Photo by MICHAEL ORLOSKY We have a pair of tickets to see wizardly electronic music composer/performer Dan Deacon at Union Transfer tomorrow night to give away. As per our pal Brian Howard in the CP: “Baltimore experimentalist/performance art puppet-master/beardo kewpie Dan Deacon has a rep as the king of the electronic candy store, spinning all manner of sugar-synthesized pop treats into crazy-danceable shout-along anthems.” Exactly.  To qualify all you have to do is sign up for our mailing list (to the right of this post, at the bottom of the masthead). Trust us, you want to do this. Signing up […]

BY JOE PAONE MATH-ROCK CORRESPONDENT There should’ve been a sign at the door of Milkboy for this show that said, “Welcome back to the 90s.” Lots of familiar faces from back in the day, yet everyone still looked fetching. Milkboy’s second-floor is so reminiscent of the long-gone Upstairs at Nick’s that I expected to see Jamie Mahon stuffing meat into a toilet. At least, I kinda remember that happening back then. Forgive me, the 90s were kind of a blur. As for the music, it was the proverbial tits. JJL opened the proceedings by molesting the notion of “power trio” […]

Photo by PETE TROSHAK Smoke and anxiety hung heavy in the air in the Theatre of Living Arts as a capacity crowd waited for Gary Clark Jr. to deliver The Blues. Once a generation this overlooked but deeply American genre produces a shining star whose undeniable brightness reaches the masses and shines a light into the darkest corners of our hearts and souls. With a palpable buzz swirling around him based on jaw-dropping live performances and his excellent Blak and Blu album, Clark just might be The One. Frequent shouts of “Gary, Gary!” rang out through the restless crowd before […]

Photo by SAMANTHA FRANKLIN BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER I have seen the future of the past, and his name is J.D. McPherson, a thirtysomething cuffed-denim Okie with lacquered hair, iron lungs and, goodness gracious, great balls of fire. McPherson and his gifted retro-rock posse recently released Signs & Signifiers, a bracing collection of tailfin rockabilly, rawboned R&B and sultry moonstruck balladeering. It is hands-down the feel-good record of the year. McPherson’s star has been rising steadily ever since. NPR and WXPN have taken up his cause, he’ll be on Letterman December 4th, and he sold out Johnny Brendas […]

  With a dulcet baritone perched somewhere between the subwoofer-shaking pipes of Mark Lanegan and Leonard Cohen, Sean Rowe commands the kind of gravitas usually associated with fiery-eyed Old Testament prophets or mud-caked Delta bluesmen whenever he opens his mouth. An avowed naturalist who has done months-long survivalist stints in the wilderness living off nothing but his wits and fortitude and the fat of the land, Rowe also vibes a certain Thoreau-ian mien that only serves to reinforce his cred as a rough-hewn, antiquarian folkie that can reduce noisy bars to pin-drop silence with nothing more than an acoustic guitar […]

  No that’s not Keith Richards circa 1987, it’s Sean Hayes. Sean was/is part of the San Francisco folk scene that birthed Jolie Holland. She’s awesome. So is, in his own way, Sean Rowe. The shorthand description is ‘the white Bill Withers,’ The longhand description is, well, let’s let SF WEEKLY explain, they live with the guy: “Take him anywhere, play him for anyone, and the response is always the same: People want more. They’ll write down the name if they don’t know it already… an impressive treat in your pocket. Hayes’ music succeeds on the tension between warm, resonant […]

Photo by Sheryl Nields We love Aimee Mann. How could we not. Just look at this picture. Those boots made for walkin’. Those glasses made for readin’. That coat made for wearin’. And don’t even get us started on that backdrop. Like butter, it is. We’ve loved her ever since the nihilists cut her big toe off in the Coen Brothers The Big Lebowski. That’s not true, we loved her before that. We loved the gorgeously melancholic soundtrack to PT Anderson’s Magnolia (SEE BELOW). We loved it when she was Sleater-Kinney’s maid, as humbling as that must have been. We […]

  Unless you are dead, insane or in jail, you know that Divine Fits is indie-rock super-dooper group comprised of Britt Daniel from some band called Spoon, Dan Boeckner from Wolf Parade and Sam Brown from the mighty New Bomb Turks. They play Union Transfer on Monday in support of their debut A Thing Called Divine Fits. We have a pair of tickets to give away to the 13,oooth lucky reader to sign up for our mailing list (to the right of this post, under the masthead). And by 13,000th we of course mean 13th. Signing up to our mailing […]

  From WIKIPEDIA: On May 1, 2012 Joshua [Tillman, formerly of Fleet Foxes] released the album ‘Fear Fun’ under his new moniker ‘Father John Misty’.[15] When discussing his motivations behind the creation of the name ‘Father John Misty’, Tillman paraphrases Philip Roth: ’It’s all of me and none of me, if you can’t see that, you won’t get it’. What I call it is totally arbitrary, but I like the name. You’ve got to have a name. I never got to choose mine.”[16] A couple of months prior to the release of the album a video was released for the […]

  We have a pair of tickets to see Wu Tang Clansman GZA perform his legendary 1995 solo album Liquid Swords beginning to end at The Troc on Saturday for the lucky 13th reader to sign up for our mailing list (to the right of this post, under the masthead). Signing up to our mailing list gets you special content alerts and early warnings about special promotions and concert ticket giveaways. And rest assured your email address will never be sold or shared with anyone, we promise upon pain of death. Us not you. So, let’s get you into a […]