Punk’s latest cult-classic band was conceived like an illegitimate child from a one-night-stand back in ’08—most likely in the backseat of a car with a cheap bottle of booze. What’s more punk than that? After Andrew Jackson Jihad asked friend, now vocalist and guitarist, Barry Johnson to open his show, Johnson floundered for a name. So, […]
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The Antlers, best known for their 2009 record Hospice—a concept album set in a cancer ward—are no strangers to profound emotional probing. Lead singer and guitarist Peter Silberman’s lyrics almost always come back to themes of grief, confusion, regret, and what we will all, eventually and ubiquitously, experience: death. This time around, however, on their […]
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Parquet Courts look too well kept to be garage-punk—too healthy, with too many flannel-cardigan combinations. Nonetheless, the impending poster boys of American “punk” will be heard, undoubtedly, blaring through brand new Crosley’s (courtesy of Urban Outfitters) in trendy studios on hot summer nights. A Brooklyn basement band that went from playing DIY shows in garages and sweaty […]
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Sharon Van Etten’s Are We There is the soundtrack to overcast skies and rain pattering on windowpanes. The soundtrack to taking hot baths while smoking cigarettes, to driving too fast on slippery streets and ballroom dancing drunk in a parking lot. Her melancholia is contagious and comforting, the absolute definition of catharsis. “I can’t wait […]
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If Bright Eyes had never existed (or, at least, never released I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning), would Conor Oberst have a following? It’s questionable. Oberst is 34 years old, and has finally stopped pseudo-nihilistically singing about the depressing difficulties he’s faced throughout all the masks he’s worn, all the way from angst-ridden teenager to a feeble attempt as […]
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There’s no doubt about it: This is badass…
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