North Star Bar

There are still tickets remaining for My Morning Jacket’s shows this Friday (10/27) and Saturday (10/28) at The Met, the band’s most intimate area appearances since they played the Tower Theatre in 2015.  And while it is a rare opportunity to see the psychedelic Southern rockers indoors (in an...

This month marks 20 years since I moved to the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection.  I was the typical suburban alternative teen, migrating to University of the Arts to study among likely the only fans of The Velvet Underground and Nick Cave hailing from upper-middle-class, yuppie-breeding...

When Wiretap Scars – the debut LP from Sparta, an El Paso-based post-hardcore outfit comprised of 3/5ths of the recently disbanded At The Drive-In – dropped, I was about to start my senior year of high school.  The Spectrum, North Star Bar, and Trocadero still remained, Franklin Music Hall...

Last September I was chatting with singer/songwriter Kelsey Wilson about her funk outfit Sir Woman, who were currently on the road, and she casually mentioned that her band Wild Child were actually preparing to drop a new album, their first since 2018’s Expectations.  Well, today...

“We felt like we wanted to make a record that felt like the antidote to the last few years that we went through,” says St. Lucia mainman Jean-Philip Grobler of the band’s fourth LP, Utopia, which drops this Friday, October 7th, courtesy of Nettwerk.  The synth-pop band, led by...

This Friday, July 29th, gothic Western outfit Murder by Death will be releasing their ninth studio LP, Spell/Bound, which frontman Adam Turla tells me he is exceptionally excited about, during a recent phone chat: “I am really proud of this one.”  Like most albums being released these days, Turla...

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from post-punk popper Frankie Rose (formerly of Vivian Girls, Beverly, Crystal Stilts, and Dum Dum Girls).  Her last studio album, Cage Tropical, inspired by ‘80s sci-fi films and the extraterrestrial, dropped in 2017.  However, during a recent chat, she tells me about...

2021 sees the return of bluesy, folksy, garagey Americana rockers Heartless Bastards.  A Beautiful Life, their first album since 2015’s Restless Ones, drops September 10th courtesy of Sweet Unknown Records/Thirty Tigers.  This current iteration of Heartless Bastards has singer/songwriter/mainperson Erika Wennerstrom (who released her first solo record, Sweet Unknown,...

Although we’re all still lamenting the days when our favorite industrial disco sleazeballs (and other subversive outsiders in general) could headline a city’s premiere clubs throughout the ‘90s, Philthy has enjoyed getting to see Wax Trax! alums My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult play some of the city’s...