Derided before it even premiered in the spring of 1987, the last stand (directorial, at least) of Elaine May cast Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty against type: Hoffman is Chuck, the P-magnet; Beatty, Lyle the dolt. Both are struggling songwriters stuck in the New York City supper circuit. The joke is that they’re struggling because […]
—“new
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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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Ready or not
The Ready Set Photo: Jared Thomas A 20-something singer-songwriter from the Midwest readies to play a few tunes Thursday night from his ever-growing repertoire of chart-topping singles, acoustic endeavors and previews from his upcoming third full-length album. As The Ready Set, Indiana native Jordan Witzigreuter has charmed national audiences — particularly the teen, female demographic […]
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Aisha Eustache — Love & Addiction
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 […]
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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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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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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 […]
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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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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 […]
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RED 2
Its inevitable successor, RED 2 (the acronym stands for “Retired, Extremely Dangerous,” per the comic-book source material), is, instead, a caricature of a caricature, one that revels in its lack of substance to the point of phlegmatic disinterest. The film revisits retired CIA agent Frank Moses (Bruce Willis, A Good Day to Die Hard), who, […]