Jemina Pearl @ The First Unitarian Church

Jemina Pearl
@ The First Unitarian Church
November 3, 2009

Platinum blonde hair zig-zags through the air as a seemingly possessed body is propelled across the stage like an epileptic surfer caught in a swell. Jemina Pearl and her epically abrasive bratiness are back. Three years ago Pearl proved to be the brilliantly and chaotically sassy punk chanteuse that we had all hoped Karen O would be. Then she was fronting genius post Riot Grrrl outfit Be Your Own Pet. Now she’s back “on her own” (still joined by BYOP drummer John Eatherly) with a more refined take on the aesthetic of her former band.

Her solo debut, Break it Up, was released on October 6th via Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace! Shockingly versatile (accessibly playful and credibly crass), the album may be competing for both the pop and punk albums of the year. Pearl finds herself under the mirrorball (“Ecstatic Appeal”), on the New Wave scene (“Retrograde”), and even at the sock hop, alongside Iggy Pop, with the most endearing song ever written about hatred (“I Hate People”). Of course, the old Jemina of BYOP can still be found on tracks like “After Hours” and “Selfish Heart,” albeit in much friendlier (and more coherent) form. Also noteworthy is Pearl’s bevy of bumper-sticker-on-her-textbook-ready words of pop wisdom (consider “Ain’t got time to linger, wave goodbye with the middle finger” or “My hands smell like cheeseburgers and cigarettes, on the tips of my fingers I count my regrets.” Any punk rock girl in need of a senior quote, look no further.

On November 3 Pearl found herself at the First Unitarian Church, Philthy’s proving grounds of indieness. The last time she was in the venue, she and the boys of BYOP successfully broke the boundaries between band and audience, leaving the crowd of about 50 as heavily bruised as they were after a riotous 25-minute set. Although her solo debut at the venue was far less hazardous, it proved to be nearly as much fun. The set boasted the better part of Break it Up, including the Runaways-esque “Looking For Trouble;” “D is For Danger,” a modern take on the girl-group sound; and “So Sick!,” the album’s most abrasive track, which left Ms. Pearl gasping for air and storming off the stage in a wonderful (albeit faux) fit of punk femininity… Ms. O, take note. – Izzy Cihak

Gossip @ TLA

Gossip
@ Theatre of the Living Arts
October 10, 2009

A few short years ago the Gossip’s trips to the City of Sisterly Affection had them getting sweaty in church basements or ghetto-licious dive bars attached to firehouses, but now they’re finding themselves full-blown pop stars. Upon the monstrous stage of the TLA on South Street, Beth Ditto and company found themselves basking in the bright lights.

Accompanying their newfound stateside stardom is a new sound. The PDX trio has abandoned any lingering remnants of Riot Grrrl for something along the lines of 80s tween pop. Although the sound has little to offer fans of 2001’s That’s Not What I Heard or 2002’s Arkansas Heat, those in attendance hardly seemed to miss the days of being punk.

Few remnants of their past, brilliantly-abrasively-confrontationally-danceable, selves were present in the evening’s set. The distortion of “Yesterday’s News” and “Don’t Make Waves” were just as crassly soulful as ever, although they had even less to do with the band’s current sound than that night’s covers of “What’s Love Got to do with It” and “We Are The Champions.”

Those who embrace the band as LGBT icons now seem to regard them more along the lines of Cher than Allison Wolfe. Fans gasped, swooned, and shook their newly-liberated asses through the better part of Gossip’s latest, Music For Men, as if they were at a block party on 12th and Spruce (and not at all as if they were celebrating the new issue of their zine in a DC basement). – Izzy Cihak

The Brunettes @ Johnny Brenda's

The Brunettes
@ Johnny Brenda’s
9/03/09
www.lilchiefrecords.com/brunettes/index.html

Tragedy strikes under the mirror ball at Johnny Brenda’s… but then again, how fucking twee is that? After nearly two years New Zealand indie pop duo, The Brunettes, returned to the City of Brotherly Love with their best live band yet to play to at least five times the crowd of their last visit. Unfortunately, the performance was under less than loveable conditions. As they should’ve been taken the stage, Jonathan Bree (the masculine portion of the duo) found himself stomping through the venue in search of a lost amp that was never to be found. In a best-case-scenario, the group may have powered on with their borrowed amp and dazzled the crowd with a set of their chicly infectious tunes and earned back the money necessary for a new amp through the sale of nearly half a dozen splendid releases only available in America by way of their merch table. That, however, is not quite what happened.

Bree remained rattled throughout the band’s much abbreviated set, groaning about the luck of the above-average number of camera phones documenting the below-average set. Unfortunately, band’s most impressive work, from 2007’s Structure & Cosmetics, such as space pop anthem “Brunettes Against Bubblegum Youth” and “Stereo (Mono Mono),” which borders on the brilliance of Reed and Cale, were absent that evening. Would-be classics like “Holding Hands, Feeding Ducks” and “Polyester Meets Acetate” came off just as delightfully as ever, although the rest of the set was phoned-in like a frantic 911 call. Izzy Cihak

The Dead Weather @ 9:30 Club

The Dead Weather
@ 9:30 Club
7/14/09
www.thedeadweather.com

Drumming for the Dead Weather seems to be Jack White’s best role since 2003’s Coffee & Cigarettes. Like a Jim Jarmusch film, White’s latest project is derivative, satirically melancholy, and abrasively gratifying. While his gigs as a frontman usually have him offering a suburban-friendly take on a once-intriguing musical trend, the Dead Weather proves that his Detroit rhythm is perfectly suited for keeping this supergroup of endearing misfits in time and in line. If anyone seems to be the band’s driving force, it is NYC anti-chanteuse, vocalist Alison Mosshart. Regularly found in The Kills, Mosshart has proven to be the decade’s most brashly alluring frontwoman, at times resembling Patti Smith as Joey Ramone for Halloween, and at times as an ineffably chic and dopesick star of the runway. With star of stage and screen Jack White gaining the majority of the project it’s notoriety, it is surprisingly Mosshart’s The Kills who have provided the majority of the project’s immediate inspiration. White, along with guitarist Dean Fertita (of Queens of the Stone Age) and bassist Jack Lawrence (of The Raconteurs and The Greenhornes) add a coating of Delta blues and garage Americana to Mosshart’s noisy brand of Post Punk.

On July 14th, the day the band’s debut (Horehound) dropped, the quartet found themselves at Washington DC’s 9:30 Club for an hour-long performance starring Ms. Mosshart. As she spastically convulsed across the stage and pensively dragged on seemingly inspirational cigarettes in her V.I.P.-dibbed thrift store garb the post-Warhol Icon seemed as though she were fronting the houseband at a bayou-front saloon.

In front of a sold out crowd in the country’s premiere concert venue, never before did grimy sound so epic as the band tore through a set fit to be played behind chicken wire, under copious amounts of moonshine. The mysterious twangy blues that began the evening quickly turned into splendidly sloppy, reefer-inspired riffage all in the course of the night’s opener, “60 Feet Tall.” “So Far From Your Weapon” managed to haunt the audience with mystical Southern balladry. Mosshart, however, sounded most at-home on tracks like “Bone House,” “Rocking Horse,” and “No Hassle Night,” which more or less sound like The Kills with an inflated, Southern-fried rhythm section.

Despite being a supergroup with only one album, the Dead Weather, thankfully, didn’t attempt to beef up their set with an abundance of generic covers. They did, however, include their take on Dylan’s “New Pony,” imbuing it with the grit that was always lacking in the original, along with a surprisingly enjoyable rendition of “Forever My Queen,” from Doom Metallers Pentagram.

Not surprisingly, the audience (largely clad in shorts and not-exactly-impressive tour shirts) had not come to see the Dead Weather, but to simply see Mr. White, whose vocal performances gained the evening’s most eruptive responses. His first appearance on lead vocals was on the bordering-on-brilliant “I Cut Like a Buffalo” where White’s phat beats and sincerely fresh flow could gain him the current title of music’s funkiest white boy. His second time up to the mic, however, was not quite so lively, yet gained the most camera phone snaps of the evening. To close out the main portion of their set White finally wandered from behind the drums to strum an acoustic guitar and share vocal duties with Mosshart for “Will There Be Enough Water?” a lazy and boggy folk ditty to cap off the chaos that had just taken place upon the very same stage.

So Mr. White has done it. He has managed to impress the last remaining naysayers and given them something to crank in their stereos. However, if this band manages to break up The Kills, for generations of hipsters to come, the phrase “Jack White” will come be the equivalent to “Yoko Ono.” Izzy Cihak

Elizabeth & the Catapult @ Tin Angel

Elizabeth & the Catapult
@ Tin Angel
6/27/09
www.elizabethandthecatapult.com

This year Elizabeth & the Catapult will serve as a common ground for middle-aged NPR devotees and their children who are running off to art school. The Brooklyn trio blends a coffeehouse singer/songwriter aesthetic with a clever and modern chicness that would surely catch the ear of anyone studying Picasso, Brecht, or Truffaut this Fall. For their Philadelphia debut, the band found themselves at the Tin Angel (far more suited for the parents), performing songs from Taller Children, their latest release and the year’s most fashionably endearing album. The almost twee “Race You” is the sound of Brooklyn’s hippest embracing their playfullness, the heartwrenching “Apathy” is as elegant as it is painful, and “The Hang Up” is a cheerfully enjoyable breakup song suited for topping VH1 charts. The set also included a few songs from their debut (“Momma’s Boy” and “Waiting for the Kill”) and a handful of covers of tunes from staple hipster folksters. For those who opted to skip the night of dinner theater at the Tin Angel, the band will return to the city on July 17th and find themselves at the M Room in Fishtown... a far more art-student-friendly setting. Izzy Cihak

Gliss @ The Khyber

Gliss
@ The Khyber
5/05/09
www.myspace.com/gliss

Within minutes, the band managed to clear a room of part-time pop punkers and produce something resembling a lonely night at Andy Warhol’s Factory. Lean bodies in striped shirts swayed with reckless abandon to the morbidly chic sound of LA’s Gliss. With their electronics jacked the previous day in Jersey, the band’s set tended toward the lo-fi portion of their catalogue. Without their signature gloom pop that falls somewhere between Placebo and Kill Hannah, Gliss sounded more like the Dandy Warhols as a tribute to The Cure. The majority of the performance was comprised of tracks from their latest release, Devotion Implosion, highlighted by older material, such as the elegant sass of “Blue Sky” and the dark, erotic drones of “Kick in Your Heart.” Unfortunately, the band’s stage presence lacked the swagger of their sound, yet that could be chalked up to the previous day’s occurrences in New Jersey… or just having to have been in New Jersey. Izzy Cihak

Living Things @ Johnny Brenda's

Living Things
@ Johnny Brenda’s
4/30/09
livingthingsmusic.com

With a mirror ball spinning overhead, a rail-thin Rock’N’Roll diva resembling Nancy Spungen’s pimp makes his way through the audience of Johnny Brenda’s, screaming “Where do all the dead boys go?” while coyly confronting panicked hipsters trying desperately not to spill their microbrews. After a few years off the radar, St. Louis’ Living Things are back to show the nation’s indie clubs that rock stars aren’t a thing of the past. Although the “radical”ness of their politics will likely remain forever in quotes, their new tunes are more suitable for kicking out jams than ever. The infectious synthetic groove of “Mercedes Marxist” could shake the asses of politicians and scenesters alike, “Snake Oil Man” set a folk protest song to a clap-along funk beat, and perfectly anthemic “Brass Knuckles” confronted the audience like a brick through the windshields of their hybrids. Living Things’ brand of garage rock, as soulful as it is riotous, hailed over the Philadelphia audience as ineffably chic frontman Lillian Berlin brilliantly shimmied across the stage like Dylan Thomas Stardust. Izzy Cihak

BELL @ The First Unitarian Church

BELL
@ The First Unitarian Church
4/26/09
www.myspace.com/whoisbell

It’s safe to say that little could make a Sunday trip to church more exciting than a bling-dripping chanteuse rockin’ a keytar. Olga Bell, Russia-born Brooklynite, found herself in the AC-free chapel of Philadelphia’s First Unitarian Church on a sweaty Sunday evening between her two-piece percussion section, performing something along the lines of an epic synthetic opera. The chapel, adorned with gold filigree and stained glass windows, housed Bell’s eccentrically expressive vocals (more than slightly reminiscent of Bjork), which coated the room as Jason Nazary and Gunnar Olsen pounded away at drums, traditional and electronic, culminating in a beautifully avant-garde brand of electro pop . The chapel shook as the trio stomped and clapped their way through “ECHINACEA” and “Eat Seeds” provided an aesthetically endearing singer/songwriter musicality far more intriguingly postmodern than anything likely to be found on VH1’s “Artist to Watch.” The band manages to blend hipster irony with sincere musicality: rhythmically-blinking plastic drums collided with classical soprano in a way that would’ve brought Brecht to a blissfully violent climax. Izzy Cihak

Rosi Golan @ The Tin Angel

Rosi Golan
@ The Tin Angel
4/16/09
www.rosigolan.com

Rosi Golan found herself endearingly encased in a scarf, wool hat, and flannel overcoat on a sunny Spring day for her first Philadelphia appearance. Sitting upon the stage of the Tin Angel, the ineffably charming pint-sized folk chanteuse performed songs from her debut, The Drifter & the Gypsy, for a modest yet engrossed audience. Her songs blend the chicness of New York scenesters with the playful pop artistry of VH1’s “You Oughta Know.” The alt. country of “Think of Me” displayed a beautiful and delicately dejected romanticism, “I Don’t Wanna Wait” could’ve been the perfect solo sing-along for a lonely desert drive, and “C’est L’amour” had the sound of a modern day fairy tale of the hippest princess in the kingdom. Izzy Cihak

Propagandhi @ the Troc (3/14)

“See, many of you think I’m a vegan. I’m here to tell you that that is no longer true. I now believe in eating free range human beings.”

There are only a few places that this statement would elicit applause and cheers of approval, one of which being the Trocadero Theatre in Philadelphia, on Mar. 14, where Chris Hannah stirred the crowd into an uproar with one of his only bits of between song banter. He had a lot to live up to, after all, as Propagandhi’s avid willingness to spread their radical rhetoric had earned them a bit of notoriety - not to mention that they had not been to the east coast in nearly eight years. “Yeah, I believe that the way humans live is the most humane method of raising edible livestock.”

This tongue-in-cheek aside led the band into their newest testament of veganism, “Human(e) Meat." The cut was one of the handful the band played off of their newest full-length, Supporting Caste, which Hannah also managed to comment on. “We have a new record out, and I can tell by the drooling faces during the new songs that you don’t all have it yet.”

The band’s history is a long and progressive one, beginning with 1993’s How To Clean Everything. While the band’s politics and belief systems that have remained unchanged throughout its career, the sonic aesthetic is something that followers of the band’s entire catalogue will find suddenly veers. How To Clean Everything and its follow-up, Less Talk, More Rock, were politically confrontational while being aggressive, though in a more standard, less technical way than later records would soon unveil. After the departure of bassist John K. Samson, a new era of Propagandhi was ushered in, seemingly with the addition of secondary vocalist and songwriter Todd Kowalski, and the three albums that followed have confirmed Propagandhi as both one of the world’s most talented and politically involved bands.

Supporting Caste, the band’s fifth proper studio album, falling conveniently into place within the second era of the band that began with 2001’s Today’s Empires, Tomorrow’s Ashes, and continued in 2005 with Potemkin City Limits. The album begins in pummeling fashion, with pinpoint rhythms and dense riffs, added to by the band’s newest addition, second guitar player David “The Beaver” Guillas. Kowalski’s lyrics reference a friend working the night shift on a dangerous side of town, and Hannah’s flair for short arpeggiated guitar leads shines through.

The album’s title track begins the intense political metaphor and imagery for which the band is known, aligning the end of the world with the rolling credits of a terrible film, citing that the only way one will be featured would be to have been a “shepherd king, a virgin birth, a resurrection, a messianic prince or some such childish thing.” Hannah’s lyrics read like a well informed rant written in prose, creating readable paragraphs within the songs that twist and bend to rhyme and fill in the holes between elaborate musical passages.

“Dear Coach’s Corner” finds the band in top melodic form while relating the still scathing commentary of the lyrics to something as simple and seemingly politically neutral as hockey. Hannah spends the song questioning the need and purpose of pre game rituals that he compares to the rallies at Nuremburg. “Specifically the function the ritual serves in conjunction with what everybody knows is in the end a kid’s game. I’m just appealing to your sense of fair play when I say she’s puzzled by the incessant pressure for her to not defy the collective will, and yellow ribboned lapels, as the soldiers inexplicably rappel down from the arena rafters.”

The introduction of the song is a blazing mix of quick chord changes and a nicely placed lead, all dissolving into a single strummed clean guitar pattern while Hannah’s lyrics take center stage.

The album’s crowning gem, however, is “Human(e) Meat," which piles every element that Propagandhi has become known for into one solid rager that details the way in which the band would dissect and consume cook book author and chef Sandor Katz. “With gratitude and tenderness I singed every single hair from his body, gently placed his decapitated head in a stock pot, boiled off his flesh and made a spread-able head cheese." The band’s passion for animal activism shines through in stunning light on this track, mocking those who claim to gain some sort of pseudo spiritual connection through meat. “Because I believe that one can only relate with another living creature by completely destroying it."

Though Propagandhi have long stood for a strict rhetoric of political beliefs, the same can not always be said for their fans, as can be attested to by recent tour-mate Andy Nelson, bassist for Philadelphia’s Paint It Black. “It's been eye opening to tour with Propagandhi [just to see] how many people aren't politically conscious, and that's not a knock on the band, it's just a testament to the fact that they put out pop punk records on Fat [Wreck Chords] in the '90s."

This does not seem to deplete the band’s impact in Nelson’s eyes, however. “[Paint It Black doesn't] take the stand that political punk can change the world in and of itself, but it definitely changed me as a person, and it changed a lot of people. Certainly people make a difference in the world. Propagandhi was a band I'm sure a lot of people see as a band that shapes the way that we think and the way we view the world."- Justin Lutz

Throwing Muses @ World Cafe Live

Throwing Muses
@ World Café Live
03/10/09
www.kristinhersh.com

Philthy’s most iconic musical event of 2009 looked something like a 15-year reunion of Reality Bites extras. For the first of only four scheduled US dates from not-surprisingly under-appreciated (as is the way of music history) Bostonian legends Throwing Muses, the city’s musical sanctuary of sterility, World Café Live, was filled to about half capacity with aged poster children for VH1’s I Love The 90s whose years of teaching five days a week at a community college have taken a slight toll on their Gen. X anti-dance moves. The truly alternative trio looked disappointingly inoffensive in a setting usually reserved for bearded singer/songwriters and “world musicians.”

The band’s set focused on material from the latter portion of their career, most notably 1995’s University (“Shimmer,” “Bright Yellow Gun,” and “Hazing”) and 1996’s Limbo (“Serene” and “Shark”). These brilliantly transgressive pop fables ring just as progressive as ever, but they lost much of their potency in the vast dinner theatre venue. While Kristin Hersh’s coy refusal to “perform” her songs as a pop star is charmingly striking in more intimate settings, from the back of WCL she likely just looked sleepy. Izzy Cihak

Lydia @ The Barbary

Lydia
@ The Barbary
03/03/09
www.lydiamusic.com

The band seamlessly segued from tuning their instruments themselves into the opening number of their set as frontman Leighton Antelman made his way through the audience and onto the equally cramped stage of the Barbary; Lydia are not the typical act signed to Universal Motown. Although the group has been described in terms as disturbing as post-emo, the band’s sound is far more complex and intriguing. Their brand of melancholy power pop isn’t dissimilar to Kill Hannah at their least synthetic, Antelman embraces the delicate morbidity of Robert Smith, and keyboardist/backup vocalist Mindy White brings keys and vox akin to those found in symphonic metal – all of this through a Warped Tour aesthetic (if you can even call it that). Although their latest release, Illuminate, is a little too reminiscent of well-polished, pseudo alterna-pop to discuss with your more progressively hip peers, their live show is far more raw than one would expect. The band’s set was riddled with charmingly credible ailments like faltering drums and tumbling mic stands and Antelman proved to be a sassily paramount frontman with the coy, androgynous swagger of Brian Molko. Tightly-packed fans roared over the band during “This is Twice Now” and “I Woke Up Near the Sea” as if they were anthems of 1977. The only disappointing aspect of the performance is that it lacked catalogue highlights like (the unfortunately titled) “Now the One You Once Loved is Leaving,” that cement White as more than just the band’s novelty hipster eye candy. Izzy Cihak

Obi Best @ Johnny Brenda's

Obi Best
@ Johnny Brenda’s
2/22/09
www.obibest.com

“It’s always important to stretch before you drink.” This was one of many poignant and off-beat pieces of hipster jargon spouted by Alex Lilly during Obi Best’s debut in the City of Sisterly Affection. The last time Lilly made an appearance in the area was as a backup singer for brilliantly postmodern space lounge duo the Bird and the Bee during a sold out performance at Philly’s bastion of NPR sterility, World Café Live. This time around Lilly found herself presenting her own musical project to an unfortunately sparse crowd at the city’s official watering hole for the hip, Johnny Brenda’s. Obi Best’s performance was comprised of tracks from the band’s first LP, Capades. The set included songs like “Nothing Can Come Between Us,” which is along the lines of a fashionably quirky adaptation of Morrissey for a scenester musical and “Green and White Stripes,” a composition far more clever and progressive than anything to be found in the catalogue of the band who (possibly coincidentally) finds their name in the track’s title. The band’s sound hardly strays from the indie pop of the Bird and the Bee, yet lacks the range (i.e. the insatiable danceability of “I Hate Camera” against the tear-inducingly lo-fi “Spark”) to establish itself as quite as profound as the previous band. However, the both pleasantly avant-garde and accessibly chic sounds Lilly produces in Obi Best, combined with her ineffable eccentricity, will surely establish her as her own indie starlet. From the stage of Johnny Brenda’s (donning a charmingly curious pastiche of a leotard, snow boots, and clear-framed glasses) she resembled a Disney princess guest-starring in a Godard noir. Izzy Cihak

The Pretenders @ The Electric Factory

The Pretenders
@ The Electric Factory
2/6/09
www.thepretenders.com

With The Pretenders playing Philadelphia’s Electric Factory on a Friday night, PA/NJ babysitters were in high demand on February 6th. However, with the band's latest release, Break Up the Concrete, picking up right where “The Adultress” left off, and a tour that’s an affront to the very white heteronormative suburbanism that afforded them their legacy, The Pretenders are embodying the term “badass” more fully than they have in the past two decades. And Chrissie Hynde? At 57 years-old, in skintight jeans and knee-high vinyl boots, she looked… well, still pretty damn sexy. In a nearly two-hour set revolving around themes such as S&M, genderfucking, and The Kinks, The Pretenders seemed to strip themselves of all previous ties to honky reggae, Demi Moore movies, and Lilith Fair.

Chrissie’s new live band, featuring original Pretender Martin Chambers, along with a group of young punks, gave the band’s catalogue just the audacity that had been absent on recent tours. Hynde strutted across the stage with more credible sass than any other surviving Post-Punk diva, coyly mocking those audience members shouting for songs like “Night in My Veins.” The Pretenders were out to prove that they weren't just a nostalgia band.

The band was anxious to present their latest release in a live setting, featuring their most brashly danceable songs since Learning to Crawl and the grainiest ballads Hynde has ever produced. The former of which tended to be more impressive in that particular setting (that is, a 3,000-capacity room that looks like a “futuristic” set of a 1950s B-movie, filled with people who’s last concert attended was on Journey’s summer jaunt): the reckless mod-abilly of “Boots Of Chinese Plastic” opened the evening with an almost violent rapture thought to be relegated to bands still promoting their first album, followed by “Don’t Cut Your Hair,” a could-be sequel to “Precious” that is just as fantastically juvenile as one would imagine, and the playfully primal pop of the title track that closed the set to more ass-shaking than you would expect for a song likely only 5% of the audience knew. Unfortunately, the alt. country balladry of “The Nothing Maker” and “Love’s a Mystery” were lost among the sound of hundreds of weekend warriors struggling to order $7 Budweiser’s.

Highlighting The Pretenders’ Philadelphia set were songs like “Tattooed Love Boys,” “Thumbelina,” and “The Wait,” from the days when the band still had a bit of the 100 Club in them. The set did, however, include a handful of dentist-office FM favorites, such as “Brass in Pocket” and “Back on the Chain Gang,” but the band managed to avoid “Middle of the Road” and Chrissie spruced up “Message of Love” into one of the night’s high points, with the line “Oh, it’s good, good, good, Like… Morrissey.” Of course, in 2009 the Pretenders aren’t exactly a punk band, or anything too likely to offend, but it’s pretty cool to find old-timers putting up such a convincing fight. Izzy Cihak