Live Music Now

These are the top 5 must-see concerts in Houston this week

After three weeks of RodeoHouston and then a big, successful weekend with In Bloom, one would think that the music scene would take a breather before ramping up for the summer months ahead. But spring time continues its hot streak with great shows for the live music fan. Here are the Top 5 shows coming up in Houston:

Best buzz act to see in a club before they blow up
To get a sense of how big K.Flay, also known as Kristine Meredith Flaherty, is getting, just look to this past year’s Grammy Awards. The 32-year-old alt-rock singer found herself nominated for two awards, Best Rock Song for her hit “Blood in the Cut” and Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical for her 2017 album Every Where Is Some Where. This put her in the company of Metallica, Foo Fighters, Roger Waters, and Bruno Mars.

Even though she didn’t pick up any hardware, the future is bright for this talented singer whose exhilarating blend of beats, guitars and in-your-face lyrics a la Alanis Morissette is set to launch her to even greater heights.

K.Flay brings the fury to White Oak Music Hall, located at 2915 N Main St., on Friday, March 30. Yungblud opens. Tickets are $15 in advance, plus fees. Doors open at 8 pm.

Yacht rock giants
The sweet, sweet harmonies of Chicago find their way to Sugar Land, where the classic rock group will bring their hits from across five (!) decades for fans who grew up to on them. Also known as one of the biggest dad rock bands of all time, Chicago has made a good late-career surge on the oldies circuit. The band started in the late-'60s when bands took to naming themselves after geographic locations for some reason (Boston, Kansas, America).

They started off releasing pretty good rock songs (“25 or 5 to 4”) before veering into the pure cheese of prom night ballads ("If You Leave Me Now," "Hard to Say I'm Sorry/Get Away," "You're the Inspiration") that many '80s kids probably can thank for their conception, but ultimately serve as a time capsule of an era when cars were really big, hair was shaggy, and fashion gaudy. Hey, 100 million albums sold can’t be wrong.

Chicago brings the oldies to the Smart Financial Centre at Sugar Land, located at 18111 Lexington Blvd. in Sugar Land, on Saturday, March 31. JD & The Straight Shot opens. Tickets start at $79.50 plus fees. Show starts at 8 pm.

Smoothest R&B sounds of the week
Critically acclaimed R&B artist Miguel brings his smooth voice and boundary pushing catalog that combines Prince and Stevie Wonder influences with the production sounds of The Weeknd and Frank Ocean to Houston for a sold out show. Miguel has been making big waves on the charts, including three top 10 albums in 2012’s Kaleidoscope Dream, 2015’s Wildheart, and 2017’s War & Leisure, the first of which is considered a modern R&B classic.

Most urban music fans will know him from the No. 1 Wale smash, “Lotus Flower Bomb, which was all over the radio back in 2011.

Miguel performs to a full house at Warehouse Live, located at 813 Saint Emanuel St., on Tuesday, April 3. Sir and Nonchalant Savant open. Tickets are sold out but you can try your luck on the ticket exchange. Doors open at 8 pm.

A side-project with a hella great singer
Brittany Howard, the booming-voiced lead singer and guitar of the massive Alabama Shakes, is taking a break from her day job to hit the road with friends Becca Mancari and Jesse Lafser as the trio Bermuda Triangle to ply acoustic based Americana tunes. The group only has two recorded songs right now, the tropicalia-tinged “Rosey,” and rootsy “Suzanne” so expect to hear cover tunes and hopefully new renditions of songs from her other band.

Bermuda Triangle plays at the Heights Theater, located at 339 W. 9th St., on Wednesday, April 4. Liz Cooper & The Stampede, Becca Mancari open. Tickets are $20, plus fees. Doors open at 7 pm.

Best NOLA party in HOU
By now, you’ve might have heard the story of Tank and the Bangas. The New Orleans funk-soul band, fronted by Tarriona “Tank” Ball and founded in 2011, broke it big when it won the NPR Tiny Desk Concert competition out of thousands of entries in 2017. The victory launched their career and they’ve been on the road ever since. The group quickly gained fame for putting on thrilling and infectious live shows emphasizing interaction between the band and audience. They are touring behind the release of the 2017 single, “Quick.”

Tank and the Bangas bring the NOLA party to White Oak Music Hall, located at 2915 N Main St., on Thursday, April 5. Tickets are $16 in advance, plus fees. Doors open at 8 pm.

Up-and-coming alt-rock artist K.Flay will headline at White Oak Music Hall on Friday, March 30.

Courtesy Facebook

Up-and-coming alt-rock artist K.Flay will headline at White Oak Music Hall on Friday, March 30.

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Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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