Recent Articles
The Morning After Girls: Life Into Art
The morning after girls, recent New York City transplants from Melbourne and Sydney, Australia, first piqued my interest with a set that stood out for its shimmering onslaught of mystery, when they opened for The Dandy Warhols at NYC’s Webster Hall during a 2005 U.S. tour. Some years later, with three EPs and an album [...]
Placebo to Battle the Sun with New Album and Summer Tour
They’re a band that’s always been one of our top guilty pleasures and they’re back with a bright, new vengeance, with a new U.S. and Canadian release this June 9th on Vagrant Records. Placebo’s sixth studio album, Battle For The Sun, is the band’s first outing with new drummer Steve Forrest, and is a follow-up [...]
The Charlatans UK to Tour the U.S. and Release Tenth Album
The Charlatans’ tenth studio album, You Cross My Path, promises a rebirth of sorts for this UK band who have had one of the most stellar careers amongst their English peers, and is a fitting 20th anniversary gift to themselves as well. Though the album was already released in early March in MP3 format for [...]
Great Northern Trips the Light
Rachel Stolte, half of the songwriting duo behind the Los Angeles-based band Great Northern, swears that after over five years of constant shows and tours, playing live is still what keeps the band most inspired. “It’s like arrested development,” she says, pausing for dramatic effect, “you get to go out and play and rock every night, and have drinks!”
Chase Pagan at Mercury Lounge, NYC, 5.21.09
Seeing Arkansas-based Chase Pagan perform for the first time “is akin to reading Nabokov novels in their original post-it note format, you get the gist but it leaves one wanting more.” That’s what a writer said who came to his first Pagan show tonight, and it stuck, since it was pretty amusing and seemed to [...]
Jarvis Cocker – ‘Further Complications’
Jarvis Cocker has amped up for his second release with a collection of lusty songs that rock for the sake of rocking. Check out the power chords that lead up to Cocker’s whispered “Angela, Angela” on the opening track and his breathless delivery on “Caucasian Blues”, in which the rapier-witted frontman spits out “I’ve heard [...]
Leonard Cohen at Radio City Music Hall, Saturday May 16, 2009
As a writer and most importantly, a fan of Leonard Cohen, it’s virtually impossible to eschew hyperbole and review a performance the man gives. He with the jaunty suit, and fedora. He with the many bows of gratitude and cups of mercy and unified hearts.
Pitchfork Music Festival 2009 Adds to Lineup with The Thermals and More
Chicago’s hot and hazy 2009 Pitchfork Music Festival has just added to its eclectic lineup with Final Fantasy, Cymbals Eat Guitars, Bowerbirds, and Michael Columbia for Saturday and The Thermals and Killer Whales for the equally stellar Sunday. The festival has always been an avid supporter of Chicago’s own bands, which is why they’ve wisely [...]
Ramblas In Hell’s Kitchen: SonarSound NY, 5.12.09, Baryshnikov Arts Center
We’ve made it out to Siberia, the stretch of lower Hell’s Kitchen that seems to greet more visitors than locals, to the Baryshnikov Arts Center, a relatively new performance venue. The desolate streets bunched together by the cloverleaf of the Lincoln tunnel are lined with low tenements made into mushrooms by the roof parapets, surrounded [...]
Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band – “Outer South”
Conor Oberst has done it again. Outer South is comparable to a musical version of The Catcher in the Rye. Oberst explores a coming of age through brotherly love…
