Celebrating Community
The rhythm, the rebels. The smart assault of clipping. returned last month with a full-on assault. Dead Channel Sky is the hip-hop crew’s first album in five years (CD, LP, download on Sub Pop Records) and only their fifth full-length since their 2014 debut. It was worth the wait. After a quick intro that fills the table with topics in […]
\ Sultry haze of balmy nights. The Egypt-born, Quebec-based singer/composer/producer Nadah El Shazly has built a following in recent years with a blend of club music experimentation and Arabic tradition. She’s been a big part of the rich and exciting music coming out of the Beirut / Cairo / Istanbul triangle (Karkhana, Praed Orchestra!) as well as a variety of […]
Punk’s not dread. Back in the ’90s, Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon had “Girls invented punk rock, not England” emblazoned on a t-shirt. Photos of her sporting the slogan circulate every so often—I’ve been seeing them again lately on social media. I’m not sure what it means, I’m not sure if I agree, but I’m not about to argue the point. […]
Apparitions of the Eternal Earth. On their monolithic 2022 debut, Eyes Like Predatory Wealth, the Houston, TX trio Apparitions set forth a slow burn with three tracks running, in sequence, 10, 20 and 30 minutes. The fire has been spreading ever since. In 2023, they issued the digital-only Semel, with three poundingly untitled tracks, and this month comes Volcanic Reality (CD […]
David Lynch sat in a strange seat of power during the 1990s. He had put a tale of psychic terror about a victimized cheerleader addicted to cocaine on network television. He then retconned the notion of Elvis Presley movies to include shocking levels of physical and sexual violence and took it to Cannes. And he syndicated a comic strip that […]
Ghosts in the guitar. The wonderfully inventive Jules Reidy has been going through a period of transition of late. Affairs of the heart, a change in gender identity and a renewed interest in mysticism have all, it seems, led to Ghost/Spirit (CD, LP, download out Feb. 21 from Thrill Jockey). While they’re often heard in more experimental and freeform settings, […]
Smart, simple pleasures. On Only the Void Stands Between Us (LP and download released last month by Silver Current Records), Julie Beth Napolin sings of distance and intimacy. She sings quizzically of a fire coming to burn, it seems, those who don’t deserve to survive, and she sings very directly about praying for the living and the dead. In other […]
Mothers of reinvention. “It’s never too late to be what you might have been,” according to writer George Eliot, who spoke from experience. Born in the UK in 1819, Mary Ann Evans found her audience using the masculine pen name in order to avoid the scrutiny of the patriarchal literati. Reinvention, of style if not self, is in the air […]
Who says a jazz band can’t play rock music? George Clinton didn’t quite ask that question on the 1978 Funkadelic track “Who Says a Funk Band Can’t Play Rock?” but it’s a logical implication of the various permutations of the lyric, which questioned genre divisions at a time when radio and television were still segregated, even if schools weren’t. These […]
A belated Baldwin birthday bash. After being rained out on August 2—the proper centennial of the outspoken author and activist James Baldwin—the release concert for Meshell Ndegeocello’s No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin (CD, LP, download from Blue Note Records) in the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! concert series was rescheduled for August 14. As it happens, that night was […]