Artwork by SCOTT LAUMANN FRESH AIR: The recent biopic Rocketman painted a Hollywood version of Elton John’s life, but a new memoir, Me, comes straight from the artist himself. In it, he describes how, as a young man, he was determined to enter the music business, in spite of some misgivings about rock ‘n’ roll in his household. As he tells Fresh Air, “My dad, of course, hated it.” And yet, that disapproval only fueled his will to succeed. Me recounts many more stories from the pop superstar’s personal life, including how proposing to a woman helped him realize he […]
Q&A: w/ Black Keys Drummer Patrick Carney
BY LARA MICKLE After a five year hiatus, the Black Keys are back with a new album called, simply enough, Let’s Rock, and a tour that stops at Wells Fargo Center on October 14th. Re-connecting their basement-rocking roots, Let’s Rock channels a distinctly bell-bottomed 70’s rock vibe by keeping it stone-cold simple and using no instruments made after 1978. Last week we got bespectacled Keys sticksman Patrick Carney on the horn. DISCUSSED: What the hell they’ve been up to for the last five years (a lot, it turns out); making babies; producing other people’s albums; seeing Wu-Tang Clan at the […]
BEING THERE: Bon Iver + Feist @ Liacouras Center
Photo by GRAHAM TOLBERT Pasted on every door of the venue were warnings of extreme strobe lighting. The heavy promise of a twisted psychedelic dream that would channel both the cabin fever seclusion of Bon Iver’s early music and the cryptic auto-tuned voice of 2016’s 22, A Million grew closer with Feist’s preparatory words, “Your hearts will be turned into a flock of pastel geese flying into the future,” at the end of her opening set. With the sudden darkness and quick flashes of hallucinatory art across stage-bookending screens as the i,i intro “Yi” played in the background of Bon […]
BEING THERE: Hop Along & Tierra Whack
Photo by ALEX PATERSON-JONES Philly loves their own. The crowd, crammed into a warehouse somewhere in Northern Liberties last night, went wild for the performances of three Philly-born artists’ Hop Along, Tierra Whack and Orion Sun, at the opening of the 4-day House of Vans event. Indie rock band Hop Along—which is comprised of two siblings, front-woman Frances Quinlan and her brother Mark on drums — opened for Tierra Whack. Live, Frances’ voice is an enigma— think a chain-smoking baby, crude and rustic, pulsing in its ragged rawness. That voice’s full-throatedness pierced the venue, making the audience empathize with the […]
ALBUM REVIEW: Redd Kross Behind The Door
If any band on Earth can deliver us from evil, it’s Redd Kross. The brothers McDonald, pride of Hawthorne, California, have been bringing sonic sunshine to punk’s heart of darkness since 1978 and their seventh full-length release, Behind the Door, is here to tell you – yeah, you! – to stop tweeting, step away from CNN, and get your ass back to the party. It’s a goddamned all-American rager and it’s not over till Redd Kross says so, which won’t be anytime soon judging by the 11 rambunctious cuts on Behind the Door, which brings them to Underground Arts […]
INCOMING: Get Yer Vans On!
Starting Thursday October 10th and running through Sunday October 13th, Vans will transform the industrial warehouse at 404 N. 2nd Street into a pop-up cultural hub to celebrate art, music, action sports and street culture bringing Vans’ “Off The Wall” ethos to life. The pop-up will kick-off Thursday, October 10 with a concert featuring hometown heroes including rapper, singer and songwriter Tierra Whack, indie-rockers Hop Along and multi-instrumentalist Orion Sun. Music continues through the weekend with dreamy electronic rock duo Phantogram, house artist Channel Tres and eclectic, indie-folk pop band Y La Bamba owning the mainstage on Friday, October 11. […]
ALL THAT JAZZ: Talking Miles Davis’ In A Silent Way With The War On Drugs’ Drummer Charlie Hall
BY JONATHAN VALANIA If you don’t know Charlie Hall [pictured, below right] you should. He’s the drummer for The War On Drugs, Windsor For The Derby, co-founder of The Lindsey Buckingham Appreciation Society, leader of the a cappella choral group The Silver Ages, and an all-around good guy. A fan and a student of music in all its popular and unpopular forms, Charlie’s latest project is a tribute/cover band called Get Up With It that will mark the 50th anniversary of the 1969 release of Miles Davis’ In A Silent Way, the jazz master’s initial foray into the experimental […]
Q&A: With Jeff McDonald Of Redd Kross
EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview originally posted back in 2014. We are re-posting it today in advance of their show with The Melvins at Underground Arts on Saturday Oct. 12th. BY JONATHAN VALANIA You were born in an age of mockery, which was followed by a decade of irony. You were 15 years old when you played your first gig, opening for Black Flag. Your little brother was only 11. His bass was taller than him. You named your band after the crucifix masturbation scene in The Exorcist. Early on you were fascinated by pop culture gone horribly wrong, you wrote punky […]
BEING THERE : White Fence @ Underground Arts
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER Those familiar with the smaller stage at Underground Arts may know that seven musicians is at least three too many for a space of that size. A small extension was added centerstage on Thursday night for White Fence frontman Tim Presley, like a mini-catwalk, but the garage rock anti-hero hardly took advantage of it in the conventional sense, using it instead to edge up his mic only slightly to give the rest of his band just a little breathing room in the wings. Presley comes off as demure, unassuming and refreshingly unpretentious, his shirt tucked into […]
Win Tix To See Bon Iver @ Liacouras Center
I am old enough to remember when Bon Iver was just a weird-beard folkie lumberjack with a broken heart and a bad liver haunting the woods of Wisconsin, cranking out subterranean heartsick blues in his dad’s hunting cabin like the Unabomber of Love. This was back before he went prog-rock at Newport and started a riot — that was way cray. I remember Father John Misty threatening to cut the power with an axe and the guys from Mumford & Sons had to wrestle him to the ground. So much drama. And yet, despite the confusion of the moment, […]
BEING THERE: Lucinda Williams @ World Cafe
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER Lucinda Williams has a cold. Less than a minute into “Right on Time,” her first song of the night, she stepped back from the microphone saying “shit” under her breath, to reach for a tissue while she shook her head in agitated dismay at someone backstage. The annoyance on her face made me fear a stoic, empty performance lay ahead, or worse yet, a shortened-set meltdown. If her sandpapery voice could barely make it through the first verse of “Right on Time,” there was no way she’d be able to perform the straining high-range melodies of […]
THE MILK CARTON KIDS: I’ll Be Gone
From The Only Ones due out October 18th.
BEING THERE: Brittany Howard @ The Fillmore
Photo by MATT SHAVER Wiping the sweat from her brow, Brittany Howard paused between songs Friday night at The Fillmore to wag her finger at the crowd with a warning: “Be careful now. Don’t fuck around and drive me up.” Fans swallowed her words in a roar of cheers that would do just that, after only two songs in a set that featured every track off of her just released solo full-length debut Jaime. Unable to speak over the unending applause, Howard gave up trying, blowing a kiss to the crowd with a mouthed “love you” before turning back to […]