Columns

Live & Local: Cinderleaf (first set)

By Steven Gilmore

Published: 11/11/2009

Types: Music

[Note: Our reviewer tapped out at intermission, but please post your own comments on the show’s second half at sacurrent.com.] Twenty-five songs are just too many for one night. Most bands don’t even have 25 decent songs to play live, forget about trying to run through them all in a row. Cinder...[MORE]

Live & Local: Necurat @ White Rabbit, Thu, Oct 29

By Jeremy Martin

Published: 11/4/2009

Types: Music

Maybe, maybe, 10 people stand in front of the White Rabbit stage when Necurat have finished tuning up, but that’s all right. It’s 8 p.m. on a Thursday. It’s not even completely dark outside, and this concert’s being billed as “A Night of Horror,” with four other equally evil-sounding groups (in addi...[MORE]

Live & Local: The Colt of Us

By Jeremy Martin

Published: 10/28/2009

Types: Cover Story, Second Story

A last-minute venue change takes the Colt of Us from the laid-back, open-air Farm to the claustrophobic, dimly lit Tequila Island, but the swap is probably for the best. Not that this bizarrely named band — it took a few visits to their MySpace page to finally accept that the flyers were right and i...[MORE]

Live and Local

By Jeremy Martin

Published: 10/7/2009

Types: Music

San Antonio MC the One (myspace.com/the01) is checking the mic at Saluté International, and he looks a little nervous. “Don’t be scared,” hollers one encouraging lady in the audience, but it’s really a false start. The One’s CD won’t read, and now it’s stuck in the player. “I’m going to wait m...[MORE]

Live & Local: Local Music

By Steven Gilmore

Published: 9/23/2009

Types: Cover Story, Second Story

If there’s one thing I love in this world, it’s a good circle pit. They’re hard to come by in San Antonio, but Prevail Within, who’ve been playing hard and fast in this town for several years, are looking to revive this nearly forgotten token of fan appreciation. Hoping for the opportunity to indulg...[MORE]

Live & Local: When Words Attack

By Jeremy Martin

Published: 9/16/2009

Types: Music

The Mix doesn’t really have one, so vocalist Cindy Osbourne brings her own stage. No kidding — she spends the whole set standing on a small wooden platform, elevated about three inches above the common folk on the floor. She’s not very tall, so the effect isn’t all that pronounced, even in her thick...[MORE]

LIVE & LOCAL

By Steven Gilmore

Published: 9/9/2009

Types: Music

(Note: On Friday, September 4, the White Rabbit hosted the third annual Rick Sciaraffa birthday scholarship show. Sciaraffa, before his death in 2007, owned the club and played an instrumental role in establishing the local metal scene as we know it today. It is fitting that a collection of San Anto...[MORE]

LIVE & LOCAL

By Jeremy Martin

Published: 9/2/2009

Types: Music

Nobody says much, and the bassist wears a tie. That’s about all the description you need of Yes, Inferno’s stage presence tonight. To be fair, the guys in YI play a sometimes-ambient brand of post-rock (i.e., “music without singin’ on it”), though, so not much more’s expected of them than occasi...[MORE]

"Front Page News" — Moai

By Jeremy Martin

Published: 8/26/2009

Types: Music

Universal City’s Moai begin this would-be call to arms with Kelsey McDaniel’s coffee-shop acoustic riff and drummer Dave Orschell’s military cadence. Adopting the somber-yet-uptempo drum-corps rhythm in an antiwar song is appropriate, if pretty on-the-nose, but we ...[MORE]

Live & Local

By Jeremy Martin

Published: 8/26/2009

Types: Music

I’m beginning to feel like that dickhead voice-over dude from the Head-On commercials. But instead of repeatedly instructing you take a roll-on deodorant stick and “APPLY DIRECTLY TO FOREHEAD!!!” I’m constantly telling you to “TURN YOUR FUCKING AMPLIFIERS DOWN.” My message h...[MORE]

LIVE & LOCAL

By Steven Gilmore

Published: 8/19/2009

Types: Music

Sometimes it’s just hard to pin a band down. Our Sleeping Giant, for instance, whose songs fly all over the genre radar. Singer Danny Gibbons opens the night with four solo acoustic tracks in rapid succession, journeying through the Dashboard Confessional-esque “Lost Art of the Mid-Range Jump-Shot,”...[MORE]

"Out the Door" - IND

By Jeremy Martin

Published: 8/19/2009

Types: Music

The clip of Vincent Price accusing screen wife Carol Ohmart of serving him “arsenic on the rocks” in The House on Haunted Hill sets the tone for this song about “the fighting, the fucking, the hugging, the loving” of marital betrayal. The narrator drops verses accusing his ex and himself of backstab...[MORE]

“What We’re Not” — Peoplefood

By Jeremy Martin

Published: 8/12/2009

Types: Music

In their own words, things Austin’s Peoplefood are not: relevant, esoteric, mainstream, optimistic, just painted on. You can picture the music video (does anyone still watch those?) for this song -- the band goofing around in Central Park, holding up markered poster boards naming each of these thing...[MORE]

LIVE & LOCAL

By Jeremy Martin

Published: 8/12/2009

Types: Music, Rock/Pop

The Cove is packed when the Offbeats take the stage, but the people in the audience are mostly watching their plates of food. The band, reduced recently to the three Fosters, is set up for an acoustic show: Bryan and Sean on guitar, Colin behind an abbreviated drum kit, just bass and hi-hat. Still, ...[MORE]

Live & Local

By Jeremy Martin

Published: 8/5/2009

Types: Music, Folk/Traditional

Richard Morgan, dressed in slacks and a button-down, sound-checks his banjo with a few bars of The Beverly Hillbillies theme song. Jeannette Muniz, sitting cross-legged in a church dress and heels, tunes her acoustic guitar and invites the audience to move closer to the stage with “Come on up and be...[MORE]

"Run" - Zita B. Sanders

By Jeremy Martin

Published: 8/5/2009

Types: Music, Rock/Pop

Sanders starts running to catch the bus, but doesn’t make it before it pulls away. Then the rain starts, but Sanders shrugs “Life just isn’t fair that way.” Backed by a tune that’s got more than a little in common with “Teach Your Children” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Sanders seems to sugge...[MORE]

LIVE & LOCAL

By Steven Gilmore

Published: 7/29/2009

Types: Music, Rock/Pop

The Gatsby is a strange spot for a rock show. Paintings of jazz trumpeters and the high-class clientele cast a top-hat-and-monocle-shaped shadow over the jean-clad rockers set to perform. Access to the show is limited to adults 21 and older, which makes July’s presence in the room somewhat awkward, ...[MORE]

"Tonight We Dine in Hell" - Madex Thirteen

By Jeremy Martin

Published: 7/29/2009

Types: Music

The orchestral strains of the 300 soundtrack briefly confuse things, but the requisite Leonidas sound bite leads immediately into the muddled guitar skronk that doubles, apparently, as Satan’s dinner bell. And forget vegetarian options, the only item on the menu is a “death grip holding you tight.” ...[MORE]

LIVE & LOCAL

By Jeremy Martin

Published: 7/22/2009

Types: Music

The door man stamps my hand with an inappropriate question: "WWJD?" it asks, "What would Jesus do?" The question's inappropriate not just because Monkeysoop shares the bill with the likes of Mobile Deathcamp (fronted by former Gwar bassist Todd Evans) and SA's own AnalPlague, but...[MORE]

"Can't You See" - Devin's Inferno

By Jeremy Martin

Published: 7/22/2009

Types: Music

"Can't You See" is a perfect case study in how not to tell off an ex. Thirty seconds of late-'90s pop-punk power chords isn't enough time to prepare a well-thought-out speech, so verse one is mostly stammered babble. "I can't seem to get you off my mind," begins one half-coherent...[MORE]

LIVE & LOCAL

By Enrique Lopetegui

Published: 7/15/2009

Types: Cover Story, Second Story

Don’t ask me how Aly Tadros, Alyse Black, and Sarah Peacock managed to pull it off. The three share a natural songwriting talent and vocal skills, but could not be more different artistically. Even though I’m tired of up-and-coming artists doing “collaborative show” after “collaborative show” i...[MORE]

“Wake Up Today” — Def Space

By Jeremy Martin

Published: 7/15/2009

Types: Music

Def Space’s Phillip Luna isn’t putting up with your bullshit — you are getting out of bed, right this very minute. With lyrics written entirely in the second-person imperative, Luna’s charmingly untrained voice and cheery guitar strumming coax you through the morning ritual (“Put on your white shirt...[MORE]

"I'll Take Romance (Sexy Version)" - Ken Slavin

By Jeremy Martin

Published: 7/8/2009

Types: Music

Slavin is bringing sexy back to this Oscar Hammerstein/Ben Oakland composition, assuming Frank Sinatra is your personal Cialis. If the audio weren’t so pristine, you’d never guess Slavin’s take on the title song from the 1937 film (a semi-obscure vehicle for opera star Grace Moore) was recorded 70 f...[MORE]

Tommy C

By Jeremy Martin

Published: 7/8/2009

Types: Cover Story, Second Story

The force of the bass at SA Dub .2 is more like a physical presence, penetrating you in waves, vibrating your vital organs like an internal Sharper Image massage chair — a not-unpleasant tingling sensation they could probably sell as a black-market cancer cure. Maybe a dozen people hang out ups...[MORE]

Men at work: The Heroine say music's a gamble, and they're 'playing for keeps'

By Jeremy Martin

Published: 7/1/2009

Types: Music, Rock/Pop

Guitarist Derek Badillo named the band after some chick in a movie he doesn’t even remember. It might’ve been Joan of Arc. “They said ‘the heroine,’ and then there was this girl, and she was powerful and beautiful — and she slashed throats,” recalls Badillo, dripping post-show sweat in the all...[MORE]

"Repeat After Me" - Bully Puppet

By Jeremy Martin

Published: 7/1/2009

Types: Music

The song’s chiming guitars and build-and-release structure borrow equally from Thurston Moore and the Edge, but it’s “I’m free ’cause I’m me” message is straight-up PSA. The constant freedom references and the second-verse lyrics “I go to work, I pay my taxes,” threaten to take the song into Frank S...[MORE]