Boot & Saddle

  • Flashing Back to 2016 with Cate Le Bon (10/6 at UT)

    This February Welsh art pop singer/songwriter Cate Le Bon released her sixth studio album, Pompeii, courtesy of Mexican Summer.  NPR claimed the album and artist, “made meaning out of high-art nonsense, turning simple, quotidian things into freaky and oblique images, the stuff of heady and sensual dreams,” and The...
  • Sizzy Rocket: “I just want it to be a big, fun, sweaty dance party.” (July 4th at The Dolphin)

    “My show is kind of like a punk show, but also a pop show, but not in a pop-punk way,” says Sizzy Rocket, laughing.  Sizzy’s crass, club-ready bangers owe as much to the acts that made Max’s Kansas City and CBGB famous as they do to any of the...
  • Dehd’s Jason Balla on Blue Skies: “This is our best one yet!” (10/22 at Brooklyn Bowl)

    Unfortunately, Chicago trio Dehd’s show scheduled for this past Sunday at Union Transfer had to be cancelled with someone in the group’s touring party testing positive for COVID….  But, just today they announced more than a month of Fall dates, including an October 22nd stop at Brooklyn Bowl Philadelphia. ...
  • Adia Victoria’s “blues existentialism” (4/19 at MilkBoy)

    In the decade that Adia Victoria has been kicking out twangy blues jams (In the MC5 sense, not the hippie or party-ready sense.), she’s managed to play all of the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection’s favorite barroom dive venues, from local metal mecca Kung Fu Necktie, to...
  • The Harmaleighs: “We are ready to rock.” (2/15 at JB’s w/ Lilly Hiatt)

    It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Nashville-based (traditionally acoustic) folk pop duo The Harmaleighs.  August of 2019 saw the release of She Won’t Make Sense, the sophomore LP from Haley Grantwho (lead vocals and guitar) and Kaylee Jasperson (bass and backup vocals), which had the band working...
  • Macie Stewart: “It’ll be very lush and comforting.” (2/18 at WCL)

    “The solo record is an interesting thing, when you have these people who are normally heavy collaborators.  But every once in a while you have to let out the steam a little bit, which is I think what solo albums do,” says Macie Stewart, best known as one-half of...
  • Mipso: “We don’t want each show to be a carbon copy.” (12/17 and 12/18 at MilkBoy)

    Philadelphia has grown accustomed to seeing North Carolina-based folk quartet Mipso in exceptionally intimate rooms, such as Boot & Saddle and The Locks at Sona.  However, on their current headlining tour they are playing a handful of significantly larger rooms, some holding 1,000+.  But, lucky for us, on their...
  • Annie Hart Goes Ambient (11/30 at WCL)

    You may know Annie Hart as a composer of synth-heavy, postmodern pop jams, both as one-third of Au Revoir Simone and, since 2017, a solo artist.  However, her latest solo effort, Everything Pale Blue, which dropped this May, took Hart in a different direction.  In the middle of lockdown...
  • Big Thief, Night Two at Union Transfer

    The last time I caught up with Brooklyn-based indie folk rockers Big Thief was in 2016, when they were opening for Nada Surf at World Café Live, so their headlining show last Saturday, October 2nd, the second of two sold-out nights at the 1,300-capacity Union Transfer, was something quite...