Siren Fest on Coney Island, NY was one of those can’t-miss events this summer. The weather was gorgeous and the lineup of bands was fantastic. Everyone played their asses off and had a great time. Screaming Females performed, and during Ted Leo & the Pharmacists’ set Marissa Paternoster hopped on stage with him.
The highlight of [...]

In March of 2007, I pulled a copy of Diane di Prima’s prose and poetry collection Dinners and Nightmares off my bookshelf. At the time, I was in the midst of compiling content for Verbicide magazine issue #20. I decided on a whim to email the book’s publishers (Last Gasp) in hopes to acquire rights [...]

Frankie Rose has a reputation around here. And by here, we mean Brooklyn. And by reputation, we mean her minimal, Maureen Tucker-like beats and iconic presence in such buzz-stirring bands as Crystal Stilts, Dum Dum Girls, and Vivian Girls. Those groups spearheaded a scene that mixed the sounds of lo-fi garage, big reverb-drenched Phil Spector-produced [...]

In attempts to dance about Shellshag’s architecture, they’ve been explained as an amalgam of The Breeders, Sonic Youth, The Ramones, DFA, David Byrne, Guided By Voices, Moldy Peaches and early Superchunk — and, because they’re a male guitarist/female drummer duo, those touch points (Jack and Meg, Matt and Kim, Juicifer) get tossed around like so [...]

Rock Action Records
54 min., dir. by Vincent Moon and Nathanael Le Scouarnac
I’ve always enjoyed Mogwai, but I have to confess that up until this film, I don’t think I’ve listened to more than two tracks consecutively. Burning is a concert film, stripped down to the absolute basics. Gone are any distractions of tour footage and [...]

Each year, sometime around Earth Day, art takes over the town of Olympia, Washington. The streets are closed down, and just about every retail store, restaurant, and coffee shop displays art on their walls, inviting people to come in and have a look, free of charge. It’s like a big, disorganized art gallery, and they [...]

Brooklyn’s six-piece root-rockers The Morning Pages have just recorded an alt-country take on Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” along with a grainy lo-fi stock photography-esque video complete with slide guitars, cowboy hats, and tin cans on strings, answering the question, “How would ‘Telephone’ play out in the 1850s?”  The ubiquitous song caught the attention of lead singer [...]

In the span of only five years, The Morning Benders have had a total of eight releases.  Their newest effort, Big Echo, reveals a mix of jaunty tunes filled with handclaps, tripped-out guitar effects and forceful drum beats.
The album starts off with the song “Excuses,” an acoustic guitar- and drum-driven tune that has a very [...]

The Morning Benders are a four-piece who recently relocated from San Francisco to New York City. “Promises” appears on their highly anticipated new album, Big Echo, which will be their first release for Rough Trade, who they signed with only a few months ago.
Big Echo is an album made to be played loud. And it [...]

It is soundcheck, and Autry Rene Fulbright, lead singer of Midnight Masses, stands at the edge of the small Union Pool stage on the last night of their residency, the venue nearly packed with hipsters, hip-hoppers, and rockers alike. Fulbright, who has the presence and dressings of a 1950s Motown crooner, releases his mic stand [...]

Meghan Wolf is as multifaceted as a sparkly cut gem. She’s one of those artists who simply does it all — she’s a singer/songwriter, guitar and piano player, she has her master’s in fine arts, and she’s an actress to boot! Formerly the lead vocalist of New York No Stars, a punk group based in [...]

For all the good-will it generated, there was a chafing discontent surrounding Vampire Weekend’s ascent to prominence. Somewhere between the Leno appearances and the critic’s top 10 lists, it seemed that these well-dressed Brooklynites were doomed to flounder in the massive shadow of their unparagoned debut. And sure enough, the second effort Contra doesn’t match [...]

Raised on 20 wooded acres in Western Massachusetts, artist Meghan Wolf often found herself lost to the quiet of the forest and the rhythms of the natural world.
“Walking and water bring melodies and words to the surface for me,” she says. “When I was a kid, I would spend hours wandering the woods and making [...]

The Rain Machine discussed here is neither snake-oil nor cash money precipitation, but rather the debut album from Kyp Malone, singer and guitarist of TV on the Radio. Over the last six years, many words have been used to capture the Brooklyn-based band: experimental, dark, moody, art-rock, hipster. But TV on the Radio can best [...]

As prolific as he is as a recording artist, Kyp Malone is terribly difficult to define. From his band’s hard-fought successes, Malone and his band mates have been changing the sound of popular music as the music industry itself is resistant to any type of change in a digital world. Malone’s latest offering, Rain [...]