Where are the chanteuses who once graced the charts, like Betty Wright, Roberta Flack or The Three Degrees? Where are the beautiful declarations of love and fidelity? The soul-stirring rock-bottoms of heartache and loneliness? A return to honest, resonant emotion? Those questions are answered with the five songs of Love & Addiction, the debut EP […]
EP
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Smith and lesson
Who is Frank Smith? According to Wikipedia, there are dozens of them, ranging from English footballers to daytime soap characters. In musical terms, however, Frank Smith isn’t any one person; he’s five of them. The Austin, Texas-based alt-country project — fronted by Aaron Sinclair — was, in a past life, a band out of Boston […]
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Speedy delivery
Sometimes lyrics are so good, they read like poetry. That’s certainly the case with Massachusetts alt-rock act Speedy Ortiz, although it comes with a simple explanation. When lyricist and front woman Sadie Dupuis isn’t onstage, she can be found studying or in class at Amherst College, where she is finishing her master’s degree in poetry. […]
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Western Residents — Sunlit Nights
Western Residents are an anomaly in that their first release, the earnestly delivered and judiciously crafted Sunlit Nights, sounds like the musical equivalent of a tattered wool blazer. They wear it well. The Oklahoma City outfit has existed in some form or fashion for more than a decade, undergoing a bevy of name changes and […]
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Huff stuff
New Fumes isn’t technically a local act. However, one gets the feeling this is its home away from home, as the Dallas-based experimental brainchild of Daniel Huffman returns to Opolis this Friday. “I’ve lived all over the metroplex,” Huffman said. “Now I feel like half the time I live in Oklahoma City.”It started in the […]
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Heating up
Denver garage rockers Sauna dreamed that meeting one of its musical heroes would lead to a record deal. And it kind of did, if not in the way the four members had expected. “We were 16, just a few months after the band formed,” said guitarist CJ Macleod. “We saw Hunx and His Punx were […]
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Bowled over
Photo: Kerry Amanda Myers Description defies Oklahoma City trio Bowlsey. With guitar, organ, synthesizers, rapping and singing all making their way into the mix, “music” is about the only apt descriptor for the sounds Bowlsey makes. “People will ask us what we think we sound like, and I honestly don’t know what to tell them,” […]
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Them Hounds — Them Hounds
Given the parameters of what actually constitutes the blues, it’s easy to see why: There just aren’t that many variations of the genre’s 12-bar framework that retain that “bluesy feel.” Instead, its divergences usually come in the form of vocal variance and guitar solos, and Them Hounds thrive within these confines. Two things immediately jump […]
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Another Round — Just Walk Away
Norman band Another Round’s latest album, Just Walk Away, could be used on the next five National Guard ads, and in no way do I mean that as an insult. When I see those commercials, I admit to rocking out and all but walking out to sign up and defend my country. With impassioned vocals, […]
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Full steam ahead
Photo: Tess Baez Seventeen years is a long time for anyone. For a rock band, it’s an eternity. Yet things haven’t gotten stale over the course of Traindodge’s nearly two decades together, thanks in part to a willingness to evolve that finds the Oklahoma City act chugging along as strong and excited today as it […]