Clint Niosi’s The Sound of Dead Horses Beaten Against Cold Shoulders www.myspace.com/clintniosi By Ken Shimamoto First impression: Waitaminute, what’s this? Can it be…a concept album about rejection (a topic with which most musicians should be familiar)? Nah, that’d be too perfect. Clint Niosi’s a singer-songwriter who grew up in Minnesota and moved, kicking and screaming, with his family to Mansfield when he was 14. An agile fingerstyle guitarist whose vocalismo resides somewhere in the vicinity of Jeff Buckley, Rufus Wainwright, and the rustic side of Robert Plant, he hit the boards in 1999, playing any and everywhere from the Ridglea Theater lounge to the Black Dog to the Metrognome Collective, not to mention Denton, Dallas, Austin, etc. Niosi rolled out this arty, ambitious debut disc in a late-June extravaganza at the Rose Marine Theater, backed by a string section and musos from Tame…Tame and Quiet as well as album producer-arranger/Theater Fire multi-instrumental whiz James Talambas, fellow singer-songwriter Kristina Morland, and Top Secret…Shhh mastermind Marcus Lawyer (on bass). On the disc, Talambas decorates the songs with lush beds of keyboards, string and horn arrangements, vocal choruses and loads of interesting effects (like the hand percussion on the opening “My Mephistophilis”). Morland joins Niosi on “The Sum of Parts” for a vocal duet that hits like a depresso June ‘n’ Johnny. Lyrically, Niosi takes on The Big Topics (God, death, the emptiness of city life) in a way that’s often oblique and opaque (I’m not sure exactly what he’s on about in “Coal Mine Canary,” from whence the album’s title is drawn), but when he drops the thesaurus and speaks plainly, he can be effective. The aforementioned “My Mephistophilis” starts out as a Bert Jansch-via-Led Zep III folkie blues before the string section enters two thirds of the way in and transforms the song into a Danny Elfman-esque cartoon nightmare. “City Girl” works either as a meditation on urbanity or a love song, punctuated by Burt Bacharach-meets-The Theater Fire brass interjections. “Van Gogh Complex” rocks out in the manner of Death Cab For Cutie or one of those, reframing the classic tortured-artist story in a way that’s miles away from the way, um, Don McLean did. With the record done, Niosi’s taking it to stages all over North Central Texas, including the Fairmount (for their July 23rd Songwriter’s Showcase). You can cop the CD at Borders at I-30 and Hulen, as well as online at lala.com and emusic.com.  

Love, Loss, and Dead Horses

Sepia-toned singer-songwriter Clint Niosi makes his polycarbonate debut — finally.

By ANTHONY MARIANI

Clint Niosi’s debut album has been a couple of years in coming. The Sound of Dead Horses Beaten Against Cold Shoulders is a sly and evidently apt description of the Gen-X singer-songwriter’s music career. Lamentations of art not appreciated and voices not heard pop up throughout his delectable brassy-folk treat produced by The Theater Fire’s James Talambas. The dead horses, of course, are his songs, most of which have been worked and re-worked over the years. The cold shoulders belong to you.

Niosi has been writing, recording, and performing — quietly, apparently — for about 10 years. In addition to having a member of the vaunted Theater Fire in his corner as both producer and multi-instrumentalist, Niosi also has a backing band that includes several North Texas big-shots: Tame … Tame and Quiet’s Aaron Bartz on guitar and Boyd Dixon on drums, Top Secret … Shhh’s Marcus Lawyer on bass, fellow singer-songwriter Kristina Morland providing backing vocals, violinist Nicole Amundsen (former of Southern Methodist University’s Meadows Symphony Orchestra), and cellist Emma Hertz (formerly of Peter and The Wolf).

There’s a good reason Niosi is in such esteemed company. His tunes are epic — minimalist but totally sweeping. The arrangements are non-intrusive, just simple combinations of drums, acoustic guitar, strings, and brass that form skyscraping walls of sound while giving life to Niosi’s dynamic melodies. The overt influences, such as Robert Plant, Midlake, and the aforementioned Theater Fire, surface occasionally, and with his wavy, arrow-through-the-heart delivery — always nearing a falsetto but never quite committing to it and often jazzy — Niosi sounds like an older Jeff Buckley (R.I.P.).

The pitiable mood isn’t a gimmick but completely apropos, considering the ancient sins and sorrows at the heart of his songs. The two-part opener “My Mephistophilis” enters like The Theater Fire’s catchy “These Tears Could Rust a Train,” with a jaunty finger-plucked acoustic rhythm bouncing over a delicate, snappy beat. “I’d never call him my friend, though he’s there when I need him,” Niosi sings, jamming the entire second phrase into seemingly just a couple of syllables. “Mephistophilis and I / Got one hella unholy union.”

At first, the singer sounds like a soldier, perhaps one of the U.S. variety fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan, rationalizing his behavior. “When your colleagues are on the line / It’s easy enough to forget / Truth, beauty, and love / Are just your foolish alibis.” But as the song goes on, you might start thinking, heck, he sounds like all of us, compromising our morals for “gifts of wealth and earthly power … ‘Cause, come on, now / Who needs eternal salvation / When you’ve got a friend today to get you by … by … by …”

In the second, shorter half of the piece, the singer comes to terms with his fate. The beat darkens to a stomp, and as mournful strings swell in the background, a violin slashes dissonantly across the tableau, Psycho-ishly but more slowly. “There. Will. Be. No redemption,” he sings. “There. Will. Be. No forgiveness / The god I have forsaken / To these events shall bear witness.”

Dr. Faustus isn’t the only reference to Lit 101 on the album, not that Niosi needs to drop names to let you know he’s a smart guy and smart tunesmith. “Villanelle No. 1″ is exactly what it says it is, the lyrics written in the high-Renaissance poetic form, and “Van Gogh Complex” finds the singer lovesick and spiraling somewhat happily into madness. (“I poured a glass of absinthe, and I tried to force a sick smile / But in the morning I know what I must do / I’ll send a little piece of myself to you.”) And, going back to Dead Horses’ subtext, the afflicted party could be Niosi himself, in what’s arguably the album’s catchiest number, which is saying a lot because most of the tracks skew toward listener-friendliness. “I’ve never been good with people, I live inside a brain,” he sings. “I work hard all the time, but I never sell a goddamn thing.”

Frustration, natch, is around every corner. Niosi leavens it, expertly (and thankfully), with wit and good ol’ fashioned kick-ass music. His snarkiest outing — “City Girl,” a paean to a hipster-princess — is also a scathing indictment, namely of the inner-city-hipster lifestyle (for whose charms the endearingly scruffy Niosi has most likely fallen). Over an acoustic progression that conjures up Cat Stevens’ “Wild World” (“Oooh, baby, baby, it’s a wild world”) and bubbly, gently clacking rimshots, he loads on the sarcasm: “Goodbye, color green / So much more to be seen / Goodbye, sky of blue / Yeah, who needs you.”

All of the tracks are straightforward, and most of them have judiciously placed nuances that give everything some depth and never seem gratuitous. The acoustic-guitar riff that drives “Van Gogh Complex” alternates between joyous, carefree flamenco and heavy-metal, “Wave of Mutilation”-ish despair. In another nice touch, Niosi dusts off 12-bar country-blues for “Weary Willow,” whose vocal melody tumbles forward predictably before it’s steered into Rufus Wainwright’s and Fiona Apple’s lovely, purple terrains. There’s even a little circus music. Though “The Sum of Parts” comes on all skipping beats and jangly acoustic, it quickly slouches into a lazy, delirious march that’s almost funereal. Laying to rest Niosi’s career, are we? As he says in “Weary Willow,” “At the top is success and the bottom failure / But I know in the middle is worse / Now I am the voice, and you are the ear / It’s a matter of choice what you’re going to hear.”

Tuesday, 22 July 2008 08:22 PM

Alumnus releases debut folk album The Shorthorn: Laura Sliva The name of Clint Niosi’s debut album doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. The Sound of Dead Horses Beaten Against Cold Shoulders, he called it. “I’ve gotten lots of different reactions,” the alumnus said. “One girl was like ‘Dead horses? That’s terrible. Why would you want to associate yourself with that?’ ” Niosi released his oddly named folk CD in late June after working on it for a year and a half. Along with his band mates, Niosi, who graduated in 2006 with an English degree, controlled everything from the music, to the packaging, to the title of the album. The album title, taken from one of the songs, is a blend of two figures of speech, with “the sound” added to the beginning. To beat a dead horse is to relentlessly pursue something that’s unresponsive. Giving the cold shoulder means to brush someone off. “So when you put it all together, it’s the sound of continually doing something that’s not in your best interest that people don’t care about,” Niosi said. “I hope people appreciate the humor of it.” Niosi also hopes his music reaches as many people as possible. His CD is available on MP3 format on iTunes and at amazon.com. “It’s exciting because anyone can get it,” he said. “But I mean, people don’t know who I am in California.” People in Fort Worth, where Niosi lives and works, are beginning to take notice of his music. A few months ago, the Fort Worth Weekly nominated him for best alternative country artist. “All of us in the band looked at each other and said ‘Do we play alternative country?’ ” Niosi said. Five artists accompany Niosi on his album, which they recorded partly at band member James Talambas’ home studio. “Little by little we all met out of our mutual interest,” Niosi said. They saved money creating the album there and pitched in to cover the rest of the expenses. They also made a few bucks by selling the CD to local record stores, though Niosi said they haven’t broken even yet. “We were free to take our time with it and, in some cases, rent the best equipment,” he said. Drummer Boyd Dixon agrees that it is helpful to have plenty of time to record, especially since many of the band members play in other bands. Since Niosi usually performs by himself, Dixon doesn’t have to squeeze in Niosi’s performance dates with his other bands’ shows. “I know all of Clint’s songs like the back of my hand,” he said. “It’s not really stringent on my schedule when he asks me to play.” Talambas began playing with Niosi about five or six years ago after seeing Niosi perform. Talambas also performs with another local band, which can make it difficult to find time to record and perform with Niosi. “You have to have your priorities straight,” Talambas said. “If you love what you’re doing, you’ll find time for it. If I didn’t think it was good music, I wouldn’t play with him.” Talambas and Niosi will perform 9 p.m. Saturday at Hailey’s Club in Dallas. Niosi will play solo at 11 p.m. today at The Fairmount in Fort Worth. Although Niosi has mostly appeared in Texas, he wants to tour the Midwest, where he’s from, and the South sometime in the next year. “I hope we can take it on the road and play some other towns and do well enough to go ahead and start on the next album,” he said.

Clint Niosi

The Sound of Dead Horses Beaten Against Cold Shoulders (New Media)

By Jesse Hughey

Published on September 24, 2008 at 10:21am

Clint Niosi‘s debut album gives the impression that the songwriter is a perpetual scholar, one who consoles himself in academia, searching history, literature and art for meaning and stability absent from the confounding outside world. Many of this album’s songs seem aimed squarely at the English lit students and recent graduates reading and smoking in coffee shops; titles like “My Mephistophilis,” “Van Gogh Complex” and “Villanelle #1″ (which indeed conforms to the titular style of poetry) might go right over the head of anyone not working toward a fine arts degree.

But despite the frequent bookishness and occasional overthought wordplay (see the album title’s groaner of a mixed metaphor), Niosi’s cerebral lyrics also frequently hit you square in the heart. “We’ll Meet Again” tells a wonderful story of two lovers whose reincarnated souls reunite in life after life, a story that will give chills to anyone who’s experienced (or even just hoped for) a love so profound that it feels cosmically ordained. “Van Gogh Complex,” on the other hand, sketches a less-than-healthy romantic obsession through winking references to the biography of the mentally troubled artist.

The production, handled by The Theater Fire’s James Talambas, appropriately puts Niosi’s voice front and center over simple, catchy acoustic folk arrangements.

Dallas Observer 2008-10-02 You Said It
Yeah, but It Was Tons to Read

What a poor review. I get the impression Mr. Hughey didn’t really listen to the album [The Sound of Dead Horses Beaten Against Cold Shoulders, by Clint Niosi] but just read the song titles. And even that went over his head. The only thing he got right was the comment about “We’ll Meet Again,” the best song on the album (and the best song I’ve heard in years from ANYONE). Clint and this album deserve better. Go back to listening to your Pat Green albums, Mr. Hughey.

Kavin, via dallasobserver.com

Interview by Hunter Hauk.  Photo by Jason Janik.

Niosi layers it on

 

11:01 AM CST on Thursday, November 20, 2008

 Clint Niosi needed something more from his debut album than a collection of bare-bones folk numbers. The Fort Worth singer-songwriter waited years to make a definitive recording of his songs, and he wanted them to be something special.

Clint Niosi

So he asked friend and producer James Talambas – who plays with the Theater Fire – to help brighten up his dark guitar compositions with strings, horns, organ and the occasional backing chorus.

“Most of it was the two of us putting our heads together, and we had the means to do all this tracking,” Niosi said in an interview last week. “We went into it with the attitude that if we wanted a certain instrument, we’d find someone who played that instrument.”

Niosi released The Sound of Dead Horses Beaten Against Cold Shoulders in June.

Like the Theater Fire records, Horses takes you on a tour of rootsy styles, from finger-pickin’ folk (“City Girl”), to bluesy ballads (“Weary Willow”), to chugga-chugga railroad rhythms (“The Sum of Parts”).

Niosi completes the equation with compelling, often playful vocals throughout. And his English and history knowledge (he studied both at the University of Texas at Arlington) often finds its way into the lyrics.

Here’s more from the 29-year-old singer on being a Texas transplant, warming up to the Fort Worth music scene and learning to like his own voice.

Q: You haven’t always lived in Texas, right?

Niosi: I grew up in Minnesota, until I was almost 14. Then we moved to Mansfield, and it was a big culture shock. The biggest difference was, being in a suburb of Minneapolis, I could ride my bike wherever I wanted. I thought you could do that anywhere in the world. But in Mansfield, I rode my bike in every direction … nothing. [Laughs.] After a few miles, I think I found a gas station.

Q: Tell me about your musical upbringing.

Niosi: I played trumpet for about five months in school and was in choir later. Just before I moved to Texas, my dad had bought an electric guitar. I was hoping it was for me, but it was for him. But I commandeered it whenever he was gone. He could see I was interested. As a teenager, I played Nirvana and was really big into Led Zeppelin. My older brother’s tape collection helped a lot. When he switched to CD, I got all the tapes.

Q: And how did you start playing live at local venues?

Niosi: That all went along with getting my first car, and driving out to Dallas and Fort Worth. Fort Worth was a little bit closer. I’d had a garage band in Mansfield, and nobody else wanted to sing, which was how I got stuck with it. Later, I started taking my guitar to poetry readings and open mics. They were terribly nerve-wracking. It’s funny in hindsight. I was terrified. My knees would shake and I’d sweat. Open mics get a bad rap, because you’re always gonna see some bad stuff. They’re so democratic that there’ll be something bad. But I do still have a soft spot for them.

Q: How’d you hook up with James Talambas from Theater Fire?

Niosi: I met him at one of my shows. One day we were driving around and he was listening to the first Theater Fire album and going on and on about how great they were. Lo and behold, within a few months, he was in that band. Something to understand about Fort Worth is that there’s a small-town feel to it. Even though it’s a sizable metropolitan area, as far as the music thing goes, pretty much everybody knows everybody. If it’s good, we end up hearing about it and meeting each other.

Q: You’ve been playing around for years, but you consider the new album your debut. Is that correct?

Niosi: This is my first real album, I guess. There’s a lot of other stuff I recorded, but this is the first that was done at a nice studio, the first that we had mastered, the first you can get in a store. It was something I eventually had to do, as far as wanting to have a very professional product. There’s not a good reason not to do it, I guess.

Q: Does it blow your mind to hear the intricacy of the finished product?

Niosi: Yes and no. I’m really proud of how it turned out. But I was there for it, too. [Laughs.] I didn’t just record my parts and take off.

Q: I’m sure you get a lot of questions about the album title, ‘The Sound of Dead Horses Beaten Against Cold Shoulders.’

Niosi: People seem to take it one of three ways. One is, “That’s a really long title.” [Laughs.] Some people don’t make it past that. Or they’ll think it’s very macabre and dreary. Or they’ll see the humor in it. The point of it was, you know, doing something against your best interest for people who don’t care. It’s about doing what you feel you have to do, even though it may not be rewarding.

Q: You’ve said you got into singing sort of by default. Do you still feel that way?

Niosi: I’m not a singer by default anymore. I think, over time, you get familiar with your own range and style. I’ve always been drawn to more of the crooner-type singers, like Roy Orbison. Not that my range is anywhere near his. But some of the retakes on my album were in my default singing voice, which is set on croon. [Laughs.]

Q: One of my favorite songs on the album is “Van Gogh Complex.” What is it about Van Gogh that inspired you?

Niosi: For me personally, that was the first artist I really heard about in, like, kindergarten. I remember it always had this undertone of, “This is what an artist is, and it’s not an easy thing.” His story is a terrible, horrific story. My song is the historically inaccurate version – it’s all myth, and I thought it would be clever to approach it in a way that you don’t know how horrifying the story is unless you know the title of the song. It could just be a love song.”

The year in arts: These 20 albums by North Texas artists kept music fans enthralled in 2008

These 20 albums by North Texas artists kept music fans enthralled in 2008

By PRESTON JONES

pjones@star-telegram.com
The music industry fell even further in 2008, hemorrhaging jobs, profits and talent. But, closer to home, the past 12 months provided some of the sharpest, shiniest tunes in recent memory. Veterans and neophytes alike unveiled a range of textures and moods, moving from gritty realism to Technicolor fantasy and, occasionally, putting a fresh spin on the tried-and-Texan country-rock sound.

Here are 20 of the best albums the Lone Star State had to offer (in alphabetical order by artist).

Erykah Badu, New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)

On her first album in half a decade, Badu’s deliriously funky, politically charged New Amerykah reveals an artist shifting into an introspective phase marked by reluctance and acceptance. A galaxy of underground hip-hop stars applied their skills to these woozy, stylish tracks, slicing and dicing samples, creating moods both melancholy and militant while soaking the entire album in a vintage vinyl feel.

Black Tie Dynasty, Down Like Anyone

While the glossy synths that marked much of Black Tie Dynasty’s Movements are streaked across these 10 tracks, the quartet goes bigger and bolder on Down Like Anyone, a confident showing from one of the area’s most consistently entertaining bands. Produced with help from John Congleton, Dynasty layers on strings and guitars while stripping Cory Watson’s urgent, yearning vocals to the bone. The approach lends cuts like Lay Low, You Got a Lover or the fantastic Much Scarier a compelling immediacy.

T Bone Burnett, Tooth of Crime

This, Burnett’s follow-up to his acclaimed 2006 comeback The True False Identity, is a violent, foreboding companion piece to playwright Sam Shepard’s 1972 work of the same name. The twisted, tense soundscapes grab hold from the unsettling opener, Anything I Say Can and Will Be Used Against You, extending into the funereal Dope Island, a sinister track aided greatly by frequent Burnett collaborator Sam Phillips. The apocalyptic Crime explodes like a feverish dream but lingers on the margins of your mind.

Doug Burr, The Shawl

Denton singer/songwriter Burr (who made quite the impression with his 2007 sophomore effort, On Promenade) delivered one of the year’s most delicate, haunting and consistently thrilling discs with The Shawl. The cumulative effect is overwhelming. Burr’s plaintive voice wraps itself around these spare, often melancholy compositions, and while The Shawl has its roots in the Bible, the songs never feel overtly spiritual. Instead, there’s a sustained air of reverence that makes tracks like Which We Have Heard and Known absolutely stunning.

Calhoun, Falter.Waver.Cultivate

Produced by Tim Locke, Stuart Sikes and Jordan Roberts, these tracks are straightforward, melodic indie rock sans pretense — it’s a lot harder to create than you might think. It’s a consistently engaging album rife with swooning pop flourishes and Locke’s reliably incisive lyrics; Drifting and the bouncy Apocalypse (A Love Story) are high points.

Centro-matic/South San Gabriel, Dual Hawks

With each successive Centro-matic disc, I become more awed by singer/songwriter Will Johnson’s seemingly limitless capacity for musical brilliance. As expected, the crunchier, up-tempo Centro-matic stuff sits in stark contrast with the achingly pastoral, luminous SSG tracks. Dual Hawks is a staggering, soaring accomplishment from one of North Texas’ most essential artists and his massively talented band of collaborators.

The Cut*off, Packaged Up for Beginners

The Cowtown quintet’s collaboration with uber-producer Salim Nourallah has resulted in some dark, devastatingly melodic compositions that slip under your skin and stay there. It’s hard to shake the vocal similarities between Kyle Barnhill and Glen Phillips (not a bad thing, mind you) or the fine mixture of left-field non sequiturs and searing metaphors. Beginners is a masterful showing, a record that grows richer with each successive spin.

Alejandro Escovedo, Real Animal

Guitarist and singer/songwriter Escovedo, who is based in the Hill Country town of Wimberley, survived a life-threatening bout of hepatitis C in 2003, and his latest record pulses with a vitality known only by the very young or the very grateful. Expansive at 13 tracks, Real Animal dabbles in a variety of styles, all of which manage to feel cohesive. Juxtaposing gorgeous sense-memories like Swallows of San Juan against raucous rave-ups like Chip N’ Tony isn’t jarring but rather is designed to underscore the extremes of the artist’s life.

Fight Bite, Emerald Eyes

The North Texas duo of Jeff Louis and Leanne Macomber make sweet music under a savage name. The pair’s full-length debut evokes the melancholy likes of My Bloody Valentine and Club 8, dusted with a hint of nostalgia. It’s a breathtaking accomplishment, 10 mesmerizing tracks captured in spartan fashion. Macomber’s ethereal voice is buried beneath swirling layers of keyboard and augmented by ambient effects (and Louis’ vocals) that can send a chill racing up the spine.

Murry Hammond, I Don’t Know Where I’m Going But I’m on My Way

Filled with beautiful, haunting tunes like I Never Will Marry and Lost at Sea, the Mark Neill-produced album is an astonishingly powerful piece of work, a record that does not let go. It’s unstuck in time, a free-floating amalgam of cowboy poetry, rail-riding truth-seekers and peculiar, gospel-inspired imagery that catches in the corners of your mind.

Collin Herring, Past Life Crashing

A raw scrape of an album, born out of a couple of rough years, including stop-start recording sessions, rehab and divorce. Yet for all of the agony seeping out of these alt-country compositions, Herring manages to find a bit of solace. Past Life Crashing is quietly devastating and loaded with top-of-the-line talent: Canadian folkie Kathleen Edwards and her husband, Colin Cripps (who produced a handful of cuts here) pitch in, as does Collin’s dad, Ben Roi Herring, and drummer Ken Coomer.

Sarah Jaffe, Even Born Again

Denton singer/songwriter Sarah Jaffe’s EP proves her astonishing talent is the real thing. Jaffe is a big local draw, beloved by all who hear her plaintive acoustic confessions, and she joins the legion of phenomenally talented females making music in North Texas. Highlights include the undulating Black Hoax Lie and the shattering Two Intangibles Can’t Be Had. Cannot wait for her ’09 full-length debut.

Clint Niosi, The Sound of Dead Horses Beaten Against Cold Shoulders

Fort Worth singer/songwriter Niosi’s lived-in lyrics and haunting, folky compositions give this disc a spectral, irresistible energy. That evocative title is culled from one of the record’s best tracks — Coalmine Canary — but Niosi doesn’t skimp on the other nine cuts. Produced by James Talambas, the CD includes lotsa local talent drafted to help Niosi flesh out this slow-burn stunner.

Odis, Feel

A disc stuffed full of slightly bluesy, sexy, crunchy rock that sounds phenomenal with a cold one in hand. Dallas quartet Odis takes a bow with this 11-track affair that swings, slashes and smokes. Frontman Larry Gayao has limber vocals that can curl from a snarl into a scream on a dime. Feel is confident without being cocky but conveys a sense of reckless abandon that must explode like nitroglycerine in concert.

PlayRadioPlay!, Texas

Aledo’s Daniel Hunter made the most of his major-label debut, draping his appealingly earnest lyrics with a thick coat of “poptronica” gloss. His time in the big leagues was short-lived (Hunter asked to be released from his contract with Island Records mid-year), but for those who took a chance on this hefty collection, the rewards were plentiful.

PPT, Denglish

What should have been a game changer turned out to be a swan song. Dallas/Fort Worth-based PPT’s brilliant, brain-bending opus, billed as a concept album that fuses an iPod’s worth of influences, was this group’s final collaboration before splitting up last summer. With the witty, weirdly compelling rhymes of Picnic, Pikahsso and Tahiti, Denglish (a hybrid of Dallas and English) features some of the smartest hip-hop to hit North Texas streets in recent memory.

Stumptone, Gravity Suddenly Released

Brilliant, beautiful, heartbreaking — that is Stumptone in a nutshell. The Fort Worth foursome’s follow-up to 1999′s self-titled debut is a wash of ambient, visceral rock delicate enough to cushion dreams and off-kilter enough to hasten nightmares. The group (Chris Plavidal, Peter Salisbury, Mike Throneberry and Frank Cervantez) describes their approach as striving to push the boundaries of psychedelic music. They’ve not only succeeded, but they’ve set the bar quite high for anyone who dares follow.

The Theater Fire, Matter and Light

The group’s third album is a masterful blend of ominous moods, quirky lyrics and a potent artistic focus that somehow holds together some disparate, occasionally nightmarish tunes. The album isn’t all minor-key musings and midnight-hour vignettes; in fact, many of its most winning moments are lighter than air. Don Feagin and Curtis Heath, who share vocal duties, each have marvelously expressive voices (they weep like fiddles and creak like saddles) that can make even the happiest songs feel like dirges.

Titanmoon, Film Black

Titanmoon, which splits its time between Fort Worth and Dallas, returns with the ambitious Film Black, a 12-track effort billed by the quartet as (ahem) “a musical conceptualization of the film noir genre.” Concept albums are always tricky to pull off, because failing means looking pretentious, but Titanmoon more than accomplishes its goal. These dense indie-rock compositions have an epic sweep and clear-eyed emotional heft.

Toadies, No Deliverance

Seven years after the underrated Hell Below/Stars Above, the Fort Worth foursome (with new bassist Doni Blair) returns to the spotlight with this viciously entertaining slab of sonic brawn. Produced by David Castell, these 10 cuts blend the Toadies’ trademark fusion of raw violence and blunt sexuality without ever feeling strained or stilted. It’s not often that a band can recapture what made it big in the first place, especially without being overtly obvious about it.

Category(s) in which they’re nominated: Big Solo Artist

Quick take: Fort Worth singer mixes his literary lyrics with rootsy arrangments — from finger-pickin’ folk to bluesy ballads to chugga-chugga railroad rhythms.

Hear some music: myspace.com/clintniosi

The questionnaire:

Q: Talk about some of the music and live shows you experienced early on that helped you develop your sound and live-performance style.

A: My earliest live music experiences were at classic car shows with my parents, so I was very saturated by pop music of the ’50s and ’60s. I remember seeing the remaining members of the Crickets, as well as the Trashmen, Tommy Roe, and Tommy James and the Shondells. I listened to my father’s 45 of Jimmy Rogers playing “Kisses Sweeter than Wine” on my Fisher Price record player long before I knew anything about kisses or wine. I’m not sure of the full extent that those experiences have affected my sound, but I know they formed the core of my musical vocabulary.

Q: Who are a couple of your favorite local acts, and what draws you to them?

A: I think my friend Warren Jackson Hearne’s work warrants more attention than it has received. There is a theatrical element that makes the shows interesting, but what keeps me coming back is that all the songs are solid. He’s been performing as a duet with a woman named Sabra Laval, whose voice I’ve been very impressed with. I’d recommend seeing them both solo and as a duet.

Q: What themes or ideas do you think lurk under the surface of your songs?

A: On the last album I was writing a lot about death and various versions of the afterlife. On the songs I’m writing for the next album I’m more concerned with memories, dreams, and things like ESP and prophecy. I like to take a subject that feels like a stretch for me and attempt to ground it in a practical reality that’s easy to relate with.

Q: Looking back on the past year, what is one highlight and one lowlight for you?

A: It has been a good year for me. One highlight was definitely seeing the release of my first proper album. Even more rewarding was working with my friends to make it happen. One lowlight was driving through a blizzard in Iowa on solid ice and observing the shoulder littered with vehicles while returning from a tour of the Midwest. But hey, that’s what I get.

Q: If you win this award, will your speech be annoying, funny or confusing?

A:I win this award I’m sure that it will be by a slim enough margin to ensure a few annoyed audience members. Whether or not it is funny, I would be laughing in disbelief. Would it be confusing? I won’t pretend to understand these things, but I think can make sense when I need to.

Summer songs: Local musicians discuss their faves

12:10 PM CDT on Thursday, June 18, 2009

Hunter Hauk It’s difficult to identify the formula for a perfect summer song. I’m all over the place on the issue. Sometimes it’s a nice beat (Q-Tip’s “Breathe and Stop”); other times it’s a sly, slinky vocal (Jagger on “Honky Tonk Women”). Or it can just possess a dumb-n-fun vibe (anything by Kelly Clarkson, pre- and post-My December). But perhaps I’ve said too much.

Let’s hurl the conch at the real music geeks in our neck of the woods – the musicians themselves. They’ve been asked to write short essays on their favorite songs of summer. Find more of these nuggets online at QuickDFW.com.

Clint Niosi

I’ve always wondered if I would handle the summer in Texas any better if I were a native. Instead of any joy surrounding the impending summer months, I usually have a sense of dread. The daytime hours of a Texas summer, speaking for myself, are something to be endured rather than enjoyed. Nighttime during the summer, on the other hand, can be a drastically pleasant experience. As a result, my usual nocturnal hours become nearly vampiric during the summer. I feel that the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City” captures the duality of the season and resonates with my own mixed emotions concerning the summer. As a side note, my father’s favorite summer song is “Cruel Summer” by Bananarama.