When Tallows’ two-song demo surfaced on their Bandcamp site last November, expectations mounted in anticipation for a proper full-length. This was understandable, given the promise exhibited by these four fresh-faced locals on both “Soft Water” and “Small Talk” (the aforementioned demo), songs that were staggering in their conceptual ambition. Nine months later, we have Memory […]
indie
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Leaf Hands — Your Imagination
The lazy guitar and the clickity-clack percussion loom like the bastard child of Jandek and Belle and Sebastian, grown up and obsessed with mild folktronica. It’s ominous, comforting and beautifully introspective. This bleeds nicely into “Drift,” which takes that sullen ambiance and swirls it left to right with singer Cooper Whitson’s off-kilter voice acting as […]
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Bone density
Bone marrow is a soft and spongy substance, yet it’s the innermost element of the human construct, vital to our existence as a sustainable and adaptable species. Without it, our bodies would succumb to even the most innocuous threat. Likewise, Tallows’ music is so constructed: robust with instrumental depth and conceptual assertion. There’s also a […]
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Young Lyons — Crash Course EP
Just as things started to get really good, “Buddy Holly” came on the radio. I paused to turn it up, killing the moment and any chance of advancing my quest any further. After dropping my date off, I went to Wal-Mart, purchased The Blue Album and that, as they say, was that. The experience filled me with […]
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Magic Magic
While you’re at it, give Magic Magic credit for being something different, even if it ultimately proves a disappointment. Written and directed by one Sebastián Silva, the Chilean-set chiller sends Alicia (Juno Temple, Killer Joe) on her first trip outside the United States. She joins cousin Sarah (Emily Browning, Sucker Punch) and a few of […]
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Bowlsey — Sleepy Weather
In a weird way, it does. The budding Oklahoma City trio released Sleepy Weather — a five-song demo of sorts — just a month after the band’s conception, each track abstaining from any semblance of formula. With a range of influences spanning from sultry lounge and folk jangles to Adult Swim hip-hop and chilled electronica, […]
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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 […]