Celebrating Community
Today, tomorrow, and yesterday, too The flowers are dyin’ like all things do Follow me close, I’m going to Bally-Na-Lee I’ll lose my mind if you don’t come with me I fuss with my hair, and I fight blood feuds I contain multitudes So go the first lines of Bob Dylan’s first album of new songs in eight years. He […]
Next year will mark the 30th anniversary of drone metal pilgrim Dylan Carlson’s first release under the name Earth. In that time, countless bands from all corners of the world have emerged into the new freedom, among them iconic innovators and black copycats. The best of what we might call the New Wave of Experimental Heavy Metal relies, in a […]
The mysterious multi-media project known as “The Residents” has long been big on reinvention. In the 1980s—already a decade and a half into the anonymous collective’s shared career—the outfit released albums reinterpreting the music of James Brown, George Gershwin, John Philip Sousa and Hank Williams, turning masters of American music into catchy, ugly, digital ditties. They’ve also been big on […]
Prince was never lacking for fans. Years after he was getting regular radio play, his albums were still charting and his concerts selling out. While existing largely outside the music industry (or within the micro-industry he built), Prince maintained a substantial and remarkably faithful fan base. There aren’t many musicians who can play Madison Square Garden without a record contract. […]
X broke the mold of what a punk band should be. Amid 1970s West Coast zealot savants like Flipper and Germs, X was a talented band versed in multiple styles and with a passion for vocal harmonies. They were also as committed to the cause as any of their upstart peers and through five essential albums held fast to the […]
“Nobro” means just what you think it means, and what you maybe hope it doesn’t. The all-female (no bros) Montreal four-piece might be breaking a logical implication of the Bechdel test – a band without dudes shouldn’t have to talk about them – but that’s already committing too much thought to it. So OK, stop, back up. Nobro rocks […]
The blues, according to B.B. King, is about survival, and if there’s a list of people who know about both the blues and survival, King’s got to be near the top. The blues, we learn from King, isn’t about being beaten down, it’s about getting back up again. Singer Vienna Carroll knows about blues and survival, too. And she knows […]
I’ve been admiring the Lancaster, England, duo the Lovely Eggs from afar for quite some time. They’ve been at it for well over a decade and are perfectly molded for the age of internet-induced attention deficit disorder. Their songs and videos are fast, funny, charming and can serve to work out aggression in a matter of minutes, either by giggles […]
Horse Lords: All Grown Up and Nothing to Prove by Kurt Gottschalk Horse Lords is a complicated beast. A likeable one but, well, it’s complicated. The Baltimore band doesn’t cling to any real notions of rock, but fits snugly alongside Battles, the Books, Zs and other such bands who might not be rock but pretty much are. Their own brand […]
Greg Fox sipped his own mix of green tea, honey and nettles as he spoke from his shared loft in Gowanus in what he describes as being “as professional a situation as a bedroom studio could be.” The large, sunny room is filled with drums and other instruments, recording equipment and the ephemera of the working musician and percussion instructor. […]