Live Music Now

These are the 7 best concerts to catch in Houston this week

Another month, another festival in Houston as JMBLYA sets up shop on Sunday, May 6. Not that we’re complaining — it’s one of the few hip-hop focused festivals to take place in Space City, a town that loves its rap music. For those not inclined to that persuasion of the musical spectrum, there's a nice mix of other acts to see in the week ahead. Here’s a few of our favorites:

Ska and Cinco
What’s better than Cinco de Mayo? Having it fall on a Saturday. The underdog Mexican army’s win over the French Emoire at the Battle of Puebla, on May 5, 1862, has become a great excuse to party, eat tacos, and drink copious amounts of cerveza. This year, Market Square will host its very own Cinco de Mayo Kickoff Party, complete with a performance by local act Los Skarnales, 20-year vets who combine ska, cumbia, reggae ,and punk into one spicy mix.

Los Skarnales performs at the Cinco de Mayo Kickoff Party at Market Square, located at 301 Milam St. on Saturday, May 5. Free admission. The event starts at 5 pm.

Hip-hop at the horse track
JMBLYA, one of the best touring festivals centering on hip-hop follows stops in Dallas and Austin with a date in Houston, setting up on the grounds of Sam Houston Race Park. The lineup is a who’s-who in the game right now, headlined by J. Cole, who owns the No. 1 spot on the Billboard charts with his new album, KOD, his fifth album to make that mark. Unfortunately, a pregnant Cardi B canceled her appearance, but Atlanta’s Young Thug stepped in to fill the void. Other performers include Migos; a recently released from prison Kevin Gates; Playboi Carti; and CultureMap cohort, Bun B.

JMBLYA will go down at Sam Houston Race Park, located at 7575 North Sam Houston Pkwy. West, on Sunday, May 6. Tickets start at $89 plus fees. Gates open at 1 pm.

The fantastic Foxes
Seattle indie folk band Fleet Foxes bring soaring, lyrical tunes to Revention Music Center. They resemble fellow Seattle act Band of Horses if they listened to way more Bob Dylan and had an obsession with vocal harmonies. They’ve quietly amassed a large fanbase over the course of three albums, including 2017’s acclaimed Crack-Up.

Fleet Foxes perform at Revention Music Center, 520 Texas St., on Monday, May 7. Amen Dunes opens. Tickets start at $35 plus fees. Doors open at 7 pm.

iPhone heroes
Anyone who has seen an iPhone commercial lately will have heard Sofi Tukker, a New York City-based electro-rock duo that has scored a place in the pantheon of emerging — usually great — artists to have their song used to sell electronics. Comprised of singer/guitarist Sophie Hawley-Weld and producer Tucker Halpern, two of their songs have appeared in iPhone commercials, and they are both electro-house, guitar-laced, dancefloor bangers, “Bats**t” and “Best Friend.” Check out Tucker’s protégé, LP Giobbi, who will open and has been making waves on the NYC scene.

Sofi Tukker perform at White Oak Music Hall – Upstairs, located at 2915 N. Main St. on Monday, May 7. Kah-Lo and LP Giobbi open. Tickets start at $16 in advance plus fees. Doors open at 7 pm.

Take me out...to White Oak
Out of the class of U.K. guitar bands to break in the early aughts (The Libertines, Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party et. al.), Franz Ferdinand proved to be the true survivors, having produced five good-to-great albums of danceable indie-rock. While no hit made as much impact as 2004’s chugging earworm, “Take Me Out,” the Scottish five-piece always manages to produce a few killer singles per record, which equates to a fantastic live show, led by the charismatic Alex Kapranos. The latest album, Always Ascending, takes the dance-inflected tunes even further, incorporating disco and synths. This is a must-see show for anyone who's regularly read the NME. Stay tuned this week to CultureMap for an interview with Franz bassist Bob Hardy.

Franz Ferdinand bring their unique brand of disco-fied Brit-pop to White Oak Music Hall, located at 2915 N. Main St., on Tuesday, May 8. Acclaimed indie act Priests opens. Tickets start at $31 in advance plus fees. Doors open at 7 pm.

A.M. radio legend at Redneck
Practically a god in his native Canada, Gordon Lightfoot is still playing his inimitable catalog of expertly crafted pop-folk-country tunes that made him an international star in the ’60s and ’70s. Simply put, the guy has a ton of fantastic songs and is a master storyteller, evidenced on the hooky “Sundown,” the heartbreaking “If You Could Read My Mind,” and the vivid “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” among many others. The fact that he’s creeping in on 80 years old means that music fans need to take the time to appreciate a guy that dominated A.M. airwaves for decades and influenced a wide-range of superstar musicians, including Jimmy Buffet, Bob Dylan, and Eric Clapton.

The ageless Gordon Lightfoot performs at the Redneck Country Club, located at 1110 W. Airport Blvd., on Wednesday, May 9. Tickets start at $60 plus fees. Doors open at 6 pm. Show starts at 8:30 pm.

Swingin’ in the Heights
Ah, the ’90s. Audiences, sick of the watered-down grunge that dominated airwaves in the latter half of the decade, turned to seemingly dead genres to liven things up. Following a short resurgence of ska bands, swing-influenced bands exploded in full force — see 1996’s Jon Favreau flick Swingers as its definitive watermark — and no other band benefited more than Squirrel Nut Zippers. Not to be confused with the gross-named Cherry Poppin’ Daddies or Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, the Zippers hit it big with the 1930s throwback, “Hell,” from the aptly named Hot, an album that sold over a million copies — a record kids and grandparents alike could seemingly enjoy together. (It was a very strange time in pop culture.) Dust off the dance shoes, chum, and relive your youth for what’s sure to be a fun performance.

Squirrel Nut Zippers brings the swing to the Heights Theater, located at 339 W. 19th St., Thursday, May 10. Ginny Mac opens. Tickets start at $24 in advance plus fees. Doors open at 7 pm.

NYC electro-house duo Sofi Tukker brings their iPhone commercial jams to White Oak Music Hall on Monday, May 7.

Toma Kostygina/Fancy PR

NYC electro-house duo Sofi Tukker brings their iPhone commercial jams to White Oak Music Hall on Monday, May 7.

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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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