Similar to how Halloween is most celebrated by outsiders who don’t generally engage with holidays, Mary Mortem is a Tulsa musician for music fans who typically avoid Tulsa music. The intensely haunted sounds of Mary Mortem are so far removed from the Tulsa sound and their presence so absent from the local music scene that […]
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Soundcheck: KNOble Savage – The Loud Terror
“I had that Columbine potential,” Oklahoma City’s KNOble Savage raps in his first verse to “Pine Box,” a track that imagines his death and takes the opportunity to reflect on his life, strife, and legacy. That track begins the first half of The Loud Terror, and it doubles as a content warning to the rest […]
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Soundcheck: Endocrine Twins – K.OS / ctrl
Packed with a unique blend of niche electronic subgenres, the experimental band tops sequenced beats with alien guitars, eccentric synthesizers, and piles of effects. On the occasion that the songs do include lyrics, the words are performed with such disembodied character and are so heavily manipulated that the English language doesn’t even register at times. […]
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Soundcheck: The Bottom of the Barrel – Sober
The debut 9-track album from Oklahoma City quartet The Bottom of the Barrel is a rip-roarin’ time, and that’s no small feat for an acoustic record. Comprised of guitar, banjo, fiddle, mandolin, and upright bass, the sounds on Sober are noticeably light on percussion, with just the occasional snare, shaker, snap, or foot stomp to […]
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Electrical transformer
Trip Wire release party March 18 Seasoned Clothing & Apparel 243 W. Wilshire Blvd., Suite E facebook.com/tripgofficial The third in a trilogy of releases, Trip G’s Trip Wire shows multiple sides of the OKC hip-hop artist’s sound and personality. Trip G will perform songs from his latest release Thursday at his monthly Trip N Friends […]
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X factor
LCG & the X 8:30 p.m. Friday 51st Street Speakeasy 1114 NW 51st St. facebook.com/lcgandthex 405-463-0470 $5 Even longtime fans of local rock band LCG & the X might not recognize some of the songs on its self-titled debut. LCG & the X celebrates the album’s release 8:30 p.m. Friday at 51st Street Speakeasy, 1114 […]
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Eve’s daughter
Amanda Shires 8 p.m. March 21 Tower Theatre 425 NW 23rd St. towertheatreokc.com 405-708-6937 $24-$100 Released in February, Amanda Shires’ “Deciphering Dreams” is an optimistic song about a tragedy. “In some ways, it’s different for me because it’s a hopeful and kind of happy song,” Shires said. “I have a tendency sometimes to talk more […]
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Cover: Old school
The poster for 1984’s Beat Street promised “the music and breakdance explosion of the summer,” but for Brian Frejo, watching in a Capitol Hill movie theater, what happened after the movie might have been more important than anything on screen. “The movie was packed,” Frejo said, “and when we came out of the movie, in […]
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Cover: Listen up
I know, I know — the list below, as far as you’re concerned, is wrong. By the time you read this, even I might want to tweak it a little. Year-end best-ofs are always subjective and even a little arbitrary. As a fallible human who doesn’t like getting yelled at, I’d prefer to hedge my […]
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Cover: Built different
When we spoke to Jacobi Ryan in March, he was on track to release 52 songs, one for every week, in 2019. As of publication time, he still is — whether you like it or not. “I can’t imagine how many people have been sitting there at their computers every week like, ‘Hopefully it’s not […]