For Lack of a Better Phrase, NOLA Bands “Killed It” at SXSW
Hours before my fourth trip to South by Southwest Festival would take a decided turn for the Kerouackian, when I’d find myself sleeping among a sea of strangers thirty deep in what appeared to be a furniture-free detox safe house for strung-out teens with an elderly black man walking around smoking a cigarette preaching the [...]
Photoset // South by Southwest Festival, Part 3: 03.17.2012
Sip Sip + The Tontons + Megafauna + Vox and the Hound + King Louie’s Missing Monuments + The Wolf + Look Mexico + Sun Hotel performing in and around Austin, Texas on March 17, 2012 for South by Southwest Festival
Photoset // South by Southwest Festival, Part 1: 03.15.2012
Candy Claws + Chrome Sparks w/ Stefaloo + Secret Mountains + Tops + You Won’t + Sun Hotel + Hikes + The Artist Formerly Known as 2012 + Glish + Sun Hotel + Caddywhompus performing in and around Austin, Texas on March 15, 2012 for South by Southwest Festival
Photoset // Foburg, Day 2: 03.10.2012
Maps & Atlases + Sun Hotel + Caddywhompus performing at One Eyed Jacks for Foburg Music Festival
Preview // Foburg Festival 2012
Last year, when the second official Foburg Music Festival descended on the city of New Orleans, it presented a noticeable shift from the year past – namely with respect to the geographic footprint of the event which, though beginning as exclusively a Frenchman Street affair, expanded to include parts of the French Quarter as well [...]
Preview // Cafe Carnival: 02.16.2012 – 02.20.2012
In the last six months, no local venue has made a larger effort to break into a higher echelon of rock club status than hidden-in-plain-sight Garden District standby Cafe Prytania. More frequent, consistent and eclectic booking in the back half of 2011 slowly but surely elevated the humble establishment from occasional Loyola-band hotspot to a [...]
Live Picks: 02.09.2012 – 02.15.2012
02.10: Yob + Thou – The Big Top
Within a steadily rising community of artists and music heads striving and waiting for New Orleans’ national DIY comeuppance lies Thou, a different animal altogether. This Baton Rouge/New Orleans-based black and sludge metal hybrid has, since its inception in 2005, enjoyed the exact opposite type of success: acknowledged locally with no larger a profile than any other under-the-radar act, they have managed to build a hefty – even semi-legendary – following outside the state of Louisiana, embarking on nationwide tours with surprising regularity and launching cross-Atlantic jaunts nearly as often.
Photoset // The Revivalists + Habitat + Sun Hotel + Bantam Foxes + Coyotes + Gold And The Rush: 01.21.2012
The Revivalists + Habitat + Sun Hotel + Bantam Foxes + Coyotes + Gold And The Rush performing at Howlin’ Wolf and Howlin’ Wolf Den on January 21, 2012 for Revivapalooza
Matt’s Top 10 Albums of 2011
1. Wild Flag, Wild Flag Not since 2010′s Stuck On Nothing, the high-octane debut from Philadelphia power-pop quintet Free Energy, has an album rung out with the unbridled urgency and tenacity of Wild Flag‘s 2011 inaugural offering. While it is practically every kind of rad and awesome and badass, there is almost nothing overtly retro-facing [...]
