NEW YORK TIMES: Adam Schlesinger, an acclaimed singer-songwriter for the bands Fountains of Wayne and Ivy who had an award-winning second career writing songs for film, theater and television, died on Wednesday in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He was 52. The cause was complications of the coronavirus, his family said. In Fountains of Wayne, which was started in 1995, Mr. Schlesinger [pictured above, second from right] and Chris Collingwood perfected a novelistic form of hummable pop-rock in a style derived from the Kinks and from 1970s groups like Big Star and the Cars. They chose northern New Jersey and boroughs outside Manhattan […]
REQUIEM: Threnody For The Victims Of Hiroshima
NEW YORK TIMES: Krzysztof Penderecki, a Polish composer and conductor whose modernist works jumped from the concert hall to popular culture, turning up in soundtracks for films like “The Exorcist” and “The Shining” and influencing a generation of edgy rock musicians, died on Sunday at his home in Krakow. He was 86. Mr. Penderecki was regarded as Poland’s pre-eminent composer for more than half a century, and in all those years he never seemed to sit still. Beginning in the 1960s with radical ideas that placed him firmly in the avant-garde. […] It was compositions from the wild first decade […]
THE DREAM SYNDICATE: The Longing
? When The Dream Syndicate emerged in the early ’80s, front man Steve Wynn declared, “We’re playing music we want to hear because nobody else is doing it.” He added, “I’ll compromise on what I eat or where I sleep, but I won’t compromise on what music I play.” Both were true, and although their template of Velvet Underground meets Crazy Horse may seem commonplace today (and let’s not forget, the Syndicate spawned many imitators), their raw twin guitar, bass and drums approach was not common during an era when slick, polished MTV bands ruled. Thirty years later The Dream […]
THE RENTALS: Invasion Night
Today, the Los Angeles-based production house American Primitive debuted “Invasion Night,” the official music video for The Rentals’ newish single. Created by former Buddyhead founder Travis Keller and his partners at American Primitive, including cinematographer/editor Jacob Mendel, “Invasion Night” is a fantastical slice of Armageddon-inspired science fiction. The short film takes place just moments after a vengeful alien adversary instantly and effortlessly brings near total annihilation to our unsuspecting, naive planet. In the aftermath of this global apocalypse, a connection forms between the last two living beings on Earth, a lone woman and a small dog… “Invasion Night” is their story. “Shortly after Travis and […]
REVIEW: Grimes Anthropocene
In the five years since she’s released an album, Grimes’ public image has transformed from burgeoning indie star into love interest of everyone’s favorite billionaire Elon Musk. In the interim, Grimes sated listeners thirst for new material with a one-off single called “We Appreciate Power” with her collaborator Hana. The song was exciting and metallic, and it had the most transcendent bridge of her career to date, only furthering the upward trajectory of Grimes’ artistry since 2012’s Visions. Her next studio effort, 2015’s Art Angels, was the strongest collection of songs she had released up to that point. All […]
REST IN POWER: Bryan Dilworth (1968-2020)
I don’t know how common knowledge this is, but countless times back in the ’90s, when some up-and-coming band that Bryan booked had been stiffed at the Khyber, he would wind up paying their meager guarantee out of his own pocket so they’d have enough gas money to make it to the next town/gig and live to rock another day. I remember sitting with him at the bar one night when some band I can’t remember the name of that we all liked but nobody in Philly had heard of/cared about was playing for the sound man, and Bryan, in […]
Q&A W/ Joshua Ostrander AKA Mondo Cozmo
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Joshua Ostrander, aka singer-songwriter-producer and one-man-band Mondo Cozmo, is having a moment. After years and years of dues-paying obscurity grinding out laudable-but-doomed-to-the-cutout-bins music in bands called Laguardia and East Coast Conference Champions, Ostrander is finally enjoying a turn in the sun. Born and raised in Bucks County, and a resident of Philadelphia until 2006 when he pulled up stakes and headed to L.A. in search of fame and fortune, Ostrander spent the better part of the last decade working dual landscaping gigs by day, and feverishly recording in his bedroom at night, living on little more than […]
INCOMING: Being Jonathan Richman
Artwork by EDGEART If Jonathan Richman didn’t already exist, we would have never thought to invent him, which is a testament to both his originality and the shortcomings of our collective imagination. For going on a half century, Richman has been a tireless advocate of hopeful romanticism, rugged individualism and unyielding optimism, traveling the world like some post-modern Jimmy Stewart, armed with nothing more than a stripey shirt and a beat up acoustic guitar, telling anyone that would listen that, despite all the hard-bitten cynicism that surrounds him, it’s still a wonderful life. He is, in short, the immaculate heart […]
I HEAR A DARKNESS: Q&A With Will Oldham
[Photo by JEFF RUTHERFORD] EDITOR’S NOTE: Will Oldham, aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy shares the bill with Jonathan Richman Sunday night for a sold out show at Union Transfer. Oldham is touring in support of last year’s I Made A Place, his first LP of new songs since 2011. To mark this auspicious occasion, we are re-posting our 2010 Q&A w/ the irascible Mr. Oldham. Enjoy. NEW YORKER: Oldham remains an elusive figure, but the show is a gentle reminder of why he is often cited as one of the finest singer-songwriters in contemporary American music. Oldham was a student of […]
THE DREAM SYNDICATE: Regulator
LA indie rock forbearers The Dream Syndicate are announcing their third ANTI- Records release today. Titled The Universe Inside, the mind-bending new album will be released on April 10. First single “The Regulator” kicks in instantly; at twenty minutes long, immerse yourself in the song. Directed by David Daglish, the video is a psychedelic journey through New York City, equal parts panoramic, psychedelic, somnambulistic and political in all the best ways. George Harrison once said, “arrive without traveling.” This is your ticket to The Universe Inside. Reminiscent of 70s Miles Davis and his chaotic brilliance, the track starts all fired […]
BEING THERE: Black Lips @ First Unitarian
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER I have to admit that when I first checked out the Black Lips about a decade ago, it had nothing to do with their music. I’d never heard it. Rather, I was drawn in by their already legendary antics such as whipping their junk out, vomiting, and kissing one another. That last stunt allegedly got them kicked out of India. This stuff may seem pedestrian to you, my faithful old-school punk reader, but for a dyed-in-the-wool folkie like me it sounded super-cool. I mean, in the folk world, the worst we get up to is, say, […]
BEING THERE: The Black Crowes @ The Foundry
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER After breaking up three years prior, The Black Crowes reunited in 2005 and began work on a record that would shift away from the rollicking radio-ready electric blues boogie of Shake Your Money Maker and the space-kissed psychedelia of 2001’s Lions. The resulting LP, 2008’s Warpaint, featured a balanced narrative of contemplative ballads on America’s southern mountain life: bittersweet odes to sunsets, backwoods swamp-stomp evangelism and a subtle, irreverent iconoclasm reminiscent of Flannery O’Connor. All of which revealed Chris’ and Rich Robinson’s deep roots in the lore of early-20th-century Appalachian folk music that framed up new […]
GIRL UNINTERRUPTED: Q&A w/ Amy Rigby
BY SOPHIE BURKHOLDER A Catholic-raised Pittsburgh girl, Amy Rigby fled her steel mill hometown for New York, then in its mid-70s punk prime to attend Parsons School of Design. Soon shrouding her eyes in black liner, she quickly became a fixture at CBGB and fell into a crowd of downtown punk scenesters. Her love of music grew into a passion for making her own, first with bands like Last Roundup and The Shams, and later on her own. Her first solo album, 1996’s Diary of a Mod Housewife, received widespread critical acclaim in the press a few short years […]