What Chaos Is Imaginary is Girlpool’s third LP, and finds duo Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad shedding past selves like an old skin. The work revolves around gradual personal growth, the pain of becoming someone else and trying to abandon the echo of who you once were. This is the first album the band has released since Tucker’s transition, and the drop of their voice into a lower tenor has changed the core of the songs. Before, their voices blended in gentle harmonies, but now there is sharp division. On previous works, everything was shared, a constant collaboration. Now […]
RETROSPECTIVE: Earl Sweatshirt, The Understated Young Poet Laureate Of The Mumble Generation
Illustration by @KingJediah via Instagram BY SEAN HECK In 2011, Los Angeles-based hip-hop collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All were at the zenith of their fame. By then, the group of boisterous young rappers, producers, crooners, skaters, fashion designers and hype men had collectively released 12 mixtapes, with a few members showcasing a large array of distinct influences, personalities, and sounds. The group’s ringleader, Tyler the Creator, seemed to get his kicks from simultaneously worrying and intriguing white Americans with repulsive, predatory lyrics about rape, murder and mutilation juxtaposed with murky, jazzy, and at times quirkily beautiful piano […]
BEING THERE: Amen Dunes + Arthur @ UT
Photo by MATT SHAVER Despite the frigid wind and snow of a polar vortex—whatever that is—Union Transfer was packed with beanie-wearing, beer-guzzling indie kids last night. At first, the crowd was largely friends and family of opener Arthur, the experimental pop project of Arthur Shea. Shea also plays in Philly band Joy Again, who I’ve been following on the DIY scene for several years, watching them grow from playing in dingy basements to touring with Rostam (Vampire Weekend). Arthur’s music is surreal and alien, full of bizarre sound effects and skittering pop keyboards. The overall impression is frenzied, like an […]
IN THE BEGINNING: Vinyl Mini-Box Set Of David Bowie’s Earliest Demos Lands On Earth April 5th
With 2019 marking 50 years since David Bowie’s first hit, “Space Oddity,” Parlophone is set to release a 7″ vinyl singles boxed set of nine previously unreleased recordings* from the era during which “Space Oddity” was first conceived. The title SPYING THROUGH A KEYHOLE is a lyric taken from the previously unknown song “Love All Around” and though most of the other titles are known, these versions have never been officially released until late last year (see footnote). Most of the recordings are solo vocal and acoustic home demo performances, unless otherwise stated. The photography that adorns the box front […]
AVEY TARE: Saturdays (Again)
Avey Tare, a.k.a Dave Portner of Animal Collective, has announced the new album Cows On Hourglass Pond, for release on March 22, 2019. Cows On Hourglass Pond was recorded between January – March 2018 by Dave Portner at Laughing Gas in Asheville, NC on a Tascam 48 half-inch reel-to-reel tape machine. The album was mixed by Adam McDaniel and Dave Portner at Drop of Sun in Asheville, NC. Tour dates after the jump…
TIM HEIDECKER: Ballad Of ICE Agent Ray
Today, Tim Heidecker releases the Another Year In Hell: Collected Songs from 2018 EP via Jagjaguwar, the follow up to 2016’s acclaimed Too Dumb For Suicide: Tim Heidecker’s Trump Songs. He also shares a lyric video for “Ballad of ICE Agent Ray,” edited by Vic Berger and stylized with a still of Trump’s twitter and his comically characteristic misspellings. Featuring six songs that are caustic renderings of MAGA characters, both imagined and real, Another Year In Hell boasts the same signature piano and guitar lines from Heidecker’s previous release, but with a sharper bite. While Too Dumb For Suicide made us […]
BEING THERE: Neko Case @ The Keswick
Photo by MATT SHAVER The first time I heard Neko Case sing was at a live show and she was singing just to me. The year was 2004 and I was at the Tower Theater, er, sorry, Tower Records, in Fairfax Virginia. The listening stations were a favorite spot of mine after classes. I’d post up on those shiny red stools and bury myself in whatever the staff was recommending at the moment, and in this moment it was The Tigers Have Spoken. I was hooked from song one and have been enthralled ever since. Neko has THE voice – […]
Win Tix To See Neko Case @ The Keswick Friday!
A tomboyish siren with a thick red mane and lungs of fine Corinthian leather, Neko Case is equal parts gender warrior and indie aesthete, a potent hybrid aptly evoked by the Joan-of-Arc-on-a-muscle-car tableau on the cover of 2009’s Middle Cyclone. Case is also in possession of what is arguably the greatest voice of her generation — clarion in tone; trans-national in its reach; and bottomless in its capacity to transmute wryly-observed public fictions into inescapable private truths that all more or less boil down to: I am woman, hear me ruminate. She performs at the Keswick Theater tomorrow night […]
VAMPIRE WEEKEND: Harmony Hall
From the fourth Vampire Weekend album, Father Of The Bride, due out this spring. Stay tuned.
AMEN DUNES: Miki Dori
Amen Dunes plays Union Transfer on Wednesday January 30th.
BEING THERE: Mineral @ Theater Of Living Arts
Photo by MATT SHAVER Mineral was one of those bands that got me through high school. Cliché as it may be, those angst-filled, sometimes brittle, but always powerful vocals, and the noisy, feedback-laden guitar riffs spoke volumes to me – speak volumes to me. Formed in Houston in ’94, Mineral became one of the most important bands in emo, and their first full-length album, The Power of Failing (1997), has become a staple of the genre. Their songwriting was unapologetically honest, and the highly emotional lyrics were carried by epic vocal harmonies through song structures that usually took the listener […]
BEING THERE: A$AP Rocky @ Liacouras Center
Photo by ALEX PATERSON-JONES A$AP ROCKY’s latest LP,Testing, released last May, rocks a combination of eclectic, experimental head bangers and high-octane mosh pit fuel, perfectly-suited for live workouts on his current “Injured Generation” tour, which stopped at the Liacouras Center last night, with opening acts Smooky Margiela and Comethazine in tow. Just 16 years old, Smooky took the stage first and owned it with a charisma much larger than his body size. Throwing down his now-blowing-up hits “Stay 100” and “Vlone Flex,” Smooky made it clear why A$AP has chosen him to join his creative collective, the A$AP Mob. Next […]
SET THE WAYBACK MACHINE TO NEVER: A Q&A With Jon Spencer, Legendary Blooze Traveler, Elvis From Hell, Noise-Rock Deviant & A Really Nice Guy
BY JONATHAN VALANIA With all due apologies to The Gun Club, Jon Spencer looks just like an Elvis from Hell. Where I come from that’s the highest praise you can confer on someone. And after 34 years of rocking righteously and outrageously, not to mention prodigiously — more than 40 albums and EPs, and countless singles and comp appearances spread across five different bands — he’s earned it. Back in 1985, his band Pussy Galore crawled out of the noise rock sewer of the Lower East Side and proceeded to define deviance downwards. They sounded like Einsturzende Neubauten raised on […]