Hop Along, a locally-sourced Philadelphia band fronted by the gilded growl of Frances Quinlan, is best defined as undefinable, not quite punk and not quite folk. Their first two albums, Get Disowned and Painted Shut, are marked by lyrics that read more like short stories, grounded in the majesty of the mundane and smothered in a gorgeous squall buzzing guitar riffs. Quinlan’s songwriting evades the cliches and corniness that 21st century punk rock so often falls prey to, while maintaining its rasp and verve. The new Bark Your Head Off, Dog maintains Hop Along’s warbly effervescence, but this time […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR: Four years ago, Eels founder Mark Oliver Everett decided to take a break. After 25 years of making music, he says, “I got to the point where if you do any one thing too much in your life, it catches up to you and makes it clear that you need to do something else.” Everett went on what he calls a project of self-improvement, during which he got married, got divorced and, at the age of 54, had a son. He also spent time reckoning with the losses he’d experienced earlier in life, including his sister’s suicide, […]
Q&A: With Hampton Sides Author Of “Hellhound On His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the International Hunt for His Assassin”
Hampton Sides is an acclaimed bestselling author and a National Magazine Award nominated journalist. He won the PEN USA Award for nonfiction and the 2002 Discover Award from Barnes and Noble for Ghost Soldiers, a historical narrative following the rescue of WWII Bataan Death March survivors that was later adapted into the Miramax feature film The Great Raid. His next book, Blood and Thunder, was adapted into an episode of the Public Broadcasting Service’s American Experience series. Hellhound On His Trail, is a taut and thrilling account of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the 65-day manhunt […]
NICK LOWE: Tokyo Bay
On June 15, Yep Roc Records will release Nick Lowe’s ‘Tokyo Bay/Crying Inside’ EP, the “elegant and nearly devastating” (New York Times) songwriter’s first new music in five years, and first non-holiday recordings in some seven years. The four-song EP features the two new Lowe originals of its title, plus covers of songs popularized by Dionne Warwick (“Heartbreaker”) and Cliff Richard (“Travellin’ Light”). Lowe is backed by his Yep Roc label mates and frequent touring partners Los Straitjackets on all four songs, which were recorded at the Diamond Mine in Queens, NY in late 2017 (Lowe’s first New York sessions […]
WORTH REPEATING: Pigs On The Wing
NEW YORK MAGAZINE: It is certainly not a surprise that Trump has refused to disclose his tax returns. What’s truly shocking is how much petty graft has sprung up across his administration. Trump’s Cabinet members and other senior officials have been living in style at taxpayer expense, indulging in lavish travel for personal reasons (including a trip to Fort Knox to witness the solar eclipse) and designing their offices with $31,000 dining sets and $139,000 doors. Not since the Harding administration, and probably the Gilded Age, has the presidency conducted itself in so venal a fashion. It is hardly […]
HAPPY EASTER: David Lynch’s Rabbits
WIKIPEDIA: Rabbits is a 2002 series of short horror web films written and directed by David Lynch, although Lynch himself refers to it as a nine-episode sitcom.[1] It depicts three humanoid rabbits played by Scott Coffey, Laura Elena Harring[2] and Naomi Watts in a room.[3] Their disjointed conversations are interrupted by a laugh track. Rabbits is presented with the tagline “In a nameless city deluged by a continuous rain… three rabbits live with a fearful mystery”. Rabbits takes place entirely within a single box set representing the living room of a house. Within the set, three humanoid rabbits enter, exit, […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
NPR FRESH AIR: Comedian Bill Hader is adept onstage and doing live performances. But he’s scared to death of standup. He says he remembers watching Chris Rock’s 1996 HBO special, Bring the Pain, and thinking, “I don’t know how people do that.” “I need a character,” Hader tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “I need people out there with me.” So Hader has stuck with sketch comedy — where he has been wildly successful. He joined the Saturday Night Live cast seven years ago along with Kristen Wiig and Andy Samberg, who both recently left the show. And he’s garnered […]
CINEMA: Dog Day Afternoon
ISLE OF DOGS (Directed by Wes Anderson, 101 minutes, USA, 2018) BY JONATHAN VALANIA Near the end of Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, Snoopy, a wire-hair fox terrier owned by Sam Shakusky, the bespectacled, coonskin-capped orphan-on-the-lam at the center of the film, is accidentally killed by an errant arrow. By way of eulogy, Sam is asked if Snoopy was a good dog. Unwittingly channeling the louche moral relativism of a Left Bank existentialist, Sam shrugs wearily and asks “Who’s to say?” Anderson’s new film, a stop-motion animated puppet pageant called Isle Of Dogs, dispenses with any and all such moral ambiguity: […]
RESERVOIR DAWG: Meet Folktronica Prodigy Gordi
BY KEELY MCAVENEY Here’s what you need to know about Gordi: she is a 25-year Australian old singer-songwriter who combines folk and electronica with striking results. Her debut album Resevoir came out last summer, described by one critic as “At once cavernous and claustrophobic, substantially assembled from gloomy electronica and echoing drums, all of which provides an appropriate backdrop to a rich voice appealingly laced with melancholy.” She is currently touring with the likes of S. Carey, Bon Iver’s drummer. He’s featured on her track “I’m Done,” a breakup ballad that is both emotionally fragile and empowering. Not only […]
TOMMY GETS HIS TONSILS OUT: Q&A With The Replacements/GNR Bassmaster Tommy Stinson
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Tommy Stinson was the bass player in the The Replacements. He also played bass in Guns N’ Roses for nearly 20 years, and Soul Asylum for two albums, and played guitar and sang and wrote songs for Bash N’ Pop and Perfect and made solo albums. (For the in-depth 411 on Tommy Stinson’s life after The Replacements, check out this Rolling Stone profile from a couple years back.) But above all things Tommy Stinson was — along with his brother Bob on guitar, drummer Chris Mars and singer-guitarist Paul Westerberg, arguably one of the greatest songwriters […]
ARTSY: Signs Of The Times
Artwork by the daughter of @SandraSMcCrae
Win Tix To A Super-Exclusive, Once-In-A-Lifetime Special VIP Advanced Screening Of The New Wes Anderson Animated Insta-Classic Isle Of Dogs
Wes Anderson is the two-word answer to the increasingly asked question: What good is a liberal arts education? There are times in this country’s history when we’ve had to take stock and ask ourselves: Do we really want to live in a world without English majors? And this is one of them. Let us rejoice, then, bundled up in our Blonde On Blonde scarves and winter beards, in this the darkest hour in American life since the rockets red glare and the twilight’s last gleaming, and check-in to The Hotel Andersonia where we will shelter in high style for […]