Authors

Madison Bloom

Madison grew up in a podunk lumber town in Western Washington, about an hour and a half North of Seattle. She moved to New York in 2008, after settling the debate between studying journalism or fashion design. She chose the latter. Some years, three countries, one degree, and several jobs later, she decided to return to her love of writing, particularly the music-centric kind. She does occasionally miss wearing herself thin for sycophantic high-fashion tycoons, but- Oh wait. No. No she does not.

Live Review

The Glenn Branca Ensemble @ St. Vitus

Glenn Branca didn’t want people to dance to his music. “I want them to sit there and be blown away,” he once said in an interview. No one was seated at Brooklyn’s St. Vitus Bar on Sunday, where the Glenn Branca Ensemble played in tribute to the late composer, who died last year after a battle with...

Honus Honus singing onstage in an orange blazer.

Live Review

Man Man @ Brooklyn Bowl

Man Man’s tech rider must read like a sideshow’s inventory. 6 sparkly purple capes 5 bouquets of paper roses 2 black boxing gloves 4 sets of keys 1 human skeleton (authenticity optional) 2 white fur coats 1 taxidermied deer head 24 jumbo feathers, red An assortment of hats 1 signing plastic owl...

Live Review

Landlady @ Nublu 151

Nublu 151 looks like the inside of Satan’s jewel box. Kaleidoscopic projections swirl on the walls and a dangling disco ball takes the place of a wind-up ballerina. But it’s the pervasive red and blue lighting that really lends a sinister tint to the venue. The colors radiate over the main floor,...

Live Review

Young Jesus, IAN SWEET @Park Church Co-Op

“There were certain things about my Christian upbringing that I liked. Others, not so much.” The irony that John Rossiter’s band is playing in a Lutheran church has not been lost on the Young Jesus frontman. Surely the crucifix presiding over the stage at Park Church Co-Op did not go unnoticed by...

Live Review

Public Memory @ Mercury Lounge

I’ve never felt more old or useful than at last night’s Public Memory show. After getting startled by the opening clang of a crash cymbal (who could ever anticipate drums at a rock concert?) and bolting away from the monitors to the back of the room, it dawned on me that I’d forgotten to bring...

Live Review

Told Slant, Lily Konigsberg @ Park Church Co-Op

As someone who’s spent little time in them, it is strange how familiar old churches smell. They smell like warm dust, wood, and maple syrup—like a childhood home you’ve never stepped foot in before. It’s a combination of aromas rarely found in the glass and concrete structures of New York City, but...

Live Review

The Beths, Godcaster @ Alphaville

If you wear a fringe-sleeved shirt onstage, you’re bound to get it tangled in your tuning knobs—but this is of little concern to Judson Kolk. The guitarist and lead singer of Philadelphia rock outfit Godcaster flits around so swiftly, his tassels don’t have time to snarl. Calling Godcaster a “rock”...

Only Noise

Like a Summer Thursday

One of my favorite descriptions of summer, particularly its languid, melancholy months, comes from Don DeLillo’s first novel, Americana: “Summer unfolds slowly,” DeLillo writes, “a carpeted silence rolling out across expanding steel, and the days begin to rhyme, distance swelling with the bridges,...

Only Noise

Glenn Branca's Final Ascension

I wound up at the Kitchen sort of by mistake. It was a Tuesday - February 23rd, 2016 to be precise. It had been a year since the worst week of my life, and sitting at my desk after a long day of designing women’s underwear, I longed for a little culture that evening, a little date with myself. So I...

Only Noise

Punk Rock Mom

“Punk Rock Mom” was a distinction of honor my mother appointed to herself, and though the title mortified me on more than one occasion, she’d well earned it. She was the one helming the two-hour, round trip commute between my hometown of Arlington, Washington and Seattle, where any and all rock...

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Waterloo

Waterloo always sounded like an exotic place to me, an English garden oasis dotted with fountains and plum trees and those little stone statues of naked angel-babies. The name suggested a swan pond, croquet matches, and crustless triangle sandwiches served at 3 p.m. for tea. Little did I know that...

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An Audience of None

In what world does this sound like a good time? You are in a dark room, surrounded by drunks you don’t know, and some you know too well. Your favorite song is playing, only it’s a compressed, simplified version void of lyrics. You are holding a cheap microphone, and the fate of the next three...

Only Noise

Adult Entertainment

In 1997, filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson was racking up a lot of “firsts.” He released his first major feature, Boogie Nights, which garnered his first Oscar nomination. Moreover, Boogie Nights was the first widely celebrated Hollywood film about the Golden Age of pornography. Set in 1970s San...

Only Noise

When You Walk

There is certain music that you share with close friends and family. Music that scores the first dance at your wedding, albums you recommend to your sister, and songs that make your dinner party mix. There is music that feels inherently a part of a communal experience, and necessitates sharing...

Only Noise

Let Them Eat Cupcakke

You don’t have to be intimately familiar with Chicago rapper CupcakKe to glean that her work might be sexual in nature – if titles like “Deepthroat” and Cum Cake don’t tip you off, I’m not sure what will – but on Tuesday, YouTube saw fit to censor her video channel, pulling clips for the...

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Marjorie's

On Sunday, in a part of town I rarely get to visit, I sat on a hard wooden bench staring at a wall. From beyond that wall I could hear trumpet, bass, and a drum kit played by invisible musicians. Their presence was confirmed not only by the sound, but by the rows of people sitting in fold up chairs...

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A Woman Like Your Kind

Today is International Women’s Day, and people are celebrating in many ways. This American Life devoted their entire show on Tuesday night to listening to the stories of five women who were sexually harassed by media executive Don Hazen, giving individual voice to members of the #MeToo movement....

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Don't Be in Love With the Autograph

On Monday, Mount Eerie’s Phil Elverum posted a lengthy Reddit AMA explaining his reluctance to sign autographs for fans. The statement was originally published in a pamphlet Elverum hands out to concertgoers in search of his John Hancock. The statement is six single-spaced pages and nearly 3,000...

Only Noise

Make Me Smile

My dad’s record collection has always been a significant source of music in my life. Its sheer volume and variety has never ceased to amaze me, and that is likely why I write about it so often. Each time I head home for the holidays (or between jobs) it is one of the first things I check on after...

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Love Songs

If you were lucky enough to get them, you must admit: by now the chocolates have been eaten, and the roses are beginning to droop. Maybe there are a few once-bitten, raspberry cream rejects left in that heart-shaped box of truffles your main squeeze gave you, but they will retire to the trash can...

Only Noise

More Specials

Tonight I’m going to do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I am going listen to a record, in full, and with all of the lights off, while doing nothing else, so help me god. This is how I used to listen to music. Before I had a smart phone, or a laptop, or a job. Before I had deadlines,...

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Mark E. Smith Is Dead, Long Live Mark E. Smith!

For years I was certain that the Fall’s 1982 album Hex Enduction Hour was in fact called: Hex Education Hour – perhaps referring to some BBC instructional program for budding witches. An ex had ripped the record onto CD for me and delivered it in a sort of comprehensive British post punk bundle,...

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Remembering Dolores O'riordan

When the Cranberries released their debut record Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? I was not quite four years old. It was 1993, and two household DJs named Mom and Dad would determine my musical tastes for at least another five years. Those years passed quickly. By the time we were on...

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Reviews · Editorial · OUT AND ABOUT

Review: How to Be a Rock Critic

All Lester Bangs wants to do is listen to his favorite record: Van Morrison’s 1968 masterpiece, Astral Weeks. If only he could find his copy. It’s got to be around here somewhere, beneath the splayed magazines, take-out containers, and just a few thousand other LPs. Such is the inciting dilemma of...

Only Noise

Talkin' About a Resolution

I’m not two weeks into 2018 and I still haven’t gone to the gym, started paying my student loans, or repaired the ripped and button-less pile of clothing in my bedroom. Fortunately, I’m not alone. How long do most people last when attempting their new routines – the ones drafted under that...

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A Year in Song

Certain songs have a way of tangling themselves in our days, weeks, and months, eventually embedding themselves in our psyche, forever to be associated with the particular time and place in which they meant the most to us. Here, Madison looks back on 2017 by recounting the songs that dominated each...

Live Review

AF 2017 IN Review: The Best Live Shows of 2017

Austra @Warsaw This was my first show of 2017, unless you count sets by Janelle Monae, Alicia Keys, and Indigo Girls that dotted the Women’s March on Washington days prior. I may have been late to the game regarding Austra, a beloved Toronto band already two albums into their career, and it wasn’t...

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Goodbye Sunday

In the two brief periods I lived in London, I developed a new relationship with Sundays. For 15 plus years of my life, Sunday was directly associated with Monday, and therefore brought about a rash of panic as the unfinished homework piled up and the unknown week stretched like a canyon before me....

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Winter Preview

We’ve all been a bit preoccupied thinking about the musical headlines of 2017, but I’m here to do a little forward-thinking this week. The temperatures have finally dropped to seasonally appropriate lows, Uber is hiking its carfare, and I’m craving soup. That’s right: It’s winter. And while this...

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A Certain Age

It was difficult enough for my dad to watch his daughter trade in lime green skorts and butterfly baseball tees for army fatigues and combat boots. Stranger were the glue-fixed hairdos and safety pins that were to come. But nothing could prepare either of us for the discomfort he and I (but mostly...

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Hear to Listen

The other night I found myself hovering over a smorgasbord of tiny sandwiches. I did not expect the SONOS store on Greene Street to offer such treats, and as a result of my plummeting blood sugar levels, I swallowed as many as possible in quick succession, like Scooby-Doo’s gluttonous pal Shaggy....

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Christmas Wrapping

I’m not one to jumpstart holiday season. For the previous nine years, I’ve left Christmas shopping until December 23rd – and if it weren’t for my annual Christmas Eve flight, I’d likely wait another day. As of now, I haven’t even begun making my Christmas list, on which I assign gift ideas to...

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Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving is a controversial holiday with a wretched color scheme. The Hallmark credo of thankfulness is thin when stretched against this country’s historical relationship with Native Americans. The shirking of materialism is undercut when Black Friday rolls around. To many, Thanksgiving is...

People on Dancefloor, dancing under Big Glitter Ball and balloons, Loft Party, 93 Feet East, Brick Lane, London, 2001

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One Ball to Rule Them All

The town I grew up in didn’t have a roller rink. Sure, there was a five-lane bowling alley and a one-screen movie theater, but roller rinks were too big for the bite-sized britches of Arlington, Washington. There are many consequences of a town with no roller rink – namely that it becomes by...

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Say What?

Somewhere in a parallel universe lives a Karma Comedian, a Cheerio Girl, and a one-winged dove. Dirty deeds are done by Thunder Chiefs, and Tony Danza holds us closer…so close. This is the Land of Misheard Lyrics, and it is a silly, silly place. Yet it is a place we are all familiar with, having...

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The Queen of Halloween

Don’t let the weather fool you; it’s the right time of year for chills, and I’m not talking about temperature. ‘Tis the season for screams, and witches, and all things terrifying, and personally, I can’t get enough of it. In the lead up to Halloween (or as I like to call it: The Greatest Holiday on...

OUT AND ABOUT · Live Review

Chelsea Wolfe @ Irving Plaza

If in the past Chelsea Wolfe has been called a “siren” and a “goddess,” atop the stage at Irving Plaza on Tuesday she was a towering banshee. Swathed in lengths of white cotton – with matching, armpit-high gauntlets, might I add – Wolfe commanded the sold-out crowd with pointed intensity. Wolfe's...

OUT AND ABOUT · Live Review

Sean Nicholas Savage and Dinner @ Baby's All Right

The disco balls were in full force at Baby’s All Right last Saturday, where the night’s festivities could have easily marched under one banner: Night of the Weirdos. That is of course, the highest order of compliments coming from my fingers, and while I knew from firsthand experience what a bizarro...

OUT AND ABOUT · Live Review

Dead Leaf Echo @ Knitting Factory

There is no doubt about it – Brooklyn band Dead Leaf Echo’s brand new LP Beyond Desire is a fabulous stew of shoegaze, ’77 punk, pedals and reverb. Released late last week by PaperCup Music, the band’s sophomore album is expertly produced and mixed, resulting in a sonic meal you can really chew on....

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With a Bullet

Last week, after publishing “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town,” I took the train across the East River to see a movie. A bit of distraction seemed necessary in that moment, even if it was in the form of a demonic clown named Pennywise. Sitting on the Manhattan-bound C train, I noticed a man in a grey...

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Don't Take Your Guns to Town

Last Saturday, while performing at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom, Marilyn Manson was crushed by a falling stage prop. The assailing object was not a steel cage, nor a neon pentagram, but a sculpture of two massive handguns affixed to scaffolding. Manson was rushed to the hospital with undisclosed...

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One More Cup of Coffee

I’ve stopped counting the number of times “coffee” is mentioned in Patti Smith’s M Train. The short answer is: a lot; coffee is the lifeblood coursing through the entire book. Coffee is the daily elixir of Smith’s life, and she finds great poetry in every sip – from hand-selected, highland grown...

Album Review

Common Holly "Playing House"

It is how we pantomime maturity, and begin to learn self-preservation, domestic upkeep, and the treatment of others. From pretending to prepare a meal, to sweeping the tree house, this form of...

Upcoming Events · Only Noise

Fall Preview

Benjamin Clementine's I Tell A Fly arrives October 2. Tomorrow marks the first day of autumn. You might not believe it given these muggy 80-degree days, but Fall is upon us nevertheless. Fall is the best for multiple reasons, including turtlenecks, Halloween, and mock-necks; but it is also a time...

Live Review

Basilica Soundscape 2017

Blanck Mass at Basilica Soundscape 2017. Photo by Samantha Marble/The Creative Independent Day 1: I knew this would happen. My one-person tent is sagging like ruined soufflé. Its support beams are in all the wrong holes, and the whole thing is yet to be staked in the ground. The bus for Basilica...

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Only Noise

Back in the New York Groove

It was native New Yorker Lou Reed who sang, “Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor/I'll piss on 'em/that's what the Statue of Bigotry says” in “Dirty Blvd.” The wry piece of poetry was one of many city-centric tracks to grace Reed’s New York LP from 1989. While Reed’s lyrics sound hateful...

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Rise

Sometimes, these columns are damn hard to spit out. It’s not always easy to remain enthralled with the music world, especially when the real world seems to be crumbling around us. We don’t have to pretend. 2017 has been a fucking nightmare. We’ve witnessed the inauguration of Donald J. Trump, North...

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Waiting on Waits

This is the closest I will ever get to Tom Waits. I’m sitting at the bar of my dad’s bistro, listening to a live performance by The Bleeding Romeos… a Tom Waits cover band. Much to Mr. Waits’ presumed chagrin, I do not sip from a flask of cheap whiskey, but a glass of red wine. And no – it is not...

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Campfire Songs

I never went to summer camp as a child. In fact, I didn’t really believe that anyone else did, either. Summer camp, like talking dogs and successful marriages, was the stuff of movies. Camp was a tradition I never longed for, or understood, or even thought of. So I was a bit surprised last month...

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Beautiful Losers

Repeat after me: Loser. Double loser. Whatever. Moron. If you were a certain age in the late 1990s, this insult – when paired with the correct hand motions – was the ultimate dis to peers, siblings, and losers of every stripe. The term “loser” in the nineties and early ‘00s was plastered all over...

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