PHOTO BY HENRY SAVAGE Last night at World Cafe Live, the age range of the audience was so diverse it was likely you saw your mom’s tennis partner Regina and the neighborhood pest Shane who just started high school. That’s the appeal of Darwin Deez, regardless of who you are, he’s still going to have you on your feet and bouncing to his indie pop hits. If you aren’t dancing as hard as he is, he’ll drop down into the crowd to show you how. Even his opener brought fire to the stage, Soren Bryce, a badass electronic pop musician […]
INCOMING: New Panda Bear Album Imminent
Artwork by HUGO OLIVEIRA Noah Lennox’s sixth solo album as Panda Bear is Buoys, due out February 8th, 2019 on Domino. The first song to be released from Buoys is “Dolphin”: Lennox’s bright, sincere voice front and center, with miles of space surrounding it, a guitar and some textured samples fleshing out the dubby sparseness and undercurrent of speaker-limit-pushing sub-bass low-end. You can listen to it below. Buoys was co-produced and co-mixed by collaborator Rusty Santos in Lennox’s adopted home of Lisbon, Portugal. Lennox and Santos last collaborated on the landmark Panda Bear album Person Pitch, which had its 10-year […]
BEING THERE: Shannon & The Clams @ First Unitarian
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER Last night, the kitschy-cool underground of Philadelphia gathered at First Unitarian to worship at the altar of Shannon & The Clams, one of the only modern bands whose sound is a manifestation of a rock and roll that reaches from the Ronettes to The Clash, and everything that’s followed. The sold-out crowd was dappled with heads of hair as vibrantly colorful as the wigs in the video for “Backstreets” (see below) off their new LP, Onion. Crowned in shades of lavender and burnt orange and neon green, fans of the Oakland retro rockers dressed in loud […]
Hundreds Gather At Thomas Paine Plaza To Protest Trump’s Firing Of Jeff Sessions, Move On Mueller
Photo by DARREN LOPRINZI Hundreds of Philadelphians gathered at Thomas Paine’s Plaza on Thursday night, in solidarity with thousands across the nation who were staging rallies in their cities and towns, to oppose the forced resignation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the appointment of Matt Whitaker as acting AG. Whitaker, who openly shit-talked Mueller investigation on Fox News, is now taking charge of the Department of Justice and with it the Mueller investigation. Everyone from Millenials to Baby Boomers were in attendance, with some folks rocking signs that said things like YOU CAN’T FIRE THE TRUTH and PROTECT MUELLER, […]
Win Tix To See Kamasi Washington @ Franklin Hall
Kamasi Washington just might save modern jazz from its long, slow frogmarch to cultural irrelevance. Born to musical parents, and an alumnus of UCLA’s Department of Ethnomusicology, Kamasi Washington is a saxophonist, composer, producer, bandleader, and wizard. His latest album is a double LP called Heaven And Earth. Back in April of this year, Kamasi Washington explained the concept behind Heaven And Earth, tweeting, “The Earth side represents the world as I see it outwardly, the world that I am a part of. The Heaven side represents the world as I see it inwardly, the world that is a […]
CLAMDIGGING: Q&A With Shannon Shaw
BY SOPHIE BURKHOLDER Shannon Shaw is the fearless leader of the Oakland-based vintage rock foursome, Shannon and the Clams. Drawing inspiration from 50’s and 60’s era rock, they sound like some dreamy combination of the Zombies, Chuck Berry, and the Chantels – with a little added edge from their punk DIY-scene roots. Earlier this year, Shannon and the Clams released Onion, their sixth studio album and first on The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach’s label. Partially inspired by the loss of friends in the deadly Oakland Ghost Ship fire of 2016, the record follows Shaw’s gritty Winehouse-like croon as the […]
BEING THERE: Thurston Moore @ RUBA Club
Photo by DAN LONG The warriors: Thurston Moore, James Sedwards, Deb Googe. Their weapons: identical Fender Electric XII 12-string guitars and a Squier Bass VI, respectively. But, there’s one more player: Steve Shelley sits at his throne behind the drum set, rhythmically guiding the total of thirty vibrating strings into a droning battle of angelic overtones. The battleground: RUBA Club on Green Street, right behind Silk City Diner, last night. The entire set was one continuous jam entitled “Alice Moki Jayne,” a piece Thurstone wrote, which was inspired by the works of Alice Coltrane, Moki Cherry, and Jayne Cortez. Conductor […]
HORSEPLAY: A Q&A W/ Broncho’s Ryan Lindsey
BY HENRY SAVAGE If tongue-in-cheek was defined in the Oxford Dictionary, a picture of Broncho mainman Ryan Lindsey’s face would sit right next to the entry. Originally formed in Norman, Oklahoma in 2010, Broncho came out of the punk and house show scene with their debut LP Can’t Get Past the Lips the following year. Last month, Broncho released their fourth LP Bad Behavior, showcasing a redefined sound that moves past their fast-paced punk stages to a new age of Broncho. In advance of their show at Johnny Brenda’s tomorrow night, we got Lindsey on the horn. DISCUSSED: paltry […]
ELECTION 2018: Fear & Loathing In Pennsyltucky
EDITOR’S NOTE: A much shorter version of this story ran in the August issue of Philadelphia magazine. We are posting the complete unabridged version on the heels of Rep. Daryl Metcalfe’s re-election. BY JONATHAN VALANIA December 5th, 2017, started out as just another low and mildly contemptible day in Harrisburg, the foul rag and bone shop of Keystone State governance. But by mid-morning, it had become a day that will live in infamy. In the bowels of the state capital building, in the midst of an undoubtedly fascinating debate about landlocked easements by the State Government Committee, something both unforgivable […]
AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: Just Do It!
[SOURCE: COMMITTEE OF SEVENTY] Polls across the city and Pennsylvania are open 7am to 8pm on today. Any voter in line by 8pm must be allowed to vote. VOTER RIGHTS As a voter in Philadelphia, you have the right to: Vote if you are a U.S. citizen, city resident, at least 18 years of age and properly registered with the County Board of Elections. Visit philadelphiavotes.com for more info. Vote privately and free from coercion, intimidation or harassment. Campaigning of any kind and the distribution of buttons, flyers or other partisan literature is strictly prohibited inside the polling place. Access […]
WHITE NOISE: A Q&A W/ Thurston Moore
BY KYLE WEINSTEIN Thurston Moore turned 60 this past summer. It’s been about seven years since the breakup of Sonic Youth. Moore first hit the noisy New York no wave scene after dropping out of Western Connecticut State University in the late ’70s. His early music career was nourished by his guitar work in Glenn Branca’s orchestra, from which he would draw many of his alternate tunings to be used in Sonic Youth. It was in 1981 that Sonic Youth would officially come to fruition with its founding members: Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, and Lee Ranaldo. The group changed […]
MILESTONED: 30 Years In A Daydream Nation
Thirty years ago this week, experimental noise-punk visionaries Sonic Youth changed the underground rock world with their 1988 avant-rock masterpiece, Daydream Nation. The sprawling double-LP remains a howling beacon of holy noise straddling the crossroads of the avant garde, noise-rock, cyberpunk, and psychedelia. Daydream Nation was Sonic Youth’s avant-rock manifesto, setting in stone the band’s modus operandi of riding the borderline between the accessible and esoteric, not just within the space of an album, but within single songs, doing so with such hypnotizing grace that we should think of them as missionaries of noise converting many unsuspecting, vanilla listeners […]
THEATER REVIEW: Mr. Burns @ The Wilma
Photo by JOHANNA AUSTIN BY TONY CARO Earlier this week, I caught a performance of Mr. Burns, a post-electric play at the Wilma. Written by Anne Washburn and directed by Yury Urnov, Mr. Burns starts off in complete darkness before a few lamps light up to reveal that some never-explained apocalyptic event has destroyed the power grid and left a small group of survivors sheltering in a cargo container. To keep from going insane, the survivors act out the “Cape Feare” episode of The Simpsons where Sideshow Bob is put on trial for attempting to murder Bart. Although the jokes […]