By all accounts, XX Merge, the stalwart indie label’s 20th anniversary celebration last week, was a gigantic lovefest. Turns out there was a lone dissenter well-known to MAGNET readers: Philly Boy Roy, The Best Show On WFMU regular, fledgling stand-up “comic” and chronicler of all things City Of Brotherly Love. Watch his one-man anti-Merge protest [...]
Ever wonder what will happen during the last five minutes of late-night TV talk shows? Here are tonight’s notable performers: The Late Show With David Letterman (CBS): Dave Matthews Band Matthews and his band will be playing Letterman tonight, promoting their latest album, Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King (RCA), the first LP in more than [...]
Prepare to be hypnotized by Warpaint. No, not the Black Crowes album. This Warpaint is three girls and a guy drummer from L.A who are transfixing audiences on the West Coast with ethereal vocals, haunting melodies and oddly distorted guitars and electronics. Warpaint’s Exquisite Corpse (out September 22 on Manimal Vinyl) manages to combine folk, [...]
London power-pop outfit the Jags had a 1979 hit with debut single “Back Of My Hand” but disappeared almost as quickly as they rose to fame. Thirty years later, MAGNET’s Timothy Gassen tells the tale of one of the new-wave era’s seminal acts. (For a history of American power pop, read our 2002 cover story.) [...]
Brooklyn trio Au Revoir Simone recently took to the road to promote its latest pop confection, the keyboard-buzzing beauty Still Night, Still Light. Annie Hart reports: I offered to drive right before sunset, which was timed perfectly with my favorite drive in the whole country: I-5 through Northern California and past Mount Shasta and roads [...]
As the leader of American Music Club and a solo artist, 50-year-old Mark Eitzel has toured with numerous configurations and players during the past two-plus decades, from a full band to solo with guitar. This night in Philadelphia was the penultimate stop on a small tour mostly confined to the Northeast corridor that featured a [...]
The Phenomenauts, a band with a sci-fi aesthetic and a psychobilly sound, hail from Oakland. (Or, as they call it, Earth’s Capital.) They’re known as one of the best live bands in California. Their shows combine theatrics, special effects and homemade gadgets that launch all sorts of things into the audience. Here’s their video for “Infinite [...]
Ever wonder what will happen during the last five minutes of late-night TV talk shows? Here are tonight’s notable performers: The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien (NBC): Regina Spektor Anti-folk darling Spektor will be on Conan to play a song from her new album, Far (Sire). If she does, like some critics describe, sing like [...]
There are few actual men involved with MEN, a Brooklyn-based side project of Le Tigre’s JD Samson and Johanna Fateman. MEN is an art/performance collective (completed by Ginger Brooks Takahashi, Emily Roysdon and Michael O’Neill) that tackles issues—wartime economies, sexual compromise and demanding liberties—over danceable beats and catchy melodies. The band recently embarked on a [...]
“The record doesn’t lie,” sings Aaron Stovall on “Artifacts” from The Loud Wars (Vagrant), So Many Dynamos‘ third and latest album. Some detective work on The Loud Wars reveals the St. Louis band—which also includes guitarist Griffin Kay, guitarist Ryan Wasoba and drummer Clayton Kunstel—as post-hardcore heirs to the increasingly beat-friendly lineage of Polvo, Dismemberment [...]
