Indie Music Culture
The new Albert Hammond, Jr. record was almost called Cockpit Voice Recordings if you can believe it. But the curly-headed guy with the guitar worried it wouldn’t be light enough; too “serious in the wrong way,” even. He worries about these things.
Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson’s voice lives in the bowels of human existence; it wails and drones through rat-infested dive bars in shady neighborhoods and the squalid homes of sallow heroin addicts. It echoes through the after hours of a sleazy strip club and rusted benches in Washington Square Park, benches that once gave MBAR a […]
It’s a sunny day in purgatory, a hopeful walk through T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” while impish shadows tug at your conscience. It’s funeral music for grounded transients and energetic fuck-ups, for upbeat nihilists and manic loners; and it all revolves around Ian McCarthy’s meticulously constructed conflict with isolation. The New Hampshire-based multi-instrumentalist writhes poetically […]
This review is not about a rockumentary or film, or a fade-in caught on celluloid. These words, instead, are about a t-shirt that should have never existed. The film starts with collaged montages of Manchester and a voice over that declares (roughly): “This film is not about a band or a group of people, but a city that once created the greatest revolution of Western society, then came back and created a bigger revolution…”
By chance, I found myself walking behind Jamie Burke, singer of Bloody Social, while I was en route to his gig, so I followed him along 2nd St. and then down to Pianos. Before the show, he walks off, fast. Girls are heard murmuring, “He’s the lead singer of…,” before we turn off down Ludlow St. Back at the venue, Burke is wearing a leather hoodie. Clothing as props, gimmicks of expression. Nice. Boxer stance. Symbolism is important in performance delivery. Freedom and branding fight for the same human bandwidth.
The Fratellis came on like Scottish bats out of hell with the Les Paul guitar and power drums fury of new hit “My Friend John” rousing the crowd to near insanity. Though a few songs in, frontman Jon Fratelli apologizes for his supposed fatigue, saying he “felt like shite for the first five songs,” I […]
The UK’s Sarandon like to call themselves a pop band with a short attention span. The name of their latest album, Kill Twee Pop, (released in the U.S. on Slumberland Records), seems to say it all: this is no cutsie neo-folk act, but rather, a spastic, twitching garage punk act that delights both in mashing […]
The Futureheads played an “intimate” gig to a packed and sweaty Piano’s crowd the night after their one-off Bowery Ballroom show. Instead of what would have been a private and possibly emptier gig a few years ago, this was quite the must-see event: the room was overflowing and proved that no gigs are secret […]
If this is rock and roll, then the end times are nigh. Not that Loene Carmen can’t rock, of course. And what actually is rock these days? Carmen attempts to answer the question. And when artists attempt an answer, it either works wonderfully (see Primal Scream’s Screamadelica) or comes off as almost perverse (Primal Scream’s […]
Imagine Wire and Echo & The Bunnymen collaborating on an album circa 1981. That’s pretty much what can be found on the Kiss-Off’s EP Brace. Whereas many a New York act have fallen into the creative trap of churning out formulaic post-punk, The Kiss-Off have managed to fuse two disparate styles together in an intriguing […]
Playful groovemasters Fujiya & Miyagi have announced that “Knickerbocker” will be the first single off of their sophomore release, Lightbulbs, due September 16 on Dumb + Blind Recordings. Lightbulbs is said to be “a journey littered with fragmented images, anecdotes from the sublime to the ridiculous, blurry stories that you feel you shouldn’t have overheard.” […]
On September 30, critically adored singer/songwriter Ray LaMontagne will release his third record, Gossip in the Grain, on RCA. Said to encompass such varying styles as “pastoral folk, railroad blues, front porch country, and plangent balladry,” Gossip was recorded in Box, England, with returning producer Ethan Johns, and features members of LaMontagne’s live backing band. Songstress […]
Seems people can’t get enough of Girl Talk (and main man Greg Gillis) and the pay-for-play Feed the Animals these days. And clearly Gillis is a man who lives to please, as he has just announced an extensive fall tour of North America through October and November in addition to the previously confirmed July dates, […]
It’s a fact. The Last Shadow Puppets are one of Sentimentalist Magazine’s favorite side projects in recent memory. Partners in sultry, orchestral crime, Alex Turner (Arctic Monkeys) and Miles Kane (The Rascals), created an epic, Morricone soundtrack-inspired masterpiece, The Age of the Understatement, which has been in constant rotation here since its release […]
All this talk about whether they are good or not really doesnt matter. People are always going to disagree with ...
I 100% agree with MichaelDon, rockslut, and crystalchix. Take it from someone who is high up on the A&R and ... I 100% agree with MichaelDon, rockslut, and crystalchix. Take it from someone who is high up on the A&R and ...
I think I read about these guys on brooklyn vegan or something. I went out to see them based ... I saw these guys at a few shows, don hills, delancey, and lit. Didnt feel it really. The lead singer ...
