In the last year Tame Impala auteur Kevin Parker has gone from trippy bedroom Lonerist to beloved global psych savant. MAGNET journeys to the Land of Oz to press an ear up to his inner speaker. BY JONATHAN VALANIA Kevin Parker, the one-man-band psych-rock wunderkind who records under the name Tame Impala, lives across the street from a professional magician (and sword swallower) in a quaint cul-de-sac of houses ringed with lemon trees in Freemantle, a charming seaside town of 25,000 in Western Australia. He shares a granny flat with Melody Prochet, his beautiful and cool French girlfriend, who is […]
TIX: No, You Are Not Too Cool For The Wallflowers
Photo by ELLIOTT LANDY The curse of being a scion of greatness is that you will never outrun the titanic shadow of your father’s legacy. Case in point Jakob Dylan of The Wallflowers. Back in the ‘90s, I remember thinking I was too cool for The Wallflowers. But either I was never too cool for The Wallflowers or I have, in my dotage, become just uncool enough to love them, or more specifically, their one big hit “One Headlight.” It is a perfect engine of Big Radio’s endorphin-triggers: the deathless thock of the snare, the galloping rhythm guitar dancing the […]
BEING THERE: Beck + Spoon + Cage The Elephant @ BB&T
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER It’s not easy for a band to maintain its integrity in an industry that reserves gratification for mainstream success. Remarkably, over two decades, indie rockers Spoon [pictured, below right] have managed to avoid committing the penultimate sin of ‘selling out.’ Opening the show at BB&T last night, Spoon’s set swerved from 90’s grunge throwbacks to the delicate synth-pop tunes that populate their most recent albums. While their quintessential single “The Underdog” is crunchy and defiant, “Inside Out” off 2014’s They Want My Soul is plush and drifting. For as much as they have evolved sonically, the […]
G’DAY: Eight Miles High In The Land Down Under
EDITOR’S NOTE: In advance of Tame Impala’s sold out show at the Mann on Friday, I’m re-posting this 2013 dispatch from Australia where I spent a week interviewing TI mainman Kevin Parker for a MAGNET cover story. I will post that story in full tomorrow. BY JONATHAN VALANIA As I mentioned previously, I have been in Australia for the past week profiling Tame Impala for the cover of the September issue of MAGNET MAGAZINE. I promised to blog some local color on a daily basis, but a hectic schedule, unreliable WiFi and soul-sapping jet lag put the kibosh on those […]
GEEK SQUAD: Spiderman Is Going Home
BY RICHARD SUPLEE GEEK SPACE CORRESPONDENT Spider-Man: Far From Home is now Sony’s highest grossing film. Ever. And so Sony and Disney did what any well reasonable mega corporations will do. They argued about money and decided to end their business relationship. Because it is hard to share a billion dollars. Marvel Studios Executive Producer Kevin Feige, who produced the previous both Spider-Man: Far from Home and Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), will no longer be producing the web slinger, according to a report on Deadline. And frankly I am unsure what this means. Since Tom Holland portrayed the character in […]
KIM GORDON: Sketch Artist
This is easily the best thing Kim Gordon’s ever done. And I’m old enough to remember when buying Bad Moon Rising on vinyl wasn’t just a hip format choice, it was your only option. “Sketch Artist” is the lead-off track from her just-announced/first-ever solo album, No Home Record, to be released October 11th on Matador Records. No Home Record follows the recent opening of Gordon’s solo exhibition “She Bites Her Tender Mind” at IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) in Dublin and “Lo-Fi Glamour” at Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA. The video for “Sketch Artist” was directed by Berlin-based artist and […]
INCOMING: Ziggy Played Guitar
PITCHFORK: The first picture of Johnny Flynn in Stardust is here. Check out the shot, taken by Paul Van Carter, above. The forthcoming, unauthorized film—which producers insist is “not a biopic”—depicts David Bowie’s life and transformation into Ziggy Stardust in the early 1970s, as he embarks on a road trip to America. MORE PREVIOUSLY: Stardust, an upcoming film about David Bowie, has cast its leading man, as Deadline and Screen International note. The role will be played by actor-musician Johnny Flynn, and he will be accompanied by Marc Maron—portraying Bowie’s publicist—and Jena Malone (The Hunger Games) as Bowie’s first wife, […]
CINEMA: Re-Born In The USA
BLINDED BY THE LIGHT (Directed by Gurinder Chadha, 118 min., 2019, USA) BY JASMIN ALVAREZ Recently, director Gurinder Chadha led a Q&A in Philly to discuss her new movie Blinded By The Light (2019) and the harrowing actuality of immigrant life during the Thatcherite ‘80s that impelled her to reimagine an upbeat and unifying cinematic alternative history. The screenplay is adapted from the memoir Greetings from Bury Park: Race, Religion, and Rock N’ Roll, written by journalist Sarfraz Manzoor, a second-generation British-Pakistani turned Springsteen-zealot who found shelter from the racist cruelties of Thatcher-fueled xenophobia in the music of The Boss. […]
ALBUM REVIEW: King Gizzard Infest The Rat’s Nest
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard is an insanely prolific seven-piece from Australia that combines psychedelia, garage rock, jazz, prog and now thrash metal to create a sound that is wholly theirs over the course of 15 albums. In 2017 alone, they released a mind-boggling five uniformly great albums. After a relatively silent 2018, King Gizzard returned earlier this year with Fishing for Fishies, an LP of soft, environmentally-conscious blues rock with songs about feeling bad for the fish you catch and boogie-oogie-oogie-ing. Fishing for Fishies may have had a few duds buried in its tracklist, but it also […]
BACK STORY: The Complete Oral History Of Spoon
BY JONATHAN VALANIA In the last 26 years, Spoon has gone from great white hype to major-label train wreck to “the most consistently great” band of the last decade, according to Metacritic. Algorithms can tell. They are the one band upon which we can all agree. The lion’s share of the blame and the glory rests squarely on the shoulders of singer/songwriter/guitarist Britt Daniel. Spoon is essentially a one-man band that’s had 11 members come and go or stay the course since 1993. MAGNET got all Spoon hands back on deck—not just the currently Spoon-fed, but the exiles and […]
ALBUM REVIEW: Bon Iver i,i
Illustration by MIKKEL SOMMER Twelves years ago, Justin Vernon emerged from a self-imposed isolation in the woods of Wisconsin and presented to the world his sadcore masterpiece For Emma, Forever Ago. Since then, Bon Iver has become a staple of indie-folk sound. His body of work always sounded to me like rustic lullabies, digestible background noise and easy to ignore. However, his latest album i,i breaks that pattern. Upon first glance, the tracklist appears senseless, made up of Biblical-sounding phrases and abbreviations. The song titles could be interpreted as poking fun at Vernon’s style of singing, the way he stretches […]
REDD KROSS: When Do I Get To Sing ‘My Way’
BROOKLYN VEGAN: Redd Kross‘ upcoming album, Beyond the Door (August 28th, MERGE), closes with a cover of Sparks’ 1994 single, “When Do I Get to Sing ‘My Way,” which they transform from glittering synthpop disco into a triumphant rock anthem. It also comes with the creators’ approval. “Redd Kross has always been one of my favorite bands and that opinion was cemented when I heard their amazing version of our ‘When Do I Get To Sing ‘My Way,’” says Sparks’ Ron Mael. “To do a version of that song with a completely different musical approach from the original while keeping […]
THE CROZ: Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man
Photo by MICHAEL OCHS via TUMBLR BY JONATHAN VALANIA In advance of his headlining appearance at the 2019 Philadelphia Folk Festival next week, and upon the release of Cameron Crowe’s acclaimed documentary, David Crosby: Remember My Name (now playing @ Ritz 5), we got Mr. Crosby (The Byrds, Crosby Stills, Nash & Young) on the horn. DISCUSSED: Choice chapeaus, kool capes, walrus mustaches, marijuana, Cameron Crowe, Monterey Pop, Neil Young, Buffalo Springfield, that badass hat he’s wearing in the “Eight Miles High” video, The Wrecking Crew, Terry Melcher, seeing John Coltrane blow mad horn in a men’s in Chicago while […]