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 […]
mp3
Posted inMusic
Look who’s Tonking
Like a local Zelig, Friedman — whose father owned Horn Trader Music, where many local musicians got their start — was the mastermind behind Inner State Studio, which produced such acts as The Reverb Brothers, as well as being the brains behind the Acoustic Oklahoma online series. But at the height of his success, he […]
Posted inMusic
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 […]
Posted inMusic
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. […]
Posted inMusic
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 […]
Posted inMusic
Hello, Darling
Playing music isn’t always the most glamorous existence, as the members of Dallas rock outfit Somebody’s Darling would attest … but that’s a price all five are more than willing to pay. “We’ll do and sacrifice anything to be a part of this band,” lead vocalist Amber Farris said. “We laugh at ourselves, because we […]
Posted inMusic
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 […]
Posted inMusic
Reunited
Oklahoma City musical duo Adam and Kizzie Ledbetter’s story is like something out of a romance. Classmates at Classen School of Advanced Studies, they went their separate ways after graduation, until 2011, when fate drew them back together. “We were both going through some pretty heavy transitions in life, going through our depressions, so when […]
Posted inMusic
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 […]
Posted inMusic
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,” […]