live shots: css for san francisco bay guardian

Lovefoxxx makes SF love her at the Fillmore

By the end of last night at the Fillmore, CSS's dynamic lead vocalist-party rioter Lovefoxxx was stripped down to a black tank top and ripped up jean shorts over fishnets, her raccoon eye makeup smeared across her face, fluffed pink hair electrified out of its sockets [...]

men for san francisco bay guardian

Feminist dance pop: Q&A with MEN's JD Samson
Just as she did with Le Tigre, JD Samson blurs the lines between feminist theory and modern pop music with her most recent musical endeavor, MEN. The experimental art-pop band, which began in 2007, is a collective with fellow Le Tigren Johanna Fateman – among others – that's as subversive as it is danceable [...]

beirut for san francisco bay guardian

The instruments of my life: Q&A with Beirut's Zach Condon

Zach Condon, the pied piper of Beirut, is known for a great many things – his quavering voice and heart-tugging music (watch the new video for “Santa Fe” and try not to weep, I dare you), the global journeys on which he embarked to gain such a worldly sound, and, perhaps above all else, his skilled takes on an array of string and horn instruments. He employs their use to enable listeners an audio-vacation: the far corners of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, to the chateaus of French chansons, to his mariachi-filled hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico [...]

great integration for san francisco bay guardian

Chamber hip-hop opera 'Great Integration' returns with a second act

Perhaps you've seen the billboard on your daily Bay Bridge commute: simple white background, a hand with two fingers pressed together, and in bold type, the words Great Integration: A Chamber Hip-Hop Opera [...]

mike apocalypse for san francisco bay guardian

Legends of the underground

Gehenna's Mike Apocalypse doesn't care what you think

"There are people like us who decide we no longer want to deal with what is fed to us through commercial forces," says infamous hardcore singer Mike Apocalypse, "We strive to create new things — if I couldn't create new music, I would fall apart in a month's time." [...]

iggy pop for san francisco bay guardian

Keep it raw

Does the Godfather of Punk really need an introduction? It's Iggy Pop. He's been doing this — this meaning spitting out underground ethos in a signature growl and writhing shirtless — for nearly 50 years. With the untimely death of original Stooge guitarist Ron Asheton, Pop regrouped and tapped Raw Power-era player James Williamson to rejoin the band a couple of years back.

I spoke to Pop in Paris over the phone -- his current world tour was supposed to land in San Francisco on Sept. 12 and 13 [...]

glowing stars for san francisco bay guardian

Reprogramming the hardware

The Glowing Stars want you to make chiptune music, too.

Technology can be so existentially mystifying. One minute you're a kid in the back seat of your parents' car with thumbs aimed and eyes glued to the screen of your modern handheld gaming console, the next you're on stage with blinding lights and an audience, smashing into a modified old-school Gameboy on a snare drum. One second you're doubled over in bed with the stomach flu, the next you're in a box on Google+, simultaneously interviewing two band members from their respective Bay Area cities [...]

kreayshawn for san francisco bay guardian

Kreayshawn gets some lady love at Slim's

It was just fine, really. Oakland-bred rapper Kreayshawn's big, sold-out show at Slim's last night was amusing, mildly enjoyable, and packed with good people watching. Rapping over prerecorded beats, elfin Kreayshawn and her Chipmunks White Girl Mob (V-Nasty and Lil Debbie) ran through what I suspect is the gamut of their songs in a brief, hyper set [...]

il gato cover story for san francisco bay guardian

Bravo, il gato

FALL ARTS PREVIEW: The baroque San Francisco band is about to have its best season yet

The clouds hang over San Francisco like a brumous, early evening warning sign. It's late summer on the back patio of popular Mission street bar El Rio. Small pockets of people huddle near outdoor heaters, and vintage pop songs come pumping through the speakers. Three men dressed neatly in sweaters and hoodies sit at a long picnic table clutching cheap beers.

This is the story of il gato, a San Francisco band that describes itself as indie-baroque-folk. Its music is baroque in the sense that it's melancholic yet upbeat, lyric-heavy yet leans towards the classical, and highly decorated with a wide array of instrumentation. The band's 2010 long-player, All These Slippery Things (self-released), and similarly-named followup EP All Those Slippery Things (released last month) feature banjo, mandolin, piano, a string quartet, and trumpets, along with aggressive acoustic folk guitar, looping pedal, upright and electric bass, and complex drumming [...]

tri angle records showcase for san francisco bay guardian

Drag me from hell
Witch house — or whatever you care to call it — is far from dead

MUSIC Noah "DJ Dials" Bennett Cunningham wants to galvanize your pleasure center.

"You know how you can think back to that one night? That punk show or cool house party or the first time you saw Björk, and it's just, the night you'll never forget? I want to do that for other people. I want to make lasting memories," he says from his perch in Four Barrel Coffee as he grabs Rosamunde french fries from his bag [...]

outside lands wrap-up for san francisco bay guardian

Outside Lands, day three
Ah, Golden Gate Park on a crisp, sunny Sunday morning. Well, afternoon. There's nothing else like it. When I finally made my way out to Outside Lands, the highly recognizable vocal stylings of tUnE-yArDs were piping through the brush and bramble. Sweaty, shirtless men – fried to a near-crisp – rain danced far back from the Sutro Stage. And those free-jazzing saxophonists that I mentioned in the pre-festival rundown were indeed beside Merrill Garbus [...]

king lollipop for san francisco bay guardian

Sticky fingers
Cody S. Blanchard moonlights in a junkyard candy-land band

Remember the raw, heart-thumping heat of the Jukebox Jamboree in John Waters' 1990 cult classic Cry-Baby? A steamy musician (Johnny Depp) strums and snarls towards a crowd of excited nogoodniks. There was a similar scene a few Saturdays back at a garage rock show in Oakland, thanks largely to Cody S. Blanchard [...]

chelsea wolfe for sf weekly

Chelsea Wolfe, Demon Girl
Chelsea Wolfe's newest album, Apokalypsis, begins with a bang. But it's not so much a literal bang as an otherworldly howl. It's like she's exorcising demons before the record can begin [...]

urban adamah cover story for j. the jewish news weekly

Nurturing their roots: Fellows flock to Berkeley’s Jewish urban farm
It’s 9 a.m. on a brisk Monday morning and Aliza Gazek and Molly Fischman are happily plucking kale from the earth.

They laugh and chat about the day’s activities while harvesting the kale, along with chard and red-leaf lettuce, to donate to the LifeLong Medical Care Clinic. Beyond them, Berkeley’s morning commuters whiz past a chain-link fence [...]

limp wrist for sf weekly

Queercore Band Limp Wrist on Playing Live Again
The song "I Love Hardcore Boys, I Love Boys Hardcore" is a given at most Limp Wrist shows. The brief, screamy hardcore anthem was written early in the band's career (late '90s) but it remains a mainstay, a memorable chant that crowds of sweaty punks cheer for. Not that they often have the chance to [...]