Celebrating Community
When 14th Street was Cooler. Back in the deep, dark ’90s, before the Meatpacking District was home to the Highline and the Whitney Museum and the Apple Store, West 14th Street housed one of the city’s great venues for music outside the norm, one that history seems to have left behind. The Cooler was a big, old, retrofitted, basement meat […]
The world’s a mess; it’s in my kiss. “How to speak mother tongue when mother is gone?” German-Turkish singer/composer Alev Lenz repeats on the opening track of her 4 in a Cycle of Thirds (digital self-release out Jan.16) against a simple backing track of saz and upright bass. It’s an urgent question plaintively delivered in a beautifully sad song reminiscent […]
Songs of love and pain and monsters. Thank God, or some benevolent power, that Daniel Johnston staked his ground long before the era of social media. These days he’d be consumed and forgotten in a matter of days—memed, mocked and left by the side of the road. But anyone who heard of Johnston back in the ’80s and ’90s likely […]
Encumbrance of things past. Of the many, many tributes to David Bowie in the years following his 2016 departure, one of the deepest was Bowie Cello Symphonic: Blackstar, an instrumental interpretation of Bowie’s final album by cellist Maya Beiser with the Ambient Orchestra. Beiser is a goth-classical goddess and got much of the attention for that album, but just as […]
Power chord lunch. The sainted and venerated Joe Strummer warned us. We’d grow up and we’d calm down, he foretold. We’d start wearing blue and brown. Sorry to say, we’ve not yet aged out of the days of evil presidentes he sang about on “Clampdown” (recorded with the Clash for London Calling, one of the highest watermarks of punk) back […]
A Wolfe in Eno clothing. In 1996, Brian Eno published his 1995 diary under the title A Year With Swollen Appendieces. (A seond edition came out in 2021 with a new preface.) It was a revealing look at the producer/composer’s psyche and methodology, in more ways than he might have intended. It showed him, unsurprisingly, as an energetic and imaginative […]
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 […]
