Posts by Lee Ackerley

[rating=7.00] JEFF the Brotherhood turned heads in 2011 when the Nashville natives were surprisingly signed to a major label at Warner Bros. After a few psychedelic and commercially unfocused releases, Jake and Jamin Orrall are back to self-releasing on their own label, Infinity Cat. Zone is the 10th release overall and the third installment in the […]

[rating=9.00] Australian electronic group, The Avalanches, have succeeded in simultaneously being reclusive, mysterious, and aggravating to longtime fans.  A 16-year hiatus from music raises many questions, the paramount one being “Haven’t they gone broke yet?”  Apparently it was predominately health issues, serious ones, that kept the Avalanches from following up sooner on their genre-bending and […]

Despite scorching summer heat, Float Fest, the annual music festival in San Marcos, TX featuring live music, camping and river floats went off without a hitch on July 16th and 17th. Lee Ackerley picked out his ten favorite things about the festival. 1. Small Crowds Don’t get me wrong, the festival sold plenty of tickets, but […]

Free Press Summer Fest has officially become the Houston Texans of music festivals. Each year begins with promise that the event will become a top-tier festival, but any expectations one might cling too quickly devolves into an avalanche of disappointment by the first Saturday in June. FPSF might have finally hit rock bottom as the […]

It was only last November when terrorist gunmen opened fire at the Bataclan rock club in Paris where the Eagles of Death Metal were playing. Nearly one hundred people lost their lives in the club that night, and members of the band, like many other survivors, were deeply traumatized by the events. It was therefore […]

[rating=6.00] “I wanted to do something that would unsettle the listener in a good way.” Anthony Gonzalez doesn’t care to kowtow to the legions of expectant M83 fans who still have “Midnight City” preserved on their party playlists. Instead, a half-decade after his seminal and intensely popular album, Hurry Up We’re Dreaming, Gonzalez has doubled-down […]

[rating=8.00] Jamil Rashad is providing a social good with his debut album Groove!  in that he’s administering unadulterated funk en masse. Rashad’s project, Boulevards, plays pure simplistic funk that calls back to Rick James, Prince, and George Clinton for an infectious sound that demands listeners to light up the dance floor. Eschewing current music fads for […]

“We haven’t been to Austin in almost four years,” Alex Scally reminisced to the sold-out crowd at ACL Live on Monday night. The dark dream-pop duo from Baltimore had, in fact, played an installation show the night before at Brazos Hall, for only a select few. Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally may need multiple shows […]

Christian Bland is a member of the Austin’s kings of reverb The Black Angels as well as the frontman of his own band the Revelators. Along with his bandmates in the Black Angels, the guitarist is also a creator of LEVITATION, formerly known as Austin Psych Fest. Taking place at April 29 – May 1 […]

M83 returned to Austin on Sunday night, touring in support of their latest album, Junk. Even with a five-year break between album releases, a fervent enthusiasm from Austinites awaited the French-electro outfit in the form of a very sold out show at Stubb’s. To say M83’s Hurry Up We’re Dreaming made an impact on the […]

[rating=8.00] The languorous ripples in Lady Bird Lake hide an undetectable lysergic compound that has turned the Violet Crown city into a lush and fertile culture for psychedelic music to flourish. Roky Erickson, The 13th Floor Elevators, Shiva’s Headband, and other 60’s psych bands germinated Austin’s psychedelic seeds decades ago. While many other analagous bands […]

Sabina Sciubba wants you to know that she is no ordinary front woman – but an artiste. The lead singer of the samba-inspired dance electronica group Brazilian Girls is renowned for her avant-garde style and sensual lyrics, which are seductively sung in English, Spanish, French, and German. While the allure of the chilled, ambient, tropicalia […]

The 2016 metal calendar has officially begun with a skull-punch from the indomitable lineup of Lamb of God, Anthrax, Deafheaven, and Power Trip, who all came through Austin’s ACL Live on Monday night. After headlines detailing a truck full of LoG’s and Anthrax’s equipment overturned on their way to Austin from Corpus Christi, there was […]

[rating=7.00] Sunflower Bean has had a quick ascent from a DIY New York buzz band, to reaching some of the highest echelons of music acknowledgement, garnering mentions in some prestigious publications without having released a record.  While their precociousness is admirable (all three members are under 21), they may have lost a piece of the […]

Soulful, stylish and sexy, Grace Potter is a force of nature. Her aura and music exude resilience and strength, and her soaring vocals are nothing short of awe-inspiring. While Grace’s musical DNA seems to be based in the pain and loss of blues and outlaw country, she is not one to shy away from exploring […]

[rating=8.00] Let’s be honest with ourselves: every Bloc Party album that gets release, we secretly hope will be as tremendous as the band’s 2005 debut album, Silent Alarm. For a fan to wish for this is natural, as we find comfort in the familiar, but it is also selfish and unfair. While Bloc Party’s fifth […]

Want to go to Brooklyn without spending money on airfare? Go to East Austin. Sixth street, east of I-35, has earned the moniker ‘Little Williamsburg’, mainly because its plethora of bars are chock full of patrons with facial hair, skinny jeans, obscure music interests, and particular diet preferences. So when a Brooklyn band like Tanlines […]

[rating=8.00] Rarely do we laud metal music with brilliant songwriting. That praise is typically reserved for more stripped down genres such as folk, country, or rock. Metal’s epithets typically include adjectives like powerful, intense, chaotic, or energetic. The discography of Baroness, including the newly released Purple album, however, shirks this preconception. Baroness are masters of […]

[rating=8.00] The Motor City rock sound ignited by the Stooges and MC5 is still alive and well as evidenced by the latest release from Detroit post-punkers, Protomartyr. Their third album, The Agent Intellect, descends into your psyche like a black cloud of angst, accompanied with sardonic quips and thinly-veiled rage.   The mood of the album […]

The average music fan goes to see live music for entertainment, and the explanation on why we pay money to see it doesn’t get any simpler than that. Yet, the ethos of why bands choose to play can be a wide spectrum of reasons and impulses. We conveniently assume musicians play because of the umbrella […]