Music

I finally ditched Spotify at the end of 2024. I never loved it, and I felt extra icky about giving them my money ever since they had no trouble finding $250 million for the sham supplement salesman and douchebag magnet Joe Rogan, despite their inability to promote or pay the vast majority of the musicians who are the heart and soul of their service. The straw that broke the camel’s back for me was learning… See more →

I was hopeful, if not naive enough to be confident, that enough people were sufficiently fed up with That Fucking Guy to keep him from returning to the White House. But he will, of course, be returning, and while this time his victory isn’t the shock to the system it was in 2016, his popular vote win, a hair shy of a mandate, still stings plenty. The Democratic Party’s subsequent soul-searching might be morbidly comical… See more →

I joked with some other folks in line about the event staff carding people at the door: Would anyone attending a Slowdive show in 2024 be under 40? I had momentarily forgotten that the kids on TikTok have in recent years made shoegaze far bigger than it’s ever been, and not only had the kids come out to pack this show, but they’d arrived early. I got there shortly after the start of Quannic’s opening… See more →

The name of this tour, The Future Past, led me to believe it was one of those tours where Maiden would be sticking to the classic albums, which is all I really want to hear. If I had done any research at all, I would have learned that “Days of Future Past” is the name of a song on their 2021 album Senjutsu, and indeed, that album accounted for a full third of the setlist.… See more →

My fourth Greet Death show, and my first since singer/guitarist Harper transitioned, and it was nice to see her come out of her shell, playing more expressively in a way that maybe she felt she couldn’t before.

Soul Glo isn’t really my thing, but I’m not gonna tell you they didn’t burn the place down. Mannequin Pussy, not so much.

Frontwoman Marisa Dabice isn’t an especially clever lyricist, and it’s easy enough to get past when listening to the band’s records, whose sonics are more about feeling than thinking. But while the records are mercifully absent overt speechifying, this show sadly was not, and Mannequin Pussy’s emotion-to-intellect ratio is a poor fit… See more →

I only found out about the Philadelphia Organ Festival the day before it started, and I’m so glad I did. I wish I could have attended more events, but if I could only make it to one, this one, “The Organ’s Modern Touch: Minimalism and Contemporary Works” was at the top of my list.

This festival being devoted to the organ, video screens were set up at either side of the sanctuary, one showing the… See more →

The magnitude of Don Henley’s and Glenn Frey’s egos is inversely proportionate to how thoroughly boring they are, as musicians and as people, and this documentary’s biggest strength is its apparently unintentional spotlight on that phenomenon. As they pay breathless homage to every minute detail of the Eagles’ bland existence, there is genuine suspense to be had in wondering if any self-awareness will ever creep into the proceedings. (Spoiler: It will not.) When Joe Walsh… See more →

I’ll begin by briefly weighing in on five of the most prominent pieces of the 2023 zeitgeist, at least from where I was sitting. Some cynical vibes ahead, so feel free to skip past this part if you’re not in the mood for negative energy:

• Taylor Swift: Gen Z’s version of Beatlemania is a bit of a head-scratcher for me, since I find Taylor Swift’s music to be entirely unremarkable, but that didn’t stop her… See more →

Late last year, my friend Jon (without an h) told me his high school buddy John (with an h) was putting together a band to play Misfits and Danzig tunes for Porchella, the annual Halloween band crawl in Irvington, the town in New York’s Hudson Valley where John lives. John on drums and Jon on guitar. Did I want in? As anyone who has ever spent more than five seconds with me knows, fronting a… See more →

Ghost’s set was largely unchanged from the one I saw last year—and I enjoyed it just as much a second time—so I won’t describe it again. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t make a note of how impressive Amon Amarth’s stage production was, especially for an opening band. The stage was bookended by three-story Viking statues. The drum riser sat atop a massive Viking helmet encasing video screens projecting eyes, fire, lightning, and… See more →

I knew right away that the arrival of Metallica’s …And Justice for All in my suburban home in June of 1989 was a pivotal moment. I didn’t even wait for my birthday party guests to disperse before sneaking up to my room to listen to it, even though its tone was decidedly at odds with the celebratory atmosphere. It was the darkest thing I’d ever been exposed to, forcing me to contemplate unvarnished truths about… See more →

Soraya Roberts, for Defector:

I just want to go to a concert. One concert. I just want to see First Aid Kit. I just want this one thing. […] But I am sorry, I am not willing to pay $97.58 for general admission at History, a Toronto club co-owned by Drake.

So that’s $73.04 USD for a relatively intimate experience (a 2,500 capacity venue in a major city) with a band that has nearly 3 million… See more →

My first visit to the Foundry. The place has strong “waiting in line for a theme park attraction” vibes.

This show was my first visit to the First Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, and I was immediately struck by the building’s gold brick interior, which I don’t think I’d ever seen in a church nave before:

The interior is buff-colored brick and sandstone and the pews are black walnut, exemplifying [Augustus] Sims’ architectural philosophy of honesty in building materials, eschewing plaster throughout. Stone carvings both inside and out were done by Alexander Milne Calder,… See more →

Another sold out Underground Arts show, and I’m still not taking my own advice and getting there early, so I didn’t get to see much more than the backs of a lot of heads. I was cranky about it at first, but even when you can barely see them, it’s impossible to stay cranky when White Reaper is doing their thing.

I think I can count on zero hands how many people I know who can even name an Unwound song, let alone call themselves fans, so after I got over my excitement when the reunion tour was announced last summer, I was a little surprised to learn they were playing Union Transfer (capacity: 1,200), and still more surprised when that show sold out and a second one was added. I’ve long had an objective understanding… See more →