Posts by Joey Willis

[rating=7.00] As indie music exploded into the forefront of the music scene in the early aughts, the nerds, misfits, and aspiring banjo players found a musical home. One of the artists at the forefront of the indie vanguard was Sam Beam. Performing under the moniker Iron & Wine, Beam made a name for himself with […]

Austin City Limits tapings are some of the best shows you can experience in the music capital of Texas. There is no opening act, the use of cell phones is prohibited, and more often than not, the artist makes the performance special in some way. For his ACL debut, Josh Tillman, better known by his […]

[rating=7.00] Being the owner/co-founder of Mo’ Wax records the past 25 years has allowed James Lavelle the opportunity to discover and work with many great musicians throughout his tenure. The debut album from UNKLE, Psyence Fiction, featured DJ Shadow as a writing partner, and Thom Yorke, Mike D, Richard Ashcroft, Damon Gough and Jason Newsted […]

[rating=9.00] It’s been five years since Grizzly Bear released their acclaimed album Shields, and fans were beginning to wonder if all was well with the Brooklyn-based quartet. In May of this year, the band silenced any doubts about their return by releasing “Three Rings” as the first single from their two year recording process and […]

[rating=8.00] Being that Melbourne is the live music capital of Australia, it’s no surprise that their output is finally getting noticed around the world. From the psych-rock bands like King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard and The Baudelaires to the garage rock of The Drones and Courtney Barnett. Though having been a respected songwriter in […]

[rating=3.00] In 2004, Arcade Fire released their debut album, Funeral, to critical acclaim and seemingly overnight became the new lords of the indie rock scene, garnering high praise from almost every music publication and even David Bowie. Over the course of a decade, Arcade Fire released three more critically acclaimed albums all drenched in lyrics […]

Austin City Limits tapings are some of the best shows you can experience in the music capital of Texas. There is no opening act, the use of cell phones is prohibited, and more often than not, the artist makes the performance special in some way. For her ACL debut, Angel Olsen used witty banter and […]

[rating=8.00] The Canadian musical collective known as Broken Social Scene has been making music together since 1999. Formed by its core duo of Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, the band has been made up of as few six members to as many as eighteen, the latter of which is how many took part in the […]

Since taking America by storm in 1994 with their debut album Sixteen Stone, Bush continued to find success through their breakup in 2002 and retained enough fans to reunite again in 2010. Though they achieved great notoriety in the states, they never really caught on in their home country of England. Having initially been described […]

[rating=6.00] Listening to the Melbourne-based group King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard can be a bit of a mixed bag, to say the least. No two albums sound the same, running the gamut from quirky psych-jazz to protometal to spaghetti western to space rock. Considering how prolific the band is, having released at least one […]

[rating=7.00] For four best friends from Brooklyn, forming a band and writing songs just came organically. The boys in Rips share the same musical influences mostly made up of 70’s NYC bands like The Ramones, Television and Johnny Thunder with a healthy dose of Sonic Youth and The Strokes mixed in. By combining these influences […]

There are shows, that when you see them, inspire you to go home and dust off that ill-used instrument you have lying around the house and start playing it again. Maybe it’s because the band makes it seem like it’s an attainable dream to be a rock star. Or perhaps it just looked like so […]

Prolific multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Ty Segall brought a career-spanning set list to Stubb’s in Austin on Saturday night. Currently touring on his second self-titled album, Ty Segall and The Freedom Band managed to fill up the iconic Austin venue quite nicely. As an added bonus Segall invited some of his friends to open up the […]

Since forming in 2004, The Black Angels have been instrumental in growing and influencing both the Austin music scene and the modern psychedelic rock revival around the world. With their creative collective, The Reverberation Society, founding members Alex Maas and Christian Bland started the Austin Psych Fest (recently renamed Levitation) which, unsurprisingly, is primarily booked […]

[rating=7.00] While the heyday for shoegaze ended in the mid-nineties when brit-pop came onto the radio waves, the past few years have seen a new resurgence in popularity of the genre. My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and Slowdive have all recently released new material for the first time in over two decades […]

[rating=7.00] After recording her first EP under the moniker of Fazerdaze in 2014, Amelia Murray hand-stitched fifty cardboard sleeves together and sent them to her fans and friends in Auckland, New Zealand. She found herself sending out more and more copies of the EP, and before long, began touring in support of it. As her […]

Without the Pixies much of rock music would probably sound different today. Radiohead and Nirvana, whom both released genre redefining albums, site Pixies as a major influence on their music and both Cobain and Yorke have noted that their bands wouldn’t have existed without the Pixies. Anyone attending a Pixies show can hear why the […]

It’s been well over a decade since PJ Harvey has done a proper tour of the U.S., and her past two albums haven’t seen more than a handful of shows played in New York, L.A. and San Francisco. The rest of the country hasn’t seen her play their venues since 2004’s tour in support of […]

[rating=7.00] London-based indie rockers The Big Moon are relatively new on the music scene with Juliette Jackson having formed the band in 2014. After releasing a series of singles and an EP entitled The Road in 2016, the four piece band have been hitting the road in support of their debut album Love In the […]

[rating=7.00] Since the release of their eponymous debut in 2005, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah have struggled to create something quite as monumental. In fact, after releasing three other LPs over the past decade and failing to receive much critical acclaim, founder Alec Ounsworth has decided to make the band a solo project and The […]