Hop Along’s Frances Quinlan has made a name for herself as one of the most prominent songwriters with one of the most distinct and inimitable voices in the indie rock space over the past decade. Today the Philadelphia-based musician announces her stunning solo album Likewise, which will be released on January 31st on Saddle Creek. While Hop Along began as Quinlan’s solo project (originally titled Hop Along, Queen Ansleis), Likewise is Quinlan’s debut under her own name. Recorded with bandmate Joe Reinhart at The Headroom, Likewise sees Quinlan tap into new sounds. “Working with Joe on this made me able […]
DESTROYER: Crimson Tide
The lead-off single from Have We Met, the new Destroyer album due out January 31st. Destroyer plays Underground Arts March 8th with Nap Eyes. Tickets go on sale Thursday October 24th at 10 AM.
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: In the 1960s, Janis Joplin was an icon of the counterculture, a female rock star at a time when rock was an all-boys’ club. “At that point in time there weren’t too many women taking center stage,” biographer Holly George-Warren says. “Janis created this incredible image that went along with her amazing vocal ability. … [She] was very, very different than most of the women that came before.” On stage, Joplin oozed confidence, sexuality and exuberance. It all seemed so effortless, but George-Warren describes Joplin as a bookworm who worked hard to create her “blues feelin’ mama” […]
CINEMA: Zombies All The Way Down
ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP (dir. by Ruben Fleisher, 99 minutes, 2019, USA) BY DAN TABOR It’s been over a decade since the release of Zombieland, the charmingly dysfunctional family comedy that just so happens to take place during the zombie apocalypse. The Ruben Fleischer directed film was the front runner of our current zombie resurgence, soon followed by the juggernaut that is The Walking Dead, which over nine years has run its course both as a show and as a fixture in the pop-culture landscape. Thanks to TWD I think every variation of the formula has been attempted in every […]
ALBUM REVIEW: Danny Brown Uknowhatimsayin¿
For those unaware of Detroit rapper Danny Brown, who has just returned after a three-year hiatus with a new album called uknowhatimsayin¿, I would like to give a brief test. Play five seconds of his song “Downward Spiral,” the opener to his 2016 album Atrocity Exhibition. I predict you will either close the tab immediately, or be sickly fascinated. The double punch of the dark, looming instrumental and Danny’s yelpy delivery will either immediately turn you off or pull you in. Or better yet, do the same test with his song “Ain’t it Funny,” probably one of the wildest […]
AOIFE NESSA FRANCES: Blow Up
From Land of No Junction due out January 17, 2020, on Ba Da Bing.
BEING THERE: IDLES @ Union Transfer
Photo by MATT SHAVER Bristol post-punk outfit IDLES is not the heaviest band out there, and they certainly aren’t the edgiest. They are, however, indubitably one of the angriest bands around. The fundamental rebelliousness that is the driving force of punk rock music, in the case of IDLES, manifests itself through a twisted (though profoundly humane) depiction of love. You heard me right: the thematic heart of IDLES’ punk-ness is a kind of re-imagined Flower Power. Their two debut full-length records, Brutalism and Joy as an Act of Resistance are both unashamedly anti-fascism and an unconditionally inclusive call for community. […]
THE ELECTRIC HORSEMAN: Q&A W/ Author And BoJack Horseman Creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg
BY PEYTON MITZEL I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why the animated Netflix series Bojack Horseman, now in its sixth season, resonates so strongly with me. It’s an animated metafictional critique of stardom about a washed-up sitcom star named BoJack, who also happens to be an alcoholic horse, struggling to find functional happiness in the crushing shitstorm that is the world these days — so it’s not exactly telling me my life. And yet, despite the fact that I was 17 when I started watching the show, I found myself relating to the roughly middle-aged characters and their […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
Artwork by SCOTT LAUMANN FRESH AIR: The recent biopic Rocketman painted a Hollywood version of Elton John’s life, but a new memoir, Me, comes straight from the artist himself. In it, he describes how, as a young man, he was determined to enter the music business, in spite of some misgivings about rock ‘n’ roll in his household. As he tells Fresh Air, “My dad, of course, hated it.” And yet, that disapproval only fueled his will to succeed. Me recounts many more stories from the pop superstar’s personal life, including how proposing to a woman helped him realize he […]
Q&A: w/ Black Keys Drummer Patrick Carney
BY LARA MICKLE After a five year hiatus, the Black Keys are back with a new album called, simply enough, Let’s Rock, and a tour that stops at Wells Fargo Center on October 14th. Re-connecting their basement-rocking roots, Let’s Rock channels a distinctly bell-bottomed 70’s rock vibe by keeping it stone-cold simple and using no instruments made after 1978. Last week we got bespectacled Keys sticksman Patrick Carney on the horn. DISCUSSED: What the hell they’ve been up to for the last five years (a lot, it turns out); making babies; producing other people’s albums; seeing Wu-Tang Clan at the […]
BEING THERE: Bon Iver + Feist @ Liacouras Center
Photo by GRAHAM TOLBERT Pasted on every door of the venue were warnings of extreme strobe lighting. The heavy promise of a twisted psychedelic dream that would channel both the cabin fever seclusion of Bon Iver’s early music and the cryptic auto-tuned voice of 2016’s 22, A Million grew closer with Feist’s preparatory words, “Your hearts will be turned into a flock of pastel geese flying into the future,” at the end of her opening set. With the sudden darkness and quick flashes of hallucinatory art across stage-bookending screens as the i,i intro “Yi” played in the background of Bon […]
BEING THERE: Hop Along & Tierra Whack
Photo by ALEX PATERSON-JONES Philly loves their own. The crowd, crammed into a warehouse somewhere in Northern Liberties last night, went wild for the performances of three Philly-born artists’ Hop Along, Tierra Whack and Orion Sun, at the opening of the 4-day House of Vans event. Indie rock band Hop Along—which is comprised of two siblings, front-woman Frances Quinlan and her brother Mark on drums — opened for Tierra Whack. Live, Frances’ voice is an enigma— think a chain-smoking baby, crude and rustic, pulsing in its ragged rawness. That voice’s full-throatedness pierced the venue, making the audience empathize with the […]