Celebrating Community
Marc Ribot is sick of everyone. Or so it seems. Or artists and activists, anyway. And politicians. And cowboys, although they might be a metaphor for one or more of those other categories. Hope—Ribot’s second release with his quick-quitted trio Ceramic Dog in nine months (out June 25 on Northern Spy) and fifth overall—seems to hold little hope, at least […]
Siouxsie and the Banshees released their second record in 1979, after a quick rush to fame and acclaim (in England, anyway) with their first single and debut album the previous year. Join Hands didn’t do much to capitalize on earlier success. The album was tense, unhinged, unnerving, built from the unexpected inspiration of the first world war and informed by […]
The Gang of Four revivalism of the early naughts got one thing terribly wrong. Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand and their ilk did a reasonable enough job at aping the angular punk-funk sound, but lacked the rigidity. They weren’t fierce. They weren’t disciplined. They seemed to want to have a good time. A generation later, London’s Dry Cleaning is out to […]
Vocalist Priya Carlberg formed Birthday Ass five years ago when she was a student at the New England Conservatory, but the band members’ backgrounds in jazz and improvisation shouldn’t be cause for concern. The sextet has sufficient attitude to back its name, as evidenced by the Bandcamp bundles for their new album which include purple vinyl and band logo undergarments […]
I’m not sure where Alpha Maid comes from, but it seems like a scary place. Reports say South London, although Godard’s Alphaville seems more likely. I might also have guessed Bristol, where producer/rapper Tricky comes from, but that might be an overgeneralization. Like Tricky, though, or at least Tricky at his best, Alpha Maid make disturbing mixes, putting unadorned vocals […]
Next month will mark the 40th anniversary of the Exploited’s first record, on which they declared (in title and opening track) that “punk’s not dead.” Even at the time it felt a bit defensive but the song coined a slogan that has continually been graffiti’d ever since. Forty years is almost as long as the lives of Darby Crash and […]
I don’t know what you were doing in 1983 but I know what the Melvins weren’t doing is making this record. “Melvins 1983” is whispered like it’s some kind of incantation, like it’s the name of a beast with no name, like it’s something you’d better be careful not to wish for, like it’s a monkey’s paw keychain. Or at […]
Doug Brod’s They Just Seem a Little Weird examines KISS, Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, Starz and the making of ‘70s rock megastardom. Eric and I didn’t have much to go on, but we didn’t need much, either. We were desperate tweens ready to rock. It didn’t matter that we didn’t know the band that was playing. They had the look and […]
When my first sister told me that her adolescent son had discovered David Bowie, something powerful struck me. My nephew, I realized, had joined the legion of outsiders. He had recognized (on some level) that the world was a complicated place, that in the inescapable realms of majority rule, you usually don’t get to choose to be on the winning […]
The surprising thing about New York black metal band Liturgy in 2020 isn’t frontperson Hunter Hunt-Hendrix coming out as transgender. It might be interesting. It no doubt informs her obscure-anyway songwriting. And she’s to be commended for the forthright and thoughtful coming out video she posted to her YouTube channel in August. But it’s not the most exciting thing about […]