I know it might seem a bit tacky to repost from a press release, but it’s hard to ignore something described as, “a dream alliance of Nile Rodgers, Giorgio Moroder and Afrika Bambaataa circa 1985.”
Spatial Education: “Philharmonic 360” at the Park Avenue Armory, Reviewed
Entering the Park Avenue Armory for Philharmonic 360, a program of four distinct examples of what James M. Keller referred to as “spatial music,” the first thing I noticed were a selection of well-dressed men and women, seemingly frozen in place. It seemed an odd and striking touch, an indication that the evening’s program would be a stylized one. The music that followed ranged from Stockhausen’s Gruppen to the finale of Act I of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. And it was the first […]
An Evening With Grass Widow
Plenty think-pieces have sprouted from the prolific theorizing of rapper Lil B, a twenty-two year old Berkeley boy who is now an Internet content farm and once was in The Pack (of “Vans” fame, widely, and of “In My Car” fame, personally). Among the descriptions of his oeuvre, analysis of Lil B’s heralding of “based” life often, if not always, ends with a shrug. As an idea it resists definition. Like “chill” or “cool,” the word “based” requires some empirical […]
John Hodgman Writes Bio for new Mountain Goats Record
Here’s what I know about the new Mountain Goats album: It’s called Transcendental Youth, it comes out on October 2nd, the words “Florida,” “Judas,” and “Satan” are all included in the song titles, and John Hodgman wrote this biography.
Vancouver Landscapes and Johnny Ramone’s Book: Band Booking With White Lung
Listening to White Lung’s fantastic second album Sorry, you might be tempted to speak in rapturous terms about their music, and to make unexpected connections between their sound and that of their punk rock forebears. The bands in which Rick Froberg has played — Drive Like Jehu and Hot Snakes in particular– come to mind, but so does the sorely-missed Scottish postpunk group Life Without Buildings. It’s visceral yet complex stuff, and it doesn’t hurt that vocalist Mish Way is […]
Band Booking: Like Pioneers
Chicago’s Like Pioneers have a fantastic new album out, titled Oh, Magic. It’s full of the sort of cathartic indie rock that, when done well, I dig like catnip. It doesn’t hurt that 3/5 of the band previously played together in the excellent Bound Stems, or that Jessie Woghin previously made music in the fantastic The Narrator. In advance of a pair of NYC shows this week (June 21st at Cameo Gallery and June 22nd at Pianos), I caught up with Woghin […]
Band Booking: Wooden Wand
James Jackson Toth plays taut, haunted music with folk roots and a darkness all its own. Most of his work has been released under the name Wooden Wand; most recently, his album Briarwood got the deluxe reissue treatment from Fire Records. And it turns out that the guy’s a prodigious reader, able to smartly discuss musical histories and work from Barry Hannah and William Gass in equal measure.
Baseball, Indie Rock and Yo La Tengo with Jesse Jarnow
Big Day Coming is the new book by music journalist/WFMU DJ Jesse Jarnow that tells the story of indie rock as it evolves through the lifespan of Yo La Tengo. Jarnow paints a picture not only of a band’s lifespan or of a genre’s inception, but of multiple decades of rock n roll history, music journalism, and the city of Hoboken, New Jersey. Yo La Tengo, being a band so inextricable from their home venue, Maxwell’s in Hoboken, the place […]