Lucky Motors formed in the summer of 1999. Veterans of countless area bands, they quickly developed a catalog of some the catchiest, smartest, tightest rock songs this city has ever heard. They split up in September of 2002, moving on to other bands and other cities. But they're back, and we're happier than we can say to have these Houston indie-pop legends playing their first show in over two years at the first DWTS showcase!
From Rocket Fuel's review of their 7-inch on Ojet Records:
"You're ripping up the road and tooling through the hills with the top down - that left arm is getting quite the driver's tan, and a frothy root beer wiggles comfortably in its place between your knees. With one hand out the window and the other on the wheel, no doubt tappin' away, you're singing at the top of your lungs. And you don't care who sees you. In fact, it's hard to care about much of anything when listening to Lucky Motors besides the superb brand of punchy rock this Houston trio belts out with optimistic fervor.
"Lucky Motors operates, excuse the pun, like a well-oiled machine. This, the group's debut release, is a great showcase of Ben Murphy's fluid, snappy guitar stylings and buttery vocals, Melissa Lonchambon's sonorous, melodic basswork and Jeff Senske's grounded, enthusiastic percussion. Both 'Package and the Prophet' and 'Ashtray of Kisses' induce head-bobbing and the occasional hand-clap. The members of this rock triumverate pride themselves on listening to a lot of the classics - undertones of The Who are apparent in Lucky Motors' dynamic, cheery song structures.
"This machine definitely drives down sunny, windy roads; the kind of roads in commercials. There's no traffic, no superfluous detours, and no annoying stop signs. The tank's always full of gas, and your turntable's operating on all eight cylinders. Indeed, there is no need to feel silly about singing along to such an incredible release." --Joan Hiller
From the Houston Press, December 7th, 2003:
"Even if you find indie rock boring and annoying, the genre is more than palatable in the hands of locals the Kants. These rock philosophers play a ringing, melodic brand of the stuff that would fit nicely on Washington, D.C.'s Dischord label or with '90s-era Touch & Go bands like Girls Against Boys. After releasing a CD-EP last year and a split seven-inch with Handriver this past May, this time around the Kants deliver a one-sided, six-song 12-inch EP on red vinyl, and this dark, hypnotic and sometimes scary set is well worth the trouble of digging the turntable out of the attic. What you'll find in the demon-colored grooves is a devilish blueprint for a plot to take over the indie rock underworld. The title track has a sludgy ambience and a slight industrial tinge -- all told, the experience is like being stuck in downtown gridlock, surrounded by canyons of concrete and steel and bathed in the miasma of a Stinkadena chemical wind. A cleaner sound makes "Plan for Takers" the most accessible cut, while "Modern Ways to Health," with its urgent, sirenlike guitar and Ted Conway's sonorous vocals ("What you got is something / what you got is nothing / what you got is me") mixed just up high enough to be discernible also sticks out on this fillerless slab o' wax." --Timothy J. O'Brien
Jonx lacks defining;
Dictionary slang isn't
Language of the streets.
Jonx, extendable
To all names, means following
Directionless sounds.
Jonx is the only
Expression of that which is
Inexpressible.
Jonx means, above all,
Never having to say you're
Sorry, unfinished.
From the liner notes:
Our relationship to the city is profoundly ambivalent. Rent is dirt cheap, and the food is great, but the place seethes with corruption, the traffic and air pollution are among the worst in the country, and the summer heat and suburban sprawl are legendary. To be an artist in such an environment to be on an urban frontier. The possibilities are endless, but the plausiblities seem depressingly limited.
This attitude depends on our awareness that other places might oppress us less, and yet we decline to leave. Beneath dissatisfaction, we believe that, along with all the things we revile, the city is what we want it to be, and that above all, it will let us be what we want, and let our music be what it deserves to be. This is the new sound of Houston: heartfelt, raw, uncompromising, and cosmopolitan. --Daniel Mee
"The creation of a work of art, like an act of love, is our one small 'yes' at the center of a vast 'no.'"- Gore Vidal