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Last Saturday, when I went to a live show headlined by Snail Mail—an artist about whom I've been waiting to write—I remembered what it means to fully connect to a piece of music.
Philly native Anna Shoemaker felt a common kind of disenchantment with college as she started to realize the disconnect between her lectures and her actual goals in life. But, unlike most of us, she decided to act on these feelings by taking a leap for what she loved most: writing and performing music.
Whether you like it or not, summer is halfway over. So, what better way to ease the mental transition from chill to, well, Penn, than to check out all of the insane music coming to Philly this fall? If there’s any way to get your friends to leave the Penn bubble, it’s a bangin’ can’t–miss concert. Street’s rounded up the hottest (and coolest) acts coming to the greater Philadelphia area right around when class picks up.
Sometimes a big break can come from one single stroke of good luck. That’s what Calvin Langman, cellist for the Happy Fits, thought when he woke up one morning to find that a song from their debut EP Awfully Apeelin’ received over 30,000 streams on Spotify. Now at over a million plays, the song “While You Fade Away,” is what Langman says helped the band reach a new level of fame.
One of the most hypnotizing songs on Tyler, The Creator’s 2017 album Flower Boy is “Boredom.” The catchy tune fastened itself to the public’s memory because of the enchanting chorus from Alex O’Connor, who goes by the stage name of Rex Orange County. The mantra “Find some time to do something,” is a simple phrase that manages to pull on the heartstrings of self–recognition, reeling listeners in from the dark and lonely corners.
The girl is thin. She is white. She has the air of a lost fawn teetering on spindly legs. She is beautiful but couldn’t care less. She smokes cigarettes, or maybe she just looks like she does. You want to fix her.
Summer is the prime season for music. With outdoor concerts and loosely flowing wardrobe options, the desire to waste away your days dancing never seemed so tempting. But when temperatures surpass 90 degrees and the whole city all but shuts down, it creates a hazy dream of enforced laziness, and only certain playlists have the perfectly slowed ease to match it. Rather than curating a fresh one, though, here’s a short list of albums that you can play on repeat as a spiritual guide through the endlessly oppressive heat. There’s truly no better opportunity than days like these to strive for that increasingly evanescent patience of listening to a full record from top to bottom.
"Blues and jazz aren’t dying, they’re dead" is one of the most common misconceptions of the modern music industry. The statement may be true for purists of those genres who take up a derivative form of late greats like Miles Davis or B.B. King, but it completely neglects the current and more evolved sounds of bands like White Denim, a group that is undoubtedly rooted in blues.
Philadelphia is home to more than the birthplace of American history or the reigning Super Bowl champs; the city of brotherly love boasts a music scene that’d make Nashville or LA jealous (well, almost). You’ve heard of Hall & Oates. The Tonight Show wouldn’t be much without The Roots. And any self–respecting pump–up playlist will make space for “Dreams and Nightmares” (#freemeek?). Street presents: five don’t–miss Philly artists.
OH. MY. GOD.
Last Friday at Union Transfer, the Brooklyn punk rock band Parquet Courts, touring in support of their new album Wide Awake!, played a sold out show with Goat Girl—a London–based group who was, to my delight, a band of four women—and Street Stains. Though the volume of the latter two–man act’s sound made the majority of their lyrics indistinguishable, their frustrated screams of punk foreshadowed the crazed mosh pit that would later ensue with Parquet Courts.
It seems that, every year, more and more festivals pop up with more and more artists jumping on the summer set bandwagon. With hundreds of festivals slated to bring hours of music to fans this summer, it can be hard to keep track of who’s playing where—and who is worth seeing. Here are Street’s picks for the top five artists performing this summer (and where you can see them).
I had a history teacher once who included music and art in his lesson plans as a way of demonstrating the relationship between political and cultural climates. The more I understood these connections, the more I started to recognize similar ways in which today’s politics infiltrate music; yet, rarely did I see it in rock, and even more rarely did it come from all–white male bands. Parquet Courts changed that with their new album, Wide Awake!.
Before I started reviewing concerts, I essentially ignored opening acts, taking advice from concert–goers I knew to arrive about an hour after the official start time. Walking into a larger crowd made me feel comfortable with that decision, as if being “fashionably late” saved me from some self–perceived embarrassment of isolation.
The reviews that surface after a Google search for Post Malone’s beerbongs & bentleys all seem to deliver similarly damning conclusions—that frankly, the album sucks. It’s a “Flexing, Partying, Rich–Sad Bummer,” proclaims Rolling Stone. Pitchfork deems the album “false and performative,” and its predecessor—Post’s debut, Stoney—a “cynical, punishing listen.”
When Rita Ora’s new song “Girls” dropped last week, the singer called it a "bisexual anthem" and marketed it as her personal lyrical coming–out celebration. Now, only days later, the British songstress has issued an apology over critiques of being “tone–deaf.”
The music world has graced us with a much needed post–finals gift. The Arctic Monkeys, Britain’s indie rock golden boys, have broken their five–year dry spell to deliver Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, an 11–track romp through the cosmos on the keys of a Steinway.
Even though new music comes out every day of the year, it’s often the ones from the summer that stick with us most as the background of memories from road trips, barbecues, and warm nights out. Though it’s not technically summer yet, several artists have released music over the past few weeks that will undoubtedly be dominating the airwaves in the months to come.
Best known for hit single “Chelsea Dagger,” a raucous anthem that became the goal song for numerous sports teams, Scottish indie rock band The Fratellis recently released their fifth album, In Your Own Sweet Time. The new release strays from their usual boisterous sound—it's more refined, though delightfully colorful and energetic.
Paying special attention to instrumentals, and often employing complex chords and time signatures, the technical features of the post/math rock genre are universal—but, cultural differences between East Asia and the Western world are obvious even in this relatively obscure realm. Though you might have heard of bands like Slint and Don Caballero, we bet their Asian counterparts are still unknown to you. Here are five bands you should check out, if you haven’t already.
Solutions by The State News