Listening to Horse Thief’s previous release — the haphazardly melodramatic Grow Deep, Grow Wild — felt like a chore. Whatever potential the Oklahoma City folk-pop act demonstrated on the EP was obscured behind a formulaic, contrived and ultimately hollow cloud. But it at least offered a glimmer of promise for a band consisting of, frankly, […]
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Colourmusic — May You Marry Rich
The Stillwater-based psychedelic act closed the curtain on last month’s Buffalo Lounge events at South by Southwest with a dazzlingly deafening set of material new and old, raising the already-high bar for one of Oklahoma’s most established and prodigious acts. Thankfully, May You Marry Rich — the band’s third studio album — by and large […]
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Sleighing the dragon
Sleigh Bells’ most recent album, Bitter Rivals, was released in September of last year. And after five months of promoting and touring for the record, guitarist Derek Miller sounds bored with it. “I’m kind of over it,” he said. “I mean, I finished recording it last June, so it’s kind of older for me now.” […]
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Em and the MotherSuperiors — Churches into Theaters
The group builds a wall of raucous noise with bricks from all corners of the rock and blues universe: brassy horns, soulful wails, glammy guitar riffs and pounding percussion. Even if there’s a gap here and there, it’s a largely successful remodel. Em and the MotherSuperiors are especially effective on the sultry, slower turns, be […]
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21 Grahams
Graham Colton has a smile on his face most of the time. You wouldn’t know it from listening to his soulful, introspective music, but life has been pretty great for the Oklahoma native. The past two years have been about change — both professional and personal — that culminated in his new album, Lonely Ones. […]
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Josh Sallee — Know Society
The 12-track album is lively and diverse. Each song is packed with energy, and Sallee’s rhymes and flow are as sound as they’ve ever been. He can spit it quick, and he knows it, but that’s not the only thing he’s capable of. The album kicks off with “The Biased Introduction,” which features a hard-hitting beat […]
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Yo ho ho and a flagon of rum
The band’s persistence resulted in a recording contract with Side One Dummy records (Irish punks Flogging Molly are label-mates) and a spot on Vans Warped Tour after a parking lot audition for Warped Tour owner Kevin Lyman. Its debut album, Forge & Flagon, came out in 2012. Band members went on to play their self-described […]
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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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Web and flow
Photo: Mark Hancock There’s a lyric from Josh Sallee’s new album, Know Society, in which the 26-year-old Oklahoma City rapper confronts this very issue: “Who is he?/ Is he who he sees?/ Is he everything that he ever liked or seen?/ Is the game of fame influencing?” The song — “TLD – Technologicallogicaldreams” — serves […]
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Moving music
It may not be a story as old as time, but the trope of Okies wandering to California in search of opportunity goes back at least to the Dust Bowl. And while the paucity of prospects may not have the same harrowing look it did in the 1920s, people still move from windy plains to […]