atkins is not always up to the task. Neither is Steve Martin, who wants to be taken seriously while reserving the right to produce the occasional sick yuk. If you…
Mm-mmm Good
Mm-mmm good: With such a long list of fabulously fresh seafood — hardly any of it fried — it may seem odd to focus on a soup dish at Clary’s (8509 Teichman Road, Galveston, 409-740-0771). But the seafood gumbo ($5 a cup, $7.50 a bowl) is no ordinary soup. Thick…
My Name Is Mud
Obie Award-winning playwright Maria Irene Fornes is one of director Jason Nodler’s “playwriting heroes.” It says so, right in the program of Mud, Infernal Bridegroom Productions’ first show in their newly refurbished theater on McKinney Street. Elegant, understated and often hysterically funny, this dark production provides the sort of homage…
Soviet Secrets
It is the 83rd anniversary of the storming of the Winter Palace in Petrograd, November 7, New Style, the day the Soviet Union was born. It seems a fitting day to lift a glass to the Great October Socialist Revolution. After all, this was a very big holiday on one-sixth…
Talk’s Back
The art of storytelling is the anti- Hollywood: no special effects, no technology, minimal props, if any, and all story. That kind of flash-free performance takes talent, which is why folks with the gift for gab like Sheila Phillips can make a living doing what the rest of us do…
No Fear
The Drive-By Truckers’ Patterson Hood was hardly a typical white Alabama kid. Born on the cusp of the state’s agonizing “New South” rebirth, his perceptions were skewed by the fact that his father played bass in the Muscle Shoals A-Team session band and backed up such African-American icons as Aretha…
Quirky Yes, Al Qaeda No
In this time of hyper-patriotism, is a charcoal drawing of George W. Bush trapped behind a metal trellis really enough to send out the feds? Apparently somebody thinks so — and complained loudly enough to get two agents dispatched to sniff out supposed anti-American activity at the tiny Art Car…
Second Banana Blues
Sometimes it’s hard not to root for the rock ‘n’ roll second fiddle. Take KISS. Sure, Paul Stanley gets to stand in the middle of the stage with his shirt off and sing most of the songs, but wouldn’t you rather be Gene Simmons? You’d get to play a bass…
Look Closely
One of the more curious aspects in the history of photography is the quixotic, and lasting, interest in photographing what can’t be seen. No sooner did the daguerreotype confer the ability to capture reality than early enthusiasts began attempting to use the new device to prove the reality of the…
The Good Ol’ Days
It seems somehow fitting to talk with the Allen Oldies Band’s Allen Hill about vintage video games. We’re munching on oyster poor boys and fries in the far corner of the Zydeco Diner’s back room near a (sadly unplugged) Asteroids machine. “The only game I got good at,” the 30-year-old…
Six Flags over China
A fierce clay warrior stands guard over a grand piano in the foyer of Qin Dynasty restaurant. The statue is a replica of a terra-cotta soldier, like the ones found buried with the first emperor of China. The piano is one of those modern player pianos whose keys move eerily…
It’s All in the Mix
“Shepherd Plaza is kind of an interesting gig at the moment,” says club launcher John Finlay about the new drama circulating around the once-flourishing near-southwest nightlife mecca. It looks like the strip that used to house such booming spots as Voodoo Lounge (which later became Cafe Picasso) and 8.0 is…
Bouncing Souls
The waters in the sea of punk are pretty monochromatic. Shades of gray replace distinct colors. The weather here is predictable, if severe. Even the stiffest noise-gales take on a familiar rhythm, becoming humdrum in their ferocity. If you choose to navigate the less-storm-racked latitudes, where hooks and melody and…