BY MARIAH HALL Bo Burnham didn’t intend to write and direct a movie about eighth graders, it just worked out that way. In the New Yorker, he confessed, “I wanted to talk about anxiety…Anxiety makes me feel like a terrified thirteen year old.” Burnham started out as a YouTube star in 2006 and managed to flip viral video fame into a comedy career. Now he has written and directed his first film, Eighth Grade, about a middle-school girl named Kayla (Elsie Fisher). She makes YouTube videos that no one watches, aside from her endearing father, played by Josh Hamilton, […]
BEING THERE: Rise Against @ Festival Pier
Photo by PETE TROSHAK Ben Franklin, in his infinite wisdom, once suggested “Instead of cursing the darkness, light a candle.” Chicago veteran punk rockers Rise Against brought their Mourning in Amerika tour to Philadelphia on Saturday night determined to spread Franklin’s sage advice. On tour in support of their new and altogether excellent Wolves album, Rise Against are now in their 19th year of melding Thin Lizzy guitar heroics to Bruce Springsteen-ian heartland earnestness. Saturday night at the Festival Pier, the band performed in front of a gigantic tarp with an vertical blood red and off-white striped flag bookended by […]
WORTH REPEATING: How ICE Went Rogue
THE ATLANTIC: Settling into a sense of safety is hard when your life’s catalog of memories teaches you the opposite lesson. Imagine: You fled from a government militia intent on murdering you; swam across a river with the uncertain hope of sanctuary on the far bank; had the dawning realization that you could never return to your village, because it had been torched; and heard pervasive rumors of former neighbors being raped and enslaved. Imagine that, following all this, you then found yourself in New York City, with travel documents that were unreliable at best. This is the shared […]
The 10 Thoughts I Had During Radiohead Last Night
Photo by MATT SHAVER 1. As the shadowy members of Radiohead took their places on the darkened stage, the PA played a live recording of some drone-y, vaguely Eastern-sounding trance music that may or may not have been the Master Musicians of Joujouka. The recording ends with a sound bite of local-girl-made-good Nina Simone telling an interviewer: “I’ll tell you what freedom is to me. No fear.” That, in two words, is the definition of white privilege: no fear. No fear of being beaten, bullied, abused, blackballed or murdered in cold blood live on Facebook by the police for the […]
FEEDBACK: State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe Responds
PREVIOUSLY: Fear & Loathing In Pennsyltucky
EXCERPT: Fear & Loathing In Pennsyltucky
Illustration by BRITT SPENCER PHILADELPHIA MAGAZINE: December 5th, 2017, started out as just another low and mildly contemptible day in Harrisburg. But by midmorning, it had metastasized into one that would live in infamy. In the bowels of the State Capitol building, in the midst of an undoubtedly fascinating debate about landlocked easements before the State Government Committee, something both unforgivable and endlessly hilarious happened: Representative Matt Bradford (D-Montgomery County), in a futile effort to stave off interruption long enough to finish his sentence, briefly touched the arm of the man seated next to him, Representative Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler County), […]
BEING THERE: My Bloody Valentine @ The Fillmore
Photo by JONATHAN VALANIA Last night, The Fillmore was levitating three feet high and rising by shoegaze progenitors My Bloody Valentine. The original MBV line-up is currently touring the US for the first time in five years, and, as last night demonstrated, they are still more than capable of blowing minds and melting faces with thick walls of fuzzy reverse reverb. Openers Heavy Blanket, J Mascis’s new three-piece instrumental stoner-rock band, Heavy Blanket, warmed us up for the ear-blasting volume that lay in store. The band seems like a fun little project for Mascis to solo the entire time with […]
ICYMI: Obstruction Junction What’s Your Function?
THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS: Previously undisclosed evidence in the possession of Special Counsel Robert Mueller—including highly confidential White House records and testimony by some of President Trump’s own top aides—provides some of the strongest evidence to date implicating the president of the United States in an obstruction of justice. Several people who have reviewed a portion of this evidence say that, based on what they know, they believe it is now all but inevitable that the special counsel will complete a confidential report presenting evidence that President Trump violated the law. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who […]
INCOMING : Tanukichan
San Francisco’s Hannah Van Loon, a.k.a. Tanukichan, has captured the melancholy essence of end-of-the-week not-wanting-to-do-anything on her debut wonderful debut album, Sundays, following on the heels of her 2016 EP, Radiolove. Produced by Chaz Bear (Toro y Moi) at Company Records, the album is rich in moody dream pop tones, and Van Loon’s drowsy falsetto vocals are compellingly reminiscent of Julee Cruise and Bilinda Butcher. But, Sundays is more than just a haze-cradle to lull the listener into deep space; the album’s sonic repertoire ranges from temple-massaging silk to brow-furrowing fuzz. The ten-track, 31-minute album opens with what feels […]
BEING THERE: Smashing Pumpkins @ Wells Fargo
Photo by MATT SHAVER The Smashing Pumpkins need no introduction, so I will be brief. By Siamese Dream (1993), arguably one of the greatest albums of the ‘90s, The Smashing Pumpkins had become an unstoppable force in the alt-rock firmament. 1995’s Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, blew fans away once again. Their fourth studio album, Adore (1998), was exactly that: a door – a door into an entirely new nightmare realm of Pumpkins, an intimate shadow dance with lead guitarist/vocalist/prophet Billy Corgan’s goth side. Their next venture, 2000’s Machina/The Machine Of God were the last recordings put out before […]
BEING THERE: Body/Head @ PhilaMOCA
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER Bathed in blood-red hot lamps at PhilaMOCA on Thursday night, art-rock co-conspirators Kim Gordon and Bill Nace sculpted the dystopic psychedelia of their now seven-year-old project Body/Head: a twin complement of electric guitar distortion, at turns cauterizing, captivating, cacophonous. For roughly forty minutes, Gordon writhed with her low-slung stratocaster, occasionally chanting unintelligible mantras into her mic, and hurling fuzz and feedback at Nace to reshape and return. Where Steve Gunn’s instrumental opening set was a sprawling release of scale meditations and soaring solos, Body/Head was the sonic obverse, with noisy chord-warps, urgent incantations and a dark, […]
BEING THERE: Beach House @ The Tower
Photo by MARK LIKOSKY Under the oppressive hair-frizzing humidity of midsummer in Philadelphia, swarms of indie music blog readers dressed in overalls and pinstripes filed into the massive Tower Theater for, yes that’s right, a fully seated show. But whether it was this heat, or astrological patterns like the approaching lunar eclipse and beginning of Mercury’s retrograde, a calm head-rolling evening felt like the perfect way to absorb every frequency of energy this Baltimore duo had brought with them to Upper Darby. After a charming and surprisingly comedic opening set from fellow Baltimore artist, Ed Schrader’s Music Beat, the room […]
BEING THERE: Raphael Saadiq @ Union Transfer
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER Late last night, Raphael Saadiq and his band took their seated places onstage at Union Transfer, under deep blue lights, and treated a capacity Tuesday-night crowd to a soaring instrumental, a sort of somber pre-meal prayer. It was as formal as the night would get, as the magnetic master of ceremonies rose to spark an enduring discourse with frenetic fans, trading dialogue and taking requests — even offering up his mic for a verse — as incandescent stage lights alternated with house lights throughout as if to cue continued conversation. Saadiq engaged with lengthy stories and […]