Austin | ChinaShop

Gallery Music Uh Huh Her: Night Moves

March 20, 2011 - 1:35 pm

The last time I interviewed Leisha Hailey and Camila Grey of Uh Huh Her, they had just wrapped production on their new album. They had no label attachments, and had barely found a way to get it mixed, but their excitement was infectious. It only took one listen to hear why. Noctures is pure, blissful, dark pop. The lyrics seethe with delicious angst, and the beats and melodies scratch and spark against each other like gears in a machine shop. It’s only the band’s second album—their first, Common Reaction, came out in 2008—but it shows an incredible amount of both lyrical and instrumental growth.

Now we’re both in Austin, a few months removed from our initial conversation. They don’t yet have a label on which to release their album—slowly becoming the best album of 2011 you haven’t heard—but that doesn’t seem to be stopping their forward progress. Before our interview, their publicist hands me Black & Blue, a six-song EP of new material that they’ve just written, and it sounds really, really good. Naturally I had to ask ‘em about it. Naturally they had a lot to say.

PS: This is not our bike.

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Music Walking Degeneration Street with The Dears

by Courtney Dudley

March 20, 2011 - 1:20 pm

So if you’re not from Canada, you probably haven’t heard of this band. However, if you are from Canada, The Dears are probably your favorite indie rock outfit on the face of this earth. They’ve put out a solid five albums since 2000 and their newest, Degeneration Street, dropped early 2011.

Their Wednesday night show was held in my least favorite Austin nightclub, normally reserved for the just-turned-twenty-one/kamikaze-shot-taking/street-brawl-starting crowd, but as soon as The Dears took the stage I forgot all about the petrified puke smell and was transported to a place where funk, rock, pop and electronic sounds live happily in a big music commune in the sky. We’ll call it funrock-electro-op heaven, for short.

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Gallery Music GroupLove: One For All, All For One

by Rich Thomas and Dustin Downing

March 19, 2011 - 9:40 am

It’s the hottest day of the week so far in Austin, and Grouplove’s Ryan Rabin is standing in the street changing out of his gig clothes. Seems a fan of the band graced them with handmade Grouplove shirts before their set, and Rabin and his mates were gracious enough to wear them onstage. But since we’ve got photos to take and the shirts have been sufficiently sweated through, it’s time for a wardrobe switch. It’s also worth mentioning that Rabin is wearing a pair of black underwear and no pants. This is a part of his outfit that doesn’t change, but like I said, it’s hot out here. Read the full story →

Austin TX Featured Gallery Shamrock Shades: Doing Our Bit To Keep It Green

by Lisa Johnson

March 19, 2011 - 9:30 am

We at ChinaShop spent the day Thursday in Austin, Texas celebrating St Patrick’s Day. What better way to share our love of the Emerald Isle than to whip out our favorite pair of shades and help with the green effort in the process.

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Featured Gallery Music Ozomatli: Jail House Rock

by Rich Thomas and Dustin Downing

March 18, 2011 - 6:38 pm

Picture yourself as the tour manager for a platinum-selling band; your first management job right out of college. It’s your first day, and your band is playing a gig at an Austin venue called the Exodus. It’s the week of South By Southwest, and the crowds are massive. To close their set, your band grabs their instruments and starts to parade offstage, playing the crowd out of the venue and onto the street like pied pipers; something they’ve done many times before. Then things take a turn for the worst. The police order the band back inside—citing breach of a local noise ordinance—but it’s too late. The crowd has already swelled to mass proportions, co-mingling with the sidewalk patrons already posted up outside the venue. Threats are issued, pepper spray is brandished, and chaos ensues. Two of your band members and the band’s manager are taken into custody, and the rest of your night is spent trying to undue a situation that should have never occurred in the first place.

Oh, and the first charge on your new credit card is $10,000 in bail fees.

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Featured Music Raphael Saadiq: Once Again, With Feeling

by Rich Thomas

March 18, 2011 - 1:21 am

Between the bands going off in the Cedar Street Courtyard next door, the sweaty green mass of St. Patrick’s Day revelers under a tent across the way, and the loud mix of patrons taking refuge in the restaurant we’re currently dining in, it’s nearly impossible to catch a break from the constant barrage of sound. It attacks from all angles, topped off with a steady flow of bass emanating from the floorboards underneath our feet. Yet for all the clamor and confusion, Raphael Saadiq is about as well composed as Beethoven’s 5th.

On Saturday, March 26, Saadiq will take part in his very own Red Bull Live Session, performing multiple sets that draw material from both past albums and the forthcoming Stone Rollin’, set to drop on May 10. The following interview is a taste of what’s to come. Make sure to tune in next weekend as we broadcast live from Red Bull HQ.

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Event How To Survive in Austin, ChinaShop Style

by Rich Thomas and Dustin Downing

March 17, 2011 - 3:53 pm

Here in Austin, there’s just as much good stuff happening on the street corners and outside of venues as there is on the inside. From dawn to dusk and beyond, it’s nothing but end-to-end music, which leaves very little time to remove oneself from the slipstream and relax. That’s where ChinaShop comes in. We’ve always fancied ourselves as purveyors of good taste, communicating the best of what’s out there straight to your computer monitor, but this week we thought we’d go the extra mile provide a tangible service to the band’s themselves. The music makers. The dreamers of dreams. So here’s what we did.

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Gallery Music Red Bull BPM Party feat. DJ Manny & Felix Da Housecat

by Rich Thomas and Lisa Johnson

March 16, 2011 - 4:04 pm

Let me preface this by saying I’ve never been to Austin before. I know, I know. Tragic, right? San Antonio, Dallas, Fort Worth, El Paso and maybe a few other random destinations, but never Austin. But if everything is bigger in Texas and Austin is “weird,” then I felt comfortable in my assumption that everything would be big, weird, and maybe smell a bit like barbecue. Maybe some beer. Okay a lot of beer. And a ton of food trucks.

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Gallery Music The Soul of Shoes: Talib Kweli at Sneaker Palooza

by Courtney Dudley

March 16, 2011 - 12:16 pm

Surrounded by a giant kid friendly map of Texas, flood control interactive computers, and a dinosaur bone reconstruction exhibit, Talib Kweli stood wiping sweat from his brow and deciding where to eat with friends. Realizing that not much was open in San Antonio, TX at midnight on a Sunday, they joked about heading down to the local Shoneys.

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Urban Exploration Those Who “Keep Austin Weird”

by Dustin Downing

December 9, 2010 - 11:49 am

Not many librarians are known for their influences on pop culture. Austin Community College librarian Red Wassenich is. But it’s not Mr. Wassenich as a man that is cause for celebrity, it’s the 3 words mentioned offhand on a local radio station in the spring of 2000 that are -“KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD.” This offhand remark has since become the slogan for a campaign to preserve small-ish local businesses, a merchandise cash cow for local tourism, and inspired copycats such as “Keep Portland Beered.” For me this slogan reflects much more on the populace of the “15^th largest city in the US” and the dualities of its inhabitants.

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