Photo by ALEX PATERSON-JONES The Dead Milkmen are the band that invariably comes to mind when we think of Philly punk rock. To me, their sound has always stood out against their contemporary punk rockers: no screaming, no harsh distortion or feedback – instead, punk attitude and punk rock song structures accented by surf and funk influence, with no shortage of comedy. Since their humble cassette beginnings in ’83 as a band of fictional characters in the minds of guitarist/vocalist Joe Genaro and his high school friends, Rodney Linderman (vocalist/keyboardist), and Garth (who joined the Air Force), to the full […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: In the new Ken Burns PBS series on the history of country music, my guest, Doug Green, talks about the era of the singing cowboy as epitomized by the most popular one, Gene Autry. Cowboy lore, folk ballads, jazz, Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood are all ingredients of the music of the singing cowboys who were movie staples in the ’30s and ’40s and then on TV in the ’50s. A lot of the music has been forgotten, but Green wrote about its history in his book, Singing In The Saddle. And he performs the music with his […]
Win Tix To See Brittany Howard @ The Fillmore
Artwork by XZIRTAEBX Alabama Shakes was formed in 2009 in Athens, Alabama — by a postal worker, a nuclear plant night watchmen, an animal clinic worker and a house painter — as a viable alternative to watching the cars rust, which was the prevailing pastime in Athens at the time. Having weathered a dues-paying, teeth-cutting cover band purgatory of sports bars and country dives and all the mightier for it, the Shakes began building buzz when the breathless blogger hype proved not just believable but vastly understated. On 2012’s million-selling Boys And Girls, Alabama Shakes sounded like Exile On Main […]
BEING THERE: Pond @ Union Transfer
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER There’s something rather tempting about the grungy industrial basement design of Underground Arts, and Nick Allbrook clearly thought so too, as he swung from his legs on a ceiling pipe with a wild smile on his face in the middle of his set last night, before careening back down into his self-requested crowd surf. The lead singer of Australian psych-rock band Pond, Allbrook took the stage of the small venue with his four other bandmates last night, some of whom trade off between Tame Impala’s touring band. Equipped with multiple synthesizers, a few guitars, a sparkling […]
BEING THERE: Iron & Wine + Calexico @ UT
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER Sam Beam took his place Friday night on the Union Transfer stage by a bank of half a dozen acoustic guitars and a glass of red wine, the crew of Calexico supporting the flanks. The Tucson-based Tejano troubadours have been collaborating and co-touring with Beam — better known by nom de guerre Iron & Wine — on and off now for about 15 years.Trading vocal harmonies with Calexico’s Joey Burns, and alternating between the two songwriters’ compositions, Beam’s smoky mountain ballads in perfect complement with Burns’ brass-gilded southwestern score. The magnetic indie folk singer and his […]
ELVIS, I’M SCARED: A Few Thoughts About Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant, Gettin’ Old & Fixin’ To Die
Robert Plant @ The Mann Center, Philadelphia, September 17th by CHRIS SIKICH BY JONATHAN VALANIA In the days of my youth I was told what it means to be a man by an Elvis impersonator. This happened at a picnic grove in the blackened heart of Pennsyltucky — Hellertown, to be exact, just a few towns over from my ancestral home — in the final decade of the 20th Century. Truth be told, this Elvis impersonator wasn’t very good — are any of them, really? isn’t that actually the whole point? — and as the keg-fueled crowd grew restless and […]
BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN: Q&A W/ Greg Sowders Of Alt-Country Pioneers The Long Ryders
BY BARRY GUTMAN During the 1980s, The Long Ryders – along with The Dream Syndicate, The Bangles, The Three O’Clock and The Rain Parade – were card-carrying members of Los Angeles’ “Paisley Underground” scene. While all of those bands channeled the ‘60s to some extent, none carried on in the folk- and country-rock vein of The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield and Flying Burrito Bros. so prominently and perfectly. “Ivory Tower”, for example, from their first LP, Native Sons, would have fit perfectly on either of The Byrds’ first two albums – so perfectly, in fact, that that band’s master songwriter […]
BEING THERE: Andrew Bird @ The Fillmore
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER There is perhaps no better complement to the purple skies and browning leaves of an early autumn night than the violin-centric folk pop music of Andrew Bird. His pensive, literary lyrics, spinning horns, pedal loops, and virtuoso whistling drew a crowd of shaggy-haired Bird look-alikes to the Fillmore last night, many fans already equipped with previous tour merchandise, and even more dorkily smiling through the face hole of a life-size cutout of the mock Death of Marat on his most recent album cover at the venue entrance. That album, My Finest Work Yet, which came out […]
INCOMING: Boy Harsher
Photo by SVEN HARAMBASIC Boy Harsher is a nouveau neo-Cold Wave duo comprised of spooky siren Jae Matthews [pictured, above] and beat architect Augustus Muller fusing goth sonic tropes with industrial electronic rhythms. Originally dubbed Teen Dreamz, the group began as a series of short stories narrated by Matthews’s reverb-drenched voice swathed in dark, moody synths and electro drum beats sculpted by Muller. In due time, Teen Dreamz morphed into Boy Harsher, coming of age with their debut LP, Yr Body is Nothing, a disorienting high-velocity night drive on a lost highway for the ears. Matthews and Muller’s mutual background […]
TYLER THE CREATOR: A Boy Is A Gun
TYLER THE CREATOR @ THE MANN CENTER’S SKYLINE STAGE SEPT. 25TH
RIP: Ric Ocasek, New Wave Architect, Dead @ 75
NEW YORK TIMES: From 1978 to 1988, Mr. Ocasek (pronounced oh-CASS-eck) and the Cars merged a vision of romance, danger and nocturnal intrigue and the concision of new wave music with the sonic depth and ingenuity of radio-friendly rock. The Cars managed to please both punk-rock fans and a far broader pop audience, reaching into rock history while devising fresh, lush extensions of it. The Cars grew out of a friendship forged in the late 1960s in Ohio between Mr. Ocasek and Benjamin Orr, who died in 2000. They worked together in multiple bands before moving to Boston and forming […]
ALBUM REVIEW: Devendra Banhart’s Ma
Ma, recovering freak folkie Devendra Banhart’s eleventh album, is a post-mortem of sorts that finds Banhart in unflinching confessional singer-songwriter mode, earnestly exploring themes of death and loss, political oppression, and the mourning of what once was. During the three-year period that passed since he released Ape In Pink Marble, Banhart travelled to Caracas, Venezuela, to find the city in ruins, his family starving, and many old friends missing and presumably abducted or murdered. Compounding the trauma of it all, his mother passed away during this time, and her ghost haunts the album. The first intimation of his mother’s […]
BEING THERE: The Growlers @ Union Transfer
Photo by MATT SHAVER Thursday night at Union Transfer, Brooks Nielsen, lead singer of Cali-based beach goths The Growlers, hit the stage rocking his trademark Robert Smith-inspired locks and a thrifty striped sweater. Lead guitarist Matt Taylor went for the no fuss, white tee and was joined by guitarist, Kyle Stratka who opted for a long-sleeve, colored tee. This was suspiciously dressed down for a band that usually sports incredibly dapper, coordinated suit ensembles. However, these perplexing sartorial choices had no apparent impact on their ability to deliver the good. They opened with “Problems III” which felt like a great […]