Photo by PETE TROSHAK Twenty-two years after the release of her most famous work — 1993’s Become What You Are, — Juliana Hatfield and a reunited Juliana Hatfield Three are out on the road to celebrate that classic album and the recent release of their second album as a trio, the excellent Whatever My Love. Hatfield along with drummer Todd Phillips and bass player Dean Fisher blazed through Become What You Are beginning to end along with a few new songs and a surprise cover to the delight of a packed house at the first of two sold-out nights at […]
BEING THERE: Sleater-Kinney @ Union Transfer
Photo by PETE TROSHAK Last nght, Sleater-Kinney — not seen in these parts since July 31st, 2006 — staged a triumphant return to Philadelphia with a way-sold out show at Union Transfer in support of their wonderful new album, No Cities to Love. Minneapolis hip hop artist Lizzo jolted the crowd awake during a lengthy opening set, at one point throwing bags of cookies out in the crowd while performing her song “Batches and Cookies.” Sleater-Kinney hit the stage shortly after 10pm, opening with raucous renditions of “Price Tag” and “Fangless”, the two opening tracks off of No Cities to […]
BEING THERE: Moosh & Twist @ The TLA
Photo by DYLAN LONG Hometown heroes DeQuincy Coleman McRae (Moosh, right) and Oliver Feighan (Twist, left) have gone from local rappers/Friends Select alums to globe-trotting recording artists who collaborate with the likes of Hoodie Allen. Friday night at the TLA kicked off with South-Philly up-and-comer Major Van Winkle and the Philly-bred live hip-hop act Ground Up, who recently sold out the Union Transfer with their vibrant-yet-dirty bars & heavy hitting drums. At half past 10, OCD: Moosh & Twist took the stage and unleashed their heavy and intricate bars, mixing in oldies — “Hold It Down,” “Take Me Back” and […]
BEING THERE: Ariel Pink @ Union Transfer
Photo by MARY LYNN DOMGINUEZ Tuesday night at Union Transfer, concertgoers in tacky plastic sunglasses and obnoxiously puffy fur coats awaited sunny pop salvation from their favorite wacky-rock idol. Though temperatures were below freezing outside, there was a hellish rise in temperature, glitter and lipstick graffiti when Ariel Pink and his ragtag five-piece band of sinners took the stage. You never quite know what you are going to get at an Ariel Pink concert. Typical sour antics at Ariel Pink concerts include: moody mid-show breakdowns, lost heads, and merciless 300-year sentences to the deepest, darkest dungeons doled out to naysayers […]
LET IT BE: The Replacements Announce ‘Back By Unpopular Demand’ Tour, Play Festival Pier May 9th
PASTE: The Replacements had seemingly played their last show together on July 4, 1991 at Chicago’s Grant Park. It wasn’t until 2013 that the band would get back together to play Riot Fest and then Coachella, as well as other festivals the following year. Now the group has announced the “Back By Unpopular Demand” tour, their first full U.S. tour in more than two decades. The shows primarily take place in smaller venues as opposed to the festival settings that the punk rockers have played the past couple years. After the U.S. dates, there will be a few shows in […]
BEING THERE: Jason Isbell @ The Keswick
Photo by RORY MCGLASSON Last night, Jason Isbell and his band The 400 Unit were a long way from the torrid climes of their home base of Muscle Shoals — about 50 degrees and a thousand miles, to be exact — inside the Keswick they made themselves right at home and turned up the heat but quick. Most of the sold-out crowd arrived early, and were rewarded for doing so by opening act, Damien Jurado. The Seattle-based indie singer-songwriter warmed the crowd with a tight acoustic set of intense and beautiful songs from his rich catalog. Isbell opened the night […]
Win Tix To See Jason Isbell @ The Keswick Theater
We are very honored and excited to announce that we have a pair of tickets to give away to some lucky Phawker reader to see Jason Isbell at the Keswick Theater on Thursday February 5th! What’s that you say? ‘Who is Jason Tinkerbell?’ We’re gonna forget you said that and meet you on the other side of this New York Times profile from 2013: He found fame early and wasn’t ready for it. When he was 22, he joined the Drive-By Truckers, the brilliant and hard-living Alabama band. He quickly wrote several of the group’s signature songs, including the […]
BEING THERE: Cherub @ The Trocadero
Photo by DYLAN LONG The “Strip to This” Winter 2015 Tour stopped by the Troc last night for a night full of grooviness and vibes, hosted by the catchy electro-bro duo Cherub. The combination of their irresistible, hook-filled, but empty calorie electro-pop paired with the zero fucks they gave culminated in a night of sweat, smiles and dancing. Lots and lots of dancing. After an intriguing set by opener Mystery Skulls, a one-man-band from LA that traffics in live vocals/turntablist hybrids, Cherub took the stage and dove straight into a super-groovy and incredibly energetic set. Jason Huber, Cherub’s frontman, spent […]
ANGELS OF MONTGOMERY: Ghosts Of The Dream
NEW YORKER: Barry Blitt drew this week’s cover, inspired by the photographs of the Selma-to-Montgomery march that are everywhere again. “It struck me that King’s vision was both the empowerment of African-Americans, the insistence on civil rights, but also the reconciliation of people who seemed so hard to reconcile,” he said. “In New York and elsewhere, the tension between the police and the policed is at the center of things. Like Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner, Michael Brown and Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, Martin Luther King was taken way too early. It is hard to believe things would […]
BEING THERE: CRUISR @ The Barbary
Photo by DYLAN LONG Last night, fresh off of their incredibly successful support slot for The 1975’s North American tour, hometown hero indie-popsters CRUISR rocked a sold-out throwdown at The Barbary along with the likes of Cold Fronts & Needle Points. The Barbary is a small joint with a big sound system, and the openers wasted no time setting an upbeat vibe for the night with loud melodies and catchy breakdowns. CRUISR took the stage at 9pm and took their sweet time working through a setlist that hovered around a mere eight or nine songs. Lush guitar riffs swept over […]
Win Tix To See Patton Oswalt @ The Tower Theater
Christmas in January continues at Phawker this week with, get this, tickets to see Patton Friggin’ Oswalt tomorrow night at the Tower!. This came together very last minute at the behest of Mr. Oswalt, who, like PT Anderson, personally donated tix to Phawker for giving away to our readers. What can we say? We’re flattered, and excited that two of you lucky ducks is going to Upper Darby tomorrow night! Time is short so let’s cut to the quick. To keep this interesting were gonna make this hinge on a trivia question. What is the name of the Pacific […]
ALBUM OF THE YEAR: Supernova Ray LaMontagne
RAY LAMONTAGNE Supernova (RCA) This was the sound of my summer, the soundtrack for playing hooky with my honey and sneaking down the shore the back way on Mondays in July, wearing wreaths of Jersey sweet corn and tomatoes and a halo of mosquitoes, the sound of moonlit drives thru the Pine Barrens, and marveling at the incandescent twinkling of the Big Dipper under magic milkshake stand skies. This album is rife with all that bygone-but-still-here-stuff — drive-in movies, purple sunshine, tape delay, lavender skies, S.E. Hinton novels, Syd Barrett nursery rhymes, the power of a reverb-drenched electric guitar, […]
THIS IS OUR MUSIC: Our Favorite Albums Of 2014
We said it before and we’ll say it again: Quoth the Chairman Of The Board, it was a very good year. So was last year, and the one before that and the one before that and so on. Why? Mostly, we can thank the disruptive, game-eating power of the Internet. The best thing that ever happened to music was the web-abetted collapse of the music industry’s one-size-fit-most paradigm and the death of radio as the prime determinant of what people like. Now people find music everywhere, it literally rains out of everything with an electric pulse, which has triggered […]