Snail Mail, the solo project of Baltimore native Lyndsey Jordan, dropped their long-anticipated full length album, Lush, just last week. The baby-faced blonde juts out a defiant chin, her gaze steady and unflinching as she ruminates on unrequited love. The songwriting of Lush is blunt and pragmatic. She is both vulnerable and resilient, which makes listening to this record feels like reading your kid sister’s diary. What sets this album apart is the departure from the grainy scratch of lo-fi recordings as Snail Mail graduates from the invisibility of DIY culture. Boxed up compactly in 10 songs, the studio-produced […]
BEING THERE: The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die + Pianos Become Teeth @ UT
Photo by SOPHIE BURKHOLDER There’s almost nothing so darkly cathartic as an emo concert. Though many bands of the genre have drawn criticism for their controversial and cliched lyrics, those at the forefront are more serious and skilled than ever. Two such bands are Pianos Become the Teeth and Philadelphia-based The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die (TWIABP), who last night performed their final show of a joint tour in support of their new albums, Wait for Love and Always Foreign, respectively. The bloated lineup also featured emo-punks Teenage Wrist and soft rockers […]
BEACH HOUSE: Black Car
Beach House @ the Tower Theater on July 26th in support of their just-released seventh album, 7.
BEING THERE: Hockey Dad @ Everybody Hits
Photo by DYLAN LONG Australian rock bands are killing it right now. The Australian rock scene is chock full of bands that are sick as hell and on the come-up, and I will not hold back my enthusiasm. Eclectic jangle rockers Dune Rats just wrapped up touring as main support for the well-established surf-rock group Wavves in the UK. The joyful garage rock trio Skegss are riding a gnarly wave of sold-out shows in pretty much all major cities across Straya, with solid support from local bands Dumb Punts & Los Scallywags . Which leads us to one of the […]
ALBUM REVIEW: Neko Case Hell-On
Neko Case is a singer-songwriter known for her uncommonly clarion vox, acerbic whimsy, nature mothering, and fiery red hair. But after the public exorcism of the #MeToo movement and the burning down of her Vermont home, the soft rock singer was forced to confront a new set of ugly and harsh realities. And she uses her new album, Hell-On, to help her do it. There is some serious introspection on the record, with the the lead-off title track diving right in to question who or what God is, finally defining him as “a lusty tire fire” – a line […]
BEING THERE: U2 @ The Wells Fargo Center
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER Entering the U2 Experience at the FU Center last night (yeah yeah, I know, but c’mon – it will ALWAYS be the FU Center), I did little in the way of recon. I have not heard these so called Songs Of Experience nor those of Innocence. I don’t know if the Line On The Horizon even had a lead-off single, and heaven knows, my ex can tell you with all honesty that I have no idea How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. In other words, I haven’t listened to the entirety of an actual U2 album […]
Win Tix To See Stephen Malkmus @ The TLA
Illustration by OLAF HAJEK Being Stephen Malkmus is … easy. You’re born upper-middle class in Los Angeles, the son of a general property/casualty insurance agent. You live on Citrus Avenue in the City Of Angels, where the sun shines all the time. When you’re eight, you move upstate to the tony suburban subdivisions of Stockton, where you’ll live out your formative years. You meet this kid named Scott Kannberg on your soccer team. You play wing. You learn to play guitar by aping Jimi Hendrix on “Purple Haze,” which features this tricky E chord. When you finally pull it off, […]
ALBUM REVIEW: TV GIRL Death Of A Party Girl
It was a brutally cold February in my sophomore year when I stumbled upon TV Girl somewhere in a Spotify rabbit hole. French Exit, their debut album, drove its catchy hooks into my ears and dragged me from the bitter, isolated cave of hibernation that I bury myself in every winter. French Exit was a splatter of color in the dismal, grey cityscape. It was a humid exhale into still lungs, the world ballooned with breath. TV Girl’s latest album, Death Of A Party Girl, sustains the dream pop, neo-psychedelic feel of previous work. Petering delivers prosaic storytelling in […]
SPIRITUALIZED: I’m Your Man
RELATED: Spiritualized have announced news of their new studio album, And Nothing Hurt, out September 7th via Fat Possum in the US and Bella Union in the UK/Europe. Spiritualized have also announced select live performances in support of the album, including two U.S. dates. From the opening lullaby of “A Perfect Miracle” through to the Morse Code fadeout at the close of “Sail on Through,” Spiritualized wrap layer upon layer of gloriously transcendent sound together to create a mesmerizing and cinematic collection of songs. There are points where the waves of blissful noise are almost overwhelming – the thunderous climax of “On […]
THIRTY YEARS AFTER: Q&A With The Posies
BY SOPHIE BURKHOLDER Thirty years ago, the Posies recorded their debut album Failure in a small amateur home studio in Bellingham, Washington. In 2016, they released their eighth studio album, Solid States, and now they’re off on a 30th anniversary tour (which stops at World Cafe Live on Wednesday) in celebration of reissues of Dear 23, Frosting On The Beater and Amazing Disgrace that will feature previously unreleased bonus tracks. Though they’ve gone through a series of line-up changes in their rhythm sections, the Posies have always included core members Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer. We got them both […]
BEING THERE: The Voidz @ Boot & Saddle
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER Monday night marked the start of a month long residency at the Boot N’ Saddle for The Voidz, former Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas’ new project. The show kicked off with Promiseland, a one-man band of electronic distortion and screamed poetry. Known for his crowd interactions, he walked throughout the small room and worked the crowd like a good hype man should. Promiseland’s powerfully loud set combined with the seedy backroom ambiance of the western-themed bar and the loop of Pixies and Sonic Youth on the PA between acts should have been the perfect build-up for The […]
BEING THERE: Japanese Breakfast @ UT
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER Despite torrential downpours and flooded streets, Union Transfer was packed last night for a sold out show headlined by Japanese Breakfast. The first opener was the Philly-based pop punk Radiator Hospital. Bed-headed and chronically-blushing, Sam Cook-Parrott wrapped himself around the mic in a wide-legged straddle, his voice pitched at a droning whine. The set primarily featured tracks from their latest release, The Songs You Like. LVL UP followed with a moody lo-fi set that contrasted pleasingly with the barbed edges of Radiator Hospital. Even with their mellow vibe and blasé attitude, the band unboxed some energetic […]
EXPRESSWAY TO YR SKULL: Q&A W/ Nels Cline
BY KYLE WEINSTEIN Well-known for his role as the wizardly guitarist of Wilco, Nels Cline has accrued an impressive discography and a heaping sum of musical projects and collaborations spanning the early ‘80s to present-day. Cline has collaborated with countless musicians, including Thurston Moore, Elliott Sharp, Zach Hill, Julius Hemphill, and many more, encompassing a diverse range of genres such as free-jazz, noise-rock, funk-rock, and so on. In 2016, Blue Note Records released Nels Cline’s Lovers, a romantic concept album of instrumental renditions of classic love songs. Last year, Ars Nova Workshop founder and Artistic Director Mark Christman commissioned […]