Photo by PETE TROSHAK Zsuzsanna Eva Ward was born in Abington, PA, in the late eighties and spent her youth absorbing her dad’s blues records as well as her brother’s hip-hop albums. Fast forward to 2014 and that little girl has become ZZ Ward, a rising music star with a sound that combines the lyrical and sonic tropes of blues and soul as well as the rhythms of hip hop. Friday night Ward and her tight three-piece band packed the Theatre of Living Arts and thrilled a winter-weary hometown crowd on the opening night of her Last Love Tour. Ward […]

Photo by MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ Before St. Vincent could take the stage at Union Transfer last night, an announcement was made over the loudspeaker by Microsoft Sam, the voice of Windows text-to-voice app, asking the jam-packed crowd to refrain from the use of any digital recording devices, audibly disappointing the smart phone-wielding hordes, most of whom, we can safely presume, had already figured out what vintage filter they were gonna put on their Annie Clark snaps. The irony of a phone telling humans to put away their funs may or may not have been lost on the crowd. Despite my […]

Photo by NOAH SILVESTRY Courtney Barnett is not yet famous, but she’s a legend in the making. Her lyrics are not yet iconic, but evoke Bob Dylan’s poetry. Her band has not yet attained rock and roll glory, but they rock like Nirvana. Point: Believe the hype. Courtney Barnett is for real, and she hasn’t even released a proper album yet. Her Thursday night show was originally booked at Boot N’ Saddle but had to be moved to Union Transfer to meet demand. Taking the UT stage backed by her power trio, she opened up a short set with “David,” […]

Photo by MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ Last night Philly natives Dr. Dog threw down an epic, no-holds-barred, all-stops-pulled tour de force sold-out show that served as a fitting finale to the band’s two-night homecoming stand at the Electric Factory. Decked out in their trademark Skittles-colored beanies and cheap sunglasses, the Dog played a seemingly endless 18-song set, followed by a six-song encore, that took long pulls from their newish album B-Room, with smaller sips from their older vintages stretching all the way back to their 2002 debut, Toothbrush. The beard-y six-piece seemed to be having the proverbial time of their lives […]

  In 1998, Neutral Milk Hotel released an album of hallucinatory folk-rock called In The Aeroplane Over The Sea that is, it can be said without fear of exaggeration, nothing short of a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. Like My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, it is lightning caught in a bottle, one of those rare perfect albums that come along maybe once a decade. Or once a lifetime. In 1999, Jeff Mangum — Neutral Milk’s singer, songwriter and primary guitarist — disappeared from public life without explanation, declining all entreaties to perform or discuss the album or record a follow-up. Over […]

Photo by NOAH SILVESTRY The Pixies weren’t just first to the indie rock party: they hosted it. They’re royals in the kingdom of rock, prophets in the religion of screamed lyrics, champions in the game of noise. Their subjects/followers/fanatics (or whatever else you may call them) flooded the Electric Factory floor to see the Pixies do what they do best, what nobody else can do — though Lord knows for 25 years they have tried and tried. This tour diverges quite a bit from others since the Pixies’ reunion in 2004: Paz Lenchantin plays bass, replacement of the replacement of […]

Photo by MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ The only thing I expected to be bitter about last night was the cold. Making trip from the suburbs to Union Transfer by SEPTA in below freezing temperatures seemed awful, but I soon found out that would be the warmest and most appealing part of my night. By the time I got to the line at UT, my fingers were frozen to the point of immobility, but I didn’t care. Seeing some of the most acclaimed indie bands of my generation — Beach House, The Walkmen, Fleet Foxes and Grizzly Bear —  performing Byrds frontman […]

Photo by MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ After the release of Foxygen’s blissed-out We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic and the chain of awful events that led to them canceling an entire tour, I was pleasantly surprised by my first listen to Foxygen drummer Shaun Fleming’s solo project, Diane Coffee. But it seemed a little too good to be true, and I decided that seeing the 60’s-70’s-gospel&Mowtown-inspired indie-pop creation live at Kung Fu Necktie Saturday night would enable me to render a final verdict. Upon entering KFN, the first thing I noticed was how outnumbered I was by […]

Photo by NOAH SILVESTRY Some say chillwave is the new shoegaze. Others say shoegaze is the old chillwave.  I say who cares about nomenclature if the music feels right? Making good-feeling music has become a mission statement for Ernest Greene, the auteur behind Subpop’s resident chillwave/shoegazers Washed Out. Greene eschews complex rhythms and intricate vocal arrangements in favor of lush sonics and velveteen song structures that feel good when they rub up against your cochlea. In the studio Washed Out is a one man band, but last night at the Electric Factory Greene brought with him an entire backing band […]

Photo by PETE TROSHAK Legendary Italian soundtrack instrumentalists Goblin arrived in Philly Thursday night delivering a crowd pleasing two hour set to a fan-base that had waited forty years to see them. The band is in the middle of the their first U.S. tour ever featuring four-fifths of the seminal original line-up of the band — drummer Agostino Marangolo, guitarist Massimo Morante, keyboard player Maurizio Guarini and bassist Fabio Pignatelli. The band built their legend composing scores for Giallo movie maestro Dario Argento, Italy’s answer to Alfred Hitchcock. Their most famous work was the soundtrack to Argento’s film Suspiria – […]

Photo by PETE TROSHAK Trippy NYC duo Cults brought their dreamy hybrid of 60s girl groups and psychedelic pop to the Theatre of Living Arts last night. Guitarist Brian Oblivion and singer Madeline Follin record as a duo but onstage they are augmented by a bass player, a drummer and a guitar/keyboard/xylophone player. Live the music has more teeth – clanging guitars, gut-rumbling bass and some primal drumming give the music more punch and aggression than their recordings would lead you to expect. Follin hung on the mic all night, giving the crowd intense smoldering stares as her powerful baby […]