Live Music Now

These are the 6 best concerts in Houston this week

Christmas came early for urban cowboys in Houston.

The one-time most famous country bar in the world and line dancing haven is making a comeback. Gilley's, first opened nearly 50 years ago in Pasadena. The nightspot and its owner, country singer Mickey Gilley, would catapult into the national consciousness with the hit John Travolta film, Urban Cowboy, released in 1980.

The venue will make a return for that movie's 40th anniversary in 2020 as a $130 million, 16-acre mixed-use development in fast-growing League City, that will include a hotel, amphitheater, and restaurants. It will be similar to another Gilley's entertainment complex in Dallas. And no Gilley's would be complete without a massive dance hall to partake in some boot-scootin' boogie.

Be on the look out for scheduled concerts at the new hot spot in the column. Until then, here are this week's biggest, best, and most notable shows of the week.

CultureMap show of the week: Megan Thee Stallion at White Oak Music Hall
Who's had a bigger year in music? Billie Eilish? Okay. Lizzo? Probably. But Houston's own Megan Thee Stallion is certainly up there as an artist that completely blew up in 2019. The "Hot Girl Summer" star and Texas Southern student blew up the charts and onto the national scene faster than James Harden puts up 60 points, earning widespread acclaim.

Yes, "Hot Girl Summer" might have been the catalyst with her 2019 album Fever the big payoff, but the woman born Megan Pete earned her stripes on the Houston freestyle scene, learning from all the "chopped and screwed" H-town artists that came before her. This one is sold out and no doubt is one one of the hottest tickets of the year.

Megan Thee Stallion play White Oak Music Hall, located at 2915 N. Main St., on Tuesday, December 3. Tickets are sold out. Doors open at 6:30 pm.

CultureMap recommends: Old 97's at Warehouse Live
One of the more popular regional acts makes another appearance in Houston this year and those who like lead singer Rhett Miller are in for a double dose. The band will perform a yuletide set, most likely drawing songs from its 2018 album, Love the Holidays.

The night will also feature a solo set from Miller and magician Casey Magic, which sounds more than interesting and bit bizarre. But we'll give the hardworking and hard touring Texas band the benefit of the doubt.

Old 97's perform at Warehouse Live, located at 813 Saint Emanuel St., on Wednesday, December 4. Rhett Miller plays a special acoustic set and Casey Magic opens. Tickets start at $25 plus fees. Doors open at 7 pm.

Yacht at White Oak Music Hall
Los Angeles by way of Portland act electro-pop Yacht was on a roll creatively and commercially, gaining critical notices for 2015 album I Thought the Future Would Be Cooler when the usually smart group made a really dumb decision to promote a new song via a fake sex tape that blew up in their faces. While they always explored the interaction of music via our reliance on the digital sphere, the stunt came across as extremely insensitive and set the band's career trajectory back years.

After a few years off to regroup, the Yacht is back with Chain Tripping, a colder, less-fun album than their previous work, returning to LCD Soundsystem head honcho James Murphy's label, DFA Records. The fact that they are playing upstairs at White Oak when a few years ago would have easily played the larger downstairs space just shows how much of a hill they have to climb before winning back their fanbase. Whether they can forgive or forget remains to be seen, but surely this band has a lot of musical talent to make up the gap.

Yacht performs at White Oak Music Hall, located at 2915 N. Main St., on Thursday, December 5. Jennifer Vanilla opens. Tickets start at $13 plus fees. Doors open at 8 pm.

A$AP Ferg at House of Blues
A member of the similarly money-signed A$AP Mob, which included A$AP Rocky, the New York City-based A$AP Ferg has found success as his own voice outside of his original group. Moving past the Mob, Ferg released a series of tight and aggressive mix tapes, collaborating with a who's-who of hip-hop artists, including Snopp Dogg, Busta Rhymes, and Rick Ross.

His 2017 full-length, Still Striving, hit the Top 20 of the Billboard charts making him an equal with his former bandmate. After a series of guest appearances on other artists' tracks, his latest is this year's Floor Seats.

A$AP Ferg is at House of Blues, located at 1204 Caroline St., on Friday, December 6. Murda Beatz, Made in TYO open. Tickets start at $32.50 plus fees. Doors open at 7 pm.

Kansas at Smart Financial Centre
The holidays are a good bet that classic rock acts will roll through the city and that job this year falls on the shoulders of Kansas (The Guess Who are also playing in The Woodlands Saturday night). The group rose to fame when too many bands named themselves after geographic locations (re: Chicago, Alabama, etc.).

Like bands of the time, they got big on a mix of hard rock and prog rock that fit with the psychedelic times, hitting their commercial peak with 1977s Point of Know Return, featuring single "Dust in the Wind." And again, like many classic rock acts of the time, they broke up and reformed and are now a staple on the nostalgia circuit but fans of the act will take pleasure in the fact the band will be playing their biggest album in fill on this tour.

Kansas performs at Smart Financial Centre at Sugar Land, located at 18111 Lexington Blvd. in Sugar Land on Saturday, December 7. Tickets start at $44.50 plus fees. The show starts at 7:30 pm.

The Grand Ol' Christmas Show at House of Blues
Holiday shows are a dime a dozen each December, but here's one that actually does it for a good cause. The Grand Ol' Christmas Show is a concert-meets-variety show-meets play featuring some of the best talent in Texas, including locally raised Americana troubadour Robert Ellis and Blue Water Highway.

Starting in 2003, the annual Texas touring performance has helped raise over $100,000 for various charitable organizations, including the Brazoria County Youth Home, Agape in Action, The Brazosport Center for the Arts and Sciences, and Military Moms and Wives of Brazoria County. Part of this year's proceeds goes towards Habitat for Humanity.

The Grand Ol’ Christmas Show is at House of Blues, located at 1204 Caroline St., on Sunday, December 7. Murda Beatz, Made in TYO open. Tickets start at $32.50 plus fees. Doors open at 7 pm.

CultureMap show of the week: Houston's Megan Thee Stallion performs a sold-out show at White Oak Music Hall on Tuesday, December 3.

Photo courtesy of Red Bull

CultureMap show of the week: Houston's Megan Thee Stallion performs a sold-out show at White Oak Music Hall on Tuesday, December 3.

music nightlife concerts column

Movie Review

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is technically stunning but lacks emotion

Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures

Matt Damon in The Odyssey.

For a story that is 3,000 years old and has been referenced innumerable times since the advent of the moving picture, it’s striking that The Odyssey has not been adapted into a film more often. Christopher Nolan’s new film is, depending on your definition, just the fourth time in film history that someone has attempted to tell the original story (oddly, the third film — The Return — came out just two years ago).

Matt Damon stars as Odysseus, who has been gone from his home of Ithaca for over 20 years. Waiting at home for him is his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and son Telemachus (Tom Holland), as well as a hall full of suitors — most notably Antinous (Robert Pattinson) — who are hoping that Penelope will finally believe that Odysseus is dead and choose to marry one of them.

In typical Nolan fashion, the film goes back-and-forth in time often to show what has happened to Odysseus in the past two decades. His sea voyages with his crew have him attacking Troy using the legendary Trojan Horse; taking on the cyclops Polyphemus (Bill Irwin); trying to escape the clutches of the witch Circe (Samantha Morton); living with the nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron); communing with the vision of Athena (Zendaya); and more.

Nolan, who wrote and directed the epic film, has a clear reverence for the material and, perhaps more than any current filmmaker, has the chops to make the sprawling story feel coherent. With a plethora of characters who have names that take some time to understand for those not familiar with the ancient tale, it’s extremely tough to wrangle everything and everyone together, and Nolan and his team make that trick seem relatively easy.

However, there’s a difference between making the story comprehensible and making it compelling, and Nolan is not as successful on this front. As portrayed in this film, it’s difficult to care whether Odysseus ever finds his way home. His connection with Penelope and Telemachus is tenuous, at best, and his status as a hero is called into question on multiple occasions. Complicated protagonists are nothing new, but in a story where the hero’s journey is the whole point, Nolan fails to make the quest all encompassing.

That’s not to say that there aren’t some standout moments along the way. The sequence in Polyphemus’ cave is tremendous, as are a few other scenes in which Nolan’s reported reliance on practical effects make you wonder how the crew accomplished what they did. Damon has said this is the hardest movie he’s ever made, and that effort shows up in every scene, especially those on the water.

At 56 years old, Damon is getting close to elder statesman status in Hollywood, and he ably embodies the role of the respected and feared leader. Hathaway, Holland, and Pattinson get the next most screentime, and each makes their character interesting if not mesmerizing. The murderer’s row of the supporting cast — Theron, Lupita Nyong'o, Zendaya, Elliot Page, Morton, Jon Bernthal, John Leguizamo, and more — give each scene a nice sheen whether or not their individual arc makes sense.

While the technical achievements of Nolan and his team in The Odyssey are admirable and occasionally awe-inspiring, the story he lays out is not quite as overwhelming. The structure he chose to use doesn’t allow the story to overcome the episodic nature of Odysseus’ brutal journey, keeping big emotions mostly at bay.

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The Odyssey opens in theaters on July 17.

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