Zac Crain
Articles by Zac Crain
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Reporting From SXSW: Day 3
Best thing I saw: Muse at Stubb’s. Even though various SXSW volunteers and Stubb’s employees were walking up and down the line out front telling people they would not get in without a badge, there still formed a line across the street several city blocks long. Just in case. Even though the kings of Queen [...]
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Reporting From SXSW: Day 2
Best thing I saw: Band of Horses at Stubb’s. I am a big fan of bands opening shows with their best song. I think they all should do it. So when Band of Horses opened with “Is There a Ghost,” the best song off their last album, Cease to Begin, and probably the best song [...]
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Reporting From SXSW: Day 1
Zac Crain will be dispatching reports from SXSW in Austin over the coming days.
Best thing I saw: Roky Erickson with Okkervil River at the Paste party at Galaxy Room. The songs off Erickson’s coming-soon album, Love Cast Out All Evil, were good, especially the title track. But I’d be lying if I said the crowd (or me, for that matter) were there to hear him play those songs. They wanted “Two-Headed Dog,” “I Walked With a Zombie,” “Starry Eyes,” and the set-closing “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” all of which led to a much heavier set than he has been playing since his comeback.
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Despite Salacious Back Story, Smile Smile’s Truth on Tape Isn’t the Emotional Wreckage We’d Hoped For
Dates
Feb 13 at 10 p.m.As I write this, Smile Smile is on the cover of Quick. Inside, there is a comic depicting the events that led to the recording of Truth on Tape, the band’s second album. In short: singer-guitarist Ryan Hamilton and singer-pianist Jencee Hirunrusme were engaged. Hirunrusme had an affair, the couple split up, and Hamilton wrote a batch of songs about it all. But Smile Smile stayed together, creating the awkward situation where Hirunrusme was performing songs essentially all about how she made their relationship fall apart. Truth on Tape, then, is their small-scale version of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. They have not been shy about telling that story.
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FrontRow’s Twitter Project: Your Eyes and Ears on Local Music
Since we’re all getting used to one another, it would probably help to do a bit of exposition before we get too far along. Before it becomes that thing where we know each other, but one of us doesn’t quite remember the other’s name, and it’s too late for proper introductions. Awkward. Much of FrontRow [...]
As with most media outlets, our writers attend press previews of performances for which they do not buy tickets. We assure you that this practice does not affect the opinions expressed on FrontRow.