In April, Ami Dang’s family held a gathering on Zoom as both an observance of the Sikh holiday Vaisakhi and a prayer session for her aunt and uncle, who had both contracted COVID-19. Dang’s mother requested that she sing...
When filmmaker Amy Goldstein and British pop star Kate Nash were in the midst of filming Nash’s life and work, the two had noticed a string of new documentaries about women in music, like Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin and...
Salt Cathedral is more than a name for the New York-based duo of Juli Ronderos and Nico Losada. “It’s an umbilical cord,” says Ronderos by phone. The actual Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá is an underground church, built in a...
There are few details that I remember vividly about my first Kraftwerk show. It was June 8, 1998 at the Hollywood Palladium, midway through a year where I saw a hell of a lot of live music, and I...
On “Spark,” which opens Sister Dynamite, Alice Bag crafts an earworm. “Hell no! I’m not dimming my/I’m not dimming my spark,” she sings. That line can stick with you throughout the day. In can infiltrate your dreams. It’s can...
Los Angeles-based DJ and music supervisor Francesca Harding had been wanting to dive deep into her favorite artists’ discographies. “This is a perfect time,” she says on a recent phone call; while clubs and bars in L.A. have closed...
On her debut solo full-length, L.A.-based singer-songwriter Suzie Chism spins intensely personal, narrative songs that expertly flit across genres from rock to folk to synthpop. Where is an album about big life changes, new beginnings and finding a sense...
Not too long ago, Anabel Englund was in what she describes as a “depressive state” – but luckily, she already had a cure in mind. “If you’re feeling down, all you have to do is get in your car,...
(Editor’s Note: Since the publication of this piece venues have shuttered and tours have been canceled due to the Coronavirus pandemic, including the Caribou tour mentioned below. They are working on rescheduling those dates, but a lot is up...
When Drama was putting together Dance Without Me, singer Lluvia Rosa Vela, better known as Via Rosa, thought of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. “We love that movie. We watch it all the time,” she says by phone from...
We were existing on the cusp of the 1990s. The ’80s as people remember it now, an era marked by new wave, John Hughes’ teen flicks and Ronald Reagan, was essentially over by 1989. Yet we were still a...
On Phantom Forest- String Remixes, Lydia Ainsworth pushes forward into 2020 with lush string arrangements performed by Toronto’s Venuti Quartet. The EP offers reinterpretations of four tracks from her 2019 album, Phantom Forest, that highlight the Canadian singer/producer’s background...
Ami Dang @ Joe’s Pub January 29, 9:30 p.m. Since the 2011 release of her debut album, Hukam, Ami Dang has carved out a singular career as a sitarist and electronic music producer. The Baltimore-based artist is classically...
It’s been a roller coaster of a decade, even on the pop culture front. With the dominance of social media, the rise of streaming platforms and increasingly smarter phones, how we discover, ingest and interact with music has changed...
Toshi Reagon’s career is extraordinary. A performer since her teens, Reagon has played alongside countless artists from Lenny Kravitz, who brought her on as an opener for his first world tour, to Nona Hendryx to Elvis Costello to her...
“Dance, it’s all I wanna do, so won’t you dance?” Kylie Minogue asks at the start of “All the Lovers,” opening her 11th studio album, Aphrodite. Taking her cue from the goddess of love, the Australian pop star began...
On Birth of Violence, released this past September, Chelsea Wolfe shines in quiet introspection. Eschewing the heavy crunch of 2017’s Hiss Spun, Wolfe drew from folk music influences and acoustic sounds, weaving threads of spirituality, perceptions of femininity, personal...
Nath Ann Carrera, with special guest Amber Martin @ Joe’s Pub December 10, 2019 Nath Ann Carrera returns to Joe’s Pub on December 10 for a night of narrative songs leading into the winter solstice. Singer-guitarist Carrera delves into...
In the dark of the club, I’ll scroll through the voluminous list of artists contained on one of my flash drives, quickly settling on Depeche Mode. I’ll scan the track list, maybe giving the choice a second or two...
“I don’t really think that history repeats itself perfectly,” says The Selecter front woman Pauline Black on a call from Monterrey, Mexico, where the band was on tour. Instead, she notes, “history rhymes,” adding, “I think that we’re definitely...
ONLY NOISE explores music fandom with poignant personal essays that examine the ways we’re shaped by our chosen soundtrack. This week, Liz Ohanesian wonders what it means when her musical memories start to blur together. My first concert was...
Anna Waronker wanted to take us back to the early years of that dog., back to a place where, she said on stage Saturday night, we would be “sweating together and smelling really bad together.” In the early 1990s,...
ONLY NOISE explores music fandom with poignant personal essays that examine the ways we’re shaped by our chosen soundtrack. This week, Liz Ohanesian struggles to focus and live in the moment – until she realizes that’s exactly what she...
ONLY NOISE explores music fandom with poignant personal essays that examine the ways we’re shaped by our chosen soundtrack. This week, Liz Ohanesian hits replay on the unlikely track that gave her strength on dance floors and in traffic...
