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I feel like Chicago’s Dead Rider are a band for people who like bands that fuck shit up (And I mean that in the best way possible.)… Hopefully they take that as a compliment. They evade genres better than pretty much any other band in existence… Well, Black Moth...
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While a lot of critics have been calling dreamy folk singer/songwriter Marissa Nadler’s sixth studio LP (July, released last month) a step in a new direction, in my most recent chat with the Boston-residing chanteuse, she clarifies that she actually sees the album as a logical evolution of her...
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Ex-Cult are a band that embody an aesthetic equally indebted to the scariest kind of proto-punk and post-punk… They sound a bit like if Bauhaus put out a hardcore record… They’ve also remained relatively elusive, with very little information to be found on them on the internet… As is...
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The last time I caught up with Orange County indie poppers The Colourist, last June, they’d only recorded two songs — which they characterized for me as “Paranormal California Tropic Rock” (If that could use a bit of context, they are all “avid hunters of the paranormal.”) Since then,...
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NYC/Berlin quartet Fenster have apparently been through even more than I realized between the release of their 2012 debut, Bones, and their follow-up, The Pink Caves, which is out today on morrmusic. The hyper-mystical, hyper-moody, and hyper-postmodern indie pop outfit kick off a string of US dates tonight at...
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Although the Australian singer/songwriter might be most famous for her collaborations with others; such as co-writing Feist’s “1234,” and Seeker Lover Keeper an indie pop supergroup formed by herself and fellow Aussie songstresses Sarah Blasko and Holly Throsby; Sally Seltmann is actually on her fourth full-length solo album (and...
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“We want it to be energetic, engaging, and interactive. The parts of this record we wanted to pull out for the live show were the really joyful and uplifting parts, the things that ignore all the bullshit that’s imposed on women by society,” Caroline Smith tells me. The Minneapolis-based...
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1. Gardens & Villa – Bullet Train (Secretly Canadian) – This is a quirky 80’s like tune with a bit of choppy guitar, cool chorus with a big keyboard splash and pleasing falsetto vocals. It’s my pick of the week! 2. Beck...
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We Were Promised Jetpacks are in the midst of a stateside tour taking them from Los Angeles, CA to the East Coast over the next month bringing with them their thunderous and powerful style of indie rock, shimmering guitars and melodic vocals....
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So, we all know Morrissey is touring this spring… But the second thing I’m most excited about in 2014 is the fact that Tying Tiffany is apparently going to be embarking on her first full-scale US tour ever. Italy’s Tying Tiffany has been making electro-punk-and-clash and an abundance of...
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The last time Philthy Mag caught up with The Belle Game they were at 2013’s SXSW, where pianist and backing vocalist Katrina Jones explained to me, “At night, 6th street kind of feels like the Apocalypse, like there are no rules, anything can happen. It’s madness.” My recent chat...
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Philthy Mag recently chatted with Ellia Bisker, songwriter, ukulele-player (among other things), and main force behind Brooklyn’s Sweet Soubrette, a vaudeville-inspired outfit that expands and collapses anywhere from a solo-project to an eight-piece. However, Sweet Soubrette is only one of many of Ellia’s musical endeavors. She’s also a member...
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The other night on Twitter, I invited ZZ Ward fans to tweet me questions they might have, in preparation for my latest chat with the chanteuse whose personal blend of soul, blues, and rock has earned the moniker “dirty shine.” To my surprise, Ms. Ward herself wanted to get...
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1. Dum Dum Girls – “Too True To Be Good” (Sub Pop) This brilliant dreamy melodic rock song by Dum Dum Girls comes off an equally beautiful LP “Too True.” The video is amazing. This song is my pick of the week! 2. Trust – “Are We Arc?” (Arts...
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French duo As Animals sound right around a dozen times larger than songwriter/producer/multi-instrumentalist Fred Grange and vocalist/lyricist Zara Desbonnes. They are an intriguingly strange amalgam of popular music of the past century, from jazz to synth pop to hip-hop to tortured singer/songwriters to that orchestral rock thing going on...
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PINS are more of a girl gang than a girl band… And I suspect they’re far more comfortable with the former designation. PINS are a Manchester quartet that are both indebted to 1960s girl groups and psychedelica and the subversive potency of late ‘70s post-punk… They write infectious, anti-pop...
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This is my weekly Sound Off, dedicated to finding really cool tunes. 1. St. Vincent – “Prince Johnny” – (Loma Vista) – The third track to drop from the much anticipated forthcoming album from St. Vincent. This may very well be the best representation of Annie Clark’s amazing angelic vocals...
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Sometimes the most frustrating reaction one can have to a supposedly brilliant work of art is ambiguity. February 25th will see the Criterion Collection’s Blu-ray and DVD release of Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue is the Warmest Colour, the coming-of-age melodrama of queer youth finding young love, that was adapted from a...
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Lake Street Dive is a decade into their career, yet they seem more youthfully passionate and irrepressibly enthusiastic about their current state than any other point of their career. The Jazz-and-Soul-inspired Boston-born, Brooklyn-based indie pop quartet recently made high-profile appearances on both Colbert and Letterman and their fourth full-length,...
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Whether you are spending Valentine’s Day over a romantic dinner with your boo, indulging yourself in a Golden Girls marathon with your besties (or your cat, because they count as besties too!), or just scrolling through Instagram to find the best anti-Valentine’s-Day meme ever, be sure to rock a...
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Morrissey announces his Spring Tour, and unfortunately no Philadelphia show. Don’t fret… There is a local show in Wilmington,Delaware show at the Grand Opera House ( which isn’t a huge venue ). Tickets are going to sell out quick so keep your eyes peeled for when the tix go...
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Chances are, if you and your friends regularly hit the hot spots in Center City for a few brews to catch up, you’ve noticed That Group. You know, the one that continues erupting in laughter every five minutes, so excited, so symmetrical, split with three guys and three girls,...
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I recently had my first chance to chat “professionally”/”critically” with Those Darlins, the Nashville outfit that I’ve regularly touted as “My favorite band of recent years.” The band’s self-titled debut LP dropped in 2009, which boasted, in my own words, “A crass and intentionally-in-bad-taste take on garage country.” The...
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Brooklyn’s PEP manifested itself seemingly haphazardly as the recent love affair Karys Rhea had with girl groups of the 1950s and 1960s… on her free moments from handling drums for garage rockers Starlight Girls. However, she’s since embraced the aesthetic of the era almost entirely, now fully-embodying the sexiest...
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Red Bull has a rich history of giving wings to creative and talented individuals in sports and culture, helping turn their ideas into reality....
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1. Angel Olsen “Hi-Five”- (Jagjaguwar) – This is Angel Olsen. This song is a straight forward fuzz guitar retro lo-fi rock song. It’s reminiscent of early Best Coast. The song is dreamy and disjointed, a love song taken to the next level. My pick song of the week in anticipation...
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While Dawn Landes is best known as a folk singer/songwriter, she’s also a noteworthy engineer and producer, who also indulges in indie pop in her trio, The Bandana Splits, and even recorded an album of original songs in the style of French Ye-Ye girls. But, during our recent chat,...
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Feb 3 – 7: My Weekly Sound Off gives you a glimpse of some of the most incredible tunes of the week. I keep a critical eye for the most danceable, eclectic, interesting sounds that you may want to hear. I hope you like them as much as I...
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Los Angeles’ Kimono Kult are probably the most beautiful and frustrating band that currently exist… They are a brilliant collective of badassedly accomplished musicians… who will never appear on a stage together (Although, there is something quite postmodernly satisfying about that very notion… So maybe I should ease up...
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As if often the case, the inspiration behind honeybird & the birdies’ latest work of art was something “honeybird” was told by her gynecologist… honeybird is Monique Mizrahi and her band’s latest album is entitled You Should Reproduce [For the record, the advice was in regards to her age...
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Philthy first met The Casket Girls a year ago. I chatted with Phaedra Greene about how she and sister Elsa were “discovered” and enlisted by Ryan Graveface (of Graveface Records, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Dreamend, etc…) to be his postmodern take on the Shangri-las. The three released their debut,...
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Okapi Sun are self-proclaimed, “tribal pop dance party enthusiasts,” inspired by a rare crossbreed (The okapi, a zebra-giraffe creature, is real, but only found in the Ituri Forest of the Congo.) Okapi Sun, comprised of Leo Okapi and Dallas Okapi, liken themselves to this intriguingly lovely creature, as they...
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Blondfire are about to release their sophomore effort, yet they already have a career that would warrant a two-hour edition of Behind the Music… Blondfire began with Erica and Bruce Driscoll, two siblings who grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan and have since relocated to NYC and eventually LA. ...
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Nina Persson is currently both moving on and looking back. The Swedish-born, NYC-dwelling chanteuse is preparing to release her first solo album donning her own name (She has released two albums under the A Camp moniker.) She also recently reunited with Swedish indie poppers The Cardigans, the band for...
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“My Education” is not only the brilliant final novel of Bill Burroughs, but also a damn-near-“brilliant” post-rock band out of Austin, Texas. The instrumental outfit has been around for a little over a decade now, existing in the realms of both abrasive, avant-garde rockers and classically high-artistry (They’ve composed...
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The Mast are a rare electronic entity that draws-comparisons-to and gains-fans-of both hyper-niche “electronic music” communities (see: IDM, EBM, “post-dubstep”… whatever any of that means…) and people simply into experimental pop music (see: 80s synth pop, electro pop, and the more digital side of post-punk). They have the chops...
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Acclaimed rock pianist Marco Benevento brings his own brand of piano rock to the Arden Gild Concert Hall in Arden, Delaware on Saturday, February 1st at 8:00 pm and with him more than a decade of brilliant work collaborating with a host of established musicians. He is in the middle...
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In a recent chat, JD Samson admitted to me that her favorite aspect of promoting her music is actually her time talking to journalists: “Doing interviews is always interesting for me because it forces me to intellectualize the choices I’ve made or lyrics I’ve written.” For those about a...
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The Doors may divide me, personally, more than any other band of music history. I find “Five to One” ringing in my head and coyly smile about subversions and revolutions… Then I see some douche in cargo shorts and a tie-dyed shirt donning Mr. Morrison’s face and I decide...
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Recent murmurings about the Pixies would lead you to believe that the band is currently in a tumultuous, turmoil-y state of flux… which is only partly true… Last year bassist Kim Deal left the legendary Boston alt rock outfit nine years into their “reunion,” just before they released their...
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The Hidden Cameras would seem to be more than simply a band. The Toronto-based outfit, led by singer/songwriter Joel Gibb, which began in 2001, have gained a reputation for elaborately chaotic stage shows that can include go-go dancers and choirs and often resemble a cult playfully assaulting the crowd...
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New York’s Swear and Shake are a rare band that actually live up to their rarely-found catchily clever moniker. They identify as “Big Hook Americana.” Their sound rings of an amalgam of popularly sun-kissed folk and the most elegantly spirited take on Southern rocking (“Southern Rock” would be far...
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“I don’t really like being a particularly public person. These songs, in my mind, are all encompassing in their regard to my own, personal life,” Caroline Rose tells me when I ask the young singer/songwriter what she thinks is most important that fans and potential fans know about her...
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Saintseneca are a folk band through and through, but they seem to be more influenced by things like post-punk and “indie rock” in its earliest form than any traditional kind of Americana. They are about to release a new album, Dark Arc, on April 1st. However, they’re currently on...
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Austin’s Mother Falcon have achieved quite a bit in their relatively short career (including making the up-to-20-member outfit function as a single, cohesive unit), however, their greatest achievement, in my mind, might be the ability to make me like Radiohead… or at least Radiohead songs… The last time the...
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Avers are a group of guys and a girl from Richmond. They came together from a plethora of musical worlds (Americana, indie pop, folk rock, etc.) to make a psych record in a whimsically and balls-ily haphazard manner. They are Adrian Olsen, Alex Spalding, James Mason, JL Hodges, and...
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So the final months of 2013 saw me finding inspiration in a plethora of younger acts, emerging into their prime with live experiences that even managed to excite, “someone who’s already sung with Belle & Sebastian, been onstage with Iggy Pop four times, and kissed Kim Deal.” If you...
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The place to be on Boxing Day was in Arden, Delaware at The Arden Gild Concert Hall for the 6th Annual Boxing Day concert. Headliners, The Spring Standards, a band with local roots, played 2 shows 6:30pm and 9:30pm with warm-up bands Inland Traveler and The DuPont Brothers respectively...
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The Pack A.D. have both classical and postmodern approaches to the spreading of their sound. They pride themselves on being road dogs… but they’re also very adept at things such as YouTube videography… The Pack A.D. are drummer Maya Miller and singer/guitarist Becky Black. They’re best known for kicking...
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As I write this best of 2013, many great albums dropped in the beginning of the year, lest they be forgotten in December. In fact, Autre Ne Veut’s “Anxiety” would have been my favorite of the year. Playing it incessantly when it came out in February this year, I...
I feel like Chicago’s Dead Rider are a band for people who like bands that fuck shit up (And I mean that in the best way possible.)… Hopefully they take that as a compliment. They evade genres better than pretty much any other band in existence… Well, Black Moth...
While a lot of critics have been calling dreamy folk singer/songwriter Marissa Nadler’s sixth studio LP (July, released last month) a step in a new direction, in my most recent chat with the Boston-residing chanteuse, she clarifies that she actually sees the album as a logical evolution of her...
