Authors

Carena Liptak

MUSING · Live Review

Parlour Tricks @ Mercury Lounge

Lily Claire, frontwoman and primary songwriter for the New York-based Parlour Tricks, gets wild-eyed when she performs. Standing squarely in the middle of the stage at the Mercury Lounge last Saturday, wearing a white tunic with a black collar (her backup singers wore matching outfits, but with the...

Track Premiere

Del Sur "in My Room"

Del Sur--a beach pop band from decidedly un-beachy Philadelphia--specializes in whimsy done mellow. The group is both youthful and young: young because their debut EP H.A.G.S. comes out at the end of January 2015, and youthful because of their penchant for simple melodies that repeat each other and...

Interviews

Lily and Madeleine

Over the course of the past two years, Lily and Madeleine Jurkiewicz, teenage sisters from Indianapolis, have had a performance go viral on Reddit, written their first original songs, gotten signed to Asthmatic Kitty, released two full-length albums and an EP, and played several tours. The duo's most...

Interviews

Buke and Gase

When Arone Dyer and Aron Sanchez met in 2000, Sanchez had already been building instruments for years. For him, constructing the instrument came part and parcel with creating sound. When he speaks about creating his gase--a guitar-bass hybrid, and the namesake of one-half the duo Buke and...

Mixes · LISTEN UP!

Playlist: A Spooky Scary Halloween Playlist

So you're throwing your annual Halloween party but you shot your wad on all the holiday classics ( the Monster Mash, the Time Warp, the Purple People Eater, etc, etc) on last year's mix. So you're going as Will Smith circa "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" and you're looking for something seasonal to...

MUSING · Album Review

Foxygen "…and Star Power"

When I was in college, I spent a lot of time dating musicians, which meant I spent a lot of time sitting in on band practice. By "dating," I guess I mean puttering around somebody's basement, falling asleep on an old, bottomed-out couch, my French homework in my lap. Or being invited over to "hang...

MUSING · Live Review

Imelda May @ Irving Plaza

Imelda May radiates light when she’s on stage--and not just because of her bright red lipstick. The Irish rockabilly singer brought an ebullient grace to her set last Monday at Irving Plaza, beginning with the immaculate-as-always platinum blonde quiff set on top of her dark ponytail, and ending...

MUSING · Track Review

Dma's "so We Know"

When DMA's signed to Australian indie label I OH YOU this February, the Newtown trio was so freshly minted that they hadn't even played a show yet. That isn't to say they were totally green--all three members (Tommy O', Matt Mason, and Johnny Took) had gigged extensively with previous bands--and...

MUSING · Album Review

Justin Townes Earle "Single Mothers"

The delightfully bespectacled Justin Townes Earle dependably releases a record every year or so, and has done so since 2007. He can be counted on for more than just punctuality, too. Not one of Earle's records is a dud: at worst, he's palatable and bland, and at his best, he expertly shines a light...

MUSING · Album Review

Odesza "in Return"

Since its inception in late 2012, the Seattle-based electronic duo ODESZA (Harrison Mills/Catacomb Kid and Clayton Knight/BeachesBeaches) has been both prolific and consistent. In particular, the pair made an unlikely fan out of this usually-EDM-ambivalent listener last November with the soulful...

MUSING · Album Review

Helado Negro "Double Youth"

After a slew of collaborations (Bear In Heaven, Devendra Banhart, Julianna Barwick, and others), Roberto Carlos Lange retreated inward to make Double Youth, his fourth full-length release as Helado Negro. Recorded largely in Lange's home studio in Brooklyn, the album is constructed with simple...

MUSING · Album Review

Weyes Blood "the Innocents"

Just now, I googled “1960s witchy psychedelic folk,” grasping, I guess, for a manageable term that encapsulates both Nico’s glamourous theatrics and Brigitte Fontaine’s quirky darkness. I’m sitting at a table in the pool-house out back of a big and beautiful summer home on the coast of Maine, where...

MUSING · Album Review

Israel Nash "Rain Plans"

The long-locked, regally bearded songwriter Israel Nash Gripka marries spacey psychedelic guitar work to wind-chilled vocals that pay a nod to Neil Young; Gripka's songs amble, they meditate, they conduct experiments in theme and variation. His third and latest studio album, Rain Plans (out August...

Reviews · MUSING

TRACK OF THE Week: Adia Victoria "Stuck in the South"

"Stuck In The South," the debut single from the little-advertised shadow figure Adia Victoria (along with her band: Mason Hickman, Tiffany Minton and Ruby Rogers), is a curious matrix, at once single-mindedly powerful and also complex, made up of conflicting impulses. Adia Victoria's is not a voice...

Interviews · Track Premiere

Tape Waves

If you ask newlyweds Kim and Jarod Weldin what kind of music to expect from their duo Tape Waves, their response might be kind of vague. “Any adjective in front of pop,” Kim responded nonchalantly, when I asked, during our phone conversation last week, I asked her to describe the group’s sound....

Reviews · MUSING

TRACK Review Double Feature: New Singles From Ty Segall's Label

Ty Segall's GOD? Records imprint, on Drag City, is only a little over a year old, but Segall has chased a visceral, DIY aesthetic since the imprint's very first release. To that end, Segall is bringing out two new 7"s from noise rockers Running and the tech-heavy, growling metal outfit Zath....

MUSING · Track Review

Steve Gunn "Milly's Garden"

Steve Gunn. Photo by Constance Mensh Despite his fifteen-year career and numerous collaborations, including work with Kurt Vile's group The Violators, Steve Gunn always seems reluctant to advertise himself. I'm not just talking about advertising in a buy-my-records sense, although there is that --...

MUSING · Track Review

Black Honey "Sleep Forever" (Demo)

Ask not for whom the gramophone croons. By now, Black Honey's obscured identity can't be unintentional. Their demo "Sleep Forever" is hooky-as-hell, sinister pop noir, with a timelessness that's strengthened by their mysterious identity. Lipstick-stained cigarettes and flickering neon come to mind,...

Interviews

Jack + Eliza

Eliza Callahan and Jack Staffen grew up at the same time--and in the same zip code!--but as the harmony-happy folk pop outfit Jack + Eliza, the pair spans decades. "Hold The Line," the first single off their forthcoming EP No Wonders (via Yebo Music), takes the seventies-era classic rock that Eliza...

MUSING · Album Review

Cold Beat "Over Me"

As far as I'm concerned, Hannah Lew--though she plays the bass--is first and foremost a vocal magician. Admittedly that's because of her work with Grass Widow, the wondrously spooky San Francisco female trio that operates as a kind of tapestry, weaving all three of its members voices together. The...

MUSING · EP Review

The Peach Kings "Mojo Thunder"

No one could accuse LA outfit The Peach Kings of making records that are too long or boring. Since 2011, the group--cornerstone members Paige Wood and Steven Dies, along with a revolving assortment of friends and drummers--have put out three releases, the longest of which is six tracks. The most...

Reviews · Track of the Week · MUSING

Dameht "the Greek"

Only New York City could have produced DAMEHT. This is a trio of musical omnivores, and they've soaked up influences in new-wave, electronic, top-40 radio, house and classic rock. Even elbows-deep in a dirty punk guitar riff, their songs ooze Michael Jackson-esque, big-stage pop glamour. In a nod...

Interviews

Dan Mcgee of Spider Bags (+ Track Review "Japanese Vacation"!)

Dan McGee, of Chapel Hill garage rock band Spider Bags, does not have time to grow orchids or build model ships. He works triple duty these days, with a family, a job, and a brand new record, Frozen Letter, due to come out on August 5th via Merge Records. When I called McGee last week, though, he...

MUSING · Album Review

WIFE "What's Between"

Shortly after Irish black metal outfit Altar of Plagues announced their breakup last summer, the group's frontman James Kelly unveiled the first glimmers of a forthcoming album to come from his electronic side project WIFE. I--along with pretty much all the metal fans I know--wasn't ready to be...

MUSING · EP Review

Alice Boman "Ep Ii" (+ "Skisser")

I'm not sure how common this practice is, but when I was in elementary school, teachers had this trick where they would whisper at a rowdy classroom to get the kids to quiet down instead of trying to yell over the noise. It worked: kids got curious after ten or fifteen seconds, and wanted to hear...

MUSING · Album Review

Fresh and Onlys "House of Spirits"

House Of Spirits, out June 10th on Mexican Summer, is the newest release from San Francisco psych-rock janglers The Fresh and Onlys, is a study in subtle kookiness. Fronting vocalist Tim Cohen, who wrote many of the songs on this album alone on a ranch in the Arizona desert, has a voice that seems...

MUSING · Album Review

Guy Blakeslee "Ophelia Slowly"

Whether performing with a trio or a quartet or semi-solo, whether in full psychedelic mode or reinterpreting the blues, Guy Blakeslee has a fantastic knack for making music that sounds haunted and doomed. June 10th marks the release of Ophelia Slowly, which, though not Blakeslee’s first solo...

MUSING · Album Review

Sharon Van Etten "Are We There"

"I can't wait 'til we're afraid of nothing," sings Sharon Van Etten, in her silvery and harmony-braided way, on the opening track of her new album Are We There. "I can't wait 'til we hide from nothing." The song-- "Afraid Of Nothing"-- has a sweeping clean-slate quality to it: it's a fresh start, a...

OUT AND ABOUT · Live Review

Cass Mccombs @ Music Hall of Williamsburg

New York City and nomadic guitar-man and songwriter Cass McCombs may seem mutually exclusive, but in fact, he used to live here, sometime between stints in Concord, California (his hometown), Baltimore and San Francisco. Throughout a seven-album-long career, McCombs has never settled. To listen to...

MUSING · Album Review

Alex Banks "Illuminated"

By the end of 2011, Brighton-based Alex Banks had already distinguished himself as a DJ and producer with distinctively complex and spacey live sets as well as a smattering of gorgeous remixes (Bonobo, Husky Rescue). His debut full-length, out June 2nd, has been two years in the making, and it...

MUSING · Upcoming Events · OUT AND ABOUT · Video Review

Cass Mccombs "Unearthed"

The contents of Cass McCombs' long and winding double album Big Wheel and Others fall into one of two categories. About half are capital-s Songs, with verses and choruses, beginnings, middles, and ends. The rest of the collection expands, with mesmerizing slowness, to fill less rigidly constructed...

OUT AND ABOUT · Live Review

Needtobreathe @ the Slipper Room

Despite the open bar and the allure of attending a "private party," I could not convince a single one of my friends to come to this damn show with me. The conversation would go something like this: I'd say hey, there's this concert, and it's both super secret and free, and the band is a handsome...

Video of the Week

The Vickers "Senseless Life"

A couple months back, Italian group The Vickers put out their Ghosts album, a slow burner of a collection with a generous helping of sixties haze. Everything this quartet creates seems to come wrapped in layers of gauze: the beats are pillowy, the bass line, though too mellow to be show-offish,...

Reviews · Track of the Week · MUSING

Landlady "Dying Day"

Before forming Landlady in 2010, Brooklyn-based musician Adam Schatz already knew he wanted two drummers and two people playing keys. That’s the basis for the group’s complicated choral pop arrangements and powerful sound. But it takes more than bodies to orchestrate a song, and Landlady’s energy...

OUT AND ABOUT · Live Review

Slasher Flicks at Bowery Ballroom

Embracing their name’s camp vibe, Slasher Flicks had the Bowery Ballroom decked out last Monday night in floaty columns of oversized white plastic skulls that hung ghoulishly in the pre-show spotlights. Skulls notwithstanding, there’s nothing all that spooky about this trio, unless you happen to be...

MUSING · Album Review

Haley Bonar "Last War"

Last War is immediately, unmistakably different than any record Haley Bonar's made before. Her catalogue is impressive: with ten releases in just ten years, and four full-lengths excluding the newest one, Bonar, pronounced bawn-er, has put a solid stake into her style of dark, quiet, vocal-heavy...

MUSING · Track Review

Amen Dunes "Lonely Richard"

In 2006, during the Northeast's creepiest and most beautiful time of year--fall--Damon McMahon started recording his tightly knotted, introspective guitar melodies in the Catskills, never intending them for public consumption. Thus Amen Dunes was born, and thus--essentially--it remains: the music...

MUSING · Track Review

Needtobreathe "Where the Money Is"

NEEDTOBREATHE’s forthcoming project Rivers In The Wasteland is Southern rock at its most handclappingly jubilant, and brand new track “Where The Money Is” stands out as one of the album’s catchiest. “Ain’t no gift like the present tense,” the song opens, with bubbling cheerfulness and an energy...

Interviews

Juana Molina

Juana Molina’s music has an associative, evocative magic usually reserved for smells: it can time-travel you to different seasons, countries, and decades. She chooses rhythms over images, harmonies over words, and the spooky beauty of her albums etches out a world that feels familiar but that is...

MUSING · Album Review

Crash "Hardly Criminal"

Awww yeah. That’s my initial and abiding reaction to “Motion Animal,” the first single off Chris Richard aka crash's solo debut, Hardly Criminal. Crash, backup singer for the Magnetic Zeros and frontman for Deadly Syndrome, finally gets to spotlight his tenor at its sultry finest on this...

Upcoming Events · NEWS

Preview: Brooklyn FOLK FEST

You're probably wondering why I'm so happy today. I'll tell you. It's because Brooklyn Folk Fest is this weekend at The Bell House and I CANNOT WAIT. I am so excited and I just can't hide it. Six years ago, Eli Smith of the Down Home Radio Show partnered with The Jalopy Theatre, a Brooklyn-based...

MUSING · Track Review

Amen Dunes "I Can't Dig It"

The two tracks off Amen Dunes' forthcoming album Love that have surfaced ("Lilac in Hand" and "Lonely Richard") are both on the murky side of things, but neither can touch the newest single, "I Can't Dig It" for sheer liberated noise. Lo-fi and howly, the track is an ingloriously atonal celebration...

Interviews

Willie Watson

Willie Watson recorded his debut solo effort, the straightforwardly-titled Folk Singer Vol. 1, over the course of two days at Woodland Sound Studios, the studio owned by Gillian Welch in Nashville, TN. In those sessions, he played whichever songs came to mind: the collection features some...

MUSING · Album Review

"Enter the Slasher House"

Avey Tare has put out some nine-odd albums with pioneering psych-electronic quartet Animal Collective, but this decade, he's focused more on solo work than he has on the band that originally made his bones. His latest creation, Slasher Flicks, feels like a deliberate push towards something new, in...

MUSING · Track Review

Parquet Courts "Sunbathing Animal"

Parquet Courts, besides being the only (I think) garage-punk quartet to ever show Ridgewood, Queens the limelight it deserves in “Stoned and Starving,” are both from and intensely representative of Brooklyn's DIY culture. They keep it simple and keep it snotty, braiding basement-classic two-chord...

MUSING · Album Review

Nathaniel Rateliff "Falling Faster Than You Can Run"

At eighteen, Nathaniel Rateliff moved from his hometown of Bay, Missouri, population 60, to Denver. He focused first on finding work, but after a mysterious bout of health issues forced him to take a break from his job at a trucking company, he slid into the indie folk scene sideways, quickly...

MUSING · EP Review

Panama "Always"

Jarrah McCleary, the classically trained pianist and experimental synth pop artist behind Sydney-based Panama, may be Australian on paper, but the title track opener to Panama’s sophomore EP Always tells a different story: he’s clearly got L.A. in his soul. Singalong-worthy and summery, “Always”...

OUT AND ABOUT · Live Review

Falls @ Bowery Ballroom

Performances by Australian group Falls revolve around the vocal magic trick that happens when Simon Rudston-Brown and Melinda Kirwin harmonize. Lightly highlighted with a string section, Rudston-Brown’s guitar and the occasional melodica solo from Kirwin, Falls create a lush and mysteriously...

Reviews · MUSING

TRACK OF THE Week: The Black Angels "Diamond Eyes"

As if you needed another reason to be excited about Record Store Day (which is NEARLY UPON US, coming up April 19th!), Austin psych trip The Black Angels have announced that their 10" clear vinyl Clear Lake Forest EP will drop the same day. It'll be the third in a rapid-fire round of releases since...

MUSING · Track Review

Haley Bonar "No Sensitive Man"

Eight years ago, Alan Sparhawk of Low spotted twenty-year-old Haley Bonar performing at an open mic and invited her and her drummer on tour with his band. Since then, Bonar’s been busy: she’s put out five solo studio albums and started a punk side project called Gramma’s Boyfriend, which we hear...

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