Photo by JUSTIN PATRICK OAKES It must suck being a roadie for Margo Price.  I mean, isn’t it humiliating enough to hump one drum set?  But there they were:  two full kits upon the World Cafe Live stage at Margo Price’s sold-out show on Friday night.  What could this be? Were Mickey and Bill in the house?  (Price has shared a stage with Phil Lesh in the past). Allman Bros. boogie-woogie to come? But I’ll be damned if little ole Margo — resplendent in full length dress, shit kickers, and one on the way — didn’t hop behind the second […]

Photos by JOSH PELTA-HELLER Twenty-five years ago, a band that deliberately named itself Weezer helped rescue self-indulgent no-fucks-given arena rock from the grungy abyss of dejected disaffection that devoured the early ‘90s. In an era where Ed Vedder’s yarling angst and Kurt Cobain’s anthems for the apathetic were the prevailing aesthetic markers, Weezer again reminded us music didn’t always need a movement, and that the message didn’t need to be heavy for the guitars to be. If Soundgarden and Mudhoney reclaimed the hair from hair metal, and Beck made it cool to be a loser — Rivers Cuomo was there […]

Photo by MATT SHAVER Sitting in the lobby bar of the Fillmore, we can hear the first strains of Manchester Orchestra seeping through the showroom doors. “All of their songs are so slow,” Hannah is complaining. I don’t feel like arguing with her, so I just nod. Last year’s A Black Mile to the Surface feels cinematic and elaborately arranged, without being overbearing. It doesn’t feel like they’re trying to prove anything, scaling back after the noisy overproduction of their last projects. Singer-guitarist Andy Hull’s songwriting is his strongest attribute, his lyrics arresting in their vivid intensity. “I Know How […]

Photo by MATT SHAVER I don’t think anyone in the history of time has received quite the bad rap that Satan has. Dude offers out a helping hand to two individuals thrust in to a new plane of existence, extensively written about by some folks who never even met him, and that one book has cast a shadow over his intentions for a couple of millennia now. Thankfully, the Swedish metal/satanic PR firm known as Ghost has descended upon the US to spread cheer and merriment this holiday season. Fronted by the elusive (and until 2017, anonymous) Tobias Forge (playing […]

Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER Wearing oversized wire-frame aviators and high pigtails supported by a small army of shiny barrettes, Sophie Allison serenaded a sold-out crowd of Philadelphia fans at the First Unitarian Church last night with her band, Soccer Mommy. Soccer Mommy’s early bedroom pop work evolved into the highly praised Clean, a 2018 record that deals with love, loss, and the overall existential struggles of most every young adult. It’s music that makes you crave the warmth of another while simultaneously feeling the pain of punching through the walls that Allison described in “Henry,” the opening song of the […]

Photo by MARK LIKOSKY Cult Leader, sludgy grindcore crust punks from Salt Lake City, are brutally melodic in a way one would only know by going down dark paths, through treacherous caves during the worst hours in search of answers. They played Ortlieb’s last night as part of a Deathwish Records package tour that also Sweden’s God Mother and Brooklyn’s Primitive Weapons. God Mother was heavy and pleasantly evil, but the singer stopped the music from time to time because he felt the ‘moshing’ was a bit too harsh and made a joke that in his country at least if […]

Photo by MATT SHAVER Khruangbin, an acclaimed coven of Houston psychedelic soul gurus, have been amassing an impressive following since their Thai-flavored 2015 debut LP, The Universe Smiles Upon You. “Khruangbin” is Thai for “aeroplane,” literally translating to “flying engine.” They are currently on tour in support of their latest album, Con Todo El Mundo (2018), which draws upon Spanish and Middle-Eastern influences. They have been consistently jamming sold-out shows and last night’s concert at Union Transfer was no exception. The group — which features Laura Lee on bass, Mark Speer on guitar, and Donald “DJ” Johnson on drums — […]

Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER Headlining an indie rock triple-threat bill supported by Maryn Jones’ Yowler and Palberta, Speedy Ortiz laid waste to the First Unitarian Church’s basement last night. Leading the charge was vocalist Sadie Dupuis, stage-stomping in her tennis sneaks, thrashing her trademark pale salmon-colored electric flat top with customized headstock featuring her solo pseudonym Sad13. Three full-lengths deep, Speedy can take their pick of plenty of fan faves to fill a nearly two-hour set of straight-up indie rock and roll, with enough guitars and guile to make their forebears proud. There’s echoes of Jenny Lewis’ lyrical smartassery and […]

Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER I think most music appreciators have a handful of bands or artists that totally reprogrammed their perception of music. I remember the first time I had listened to Radiohead. In fifth grade, my mom had begun noticing that I was kind of a weird kid, so she gave me two CDs she thought I might like: Kid A and OK Computer, which were given to her by one of her best friends, a photographer and painter named Yelena Yemchuck, who dated Billy Corgan around the turn of the millennium. I stuck the CDs in my disk […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]