THE SPRING ISSUE
Music
Morgan Geist
A contemporary disco phenom ponders the extinction. It’s not hard to consider dance music, on nearly all platforms, to be synonymous with enormous soundsystem clubs and those that choose to “feel” rather than “listen.” There’s the producer or sound nerd that really does give a shit about the quality of the mp3 and the dude […]
Growing Up in Front of Everyone
Jay Reatard proves that staying at home doesn’t make you a loser There’s something dated about Jay Reatard’s face-forward music. Anthemic hooks over boiled-down guitars are often reminiscent of a ’70s punk outfit, not an artist who is enjoying increasing popularity in the age of short-attention spans. The musical milieu of the ’70s seems to […]
Fontän
Crafting Sweden’s new wave of post-Pink Floyd psychedelia. Fontän is the product of a seven-year musical collaboration between Johan Melin and Jesper Jarold. Formed in 2001, the pair met while taking a multi-media class in its native Sweden and had a rather bizarre first musical encounter. During class, the two were grouped together and asked […]
Grails
Portland’s most enigmatic psych-troupe orbits beyond experimental parameters It seems like just about every city has its crowning moment in music history. Simply consider any predictable VH1 retrospective on ’60s San Francisco or throwback story about the emergence of punk in New York City. But like any great city, there are always a few bands […]
Sound Check
Various Artists / Radio Algeria / Sublime Frequencies 029 For those not familiar with the Sublime Frequencies’ explosion of exotica over the last few years, Radio Algeria is a stellar example of curator Alan Bishop’s region/world/mind-spanning collage work using the radio as his only source. Presented with minimal liner notes, Radio Algeria does not hide […]
Get Hustle’s Sugar and Chaos
Text by Adam Gnade Photography by Yoni Kifle Some people notice their clothes first: Get Hustle pianist Mac Mann’s gelled silent film-star finery, and drummer Ron Avila and singer Valentine Falcon’s Hendrix-gypsy trip. It’s also easy to draw cues and clues from the band’s album cover art and song titles, which give an impression of […]
Monsters are Waiting
Text by Allison Bloch Photograph by Zen Sekizawa From their name to their unique mode of transportation (a short bus complete with two dogs, Bear and Monkey), the four members of Monsters Are Waiting combine refreshingly quirky behavior with style and sophistication. Emerging from Southern California comes a band with its own brand of indie […]
Purveyors of Escapism
Lawrence Lazarou, Jim Colvill and Jamie Johns in pursuit of modern music and antiquated ideals. The “play kingdom” of Social Registry Text by Matthew Nestel Photographs by Lane Coder On a summer afternoon, Greenpoint is the Brooklyn-enclave of Polish natives gobbling kielbasa and pierogies between cigarette drags. Closer down toward the water is an old […]
The Art of Ariel Pink
Text by Fred Miketa Photograph by Brigitte Sire Woody Allen once said, “Don’t knock masturbation. It’s sex with someone I love.” While differing vastly from the purposely constructed wit of Allen, Ariel Pink creates his patent blend of lo-fi art in his own masturbatory context, far from the discretion of external critical force. Often noted […]
Nine Perfect Minutes: Neil Young
Text by Jaan Uhelszki Photograph by Danny Clinch Bob Dylan may have famously said, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” but his longtime friend Neil Young likes a few more guarantees before he takes action. The august musician has long plotted his life around the phases of the moon. […]
Sound Check
Joan of Arc Eventually, All at Once (Record Label) Joan of Arc’s insistence on turning lyrical concepts inside out via Tim Kinsella’s high-concept lyrical mind-fucks and their tendency to masturbate structure-less riffs into oblivion always begs confrontation. But perhaps it’s unfair to accuse the band of provocation; they make art-rock (at this point, more the […]
The Furious Afrirampo
Text by Douglas Hargrave The Japanese sisters of Afrirampo are a force to be reckoned with. Onstage, the duo emit a wild, raw energy that could generate enough electricity to power a small cabin. They sweat, sing and scream at each other, swallow microphones and get your heart pounding. Their stripped down blast of rock […]
Six Organs of Admittance
Text by Mila Zuo Photograph by Alissa Anderson While Ben Chasny may consider himself more of a music fan than a musician, his impact on underground music is undeniable. In this year alone, the busy songwriter tours with psych-prog dragons Comets on Fire, experimental masters Current 93, and Chasny’s most intimate project Six Organs of […]
Playing Under a Blanket
Text by Lee Wang Photograph by Kava Gorna Nestled in Anacortes, a small town on a small island in Washington state’s Puget Sound, Phil Elverum has carved out a niche as one of music’s quirkiest indie darlings, and he’s quick to credit his hometown for the quality of his music. “To me they’re sort of […]
Bill Callahan
Text by Jaan Uhelszki Photograph by Joanna Newsom Bill Callahan is perhaps one of the most talented – and at the same time haunted – songwriters working today, evoking both the ethos and poetry of a bygone era. Yet, few people know him by his name because he records under the sobriquet of Smog, a […]
Sound Check
Metallic Falcons Desert Doughnuts (Voodoo-EROS) Sierra Rose Casady from CocoRosie teams up with friend Matteah Baim to comprise entrancing folk-metal arias at lullaby speed, replete with desert conception imagery of mythic proportion. Like the name of the collaborative team, Desert Doughnuts soars with atmospheric echo, evoking both Jana Hunter (who makes a guest appearance) and […]
Band of Horses
Text by Mila Zuo Photograph by Robin Laananen “It’s really the only thing I ever wanted,” Ben Bridwell, singer of Band of Horses, says about playing music. While their debut album Everything All the Time is a splendidly lithe and catchy work, Band of Horses’ live show imparts a kind of mesmerizing dialectical energy: Bridwell’s […]
The Cathartic Cries of Wayne Coyne
Text by Patrick Knowles A few years back, sometime after the release of The Soft Bulletin and before Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, I found myself screaming my lungs out with hundreds of Flaming Lips fans in one long-pronounced maddening howl. As our yells escalated to deafening levels, the music became nearly inaudible. Lead singer […]
To Be Esperly
Text by Kendra Macleod Photograph by Alissa Anderson Being accustomed to the grimy dinge of indie-band venues, I walked into the Town Hall Theatre in New York, and being ushered through the theater to cushy seats was a somehow comforting experience. The larger audience for the headliner of this show, Stereolab, had not quite made it […]
Nine Perfect Minutes: Karen O
Text by Jaan Uhelszki On Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ second album Show Your Bones, the New York trio totally upend their world, changing the band dynamic, their music and even trading Karen O’s rather seditious haircut for a sleeker bob. But as they say, everything is everything, and that transformation is reflected in the music, replacing […]
Conducting Lightning
Text by Matthew Nestel For his annual show at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Brian Chippendale, madman drummer of the two-piece Lightning Bolt, stagedhimself on a second-story rooftop, tossing candy to onlookers below. Soon he pulled out a heavy inventory of road-kill and gave it the heave-ho. When it hit, even the crystallized […]
