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Nora Grace-Flood
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May 7, 2024 3:45 pm
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No shoes, nothing to lose: Brandon Washburn, Paul Mangan, and Dylan Michael of Attack Dog.
Attack Dog PhilaMOCA 531 N. 12th St. Philadelphia May 2, 2024
Attack Dog ambushed an avant-garde audience inside PhilaMOCA — not with snarling words or slobbery chops, but with catchy riffs and puppy dog charm.
The Philly-based boy band closed a three-set show Tuesday night with springer-spaniel-level energy alongside rock crew Phil Spector’s Fun and touring Tokyo group LOOLOWNINGEN& The Far East Idiots.
I had traveled to the venue to see the latter group, a self-described “avant-punk trio/ alternative blues trio with ink wash painting-like sounds & unicursal rhythms for all wanderers.” But I stayed for the dog show.
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Nora Grace-Flood
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May 6, 2024 3:49 pm
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Live Band Karaoke Fergie’s Pub 1214 Sansom St. Philadelphia May 4, 2024
Backed by a guitarist, bassist, drummer and a harmonizing hostess, the pony-tailed sequined woman who had introduced herself as “Stacey from the dog park” transformed into a Chris Stapleton-singing Lucinda Williams before my eyes.
I’ve looked for love in all the same old places Found the bottom of a bottle’s always dry … But when you poured out your heart, I didn’t waste it ‘Cause there’s nothing like your love to get me high …
When she hit the chorus, the whole bar began to belt: “You’re as smooth as Tennessee whiskey/ You’re as sweet as strawberry wine/ You’re as warm as a glass of brandy/ And honey, I stay stoned on your love all the time.”
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Karen Ponzio
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May 6, 2024 11:02 am
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The Decemberists brought May to a magnificent start on Saturday night when they returned to College Street Music Hall for the fourth show of their 2024 A Peaceable Kingdom North American tour. Fans filled the room from floor to balcony, up the stairs and to the edges of the stage barrier, to bask in the multicolored hues of the lights and lofty sounds of some of their favorites, mixed in with new material from the band’s aptly titled upcoming album As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again.
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Ryan Anderson
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May 5, 2024 3:41 pm
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Akasha Landry at Mi Tea R&B
Mi Tea + R&B Mi Tea Lounge April 24, 2024
Hip-hop’s dominance on Tulsa’s airwaves and stages has inadvertently created a void for R&B lovers. And where there’s a void, there’s opportunity. This is exactly what artists GOLDIELXCS and Emani saw when they created Mi Tea + R&B, a bimonthly women-focused open mic night held at the Mi Tea lounge in downtown Tulsa, owned and operated by vocalist Tea Rush.
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A.J. Urquidi
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May 2, 2024 12:01 pm
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HELMET: LOOKLEFTTOUR with CRO-MAGS Teragram Ballroom Los Angeles April 28, 2024
On Sunday in Central Los Angeles, I parked on one of Westlake’s copious skid rows, crunching the gutter-salad of glass crumbles from the last car that gave up circling the block and settled for this fateful spot. A wife-beater-clad gentleman was exchanging a baggie for cash before the unblinking eye of the Wells Fargo ATM. Descending toward 7th, not far from abandoned real estate that could’ve housed the houseless, I passed three different flavors of fecal stench and a dusty man shrieking and smacking his skull like an 11th-century friar.
Hip hop heads will grant Takuya Kuroda street cred from his time in NYC playing with one half of legendary duo Gang Starr and one of the greatest producers of all time, DJ Premiere, in Premiere’s BADDER band. Jazz aficionados will appreciate that in 2014 he was signed to Blue Note Records for his album Rising Son, the same record label to which John Coltrane and Miles Davis contributed. And so, prior to showtime at The New Parish on Thursday night, the anticipation amongst the crowd was tangible.
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Nora Grace-Flood
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May 1, 2024 10:30 am
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Yoga instructor Deb Cohen leads a lesson back by dark ambient band Monks Pond.
Savage Sisters Metal Meditation with Monks Pond PhilaMOCA 531 N. 12th St. Philadelphia April 28, 2024
*Extra credit: Test your focus (or flexibility) by reading this review while listening to the heavy metal meditation recorded above.*
People packed like sardines on 2‑foot-wide yoga mats were practicing their box breathing when a force of harmonium, gong and electric guitar smacked me square in the face.
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Emily VanKoughnett
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May 1, 2024 10:28 am
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MANNEQUINPUSSY: I GOTHEAVENTOUR with SOULGLO The Fonda Theater Los Angeles April 26, 2024
My millennial algorithm keeps pushing TikToks about the power of listening to nostalgic music, claiming, essentially, that dancing to System of a Down beats finding a new therapist. An internet psychologist in my feed says it’s harder to form the same relationship to music as an adult than it is as a teen — something to do with dopamine receptors and reaching an age past which art can’t biohack the chemically ingrained bitterness in our brains. But fuck all that, because the band Mannequin Pussy has pushed me to levels of fandom apparently unbefitting people in their thirties.
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Jamil Ragland
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May 1, 2024 9:35 am
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Melissa White and Sophie Shao perform together
Strings of Inspiration! Artists Collective Hartford April 30, 2024
Not to toot my own horn, but I’m not just a band geek — I was band president in high school. I transcribed videogame music for fun. I was about that life.
Going to the Artists Collective on Tuesday night to watch Strings of Inspiration, a performance featuring Grammy-winning violinist Melissa White, let me relive those memories of high school band practice and the joy I used to feel when I played the clarinet (and by “played,” I mean “honked aggressively”).
Woodworker Jesse Rinyu and Poet LindoYes attempt to fix their shared sculpture's nutty brain.
LindoYes performs his poem, "Irregular Heartbeat."
The Poetry Gumball Machine Project Museum for Art in Wood 141 N. 3rd St. Philadelphia April 27, 2024
“Tough love is being punched until you don’t cry — and crying is the only thing that stops the punching from hurting as much,” Philly Poet and local organizer LindoYes recited softly. His words were resonant enough to reach his audience without relying on a mic as he stood next to a wooden robot designed to dispense his poems — and social service supports — to the city at large.
Ceschi perfomring on WNHH FM's "Acoustic Thursday @ Studio 51."
Like the rest of us, Ceschi, a.k.a. Julio Ramos, had long since emerged from the darkest days of the Covid-19 pandemic. But he hadn’t forgotten.
Nor had he lost hope.
Fuck your neighbor to survive Eat your neighbor to survive We were hiding our faces long before pandemics arrived …
Ceschi (he performs under a familial nickname) was live on WNHHFM’s“Acoustic Thursday @ Studio 51” program (watch the full episode in the above video) performing“2020 BC,” a powerful song he wrote in the early lockdown pandemic days.
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Breezy Bratton
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Apr 28, 2024 11:51 am
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Castlemont High School Ensemble performs Kirk Franklin's "Revolution."
2nd Annual East Oakland Vocal Festival Phillip Reeder Auditorium at Castlemont High School 8601 MacArthur Blvd Bldg. 300 Oakland April 24, 2024
The energy was frenetic in the spacious Phillip Reeder Auditorium as students from six schools wearing black “Town Business Vocal Program” T‑shirts shrieked, did vocal warmups, and sprinted between purple seats the shade of grape jelly.
Host and MC Keenan Foster stood center stage both literally and figuratively as he introduced the event at the 2nd East Annual Vocal Festival within Castlemont High School. He aimed to bring his interests as music teacher and producer/songwriter at Town Business Inc. together in partnership with the nonprofit Elevate Oakland founded by Sheila E., Yoshie Akiba (of Oakland’s own Yoshi’s jazz club), among others, to “reignite the legacy of choral music and vocal performance for our youth in East Oakland.”
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Nora Grace-Flood
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Apr 26, 2024 11:51 am
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Stellar sound from KulfiGirls Wednesday night.
KulfiGirls The Dolphin Tavern 1539 S Broad St. Philadelphia April 24, 2024
Amid the fuzz rock, punk and noise music bouncing off the walls of the Dolphin Tavern Wednesday night, I found myself transported out of South Philly and into a Lisa Frank-like wonderland — as Carnatic rock crew KulfiGirls cut through an acidic night with an experimental mixture of sweet, sometimes gritty pop, colorful multi-instrumentalism, and neon joy.
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Alicia Chesser
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Apr 26, 2024 11:40 am
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Water Is The Sun at Noise Town
ONEAUX: A Night Of Ambience Noise Town April 17, 2024
If you’ve never spent a Wednesday night sitting on a floor in West Tulsa listening to experimental ambient soundscapes with trippy projections in a music venue the size of a New York City railroad apartment across from the Tulsa Stove Hospital (est. 1921), have you even Tulsa’d?
