The Morrison household was home to some of the rowdiest, loudest, longest and most memorable house parties in the San Francisco Bay area, but it wasn’t siblings Alex and Ben Morrison (leaders of The Brothers Comatose) behind them — it was their parents. The pair’s mom performed music professionally, and she’d invite her bandmates, friends, […]
Joshua Boydston
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Oklahoma Cloud Factory — Ancestral Ghosts
Like a Wes Anderson film set in the Sooner State or Belle & Sebastian scoring a Western, there’s something almost delightfully twee about the whole collection. It’s less plain-sweeping big and more playfully contained. It’s a story told while looking out the bedroom window at the wilderness outside, not while swallowed in the thick of […]
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A showman’s life
Chuck Mead is something of a yes man. Across his storied career from frontman of alternative country outfit BR549 to his current days as a solo artist, Mead has always made a point of accepting more invitations than he turns down. That mindset has taken him down a path worthy of the winding narratives laid […]
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Switching gears
Fresh from a well-received full-length debut, singer-songwriter Andrew Belle was less on top of the world and more lost at sea. What felt like a lifetime of personal maturity and artistic growth left the wholesome folk-pop approach carried into Ladders feeling tiresome. But for all the Chicago-based performer’s frustrations, a new direction wasn’t making itself […]
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Meant to surf
Photo: Chris Burkard The guys behind Switchfoot never think clearer than they do out on the ocean. Surfing binds the band and its brotherhood as much as music or faith. And on the eve of the ninth studio album from the defiantly relevant alt-rock group (after 18 years together and a decade in the national […]
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Psyched up
As a new generation of youth absorbs psychedelic classics like The 13th Floor Elevators, Roky Erickson and Pink Floyd, others take it upon themselves to spawn new renditions of that familiar, swirly groove. All the while, the comparatively venerable Dead Meadow nods in approval. The trio was peddling those trippy dirges and swollen, guitar-driven voyages […]
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Skating Polly — Fuzz Steilacoom
The former is a startlingly authoritative, snarling take of Kelli Mayo and Peyton Bighorse’s brand of punk-anchored “ugly pop,” a fully realized vision of doom and gloom showing just how lethal Skating Polly can be. The latter is a stripped-down, heart-tugging piano ballad on par with anything Regina Spektor has ever done, toying with lush […]
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Parker Millsap — Parker Millsap
Millsap uses that narrative but flips the script heading into his self-titled follow-up; while most sophomore records are stiffened-up and self-serious compared to their predecessors, Millsap untucks his shirt, kicks up his heels and celebrates a job well done with this relaxed but purposeful collection of songs. He shuffles poignant balladry (“The Villain,” “Forgive Me”) […]
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Nativity scene
Artists find their truth in all sorts of places. For Tulsa alt-rockers Native Lights, it was an abandoned and forgotten mid-century-style cattle auction house in the sleepy farm community of Hominy. Seeking a special space to record its debut album, the four-piece — featuring Johnathon Ford (bass), Nathan Price (drums), Bryce Chambers (guitar/vocals) and Philip […]
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Devil’s advocates
Should the Satanist-proposed monument of goat-headed idol Baphomet make its way onto the Capitol steps, Oklahoma City has just the band for its unveiling. Norman’s own Rainbows Are Free calls its brand of doomsday dirges and post-apocalyptic poetry “the devil’s music,” setting stoner rock riffs to hellish tales of mind-bending torment. In the minds of […]