SLATE: The trailer for Janelle Monáe’s new album, Dirty Computer, didn’t prepare us for this. Monae dropped two new singles on Thursday, and, to paraphrase one of them, they make us feel so effing good. First up is “Make Me Feel,” in which Monáe proves why she’s the natural successor to fill the void left behind by Prince’s death in 2016. Not only does the accompanying music video show off Monae’s androgynous style and unbelievably smooth moves, it also quickly turns into a bisexual anthem as Monáe bounces back and forth between male and female love interests, the latter of […]
DEJA VU: Jonathan Wilson’s Spirit In The Sky
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article appears in the February 2013 issue of MAGNET MAGAZINE. We are re-posting it today in advance of Jonathan Wilson’s performance at Boot & Saddle on March 9th in support of his new solo album, Rare Birds. BY JONATHAN VALANIA It is another peaceful, easy-feeling evening in Laurel Canyon. The day has finally surrendered to the onset of night, which signals the beginning of shooting the waltz scenes in the video for “Dear Friend,” the lead-off single from acclaimed producer/singer-songwriter Jonathan Wilson’s new album, Fanfare. The location of the shoot is patch of driveway at the end […]
FROM THE VAULT: It’s John DeBella’s Morning, Philadelphia Just Wakes Up In It Every Day
EDITOR’S NOTE: Wrote this 14 years ago (14? Good Lord!), reprinting this today in the wake of today’s news that DeBella is being sued for sexual harrassment by his long-time on-air sidekick. The title of the profile was JOHN DEBELLA IS NOT AN ASSHOLE. ANYMORE — in retrospect, that assessment was premature. BY JONATHAN VALANIA John DeBella has been a hippie and a punk. A winner and a loser. A hero and a villain. And now he just wants to be a nice guy. As if to prove it, he is going to start welling up in T-minus-three seconds. “I […]
BEING THERE: Bardo Pond @ Johnny Brenda’s
Photo by MARK LIKOSKY For a Boston indie kid from the ’90s like myself, Friday’s Bardo Pond/Major Stars show at Johnny Brenda’s was like a stroll down the proverbial memory lane. I used to walk into Twisted Village record store to check out the most obscure music I could find. Sometime around 1996 upon hearing that the owners of this eclectic record store in Harvard Sq were in a band called the Major Stars, I just had to go check them out. In the 20 years that have passed since seeing that show I can’t recall a more powerful live […]
BEING THERE: Porches @ Union Transfer
Photo by ALAINA CLUNE Emotionally hungover from a Valentine’s Day spent trying to walk he fine line between embarrassingly enthusiastic and an even more embarrassing aversion for the holiday, me and my friends walk what feels like too many blocks from the subway to Union Transfer. We chug cheap beer without the ease and enthusiasm with which we normally do. The rafters and the general admission area of Union Transfer are blessedly uncrowded. There’s a calm, coolness that marks both the sound of the music and this rainy Thursday night. Girl Ray, a refreshingly laid back North London girl group, […]
BEING THERE: Girlpool @ First Unitarian Church
Photo by BEN PELTA-HELLER My best friend sits on my couch and hunts fruitlessly through Facebook for a ticket. Girlpool’s Philadelphia show at First Unitarian sold out only hours before. This is evident the moment I arrive. The air is thick. There is barely room to comfortably take a sip of your somewhat stale, cheap beer. The folk punk band from Los Angeles opens with a fuller, harder sound than I expected for people adorned with glittery hair clips, and I sweat out the boxed wine I drank prior. On Powerpoint, the latest from singer/guitarist Cleo Tucker and singer/bassist Harmony […]
LISTEN LIKE THIEVES: New Dr. Dog
On April 27th, Dr. Dog will release ‘Critical Equation,’ a new album that shows the band pushing themselves into perhaps the most fertile creative period in their history. To record ‘Critical Equation,’ they holed up with producer Gus Seyffert (Beck, Bedouine) and a 16-track tape machine to produce an inspired, playful opus that’s among their most imaginative statements.
BEING THERE: Snail Mail @ PhilaMOCA
Photo by FARRAH SHEIKY “Can you cut the drum mic,” Lindsey Jordan, the 18 year old frontwoman of Snail Mail, asked Saturday night at PhilaMOCA. Her voice is raspy and nonchalant. I don’t think ever uttered a sentence that cool when I was 18. Snail Mail is her first band. (Once again, much cooler than my first experiences with music in high school, which involved a lot of West Side Story.) Their debut EP, Habit, was released in July 2016. Since then, Jordan has toured with the likes of Beach Fossils, Priests, Waxahatchee, and Girlpool. The PhilaMOCA show may not […]
IN MEMORIAM: Mark E. Smith Of The Fall
BY BRIAN W. MURRAY By the time I came to The Fall they were already well established as (post-) punk iconoclasts, their unique brand of contrarian, literate sonic terrorism already highly regarded by musos-in-the-know, of whom I knew virtually none. They surfaced late-night in my bland suburban adolescent realm in the form of the new video for “New Big Prinz,” an immediate classic amidst their dizzyingly vast output. I remember it being, well, orange. Steve Hanley’s throbbing, pulverizing bass line heralded their trademark relentlessness. Over the piledriver rhythm, Craig Scanlon’s jagged, cascading guitar somehow meshed with Brix Smith’s incongruous […]
RIP: South African Trumpeter Hugh Masekela, The Man Who Blew Freedom’s Horn, Dead At 78
NEW YORK TIMES: The next year he joined Abdullah Ibrahim (then known as Dollar Brand) and four other upstart instrumentalists in the Jazz Epistles, South Africa’s first bebop band of note. With a heavy, driving pulse and warm, arcing melodies, their music was distinctly South African, even as its swing rhythms and flittering improvisations reflected affinities with American jazz. “There had never been a group like the Epistles in South Africa,” Mr. Masekela said in his 2004 autobiography, “Still Grazing: The Musical Journey of Hugh Masekela,” written with D. Michael Cheers. “Our tireless energy, complex arrangements, tight ensemble play, languid […]
TELEVISION: Fare Thee Well, Portlandia
PHAWKER: The people quoted in the below article are humorless bores richly deserving the parody they bitch about. Their comments only reinforce the necessity of the show’s humor. WILLAMETTE WEEKLY: The first time I saw Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen together in the same place, it wasn’t on television or YouTube or in a magazine. It was at a ping-pong tournament. Specifically, the Ping Pong Pandemonium Party at Holocene in June 2010. My predecessors on the WW music desk were participating, so I came to show support. Brownstein teamed with her Sleater-Kinney bandmate Janet Weiss and won the whole thing, […]