OLD 97’S LIGHT UP IRVING PLAZA
“We’ll play some holiday songs, but not a whole show of holiday songs — we’re not monsters!” Rhett Miller, lead singer of the Old…
Vivian Wang
DANCING AT THE THRESHOLD OF THE APOCOLYPSE: GARY NUMAN AT IRVING PLAZA
When our insatiable greed strips the land, acidifies the ocean, and chokes the air, where do we look for salvation? In Savage (Songs from…
COLD WAR KIDS HEAT UP BROOKLYN STEEL
“This is an old one — you guys know this?” Nathan Willett said to anticipatory whoops and hollers. Brooklyn Steel was a sea of…
BUZZING IN THE BROOKLYN LIGHTS: DR. DOG’S ‘CRITICAL EQUATION’
There’s a self-directed voyeuristic gaze in “Listening In,” as if in some psilocybin-altered state, we’re both present and set apart, eavesdropping on our own…
AT CONEY ISLAND BABY, THE HEART OF NEW YORK BEATS STRONG
Marshall Berman, the writer and urban historian, describes modernism in New York as infinitely joyous and infinitely precarious. Where Ginsberg’s Howl despairs of the…
INTO THE PURE BLACK VOID: LORD HURON PREVIEWS NEW SONGS AT LPR
On Tuesday night, New Yorkers strolling down Bleeker Street kept pausing outside (le) poisson rouge. They’d look down at the sidewalk square lit up…
THE RUBENS BRING TWO NIGHTS OF ROCK + R&B TO NYC
It was not yet showtime, but the room fell into an anticipatory hush when frontman Sam Margin stepped on stage for line check. Wolf-whistles…
LYDIA & MOOSE BLOOD LIGHT UP IRVING PLAZA
There’s something of the desert sun that finds its way into Lydia‘s indie rock. Songs like “Georgia” paint an impressionistic picture of a drifter,…
ART IS POLITICAL: A CHAT WITH OVERCOATS (OVERCOATS + TENNIS AT BK STEEL)
Hana Elion and JJ Mitchell perform under the moniker Overcoats. It’s an apt name for the band—the duo’s harmonies are finely interwoven and the lyrics…
FAIRYTALE OF NEW YORK: A DAY WITH JESSE MALIN & BAND
A great song, like a great love, grounds you in a narrative. It imbues you with a sense of belonging, and in the chaotic…