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(09/04/19 12:14am)
It was a few weeks into my summer in Ireland that I first heard the sentence that would resonate through the rest of my journey: “I am going alone and friendless…into another country.” James Joyce said this to Lady Gregory shortly before he left Ireland for Paris, and I said something similar as I left my school and house in Philadelphia for Dublin, a country I had dreamed about for years, but that neither I nor any of my close relatives had seen. Ostensibly, I was there to write—there were a few academic papers brimming at the back of my mind, and I was scouring for sources of inspiration for my fiction. I found that inspiration, and a reprieve from my burgeoning loneliness, in live music.
(04/25/19 7:35pm)
In 2017, indie rock band the Mountain Goats shocked their fan base with the release of Goths, which was marketed as having “NO COMPED VOCALS. NO PITCH CORRECTION. NO GUITARS.” Although comped vocals and pitch correction were always antithetical to the lo–fi Goats, the band achieved its fame through vocalist John Darnielle’s squawky voice, heavy guitar, and not much else. If Goths was a departure from form, however, then In League with Dragons, released April 26 by Merge Records, is a glorious return, made up almost entirely of lyrical and acoustic callbacks to the past quarter–century of Goats history.
(04/29/19 8:05am)
Easter Sunday is a strange day for me. It’s the one Sunday that I don’t have to get up early for church, as I always attend the Easter Vigil Mass the night before. I always feel out of place sleeping in until nine or ten in the morning, dressing in a t–shirt and jeans rather than a button–down and khakis, and I need to find a way to fill the lacuna of time I have been awarded. Usually, this comes in the form of a baseball game, but the Phillies were away this weekend. I could have shipped up to the Bronx to see the Yankees or taken a trip down to Camden Yards, but instead I spent the last few hours of Easter at Union Transfer, screaming until my voice was raw to the sounds of La Dispute.
(04/15/19 2:06am)
Fling has flung for the year, and everyone who attended the concert, opted out, or spent the night attending and subsequently being thrown around the pit for Dance Gavin Dance instead, is back to the Penn grind. Finals are less than a month away, after all, and it's a race to the finish. The best study break, however, and the best way to cure the post–concert blues, is attending another show, and there's no better week to do it: from rising stars to pop icons, alternative slow jams to hardcore headbanging, there's a little something for everyone, whether you have $500 to spare or only $25.
(04/14/19 4:35am)
Bad Religion surprised everyone in the punk scene this year when they dropped "Chaos From Within" at the end of February, a track meant to serve as the lead single to upcoming album Age of Unreason, their first LP since 2013's True North. When Age is released on May 3, it will be the band's 17th album in 39 years. A week after the release of the album's second single, "Do the Paranoid Style," Canadian punk band PUP released their newest showing, Morbid Stuff. With members of punk's old guard coming out of the woodwork as fresh faces put out music of their own, the question arises: Do we still need bands like Bad Religion?
(04/01/19 11:02pm)
In 2009, indie rock band The Antlers released Hospice, a concept album using the love story of a hospice worker and a patient with terminal bone cancer as a metaphor for one of frontman Peter Silberman's old relationships. "To an extent it's autobiographical," Silberman said in an interview with The Village Voice, "but I guess the best way to say it is that there's a few ways to lose someone. It's not always through death, even if it resembles death." The message resonated with fans and critics alike: Pitchfork awarded the album with a "Best New Music" stamp upon its release before ranking it #37 of the best 50 albums of 2009, while Beats Per Minute crowned Hospice the best album of the year.
(04/15/19 1:54am)
One day, like most days, my mother made an offhand comment: "I don't know why male musicians dress so boring. If I were a rock star, I'd dress like ZZ Ward every day." When I saw her at the Theatre of Living Arts last February, Ward wore a sequined black tank top, black and white leather pants, and her signature black hat—not necessarily an outfit you would want to picture your mother wearing. In an effort to banish that thought from my mind, I started mulling over the statement, wondering how I would dress in the parallel universe where I become a famous musician, and soon it worked its way into conversation—an icebreaker I never expected.
(03/20/19 12:38am)
I wasn’t the oldest non–parent seeing Set it Off at Union Transfer on March 3—that honor belonged to my twenty–one–year–old friend—but I was the tallest, often several inches above the brace–faced and pimply high school students surrounding us in the pit. I came from the punk and hardcore scenes, and my friend from metal—both genres prone to raucous shows with headbanging, moshing, and even a few walls of death. We had survived acts like The Descendents and Marilyn Manson. Surely we could go just as hard as an audience not yet old enough for a driver’s license. Instead, we left that show with no voice, agonizing pain from neck to lower back, and the uncomfortable realization that we might be getting too old for this.
(03/18/19 5:07am)
On September 4th, 2002, nearly 23 million people tuned in to watch a twenty–year–old girl from Fort Worth, Texas be crowned the first American Idol. Now, seventeen years after Kelly Clarkson first sang "A Moment Like This," her career has come full–circle as a host on The Voice, and she boasts eight studio albums, three Grammys, and 25 million album sales. Clarkson's development from Idol to pop culture icon shows that, while singing competitions can launch a career, it takes true talent to keep one.
(03/05/19 9:50pm)
In Aristotle's tragic plot structure, the first half of a tragedy shows the protagonist on the rise, before the unfolding events of the first act culminate in a sudden change of fortune. The second act, then, is beset by pity and fear before an ultimately tragic and cathartic ending. Understanding this classical plot structure helps when making sense of the new EP a modern tragedy vol. 2, released on Feb. 22 by Canadian hip–hop artist Jordan Edward Benjamin, better known as grandson.
(02/27/19 4:36am)
When four–piece rock band Badflower burst onto the music scene in 2015 with debut single “Soap,” it seemed as if they would make their place in the blues rock revival. Between the heavy guitar riffs and the way Josh Katz yelled "Sometimes I cannot be respectable," the band would fit in just fine among acts like Black Pistol Fire, Greta Van Fleet, and Dorothy. That hard–rocking image was cemented with 2016 EP Temper, which NYLON Magazine declared “Good, old–fashioned rock n’ roll.” Three years later, debut LP OK, I’M SICK, released Feb. 22, takes the band in a new direction—a good one—with the introspective and emotional lyrics telling a much more mature story than the average debut.
(02/25/19 6:34am)
When thinking of cities with songs about them, New York is the first to come to one's "Empire State of Mind," followed of course by the selection of West Coast cities available for "California Dreaming." But the punk, hip hop, and indie rock artists of Philadelphia have embraced their hometown's quirky charm and turned it into songwriting fuel. While outsiders like Elton John ("Philadelphia Freedom") and even North Jersey's Bruce Springsteen ("Streets of Philadelphia") can attempt to catch the spirit, it takes hometown troublemakers like Mischief Brew and the Fresh Prince to guide listeners on a tour of the real Philly.
(02/21/19 1:25am)
The smell of leather was thick in the air, coming off of the battered jackets and beer–soaked combat boots of every aging hard rocker in the crowd. Everyone that packed into the Theatre of Living Arts (TLA) this past Saturday for rock band Dorothy’s sold out show started the evening dressed in all–black, although several would go on to buy and wear opener Spirit Animal’s “banana cream”—not yellow, they insisted—t–shirt. The population density of the venue allowed little room to dance, but did nothing to deter the concertgoers from flipping their hair, swaying their lighters, and pumping the devils’ horns all in time with the heavy riffs, punchy drum beats, and lead singer Dorothy Martin’s cutting vocals.
(02/12/19 5:54am)
It was 1973 when Paul McCartney and Wings said “Some people wanna fill the world with silly love songs,” and the statement holds true nearly fifty years later. Spotify’s Valentine's Day Love playlist has 100 songs and over 300,000 followers. While true love songs do exist, every so often a song will come on the radio, or on a love song playlist, that sounds beautiful...at first. Then, after a few listens and a close reading of the lyrics, that “love song” turns out to be about something else entirely. Here are a few tracks to consider taking off those Valentine’s playlists and mixtapes for crushes.
(02/05/19 2:00pm)
Four–piece Florida pop punk band Set it Off always seemed to be on the second string of its genre, never quite as famous as acts like Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, or All Time Low, although the latter band had a hand in Set it Off's development. Frontman Cody Carson was inspired to create a band of his own after being invited to perform with All Time Low at a Cleveland show in 2008. With the recent release of the band's fourth LP, Midnight, on Feb. 1, Carson and the other three members of Set it Off seem poised to join the ranks of their inspirations.
(02/01/19 10:05pm)
On Monday, January 28th, indie rock band The Mountain Goats livestreamed a performance at the Wizards of the Coast headquarters in Renton, WA, with frontman John Darnielle singing and playing guitar in front of a massive dragon statue named Mitzy. The reason: to promote their upcoming album In League with Dragons, inspired by the seminal Wizards of the Coast tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons.
(01/29/19 3:49am)
Legends are often unpredictable. Billy Altman of Rolling Stone proclaimed that hard rock “has unquestionably hit its all–time low” with AC/DC’s High Voltage, while Lester Bangs derided Black Sabbath’s debut album as “a shuck.” Meanwhile, 1992’s best–selling album Some Gave All by Billy Ray Cyrus doesn’t exactly hold up 27 years later; “Achy Breaky Heart” is more a joke than a party playlist staple. With the benefit of hindsight, Street has chosen the most important and influential albums of five, ten, and twenty years prior.
(01/25/19 4:00am)
I don’t remember the first time I heard the name Gretsch, whether it came before or after I held one of their guitars for the first time. If I were to guess, I’d say it was sometime between when I saw Nick 13 of Tiger Army ream on his signature black Duo Jet and when Tim Armstrong from Rancid brought out his signature left-hand model. In moments like those, I fell in love with the great Gretsch sound.
(01/23/19 5:31am)
When indie rock singer-songwriter King Princess announced her North American tour on November 2, her existing song repertoire clocked in at just under twenty minutes, consisting only of her five-song debut EP Make My Bed and the single “Pussy is God,” the latter released in conjunction with the tour announcement. Although a cover of The Velvet Underground and Nico’s “Femme Fatale” would be released two weeks later, this will still leave about two–thirds of a traditional ninety–minute headlining set for King Princess to fill when she comes to the TLA for a sold–out show on January 28. Though one of the most prominent examples, King Princess is not the only artist selling out shows with a limited discography. More and more often, up–and–coming artists will forgo the traditional LP–tour–rest album cycle in favor of alternating EP and single releases with multiple tours per year.
(01/21/19 3:05am)
To the average Philadelphian walking their dog or jogging through the neighborhood, it would come as a shock to know that a small Wynnefield townhouse was, for one night, a concert venue. On Jan. 14, indie prog rock band Kindo (formerly known as The Reign of Kindo) performed a 90–minute headlining set on the concrete basement floor of a four–bedroom house not too far from St. Joseph’s University. Walking up the brick stairs makes concert attendees feel more like trick–or–treaters or door–to–door salesmen than prog aficionados, and there comes a moment before opening the door where one hopes they have the correct address and won't be barging in on a house party or family dinner.