Yeah, it sounds strange to say it out loud, but Stephin Merritt will be performing as the Gothic Archies tomorrow at the Barnes n Noble in Frisco. Its located at 2601 Preston rd (Suite 1204), inside Stonebriar Mall or whatever. The performance will take place at 5pm, and you can call the Barnes N Noble at 972-668-2820 for more information. I don't have a lot more information than that, but no matter what happens, this is going to be the shit. And I don't have time for links, so just Google the shit you lazy bastards. The band's website calls the Gothic Archies "stephen's gothic bubblegum pop band," which sounds just about right. The whole thing is part of a reading tour with author Daniel Handler, who will be reading as "Lemony Snicket." It is likely that Merritt will be performing songs from a CD that he wrote as a soundtrack to Handler's books "A Series of Unfortunate Events."

Congrats to Radio UTD for being nominated for Best College Radio Station by CMJ.

Charts:
1 COMPILATION Chrome Children Stones Throw
2 DECEMBERISTS The Crane Wife Capitol
3 SPARKLEHORSE Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain Astralwerks
4 TV ON THE RADIO Return To Cookie Mountain Interscope
5 CHAD VANGAALEN Skelliconnection Sub Pop
6 BECK The Information Interscope
7 IN INK PLEASE Formica Table For Two Fall
8 FOUR TET Remixes Domino
9 JUNIOR BOYS So This Is Goodbye Domino
10 BONNIE PRINCE BILLY The Letting Go Drag City
11 DAMIEN JURADO And Now That I'm In Your Shadow Secretly Canadian
12 PORTASTATIC Be Still Please Merge
13 MASTODON Blood Mountain Warner Bros.
14 LOW LOWS Fire On The Bright Sky Warm
15 BEACH HOUSE Beach House Carpark
16 GRIZZLY BEAR Yellow House Warp
17 PERNICE BROTHERS Live A Little Ashmont
18 OXFORD COLLAPSE Remember The Night Parties Sub Pop
19 ROBERT POLLARD Normal Happiness Merge
20 PIT ER PAT Pyramids Thrill Jockey
21 EMILY HAINES Knives Don't Have Your Back Last Gang
22 JEFFREY AND JACK LEWIS City And Eastern Songs Rough Trade
23 LEMONHEADS The Lemonheads Vagrant
24 CALIFONE Roots And Crowns Thrill Jockey
25 DR. DOG Takers And Leavers [EP] Park The Van
26 PATTERN IS MOVEMENT Canonic Hometapes
27 CHIN UP CHIN UP This Harness Can't Ride Anything Suicide Squeeze
28 MOUNTAIN GOATS Get Lonely 4AD
29 CHANGES Today Is Tonight Drama Club
30 RAFTER 10 Songs Asthmatic Kitty

Adds:
1 SOMEONE STILL LOVES YOU BORIS YELTSIN Broom Polyvinyl
2 CURTAINS Calamity Asthmatic Kitty
3 THE BLOW Paper Television K
4 ALELA DIANE Pirate's Gospel Holocene
5 BADLY DRAWN BOY Born In The UK Astralwerks

Dj Nature will be doing The Party at Rubber Gloves tonight as usual, and if you haven't already, you should stop by Central Booking and download Nature's mix "Vol 3: Candy Rain." It has tracks from Clipse, Dino, Janet Jackson, BBD, Tom Tom Club, Cameo and a lot more. Its really poppy, danceable and insanely good... I can't think of a better CD to throw on your stereo while you're getting ready and/or pre-partying before you go out and do whatever it is you do at night. Seriously.

Elsewhere, if you're in Dallas tonight you might want to go by the Cavern upstairs to check out The Metro, DJ Laureen's new weekly residency. They play a pretty run of the mill hipster mix when you break it down by genre (britpop, 80's electro, post-punk,etc.), but Laureen always seems to bust out with those unexpected or unheard tracks that throw you off and make the whole night worth it.

Other than that, we're not seeing a lot for tonight. Check back for new content later this evening.

There will always be certain things about Dallas that I just don't "get." For one, the city has an oft talked about inferiority complex stemming from unflattering comparisons to other, more revered municipalities, and as a result, Dallasites tend to overcompensate in strange, alarming and often humorous ways. Whether it be the big hair, fake tans, or muscled execs in an army of bright yellow Hummers going 80 down Preston, the city's culture goes beyond overcompensation and into the realm of the absurd. Dallas is known around the world for its embarrassingly cheesy attempts to place itself on a higher plane, yet the city never gives up it's pursuit of the gaudy and grandiose. Year after year, Dallas becomes more and more like a hick version of L.A., and that seems to be exactly what many of its residents want.

Unfortunately, this ill advised behavior bleeds into the city's music scene too. The tacky guitar solo is just as much a part of Dallas' history as any of the aforementioned status symbols, and its immortality in local music will never make make much sense to me. Equally puzzling is the overly ubiquitous placement of pedal steel in every single slow song that has ever been played by those Dallas bands that specialize in what Stonedranger recently described as "good old fashioned blah blah blah." Sorta's newest record, Strange And Sad But True, has Dallas sized portions of good old fashioned blah blah blah all over it.

I have to begin by saying that Sorta isn't grating in any way, so most of the time that I've spent listening to this record has at least been bearable, which is probably the best compliment I can give them. Local critics and fans often reference Sorta's musical adeptness as a reason to get behind them, and although I appreciate good musicianship as much as the next guy, musical muscle flexing means very little to me in and of itself. Not writing a lyric like "Damned if I do/Damned if I don't" is much more important than any sort of guitar heroics, and an extra cheesy guitar line, no matter how complex, is only going to make a line like that sound a lot worse than it already does. The relationship between dubious music choices and bad lyrics is highly problematic for Sorta, and it manifests itself throughout their latest full length.

For example, the band has taken it upon themselves to write a song about one of this decade's worst local tragedies: The murderof 21 year old Lorena Osorio Godoy, who was thrown eighty five feet off of George Bush Turnpike by her boyfriend in Richardson. In an exercise in subtlety, the track is titled "85 Feet," and there is something morbidly surreal about hearing this plain, radio friendly acoustic song that borders on the exploitative. Perhaps its because when I hear it, I can only picture drunk SMU sorority girls swaying back and forth to the sappy melody with Shiners in hand. If the band was trying to emphasize the glaring contrast of a deadly serious narrative performed over lightweight fluff, then mission accomplished. However, I wonder how I would feel if a song like that was written about someone I knew. It isn't the mere fact that they wrote it that's offensive, and I promise I can hadle a song dealing with heavy subject matter such as this. In fact, I felt deeply about this tragedy when it happened, and I think Lorena Godoy deserves an artistic tribute of some sort. I just think she deserves better than a song that "sorta" sounds like Fastball.

Throughout the album, the band attempts a wide variety of styles that can be placed all over the map, which is actually pretty daring considering that this is only their third full length. I do respect their reach for sonic diversity to a point, but no living band of white men should ever attempt reggae rhythms with the kind of straight faced seriousness that Sorta does on "Pink and Baby Blue," which seems to be stylistically trapped in the long gone days of 311. In fairness, I should say that I enjoyed the synthesizer sound they used on the track, which I'm assuming is the same one they used on opener "Buttercup". It sounds so ridiculous on "Buttercup" that I almost believed I was in for something different when I first put this album on, something a little less by the numbers and perhaps a bit more exciting. Its not that I'm a synth fetishist by any means, but I would have gladly taken a lot more of that synth for a lot less of the boring pedal steel that clogs every instrumental pore on Strange and Sad. I understand the desire to employ pedal steel because it always sounds timeless and classy, but band after band is driving this once sacred instrument into the ground as a tired roots rock cliche, and I don't know if it can
ever fully recover.

If Sorta could just pull back a little on the eagerness to bog their song writing down with constant solos, I think the band would be vastly improved. On the albums' most memorable melody, "Closer", the overpowering instrumentation is restrained and the song is given enough breathing room to get stuck in your head. I know they're huge Wilco fans, and Wilco certainly has employed a lot of guitar molestation in their live shows throughout the years. However, Wilco is also big enough to hire Nels Cline, a renowned improvisational player, and nothing Sorta does comes even close to his unique level of musicianship. The guitar playing on tracks like "Lazybones" actually reminds me of a house band I saw performing at a bikini contest that my friends dragged me to when I was 18, which is why I find it surprising that the local music press spends so much time wondering aloud why Sorta isn't bigger outside of Dallas. Bands that make it outside of Dallas don't sound like bands that play at bikini contests. Ever. And unfortunately, Sorta's overly ambitious guitar playing makes it clear why they have yet to make an impression outside the metroplex.

I think Sorta has put together a competent and ambitious collection of songs on Strange and Sad But True that will go over really well with that weird lower Greenville demographic where big hair, hipsters, and fake tans meet up and hang out. They've had well attended release shows for this record at The Granada and Art Prostitute, and I commend them for such savvy taste in venues. I understand why those places are so respected in this culture starved city, and I'm glad that they are willing to take chances on local acts. But unfortunately, Sorta seems like a hipsterfied musical equivalent of a yellow hummer, and much like the rest of Dallas', um, culture, they're always going to be one of those things I just don't get.

This new Violent Squid video has TRL written all over it:

As usual, you can head over to the Cavern tonight for the Lost Generation upstairs. Tonight Wanz will be focusing on the rock:

" I am gonna emphasize more rock and soul tonight than I have in recent weeks. So if your in the mood for Slayer, Stooges, Bad Brains, Stax records, King Tubby and Curtis Mayfield tonight is for you. A good chunk of the night will be the WE SHOT JR Projection comp of local stuff. It's a good mix of good local stuff and there are still plenty of people out there that don't pay attention to blogs and playing their mixtape will let me cath up on my Marvel Comics Civil War reading."

Speaking Of Projection, we've received a lot of requests for copies of the CD to be placed at different spots all around the metroplex. We're going to do a pressing of a couple hundred here in the next few days, and in addition to Good Records, you'll also be able to find them at places in Denton and Ft. Worth as well. Stay tuned for details.

Also tonight,

you might want to head up to Rubber Gloves to see Kayo Dot | The Great Tyrant | Trifle Tower. Featuring former members of prog Metal group Maudlin of the Well, Kayo Dot makes music that is certainly progressive but hardly metal. Instead, they make extremely dreamy, almost liquidy sound collages featuring vocals that might remind one of Jeff Buckley if he was a little more metal and a little more crazy. And I like Jeff Buckley (for the most part), so I mean that as a compliment. The prog elements are all there too, but the music is laid back, quiet, and often jazz influenced. This is going to be a music dork show for sure, but most of you are dorks, so what do you care? You all know we are big fans of the Great Tyrant, who are making some of the most relevant heavy experimental music in the metroplex right now, so we don't have to tell you bout that. And we couldn't get Trifle Tower's Myspace page to work, but we did read this comment about the band:

"hailing from north texas, this in-your-face assault of fury is sure to inpregnate the brain to spawn forth minions capable of destroying even the most formidable of deadly devices, buuudddy." -pauly shore from mtv beach house, spring break 1996

That wins some points in my book.

And it looks like Carlin and the folks at Dada are taking some chances tonight with Flaming Fire | Liz MacGowan | The Pebble that Saved the World | Ouija Radio. The Flaming Fire's Myspace page contains press quotes which reference comparisons such as Psychic Tv, The Residents, and other avant heroes. Not sure if I exactly feel like they're dead on, or if I think Flaming Fire is quite on that level, but their music is interesting to say the least, and could quite possibly be a lot of fun to see live. Of course, Liz from Silk Stocking is always interesting to see, and I just realized that Pebble that Saved the World sounds like Bob Mould fronting The Replacements. The little I've heard has been pretty good too.

Don't forget about this week's Lost Generation concert series performance, which will take place this Saturday, October 21st at Doublewide. A very noteworthy lineup includes:

The Good Songs (Birthday Party/Scratch Acid tribute)
The Great Tyrant
Undoing of David Wright
Prayer for Animals
White Denim
Laptop Deathmatch performances in between sets featuring Frogboy and Plutonium Jukebox.

Over the past week or so, we've received word about a couple of upcoming shows in Denton that you might want to take note of. The first is the Secret Headquarters sponsored Our Band Could be Your Life, which takes place at Dan's Silverleaf on October 28th. In case you don't know much about it, Michael Azzerad's book of the same name is a fascinating and detailed document of 13 highly influential American underground bands of the 1980's that helped bridge the gap between post punk and 90's alternative rock. Its a movement that I usually refer to as "college rock" for lack of a better term, but I'm sure most of you know that none of the bands featured in the book really sound enough alike one another to be fairly referred to with any kind of blanket label. The idea for the show is quite interesting, even if I'm not typically a fan of covers. Basically, 13 local bands have agreed to take on the persona of one of the bands featured in the book, and each will play a short set of covers from each band in the order that they appear in the book. I have no idea if they'll be able to pull it off, or how good it will sound. But I like the book and I like the idea, and it just might be a decent evening of music. Here is the list of performers, taken from the show's press release:

Chapter 1: Black Flag by Drink To Victory
Chapter 2: The Minutemen by Deep Snapper
Chapter 3: Mission of Burma by Birth To Burial
Chapter 4: Minor Threat by This Ain't No Panic
Chapter 5: Husker Du by Raised By Tigers
Chapter 6: The Replacements by the Drams
Chapter 7: Sonic Youth by Fra Pandolf
Chapter 8: Butthole Surfers by Baptist Generals
Chapter 9: Big Black by Inaction Park
Chapter 10: Dinosaur Jr. by History at Our Disposal
Chapter 11: Fugazi by Record Hop
Chapter 12: Mudhoney by White Drugs
Chapter 13: Beat Happening by Denton County Revelators

We've obviously not big fans of every band playing this thing, but I do think I'd like to see what Fra Pandolf can do with Sonic Youth, Baptist Generals can do with the Butthole Surfers, White Drugs can do with Mudhoney and what Record Hop can do with Fugazi. I'd also like to see what ANYONE can do with Dinosaur Jr. Music will start at 8.

Elsewhere, a Halloween show at House of Tinnitus promises to be interesting and possibly downright scary. The DEAD ECHOES experiment will take place on Tuesday October 31st at 7pm, and will feature:

Venison Whirled
Ethereal Planes Indian
The Zanzibar Snails (three members of iDi Amin)
P.D. Wilder (member of Austin's Hotel Hotel)
OVEO (members of Denton's You Are the Universe)
S.D.S. (featuring an undisclosed "veteran" of the experimental music scene)

The show is FREE (donations encouraged) and BYOB with a possible keg ready for your consumption. Sounds like a great way to spend at least part of your Halloween.