Most Popular
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Barack Obama and Me
It was the year 2000 and I was a young hungry reporter in Chicago covering a young hungry state legislator
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Mescaline on the Mexican Border
Texas is the only state in the country where peyote is sold legally. Really.
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A Prison Cover-up During Hurricane Rita
For days after the storm, inmates in Beaumont lived without A/C, electricity or hot meals. Press releases kept saying everything inside was fine. Guards and prisoners agree — that was nothing but B.S.
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Little Bitty Burger Barn
"It's okay to be little bitty in the big city" is an apt slogan for this new burger joint, where sliders rule
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Ghost Town CFS: Carriage House Cafe
Step back in time — to a spooky old carriage barn with a monster chicken-fried steak
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Barack Obama and Me (254)
It was the year 2000 and I was a young hungry reporter in Chicago covering a young hungry state legislator
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A Prison Cover-up During Hurricane Rita (21)
For days after the storm, inmates in Beaumont lived without A/C, electricity or hot meals. Press releases kept saying everything inside was fine. Guards and prisoners agree — that was nothing but B.S.
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Save Lobo: A Siberian Husky Mix is Sentenced to Die (28)
Why? Because he's big and intimidating and because one family complained about him over and over again
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Are You Hot Enough for Citizen Lounge? (7)
All This Useless Beauty
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HoustonHipHop.com Relaunch Party (5)
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Are You Hot Enough for Citizen Lounge?
All This Useless Beauty
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Tired of the Hype, But That's All There Is
Next month, Houston gets to be a cool kid. But only for a week.
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The improbable redemption of Ashlee Simpson
"La La" Love You
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Rap's Rapidly Vanishing Female MC
The Why Chromosome
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A New Official State Song for Texas?
A case for a new — or different, anyway — state song
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It’s 3 a.m., and the Kid in the Bed Is Voting for Obama
06:14AM 03/12/08 -
Be of Good (Blue) Cheer
06:42AM 03/12/08 -
Spring Training: Draft Dennis Quaid!
02:04AM 03/12/08 -
Jameson’s Rarest Vintage Reserve at $250 a Bottle
12:20PM 03/11/08
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Recent Articles By Brian McManus
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Patriot Game
What's a real American to do on Cinco de Mayo?
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Houston's Food Nazis
Some are curmudgeonly but intriguing. Others are just a bad trip to S&M land.
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The Abattoir
Goring another of music's sacred cows
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Spank Rock
Yoyoyoyoyo
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Mama Mia
Our blushing Nightfly takes his Catholic mom to see R. Kelly
National Features
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SF Weekly
The Candidate
Our columnist knows Ralph Nader's running mate all too well.
By Matt Smith -
The Pitch
How Not To Be a Rap Star
First of all, lay off the Ecstasy.
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Village Voice
Project Runaway
What becomes a gossip columnist most?
By Michael Musto
Islands, with Why? and Cadence Weapon
Saturday, April 29, at Walter's on Washington, 4215 Washington Avenue, 713-862-2513
By Brian McManus
Published: April 27, 2006As the Unicorns, provocative Montreal wunderkinder Nick Diamonds and J'aime Tambeur happily hoofed across an enchanted musical landscape. Their songs were fun but dark, simple but ambitious, with lyrics running the gamut from death and ghosts to...ghosts and death. The Unicorns' stage show could inspire equal fits of glee and frustration, finding the duo performing with puppets, inviting up the homeless to bang on pots or band members staging between-song fights with each other (although now, with rumors of ever-present inner-band turmoil swirling about, maybe the fights weren't that staged).
Now reconfigured as Islands, Diamonds and Tambeur pick up where the Unicorns left off, albeit sans all the ghostly hoo-ha. This time around we are treated to songs of the sea, volcanoes and, um, Bobby and Whitney. All exhibit the same sweeping melodies, intricately picked guitars, pulsing rhythms (steel drums!?), eerie instrumentation (steel drums!?) and playful lyrics that rocketed the Unicorns up the popularity rainbow in the first place. Their album Return to the Sea is awash with achingly beautiful pop flourishes and dense musical layers, hop-scotching through genres with unspeakable ease, many times landing squarely, and appropriately, somewhere in the Caribbean (steel drums!?). Songs like "Rough Gem" and "Where There's a Will There's a Whalebone" will etch themselves into your ears with the greatest of ease, with the latter throwing in a few bars of rap for good measure. Yes, rap. Perhaps at least one ghost stuck around after all: that of band muse Andy Kaufman.
