Album Review: Disintegrator by Daniel Markham

For the past four years, Daniel Markham has been establishing himself as a serious artist in DFW. Disintegrator is the third of a trio of albums in that span and another stone Markham has laid in a musical career that continues to impress. It validates Markham’s status as an excellent songwriter and serves as a marker of a promising […]

Album Review: The Heart Contortionists by Pleasant Grove

After a decade hiatus, the locally beloved Pleasant Grove has returned with a new album, The Heart Contortionists. It is their first in 12 years. Fans of the group have enjoyed the recent reunions and one-off shows. But can an album so far removed from its predecessors recapture the allure once generated by a band […]

Album Review: Fjord by Jacob Metcalf

For the better part of a decade, Jacob Metcalf has been hovering below the Dallas radar. You probably know him as one of the members of the very likable folk act The Fox and the Bird, for whom he has sung and played banjo, guitar, spoons, really anything that can make a noise. You may have […]

Review: Remain In Light at the Kessler Theater

The Talking Heads released Remain in Light on October 8, 1980. It was the same year that Joy Division’s Ian Curtis committed suicide, Led Zeppelin broke up following the death of John Bonham, and John Lennon was assassinated. It might be glib to say music was at a turning point, but those are some major tectonic shifts […]

Paying the Piper: Songs I would Tip RTB2 to Cover

Asking a band that writes their own material to cover classic, albeit cherished, songs is generally poor etiquette. I am not sure “freebird!” guy still exists in this day and age (Grady thinks he has been replaced by “more cowbell!” guy), but he and his counterparts are a public nuisance. If a band writes their own […]