BY DAN TABOR Easily one of the most surreal moments I had this year was getting to chat with director Rian Johnson (The Last Jedi, Looper, Breaking Bad) the morning after seeing his latest film, Knives Out, at the Philadelphia Film Festival. Knives Out is a hilariously brilliant whodunit in the spirit of Agatha Christie, that has Johnson tackling the story of an eccentric family under investigation, after the “suicide” of their extremely wealthy, murder mystery-writing patriarch. Johnson immediately made an impression with both filmgoers and critics with his first feature Brick and has since directed both films (Looper) […]
INCOMING: Take The Last Train To Clarkville
Todd Kimmell, Philadelphia’s perennially apoplectic gentleman of the arts, in association with CLARKVILLE, the much beloved taproom and restaurant across from Clark Park, offer up four days of the most unusual holiday shopping you’ll find anywhere. Local artists and photographers of note, and avid (or possibly rabid) collectors have been invited to glean their flat files and present long buried treasures for the public to peruse and purchase at their leisure. Saturday, November 30 and Sunday, December 1, then again two weeks later. Saturday, December 14 and Sunday, December 15. 11 to 5 each day, and different artists presenting […]
BEING THERE: Crumb @ Union Transfer
Photo by DYLAN LONG Crumb, unlike the name, is a seven-course feast of dreamy pop-rock that leads you far away from the musically ordinary. Instead, this four-piece band is a never-ending journey on a road less traveled. Assuming their sound even desires definition, it draws hints of Hiatus Kaiyote, BADBADNOTGOOD, and a healthy dose of the mysterious. This past Thursday night, Crumb graced a packed crowd at Union Transfer with support from Divino Niño and Shormey. Colorful light-filled balloons sat scattered across the stage, glowing and evolving from shades of red to purple to blue. The four-piece had a soothing […]
LEONARD COHEN: On Moonlight
PREVIOUSLY: Leonard Cohen Is Ready To Die PREVIOUSLY: Leonard Cohen Is Dead RELATED: Adam Cohen Discusses His Father’s Work On Fresh Air PREVIOUSLY: Everybody knows that 2016 was a cruel and unusual year. Intolerably cruel. Everybody knows that war is over and everybody knows the good guys lost. So I am only half-kidding when I ask: How can we possibly be expected to endure the abominable presidency of Donald Trump without David Bowie, Prince or Princess Leia? But I’m dead serious when I say we can’t do this without Leonard Cohen, who died at the ripe old age of 82 […]
CINEMA: Punk Rock Horror Picture Show
Punk rock legend, Glenn Danzig, who is currently in the midst of his reunion tour with The Misfits is making a solo stop at our very own Philadelphia Film Center, Friday, December the 13th, the night before The Misfits play the Wells Fargo Center. Danzig will be presenting an exclusive, one-night-only screening of his directorial debut, Verotika, a feature-length horror anthology of tales culled from his comic book series. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Danzig and producer James Cullen Bressack. Verotika premiered at this year’s Cinepocalypse Film Fest and reportedly achieved instant infamy, drawing comparisons […]
REVIEW: Mean Girls @ The Academy Of Music
Mean Girls, the 2004 smash teen romcom written by Upper Darby’s Tina Fey and starring pre-demise Lyndsey Lohan, is a cautionary tale of a teen’s need for validation in order to compete in the perpetual popularity contest that is high school. It’s the story of Cady Heron, who just transferred to North Shore High after growing up in Kenya. Because she was homeschooled for the first 16 years of her life, Cady lacks the social skills it takes to fit in at her new school. Mercifully, two high school outcasts, Janice and Damien, befriend her. Janice and Damien’s sworn […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR: In 2006, as Russia was preparing to host the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg, its parliament passed a law legalizing extrajudicial killings of accused “extremists” abroad. “It was an extraordinary moment,” BuzzFeed News journalist Heidi Blake says. “Even as Western leaders were sitting around the table with Putin in St. Petersburg, at that very moment, laws were being passed … that enabled enemies of the Russian state to be murdered by Russian state agents on foreign soil with absolute impunity.” Blake maintains that Russia subsequently engaged in an assassination program that targeted exiled Russian oligarchs, security officials […]
THE METHOD ACTOR: Q&A W/ Alex Cameron
BY JASMIN ALVAREZ It’s been two years since the release of Alex Cameron’s Forced Witness—his most controversial record to date, for which he donned the persona of a conservative and bigoted macho-male who falls for an illegal immigrant, and which landed just before all the business with Weinstein and Trump. Earlier this year, Cameron released his third album, Miami Memory (2019). While the fictional songwriting personas he has often used as narrative vehicles make cameos—such as the empowered and money-making sex industry workers in “Far From Born Again” and the embittered drunkard caught in a power-struggle with his absentee […]
BEING THERE: Skegss @ Boot & Saddle
Photo by DYLAN LONG Skegss is an Australian three-piece group that wants you to live your best life. If the band’s energetic and jangly garage rock doesn’t lift you up off your ass, their inspiring, anecdotal lyrics surely will. Frontman Ben Reed has it figured out: he can teach you things like getting out of bed in the morning on the track fittingly titled “Wake The Fuck Up,” or how to enjoy the present moment despite life’s complexities on the jangly anthem “My Face.” With just a quick glance at his bright-blond surfer hair and brighter smile, it’s easy to […]
THE LEGENDARY STARDUST COWBOYS: Talkin’ Beto, Clash & Townes W/ The Flatlanders’ Joe Ely
BY JON HOULON In the beginning, there was The Word – i.e. Townes Van Zandt – and Townes hitchhiked across the desert. And in his wanderings, Townes flagged down Joe Ely who drove him from one side of Lubbock to the other. And, in return, Townes handed Joe a tablet – i.e. a vinyl platter — that Joe shared with his friends, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock. And they played the platter over and over and in the fullness of time became the Flatlanders. Or so it is written. My biblical allusions are surely suspect here: my memory […]
BEING THERE: Black Mt. @ Underground Arts
Photo by JOSH-PELTA-HELLER It’s almost 10:00 PM Thursday night when Stephen McBean and his merry band of psych-metal minions emerged from backstage at Underground Arts, rendered as silhouettes by stage lighting and smoke machine, and unleashed the fuzzy electric buzz of “High Rise,” from their latest record, Destroyer. At 50, McBean is an unassuming frontman, silver beard framed by the shoulder-length hair that shrouds his face for most of the evening, as he wrestles with his guitars and considers the evening’s extensive pedal decisions. McBean paces back and forth between flanking keyboardists Jeremy Schmidt and Rachel Fannan to commune with […]
EXCERPT: Postcard From The Edge
VULTURE: [Carrie] caused deep worry that was somehow hidden by the movie crews’ obsession with John’s addiction rather than her own. Carrie—younger than the others—was intensely fragile. She was generous, brilliant, witty, charismatic, caring—and deeply vulnerable: friends could see that. When they all got to the Belushis’ Vineyard house, “my brother was most concerned about her. He had to carry her limp body from room to room. I guess she was conscious enough that he didn’t call an ambulance, but he had a strong sense that she was really out of it.” It was during that spate of days on the […]
REVIEW: Swans leaving meaning
Since forming in 1982, Swans has pushed the boundaries of rock over the course of 14 albums spanning the dystopian ear-fuck continuum from ambient industrial sludge to sprawling post-rock fever dreams. Their 15th album, leaving meaning, continues to explore the dark, forbidden places along that continuum. “Annaline” follows the gloriously clangorous introductory track “Hums,” alchemizing its drifting formlessness with swelling tonal clusters of multi-tracked piano, violin and guitar feedback whereupon Swans mastermind Michael Gira sings “Oh, the Buddha was right, and Saint John of the Cross: a word is a thought, and a thought is a box.” “What is […]