Photo by DYLAN LONG Nandi Rose Plunkett produces solo music under the moniker Half Waif, a name that conjures the idea of a small and helpless creature – but the singer-songwriter is anything but. Plunkett towered over a synthesizer in a red dress patterned with rose petals and hair in space buns. With her eyes closed and hands joined in prayer, I half-expected her to levitate above the stage. The set drew from her latest release, Lavender, an work punctuated with intimate portraits of human life, touching on themes of family, love and mortality. The lyrics read like poetic fairy […]
MANIC PIXIE DREAM GIRL: Q&A W/ Caroline Rose
BY KEELY MCAVENEY Caroline Rose, a paragon of pop-done-right, is capable of anything, whether that be fitting a pack and a half’s worth of Marlboro Reds in her mouth or writing, instrumentalizing and producing an entire album. Her most recent album, Loner, serves as a red tracksuit-clad reinvention of herself. She sheds her formerly folksy sound for the upbeat wonk of experimental pop. Each song functions like a vignette, building stories and characters that satirize everything from catcalling to capitalism. We had the privilege of talking with Caroline Rose herself about the difficulties that accompany artistic evolution, the color […]
INCOMING: Pedals To The Meddle
If ears had taste buds, Tera Melos would be the sour candy of math rock. Nick Reinhart is, without a doubt, one of the wackiest guitarists on the planet right now. He’s not the type of guitar player who just uses pedals; he’s a guitar player and a pedal player. Some of his solos look like a Dance Dance Revolution tutorial, with his pedalboard as the dance pad. This math rock madman owns hundreds of guitar pedals, and uses over 20 in his live setup. Aside from his adroit use of effects, Reinhart’s playing style is, in one word, […]
GOSH: Q&A W/ Napoleon Dynamite‘s Jon Heder
BY HENRY SAVAGE When the world seems to consistently take a crap on you, it can feel as if there’s nothing left to do than to practice a few moves from your “D-Qwon’s Dance Grooves” VHS tape (for all you Napoleon diehards out there). Almost 15 years after it debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, Napoleon Dynamite has become an American comedy classic. What started back in 2002 as a class assignment for BYU’s film school (originally titled Peluca) went on to become the acclaimed indie comedy Napoleon Dynamite. Since then Napoleon Dynamite has become a comedy lodestar for […]
BEING THERE: Ty Segall @ Underground Arts
Photo by HENRY SAVAGE On a similarly cold and rainy night last April, I caught Ty Segall on tour with his band in support of his earlier 2018 record, Freedom’s Goblin. (Since then, he’s put out two more albums – Joy, a collaboration with White Fence, and Fudge Sandwich, eleven tracks of his favorite psych-rock covers.) That night seven months ago changed my whole idea of what a modern rock concert could be. The venue shook under the force of Segall’s unwieldy guitar power, and the front barrier I was pressed up against threatened to collapse under the weight of […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Beginner’s Guide To The Accidental Perfection Of The Beatles’ White Album
THE NEW YORKER: To mark this month’s fiftieth anniversary of the Beatles’ ninth album, “The Beatles”—universally known as the White Album—several new expanded and enhanced editions are being released this week. These new versions were created under the supervision of Giles Martin, the son of the album’s original producer, George Martin. As was done last year with “Sgt. Pepper,” the new editions contain, along with a wealth of archival recordings and other material, a brand-new, digitally remixed presentation—a laborious retrieval and reassembly of the contents of the original multitrack master tapes, with a comprehensive scope far beyond that of all […]
BEING THERE: Pale Waves @ Union Transfer
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER Every light in the room went to black, and a buzz of distortion grew into a thundering roar until overhead lights bathed the room in red, and the goth Britpop band Pale Waves took the stage. Surrounding a pale-faced black-lipsticked Heather Baron-Gracie were her bandmates – a pair of lanky indie boys Charlie Wood and Hugo Silvani, and fellow goth queen and Pale Waves co-founder Ciara Doran. Soon that droning background distortion morphed into the synthy build at the start of “Television Romance,” prompting Baron-Gracie to stomp around in robotic doll-like dance moves. The dramatic contrast […]
FUNNY GIRL: Q&A W/ Sasheer Zamata
BY ANTONIA BROWN Sasheer Zamata is a young comedian, actress, and writer perhaps best known for her tenure as a cast member on SNL, her appearances on the Stephen Colbert Show, or her own live variety show called Sasheer Zamata Party Time. Her new stand-up special Pizza Mind is currently streaming on Amazon Prime and Starz. She’s been in numerous short films as well starring in The Weekend, a new rom-com with a cast that is a who’s who of hot young black Hollywood that just premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. She is a contributor to public radio’s […]
BEING THERE: Hanson @ The Tower Theater
Photo by MATT SHAVER “Who’s playing in there tonight?” said a passerby outside of the Tower last night. “Hanson,” I said. “Hanson? You mean ‘mmmmmmbop’ Hanson?” “Yeah.” “They’re still around? Good for them.” I try to keep up, but things change so often, I inevitably lose track of bands, and I feel the worst about the 90s. “MmmBop” was a blip on everyones radar, but that jet blew past me and off to the horizon. Hanson, alongside acts like The Presidents of USA and Spin Doctors, went in to some vault in my brain that has only recently been opened […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: You may be shocked by what’s living in your home — the bacteria, the fungi, viruses, parasites and insects. Probably many more organisms than you imagined.”Every surface; every bit of air; every bit of water in your home is alive,” says Rob Dunn, a professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. “The average house has thousands of species.” Dunn started out studying microorganisms and insects in rain forests, but his focus gradually shifted toward backyards and houses. “I eventually found myself in homes with the realization that a lot of what I’d done […]
BEING THERE: Ron Gallo @ First Unitarian
Photo by HENRY SAVAGE Last night, fans of hometown hero Ron Gallo gathered in the basement of the First Unitarian Church to welcome his return in glorified house show style. As Coltrane deep cuts played between sets of bluesy Laurel Canyon harmonies from two Nashville-based openers Twen and Ian Ferguson, locals exchanged beers, handshakes, and tales of the last time they saw Gallo play the church. Having found his music a few months ago through Instagram posts from one of his tour photographers, I let these exaggerated claims of Gallo’s “indescribable awesomeness” feed my anticipation. The band members emerged, each […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
Painting by PAUL MEIJERING FRESH AIR: Brian May, the lead guitarist in the British glam-rock band Queen, is a modern-day renaissance man.Eighteen of his albums with Queen have topped the charts, selling more than 300 million copies worldwide. May, who played the guitar solo in “We Are the Champions,” also sang the bass parts in Queen’s rock opera “Bohemian Rhapsody” and penned the classic anthem “We Will Rock You.” He’s on Rolling Stone’s list of the Top 100 guitarists ever. But May’s interests aren’t limited to the rock world. Before Queen made it big, May was studying astrophysics at Imperial […]
BEING THERE: Low @ Underground Arts
Photo by MARK LIKOSKY With the perfect certainty of a heavy ocean wave crashing upon the shore, Low is a force of nature. That wave may start off small, might eat you up and crash you into the rocks or it may lift you higher into the suns rays. Although they still rock the slowcore vibe which they were only loosely associated with, Low now also has this sort of “I-don’t-know-but-whatever-it-is-I-like-it-core” vibe in that each album wiggles around different genres while still maintaining their strange and peaceful aesthetic. When they first started getting a bit more poppy I suppose I […]