Celebrating Community
Cruel to be Khanate. The biggest news of last month, perhaps tied with Tina Turner and the debt ceiling, was the first new album by “drone doom supergroup” (so says Wikipedia) Khanate in 14 years. To Be Cruel popped up without prophecy on streaming sites on May 19, with a CD and the usual assortment of buy-me-please limited-edition vinyl designs […]
There were some among the first generation of punk who decried the Sex Pistols for being so bourgeoisie as to put out an LP. Singles were punk: short, cheap and disposable. Albums were the domain of bloated acts like Van der Graaf, Stills & Palmer or whatever. A Pistols long-player would have happened sooner or later, of course. It’s the […]
The new books of Liturgy. Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix has long fronted a powerful band. The first three Liturgy releases were impressive, intelligent, calculated and well-executed albums fairly entrenched in black metal. The group (of which, at this point, Hunt-Hendrix is the only constant) has since released a second three discs, and it’s with these—2019’s H.A.Q.Q., 2020’s Origin of the Alimonies […]
Ren’s virtual genius. The death of the music industry is both often reported and greatly exaggerated, but what mystifies me is how seemingly popular artists are making money. It’s not through streaming, that’s well established, but with little for sale it’s hard to see just how the income comes in. Take the at least occasionally brilliant singer Raury. His song […]
Islands, mountains and valley girls. LA’s Death Valley Girls have released a couple of singles since 2020’s Under the Spell of Joy, and those songs have found a happy home on Islands in the Sky, the band’s fifth full-length. “When I’m Free” was the flip of Le Butcherettes cover of their “The Universe,” and it was a perfect pairing of […]
2-Tone in 2023. In December, the voice of the British ska revival was silenced. The wave began with the Specials in 1979, brilliantly conceived not as a band so much as a movement by Jerry Dammers, whose ouster not long after led to the splintering and eventual demise of the greatest of the 2-Tone bands. Dammers was the mastermind and […]
Todd Field’s Tár begins, essentially, with the end credits: dozens of names in white scrolling over a black background. It could be taken as an indication that it’s time to go home. Once the credits are done, things don’t pick up. The first third of the movie is belligerent in its boringness. It sets up the titular, successful orchestra conductor […]
With Dry Cleaning’s second album released in October—building on the unexpected success of their infectious 2021 debut New Long Leg—and the subsequent (and harder to fathom) popularity of Wet Leg’s chatty single “Chaise Lounge,” it seems what I want to call the talkcore movement’s got, you know, legs. Dublin’s Fontaines D.C. and Yard Act out of Leeds are more closely […]
Black paint (by numbers). The highlight of Liturgy’s set at First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn Heights last July (the first time the band ever played in a church, as frontperson Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix announced from the stage) was a monumental, pounding and then-unreleased 20-minute song which, it turns out, will be the title track of their next album, due in the […]
Almighty Aaron. Back in the early naughts, the mighty Isis was a vital force in defining what has since become known as post-metal with their long, slowly developing, often largely instrumental compositions. It’s been a dozen years since they parted ways, and guitarist Aaron Turner has followed the path the band forged in differing directions, most notably with the band […]