Monday 20 May
OKG Newsletter
Matt Carney
Lemma — Lemma
Rock
Matt Carney
Lemma’s self-titled full-length crackles to life with a big ol’ baritone and spaghetti-Western guitar — a brief harbinger of a rock album that draws its influence from a wide range of artists, R.E.M. chief among them.
‘Rum’ punchless
A tame Johnny Depp and disheveled script leave ‘The Rum Diary’ with a nasty hangover.
Drama
Matt Carney
Written by Hunter S. Thompson at 24, but unpublished until his early 60s, “The Rum Diary” was a fictionalized account of his besotted time in Puerto Rico, what in reality was a nine-month stint between gigs as a New York City journalist.
Doggie style
Scruffy mutts no more, Dr. Dog has groomed its psych-rock sound into a purebred, all thanks to its live show.
Music
Matt Carney
Dr. Dog with The Quiet Life
7 p.m. Monday
Cain's Ballroom
423 N. Main, Tulsa
cainsballroom.com
918-584-2306
$20 advance, $22 door
Ben there, sung that
Both timeless and dated, Ben Folds marries his piano-man ballads and improv antics with the Oklahoma City Philharmonic.
Music
Matt Carney
Ben Folds with the Oklahoma City Philharmonic
8 p.m. Thursday
Civic Center Music Hall
201 N. Walker
okcciviccenter.com
297-2264
$35-$70
M83 — Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
French imagineer captures hipsters’ nostalgia, invites them to explore broad, cinematic soundscapes.
Ben Folds — The Best Imitation of Myself: A Retrospective
Deserving songwriter gets a career-spanning, three-disc collection that doesn’t overstay its four-hour welcome.
Pop
Matt Carney
Drawing from his three studio albums with Ben Folds Five, three solo studio albums and piles of EPs, compilations and live albums, “The Best Imitation of Myself: A Retrospective” is a highly convenient and well-selected exposition of the two highly developed skills of Mr. Benjamin Scott Folds.
Justice — Audio, Video, Disco
As subtle as a herd of buffalo stampeding off a cliff at the end of the world. In space.
Electronica
Matt Carney
The long-awaited follow-up to Justice’s 2007 debut, “†,” stuffed so terrifically full of trippy, scuzzy future-disco, has arrived, signaled by guitars so big that they belong to the skyscraping giants of rock. Yup, the Parisian heirs to Daft Punk’s pyramidal throne are drawing from arena-stomping, ’70s-era prog.
Occupy OKC gets soggy
Watch a protester discuss the movement’s struggles with the weather.
News
Matt Carney
Last night and this morning brought chilling rains, but the inclement weather wasn’t enough to drive the Occupy OKC movement out of Kerr Park, where protesters have been camped out since Oct. 11.“
The Damn Quails — Down The Hatch
Country
Matt Carney
“Down the Hatch” is an important debut release for more than just the duo of Gabriel Marshall and Bryon White, who go by The Damn Quails. It’s indie label 598 Recordings’ (Chance Sparkman and Mike McClure) first long player, and a product of a prodigious amount of homegrown talent.
Wash cycle
Sister act Bleached sounds as washed-out as a pair of vintage jeans. Good thing the girls are playing at a clothing boutique.
Music
Matt Carney
Bleached with Shitty/Awesome and Lizard Police
8 p.m. Thursday
Anty Shanty
318 E. Main, Norman
antyshanty.com
310-6771
$8
Terra Lightfoot — Terra Lightfoot
This dream-folk debut will induce dead sleep.
Folk
Matt Carney
As the common people have progressed over the last 50-plus years, so has the topicality of their music. Since the development of genres in popular music in the 1950s, contemporary folk music has skewed apolitical, alluring and beautiful.
Twin Sister — In Heaven
NYC indie-pop dreamers concoct a solid debut album after an infectious single.
Indie
Matt Carney
Ever since “All Around and Away We Go” reminded me of Talking Heads last summer, I’ve kept my eyes out (and many fingers crossed) for flashes of Twin Sister’s name across the blogosphere. Much to my delight, it showed up last summer alongside fellow NYCers’ The Pains of Being Pure at Heart on a touring bill aimed at the Midwest, with a stop at OU’s campus (not three minutes’ walk from my house) right smack in the middle of it.
Zach Winters — They Were Longing For a Better Country
Folk
Matt Carney
Redemption, peace, fate and desire. Banjos, harmonicas and handclaps. God and man. Stillness.
Chromeo must vie
Joke band or no, the electrofunk duo Chromeo does what it can to get audiences a-dancin’.
Music
Matt Carney
Chromeo with Breakbot and Mayer Hawthorne
7 p.m. Friday
Cain's Ballroom
423 N. Main, Tulsa
cainsballroom.com
918-584-2306
$27
Various Artists — The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams
Thank goodness these songs ‘Saw the Light’ of day.
Country
Matt Carney
As if the man born Hiram King Williams’ influence on country music (and all subsequently affected genres, particularly rock ’n’ roll) wasn’t already completely obvious and seminal, the long-dead crooner had to go and scribble a bunch more terrific songs about heartbreak and loneliness into his diary, just to remind us of his ownership of the subject matter even generations after he died.
