Cory Graves
Suburbia and JMBLYA Add Some Acts, and St. Vincent and Analog Rebellion Stream New Albums.
We hate to sound like a broken record, but, just like the past few weeks, the theme of this week's column, once again, appears to be long-anticipated new albums, festival updates and local heritage acts playing reunion shows.
Guess it's just that time of year.
In any case, hugely buzzing albums — like the latest from St. Vincent — are pretty unavoidable these days. And Dallas native Annie Clark began streaming her upcoming self-titled via UK outlet The Guardian today. Already, that sucker has already been re-blogged by just about every outlet imaginable. For good reason: Our initial reaction says Ms. Clark just might have turned in her most well-rounded effort to date. The early album of the year contender is many things at once; it's gentle yet terrifying, organic but full of electricity, biting yet accessible. And there's a better than zero chance that this is the one that finally makes her a huge star, as she's also the subject of this lengthy Pitchfork feature.
Likewise, while Analog Rebellion's Ill'e Grande officially dropped today, that sucker has already been streaming in full over at Huffington Post for the better part of a week now. From the looks of the accompanying interview, it appears the band is still holding fast to its self-appointed “stadium lo-fi” genre tag, which we think just means pysch-tinged indie-pop with Mellotron.
And while the Old 97's might not have decided to host an early stream of their upcoming tenth studio LP, they will perform Most Messed Up in its entirety prior to its release as part of an April 19 gig at Strauss Square alongside Black Joe Lewis, Slobberbone and Madison King.
Also? Be on the lookout for new discs from some others: Sarah Jaffe recently posted that her new album would be released “soon and very soon;” Fungi Girls just finished tracking its third full-length earlier this week; Blessin' has an upcoming March release and just debuted a single via Brooklyn Vegan; Cozy Hawks offered up this single from its Pan-Pacific LP that the band says will be released this spring; and Dead Flowers reentered the studio this week as well to record its sophomore album.
Speaking of making records: Guitar World featured the below behind-the-scenes clip of Reverend Horton Heat working on the song “My Hat.” Also appearing in the video is J. Charles and the Trainrobbers frontman Jeff Saenz, who not only owns the Modern Electric Sound Recorders studio where the session was filmed, but served as that disc's engineer.
Sticking with the behind-the-scenes theme: Martin House Brewery released this clip of the fellas in the Toadies hard at work, brewing batches of its new Rubberneck Red beer. The clip was released in conjunction with the announcement that the band will be playing an acoustic show at the brewery during its March 16 tour to celebrate the beer's release. From what we hear, though, tickets to that tour, which went on sale this past Friday, sold out in roughly one minute.
As we promised, there's also some festival news to report this week: In addition to the somewhat lackluster crop of bands included in Suburbia Music Festival's initial lineup announcement, organizers have since added Surfer Blood, NONONO, Sons of Fathers and Ume to its bill. While that list of names, perhaps, doesn't carry quite the same weight as this morning's Homegrown announcement, we will say that Ume's newest jam is pretty fucking killer.
Also? Our old friend RiFF RAFF has been added to that May JMBLYA bill we've been telling you about, too. Check out that full lineup, which also includes Chance The Rapper and A$AP Ferg, right here.
And it just wouldn't be White Noise in 2014 unless we told you about planned reunions from some defunct Dallas acts. Now it's Valve and Macavity, who, along with Austin's long gone Pop Unknown, will share a bill on March 22 bill at Three Links.
Elsewhere, the Dallas Morning News posted this video that takes viewers inside the former Warner Bros. building where Robert Johnson so famously once recorded. And, lastly, The Black Dotz put out the call last week that they are currently looking for a new drummer. Hit them up on Facebook if keeping time in a punk-soul hybrid sounds like your bag.
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