Photo by MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ When Sleigh Bells took the stage last night at Union Transfer, I got the feeling that some serious ass-kicking was about to take place. A military-style drum line track introduced the four-piece band as they took their places accordingly, building up anticipation for the arrival of frontwoman Alexis Krauss. Emerging onstage dressed in a flashy, silk cheetah-print boxing robe with the words “Bitter Rival” across the back, Krauss made it seem as if the show was merely a pit-stop after a run up the steps of the Art Museum with Rocky Balboa. She made it […]
EXCERPT: The Man Who Fell To Earth
After 14 years, Moby has final created a worthy successor to 1999’s game-changing, bazillion-selling Play. MAGNET scales the walls of celeb-studded, anecdote-guarding Moby Castle high up in the Hollywood hills to find out what took so long. BY JONATHAN VALANIA This story starts in Moby’s apartment on a sunny pre-9/11 morning in New York city. Moby and his neighbor David Bowie are sitting on the couch strumming “Heroes” on acoustic guitars. They are prepping for a Tibet House benefit concert at Carnegie Hall organized by Phillip Glass. This is too good to be true, Moby thinks to himself. What if […]
Win Tix To See Fred Armisen @ Underground Arts
We have come here today to hand out lollipops and tickets to see Fred Armisen/Ian Rubbish @ Underground Arts on Thursday November 14th — and we’re all out of lollipops. 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 an email at FEED@PHAWKER.COM telling us a much, with […]
BEING THERE: Paramore & Metric In Camden
Photo by PETE TROSHAK A packed house witnessed an impressive double bill on Friday night in Camden. Metric came first, performing a short laser focused set of their best. Emily Haines alternated between jamming away at a bank of synthesizers and stomping around the stage wailing into a gold mic as the band delivered eight of their best songs. Highlights were a beautiful, ethereal “Breathing Underwater” and a stadium rocking “Gold Guns Girls.” Next came Paramore who are touring in support of their critically and commercially successful self-titled album produced by bad-ass bass player/Beck collaborator Justin Meldal-Johnsen. The band were […]
BEING THERE: Kate Nash @ Union Transfer
Photo by PETE TROSHAK In 2011 British singer Kate Nash was dropped by her record label. She then started her own label and changed up her style, ditching her keyboard and melding her cheeky pop confections with a more aggressive almost punk-like musical style. If her impressive show last night at the Union Transfer is any indication, Nash made the right move. She took the stage wearing a white bass with the name of punk band FIDLAR scrawled on it, joined by an all-girl backing band of two guitarists and a drummer. Nash delivered some rumbling bass notes and the […]
BEING THERE: The Black Lips @ First Unitarian
Photo by MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ As a Black Lips newbie assigned to review this show, I thought I’d get a crash course to all things Black and Lips by attending the Wednesday night Ritz 5 screening of their Middle East tour documentary Kids Like You And Me. The film documents the bands 2012 tour of places rife with things Americans fear most: radical Islamist protests, the threat of terrorism, and perhaps most frightening of all, People Who Aren’t Americans. The noble purpose of the tour was to find common ground and connect with the youth of places like Egypt. What […]
MILESTONE: 45 Years Of Astral Weeks
My current fave Sunday-morning-coming-down album, Van’s transcendental 1968 masterwork still holds its secrets all these years later. The converted need no further preaching about Astral Weeks, so it’s the uninitiated I’m reaching out to here. First you need to dispense with the image of Van as the largely irrelevant pot-bellied sourpuss we know today. Flash back to Belfast in the mid-’60s: Van is winding down his tenure as blues shouter for Them — a roughneck collective of bruising whiteboy R&B and flame-throwing garage-punk snarl — ready to make the leap from drunk-up wailer to cosmic poet-seeker. Legend has it […]
ASK A WIZARD: Backstage w/ Wayne Coyne
In conjunction Scrapple TV, our partner in New Media crime, Phawker sat down with Flaming Lips mainman Wayne Coyne on his tour bus a few hours before their performance at the Festival Pier last month and rolled film. DISCUSSED: Sex, drugs, rock n’ roll, why the new Lips album is so goddamned dark, why he has Nick Cave’s blood, the story behind the Wayne Coyne Hand Grenade Incident, how he got Erykah Badu naked and covered in cum and glitter, and if he wasn’t the lead singer of the Flaming Lips what would have he done with his life. The […]
Win Tix To See The New Black Lips Middle East Tour Film @ The Ritz Tomorrow Night & Tix To See The Black Lips @ First Unitarian On Thur.
In 2009, The Black Lips started investigating the possibility of a bridge building tour of the Middle East with stops throughout the region. After two years of planning, several uprisings, a civil war, the tour finally came to fruition in the fall of 2012. It wasn’t easy either. Promoters in Jordan and Alexandria, Egypt backed out at the last minute because the band had played shows in Israel and a show in Erbil, Iraq had to be changed when an explicit video of the band was viewed by a government official. Suprisingly, It all worked out in the end though […]
BEING THERE: Animal Collective @ Union Transfer
Photos by MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ As of this writing, Animal Collective is midway through a sold out two-night supercalifragilisticexpialidocious double-freak-out at Union Transfer. Last night, the band took the audience on a mind-melting supersonic trip that seemed to violate all the laws of the time and space, presenting something that was closer to quantum physics than cosmic indie-rock. The sold out crowd seemed well-prepped for the trip, some having donned lurid halloween costumes and consumed the requisite pharmaceuticals. Near the lip of the stage where I stood last night, the crowd gave the man in the long white nightgown and […]
BEING THERE: Of Montreal @ Union Transfer
Photo by MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ Although Of Montreal’s new album Lousy With Sylvianbriar finds the Elephant 6 graduates getting back to basics — which is to be expected of any group after 17 years and 11 albums of sonic exploration — last night’s show at Union Transfer was anything but predictable. After taking the stage, frontman Kevin Barnes politely greeted his adoring audience with a raise of his hand. He wore an unsurprisingly flamboyant outfit that consisted of a loud, tailored two-piece suit covered in a pattern of yellow leopard and green tiger faces, as well as black leather boots. […]
Win Tix To See Madeleine Peyroux @ The Merriam
Gawd, this just effing slays me every time — it’s like Billie Holiday covering Elliott Smith in a midnight cafe in Occupied Paris. She’s passing along key intel (unmasking a double agent or somesuch) to the operative from The Resistance (she knows it’s him because he’s wearing the agreed upon red scarf) seated at table six. But she has to sing it in code so the SS swine seated in the VIP section don’t catch on. Vive le resistance! By ‘she,’ we of course mean Madeleine Peyroux, everyone’s favorite smoky-cool Franco-Americano chanteuse from Athens, GA, by way of The City […]
Win Tix To See Cults At The TLA!
We have come here today to hand out lollipops and tickets to see Cults at the TLA tonight on December 5th– and we’re all out of lollipops. 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 an email at FEED@PHAWKER.COM telling us a much, with the words THE CULT […]