Confession time: I don’t normally find myself in the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of the State of New York. And if I had ever planned to be there, I would not have expected for it to be for a crushingly loud and yet liberating program of music played by nine guitarists and a drummer. In fact, that was how I spent my Monday night: taking in a program featuring three symphonies written by composer Glenn Branca, as […]
A Mixtape of Musical History: A Review of John Doe’s “Under the Big Black Sun”
“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture” said either Martin Mull or Elvis Costello, depending on which source you believe. Either way we keep doing it, knowing full well the kind of lightning made by mouths or slapping strings can’t be captured on the printed page. The many differences between the sung and written word kept eating at me as I read Under the Big Black Sun—a Personal History of L.A. Punk.
Battle of the Band Coffees: Hot Water Music vs. Brain Tentacles
In retrospect, it’s a little baffling that someone hasn’t made a Descendents-inspired coffee yet. (Update: or so I thought! As it turns out, Sweetwater did exactly this in 2013.) As a recent article on Vice pointed out, bands are increasingly lending their names to various foods and drinks: among others, Dogfish Head has collaborated with Juliana Barwick and Guided by Voices on beer; the former also resulted in a very good EP, Rosabi. Coffee roasters based near the labels in […]
Karaoke, Tattoos, and Liberating Solitude: An Interview With Gazebos
Die Alone, the first full-length from Seattle’s Gazebos, is an eminently unpredictable album. Quirky punk numbers co-exist with covers of songs from Grease, and transitions within the songs themselves represent bold stylistic shifts. It’s an album that rewards multiple listens, and one that rarely dwells on a particular style or sound. I talked with singer Shannon Perry and guitarist TV Coahran about the making of Die Alone, how they arrived at their particular approach, and more.
“You Don’t Have to Know the Words, You Can Feel It”: An Interview With Gustav Ejstes of Dungen
It’s been over a decade now since the Swedish psychedelic rock band Dungen first made an impression on American shores. That album, Ta Det Lugnt, attracted a wide-ranging group of devotees on this side of the Atlantic–no small measure, given that the group’s lyrics were (and remain) in Swedish. At the time of its release, Brandon Stosuy reviewed it for Pitchfork and called it “an exceedingly triumphant psych-pop oddity.” While it was their first album to receive wide attention in […]
“The Other Channel Is Just Chaos”: A Conversation With Dan Friel
The first time I ever saw Dan Friel play music was in Parts & Labor, the gloriously urgent noise-rock group of which he was a founding member. (“Fractured Skies,” from their 2007 album Mapmaker, sits very high on my list of great side one/track ones.) Since Parts & Labor’s final show in early 2012, Friel has released two solo LPs on Thrill Jockey, moved from north Brooklyn to Park Slope, and become a father. One can find the thematic influence […]
“We Are All From Album Generations”: An Interview With Jensen Tjhung of Deaf Wish and Lower Plenty
Jensen Thjung keeps busy. I first heard his work via the band Lower Plenty, who make haunting, low-key music that treads the line between unsettling bliss and disquieting obsession. Thjung is also one-quarter of the Melbourne-based rock band Deaf Wish, who released their latest album, Wish, on Sub Pop in the second half of last year. (Also in the group: bassist Nick Pratt, drummer Daniel Twomey and guitarist Sarah Hardiman.) Deaf Wish’s show at Alphaville was, flat-out, one of the […]
“I Look For Music That’s Very Honest”: An Interview With White Magic’s Mira Billotte
The first time I heard Mira Billotte’s music was at a White Magic show in New York City. For a while, the group were regulars on the city’s music scene. Their 2006 album Dat Rosa Mel Apibus captures the blend of styles that made the band’s music so powerful and so difficult to pigeonhole. There are aspects of traditional music in here; there are Billotte’s haunted vocals, and a penchant for mystical imagery. Billotte’s musical background is varied indeed–prior to […]