It has often been said that Wilco is the American Radiohead — an edgy, 21st-century rock band whose audience only seems to grow the more they challenge it. Less remarked on is the more obvious fact that they are also the new Grateful Dead — populist guarantors of the heartland verities of cosmic Americana. Like the Dead, the continuum of Wilco’s concertizing has come to matter far more than their individual albums. Which is why it is so crucial that you get to the Mann tomorrow night to see them, or risk falling hopelessly behind on the whole ‘heartland […]
LET IT BE: A Q&A With ‘Mats Biographer Bob Mehr
BY JONATHAN VALANIA In the Amerindie rock underground of the mid-80s, The Replacements, along with Husker Du and REM, formed a troika of indie-rock royalty that produced some of the greatest music of that decade or any other. Nineteen eighty-four was their annus mirabilis. REM released Reckoning, and Husker Du released Zen Arcade and New Day Rising. The Replacements released Let It Be, which despite the co-opting of the Beatles song for its title was in fact their Beggars Banquet. All three soon signed major label deals with varying results. Husker Du lasted just two albums, the uneven Candy Apple […]
CONTEST: Win Tix To See Eagles Of Death Metal!
The Eagles Of Death Metal — still reeling from the horrific tragedy at the Bataclan, and the PTSD-tinted crazy talk that followed — play the Troc on Friday and we want to send you and a friend, on us. To qualify, all you have to do is sign up for our mailing list (see right, below the masthead). Trust us, this is something you want to do. In addition to breaking news alerts and Phawker updates, you also get advanced warning about groovy concert ticket giveaways and other free swag opportunities like this one! After signing up, send us […]
Win Tix To See The Walkmen’s Hamilton Leithauser
Fourteen years after the release of Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Now Gone, The Walkmen have gone on ‘indefinite hiatus’ — which is a polite way of saying ‘We broke up but we could easily get back together for a tour or an album if the money’s right, or everything we try post-Walkmen utterly fails.’ Given the warm critical response to Walkmen singer Hamilton Leithauser’s 2014 solo debut Black Hours — an unlikely but uber-catchy collection of stately torch-songs, caffeinated power-pop and Stones-y country-rock hybrids, that features members of Vampire Weekend and The Shins), that’s not happening any […]
FROM THE VAULT: Heroes & Villains
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story first appeared in the June/July 2002 issue of MAGNET MAGAZINE BY JONATHAN VALANIA so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens. That was written by William Carlos Williams, an American poet. Best I can tell, he was talking about the significance of insignificance, that little things truly do mean a lot—like if you could surf the past in a time machine and you did something as small as, say, kicking a stone in the Stone Age, it could send a ripple through the entire fabric of history. […]
BEING THERE: Courtney Barnett @ The E-Factory
Photo by TOM BECK Fresh off a 2015 North American tour during which she played a sold out show at Union Transfer, Courtney Barnett returned to Philly last night for a sold out show at the Electric Factory backed by her Aussie accomplices, drummer Dave Mudie and bassist “Bones” Sloane. Decked out in her trademark droopy pants, old t-shirt and slept-on hair, Barnett kicked things off with “Dead Fox.” Songs from Sometimes I Sit And Think And Sometimes I Just Sit, Barnett’s 2015 debut LP, made up the lion’s share of the set list. Just three songs from 2012’s A […]
Win Tix To See Borns @ The Electric Factory Friday
Garrett Borns is a one-man glam-rock revivial — think Marc Bolan crossed with Jeff Buckley with Harry Styles hair — and who doesn’t love one-man glam-rock revivals? Not you, that’s for sure. That’s why you must be terribly excited to learn that we have a pair of tix to see Borns @ the Electric Factory on Friday. To qualify to win, all you have to do is sign up for our mailing list (see right, below the masthead). Trust us, this is something you want to do. In addition to breaking news alerts and Phawker updates, you also get […]
Win Tix To See Rufus Wainright @ The Foundry
Rufus is for lovers: Boys who like boys, girls who like girls, boys who like girls and girls who like boys. Young, old, everyone in between. These are his people. Basically anyone who’s ever had a heart break apart in their hands and learned the hard way that you can jigsaw back together, with patience and the glue of time, but it will never be the same again. It’s like bypass surgery or Cupid’s arrow — it may not kill you, it might even make you stronger, but it still hurts when you lay the wrong way. By rights, […]
Win Tix To See Cage The Elephant @ The Mann
Arguably, the best thing to come out of Kentucky since bourbon, Slint and fried chicken, Cage The Elephant are a gang of punky/trippy blooze-rockers currently wreaking their own brand of testosterone-addled, rock-havoc on the world. Currently, they are as popular as they are obvious — early on you could hear undigested chunks of Pixies, Janes, Pumpkins and White Stripes in the mix — but since when was that a bad thing in rock and/or roll? Besides, they’ve since added ’60s Brit-pop (Kinks, Hollies, Zombies) and ’70s Krautrock (Can, Neu, Amon Duul) to their plunder. Think a Kentucky-fried Dr. Dog. […]
BEING THERE: Del The Funky Homosapien @ UT
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER Following an earnest and energetic opening set from Minneapolis rapper Sean Anonymous, Harvard math grad, NYU adjunct professor and turntable acrobat DJ Shiftee helped prime a Sunday crowd convened at Union Transfer to see Del The Funky Homosapien. Having first cut his chops writing lyrics for cousin Ice Cube’s Da Lench Mob crew in California’s hip hop scene in the early 90’s, Del’s first solo record I Wish My Brother George Was Here was produced by Cube in 1991, and buoyed by the success of hit single “Mistadobalina,” a popular critique of cultural inauthenticity that sampled […]
THIS JUST IN: Earth Loves New Radiohead Album
PITCHFORK: So what is new on A Moon Shaped Pool, Radiohead’s first studio album since 2011’s The King of Limbs? Very little, which to me is what immediately makes it so great. For their ninth studio album, the concept of “newness” doesn’t resonate in the first several listens of this album in the same way that, say, Kid A immediately felt iconoclastic or Hail To The Thief stood in defiance of a political zeitgeist. Instead, Radiohead take a moment of reprise and gather little pieces from their entire career both in and out of the band. There are backwards vocals, […]
INCOMING: Win Tix To See Bob Mould
Photo by SHELLY MOSMAN These are glory days for Bob Mould, valedictorian of the indie rock class of 1984; glowering godfather of alt-rock circa 1992; dark lord of the molten dirge circa 1998; shirtless dancing bear spinning the wheels of steel for the Blow-Off, his hugely successful gay-friendly DJ parties, circa 2002; celebrated warts-n-all memoirist circa 2011; and acknowledged American Master of punk-as-fuck-three-chords-and-the-truth tunesmithery circa now. If it looks like things are finally breaking his way, that was never guaranteed. It could have just as easily gone the other way. In October he turns 56. In rock n’ roll years, […]
BEING THERE: Iggy Pop @ The Academy Of Music
Photo by DAN LONG BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER There may well be a sound more thrilling than the tub-thumping opening salvo of Iggy Pop’s “Lust For Life,” but after five decades of listening closely I’ve yet to hear it. When that song starts, stillness is simply not an option. Resistance is futile. It’s a showstopper, which is why it’s usually the last song of the night. So when Iggy (known to his mother as James Newell Osterberg Jr.) kicked off his concert at the Academy Of Music last night with it, the question hanging in the air was: […]