I'm just going to sit this video right here. Why? Because any day is a good day for Lenny Kravitz. Oh, and he has a new album, Raise Vibration, scheduled for release on September 7. You can pre-order a variety of bundles HERE. Some of the bundles require commitment...I went with a lesser commitment option. Check out the video below.
Cory Chisel & Adriel Denae are set to release their new album Tell Me True, tomorrow, August 4. The album was produced by Dan Knobler. Check out the track "Songbird" from the album below.
Tell Me True was recorded at Chisel's own Refuge Foundation For the Arts- a 33,000 square-foot, 80 year old monastery and artist retreat that houses a recording studio, 50+ bedrooms, performance spaces and even a radio station in his hometown of Appleton, Wisconsin.
Nicole Atkins is set to play Mercury Lounge on Saturday, September 9. Tickets go on sale TODAY, Friday, June 30 at 12PM EDT. See below for more details.
Marvel Studios released a trailer for their upcoming superhero movie, Black Panther. I've been waiting for this release since I saw Chadwick Boseman bring "Black Panther" T'Challa to live action in Captain American: Civil War. Check out the teaser below.
Marvel Studios' "Black Panther" follows T'Challa who, after the death of his father, the King of Wakanda, returns home to the isolated, technologically advanced African nation to succeed to the throne and take his rightful place as king. But when a powerful old enemy reappears, T'Challa's mettle as king-and Black Panther-is tested when he is drawn into a formidable conflict that puts the fate of Wakanda and the entire world at risk. Faced with treachery and danger, the young king must rally his allies and release the full power of Black Panther to defeat his foes and secure the safety of his people and their way of life.
"Black Panther" stars Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, with Angela Bassett, with Forest Whitaker, and Andy Serkis.
The film is directed by Ryan Coogler and produced by Kevin Feige with Louis D'Esposito, Victoria Alonso, Nate Moore, Jeffrey Chernov and Stan Lee serving as executive producers. Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole wrote the screenplay.
Beth Ditto is set to play two shows in New York. On July 13, she will be at The Bowery Ballroom. The following night, July 14, she will be in Brooklyn at Rough Trade. See below for more details and other tour dates below.
She is set to release her new solo album, Fake Sugar, June 16. You can pre-order it HERE. Check out the video for the first song from the album, "Fire" below.
Tour Dates
6/10 - Columbus, OH @ CD102.5 Summer Kick-Off
6/13 - Dallas, TX @ KXT 91.7 Sun Sets
7/12 - Washington, DC @ U Street Music Hall - headline show
7/13 - New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom - headline show
7/14 - Brooklyn, NY@ Rough Trade - headline show
7/15 - Toronto, ON @ Horseshoe Tavern - headline show
7/17 - Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall - headline show
7/26 - San Francisco, CA @ The Independent - headline show
The Kills are set to release their new EP, Echo Home Non-Electric EP. It is available for pre-order...HERE for digital and HERE for vinyl. The digital version will be out on June 2 and the vinyl version is scheduled for August 18. Check out the videos for "Wait" and "Desperado" below.
Donald Cried is one of those movies that you're not sure whether you're supposed to awkwardly laugh, cringe or do both. The film centers around former childhood friends Peter (Jesse Wakeman) and Donald (Kris Avedisian) from Warwick, RI. Peter left for New York and changed. Donald, still lives with his mom (and his horrid stepdad) and has lived a rather dreary unchanged life.
Peter has returned home to settle his grandmothers affairs. He looses his wallet and realizes that the only person he has left to ask for help is Donald. From there everything is awkward...bizarre...insane...intense...at times just outright painfully uncomfortable.
When we first meet Donald, my first reaction was, 'oh hell no! Don't ask this questionable guy for anything...walk wherever you need to go...panhandle, anything just don't ask Donald. But of course he does. You learn right off this isn't going to be an easy afternoon starting with the weird bedroom scene which sees Donald butt naked in front of clearly uncomfortable Peter while proudly showing off his autographed porn poster.
Little by little you start to realize that Donald's annoying and odd behavior brings out the fact that Peter, who can't wait to be rid of Donald, wasn't such a nice friend back when. Donald goes from childlike to aggressive and back again at the blink of the eye getting a little payback while humiliating Peter throughout their adventure. A part of you feels sorry for Donald while a part of you just wants to punch him. At the same time, you wonder what and how bad is Peter's defect. He hasn't been back home in about twenty years because he doesn't like how he feels when he's there. He's been so absent from his grandmothers life that the nursing home staff thinks he's an imposter due to Donald visiting her as Peter...which is creepy and yet enduring. One has to wonder just how good life really is in New York for Peter. How is it that there's nobody in all of New York that he can call in an emergency that would make that roughly three and a half hour drive to Warwick with some money and to help him out.
After an increasingly bizarre day that eventually sees the pair bonding over memories, it all comes to a head. By the end, Peter, after witnessing Donald's stepfather belittle him over breakfast, seemingly understands Donald better even offering him a bit of genuine friendship as they say goodbye. While I wouldn't want to hang out with either of them, I found that I don't find them as intolerable as I did when we first met them and you realize this odd adventure needed to happen between them. Both Avedisian and Wakeman give appropriate, awkwardly entertaining performances.
Director/writer/star Kris Avedisian expertly deconstructs the contemporary obsession with the "man-child" in this darkly funny story about former childhood best friends who reconnect decades later in their working-class Rhode Island neighborhood. Peter Latang (Jesse Wakeman) left his childhood home of Warwick, Rhode Island to reinvent himself as a slick, Wall Street mover and shaker. When he's suddenly forced to return home to bury his grandmother, he loses his wallet on the trip and ends up at loose ends. Stranded and broke, Peter looks to the only person he can think of to help him out - his next door neighbor and former childhood friend Donald (played by Avedisian). The ever-eccentric Donald hasn't changed a bit, and what starts as a simple favor turns into a long and unhinged van ride into their past. Painfully awkward moments and increasingly bizarre – and dangerous – hijinks ensue, as the friends rediscover their stifled aggression and teenaged rebelliousness. Avedisian’s pitch-perfect first feature is a brilliant twist on the family-reunion melodrama and the classic buddy comedy.
TRT: 85 Minutes
Directed by Kris Avedisian
Produced by Kyle Martin
Written by Kris Avedisian, Kyle Espeleta and Jesse Wakeman
The New Respects recently announced their debut EP, Here Comes Trouble via Credential Recordings. The record is set to be released on March 10. The Nashville group are set to go on the road supporting Robert Randolph & The Family Band beginning March 15. See below for tour dates.
The New Respects enlisted the help of Jeremy Lutito (of rock group Leagues) to produce Here Comes Trouble. Two tracks have been released from the EP, "Trouble" and "Money."
The New Respects is a family affair, made up of three siblings, twins Alexis (bass) and Zandy Fitzgerald (guitar), along with their brother Darius (drums), and cousin Jasmine Mullen (vocals/guitar). The group is heavily influenced by the gospel music they were surrounded by growing up in Nashville, which extends to artists including Aretha Franklin, Alabama Shakes, and John Mayer.
Track List
Money
Frightening Lightning
Come As You Are
Shoes
Trouble
Tour Dates Supporting Robert Randolph & The Family Band
Karen Elson is set to release her latest album, Double Roses on April 7 via H.O.T. Records Ltd. That's also the day she will take the stage in Brooklyn at Rough Trade NYC. See below for more details. You can pre-order the upcoming album HERE. Listen to "Call Your Name" and "Distant Shore" from the album below.
"I wrote maybe six songs but I'm very instinctual as a person and I knew that there was one puzzle piece missing that I hadn't tapped into the deepest part myself. I knew I needed to pull that out if I was going to make the record I needed to make." The turning point was "Distant Shore", and after that the floodgates were open, and things she'd kept bottled up for years began pouring out, detailing the emotional geography of her heart, always hovering somewhere between uncertainty and regret, without truly landing on either. But in the end finding out who she really was as a person. "At the end of the writing the album I felt liberated. I felt free. I felt like me," says Elson.
Check out video for "Idle Stranger from Miccoli. The single will be released on March 3. You can pick it up HERE. Check out the video below.
Miccoli, their name taken from the sibling trio's surname, formed in 2010 after spending most of their childhood studying and making music. Growing up in Birmingham, England, they were brought up listening to Simon and Garfunkel, Don Mclean, The Police, Fleetwood Mac and the sounds of Motown, to name just a few of their diverse musical influences.
Twin brothers Adriano (vocal and acoustic/electric guitar) Alessandro (piano, vocal and acoustic guitar) and their younger sister Francesca (vocal, piano and harmonica) have toured extensively, giving the band the opportunity to explore their musical identity and fine tune their live set - a compelling blend of haunting, melodic and eclectic sounds, interlaced with breathtaking harmonies.
Miccoli's new single 'Idle Stranger' is an epic slice of Indie Pop which showcases the band's vocal harmonies and ear for writing a catchy hook. Accompanied by a stunning video filmed in Venice, it's clear that Miccoli's artistic and musical vision is manifested through a rare and intense hypnotic beauty.
Conor Oberst released a video for "Till St. Dymphna Kicks Us Out" this week. The track is from his upcoming album Salutations that is scheduled to be released on March 17. You can pre-order the album HERE. Check out the Greg Marinaccio video below.
New York, Conor Oberst will be making a stop in Brooklyn at Celebrate Brooklyn! on July 20. See below for more details and tour dates.
Oberst has partnered with Plus 1 so that $1 from every ticket sold on US headline dates will go to Planned Parenthood and their work delivering vital reproductive health care, sex education, and information to millions of women, men, and young people in the US and worldwide. General on sale starts Friday, February 24th at noon EST. All tour dates below.
Tour Dates March
9 Omaha, NE @ The Waiting Room Lounge (SOLD OUT) #
10 Kansas City, MO @ Madrid Theater #
11 Memphis, TN @ Minglewood Hall #
12 Tulsa, OK @ Cain's Ballroom #
14 San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger #
16 Spicewood, TX @ Luck Reunion
17 Houston, TX @ Warehouse Live #
18 New Orleans, LA @ The Civic Theatre #
19 Macon, GA @ Cox Capitol Theatre #
21 Asheville, NC @ The Orange Peel #
22 Chattanooga, TN @ Track 29 #
23 Atlanta, GA @ Variety Playhouse #
24 McMinnville, TN @ Bluegrass Underground
25 St Louis, MO @ The Pageant #
26 Iowa City, IA @ The Englert Theater #
May
12 Oakland, CA @ The Fox %
13 Los Angeles, CA @ The Greek Theater
14 San Diego, CA @ The Observatory %
16 Tucson, AZ @ Rialto %
18 El Paso, TX @ Tricky Falls %
19 Austin, TX @ ACL Live at The Moody Theater %
20 Dallas, TX @ Granada Theater %
21 McAllen, TX @ Cine El Rey %
23 Fayetteville, AR @ George's Majestic Lounge %
24 Wichita, KS @ Orpheum Theater %
31 Royal Oak, MI @ Royal Oak Theater*
June
1 Nelsonville, OH @ Nelsonville Music Fest
3 Norfolk, VA @ NorVa*
4 Wilmington, NC @ The Throne Theater*
July
14-16 Louisville, KY @ Forecastle Festival
20 Brooklyn, NY @ Celebrate Brooklyn ^
21 Boston, MA @ The House of Blues +
28 Camden, NJ @ XPoNential Festival with Wilco and Hop Along
* Big Thief support # The Felice Brothers support % Phoebe Bridgers support ^ Hop Along and Big Thief support + Hop Along
Rhiannon Giddens is set to release her second full-length album, Freedom Highway, February 24...you can pick up the album HERE. In support of the new album, she has announced a tour. New York, she'll be at Alice Tully Hall on Saturday, May 13. See below for more details and a list of tour dates.
Catfight, written and directed by Onur Tukel,is the story of two former friends who after years of not seeing each other reignite an old feud within minutes of seeing each other. Veronica (Sandra Oh) is rich, drunk and oblivious. Ashley (Anne Heche) is struggling, bitter and abusive. They're not likable people when we meet them.
In your typical movie with two catty female leads, they'd generally yell, probably cry, hug it out, become friends again and we'd get some sort of life lesson. In Catfight, we get two women who beat the shit out of each other like two dudes in a street brawl...multiple times, laced with odd talk show moments telling us about the war that is going on.
This dark humored film shows a vicious cycle of anger, loss and an astounding amount of absurdity. After a spectacular smackdown that felt endless, Oh's Veronica wakes up to a dry witted doctor (Dylan Baker) who tells her she's been in a coma for two years and her former housekeeper Donna (Myra Lucretia Taylor) who sums things up for her with mock cheerfulness 'no family, no home and you're broke but you're awake and you look great...' Faced with both the loss of her husband (in an accident) and son (in the war) and with the help of Donna and a small box containing her worldly goods, Veronica realizes she wasn't nice, needs to be a better person and makes an effort.
On the flip side, Heche's Ashley has become a successful artist painting political and war inspired art. At no point do I find this character likable. Ashley is a rude, obnoxious mean person whether she's struggling or successful and takes it out on her assistant, Sally (Ariel Karouss). She and her girlfriend Lisa (Alicia Silverstone) are having a baby...life is great until Veronica's anger is sparked by one of Ashley's paintings and we get another smackdown that feels endless as well. This time the roles are reversed and Ashley wakes up to the same dry witted coma doctor and circumstances mirroring her rivals awakening. It's at this point that I feel the film lets me down. I don't ever feel like Ashley learns her lesson, even a tiny bit, or becomes a better person or even wants to be. I wanted to at some point like her, just a little bit but, I never reached that point.
Both Sandra Oh and Anne Heche give good performances and so does the supporting cast. Yet, the film at times feels disjointed and incomplete. The fight scenes, however, are cult classic status worthy. Unfortunately, by the time the final scene of these rivals beating the crap out of each other rolls around, what was dark and humorous becomes tedious.
Catfight opens in select cities and on-demand on March 3.
Synopsis:
One-time college pals Veronica (Sandra Oh) and Ashley (Anne Heche) run into each other at a party. The women, now in their forties and having not seen each other since school, find that their lives have taken radically different paths. Ashley is barely scraping by as a painter of politically charged canvases, while Veronica is married to a wealthy businessman who's about to profit hugely off yet another US-led war in the Middle East.
Within minutes of their reunion, a rivalry is revived, old wounds are torn open, and a Manhattan stairwell becomes home to a woman-on-woman brawl the likes of which are seldom seen outside of martial-arts epics. And now the gloves are off. The new feature from writer-director Onur Tukel takes a set-up that in most films would lead to a heartwarming story of female friendship — and uses it instead as the springboard for an outrageously madcap black comedy.
TRT: 96 min Director: Onur Tukel Producers: Gigi Graff, Greg Newman Writer: Onur Tukel Cast: Sandra Oh, Anne Heche, Alicia Silverstone, Amy Hill, Myra Lucretia Taylor, Ariel Kavoussi, Craig Bierko, Dylan Baker Distributor: MPI Media Group / Dark Sky Films
The album, a virtual two-person effort which features Willie B (Brian Wilson) on drums and Moog bass, combines Coogan’s three-octave soprano vocals, electric guitar soundscapes and pointed social commentary into a fierce cohesive piece which combines the personal and the political, in a musical hybrid of rock, country, pop and classical opera into a unique whole.
There have been many attempts at rock opera in the past, but The Lonely Cry of Space & Time is something different. Call it operatic rock, a genre previously explored by the likes of Kate Bush, Jane Siberry, Lene Lovich, Yoko Ono and Freddie Mercury, among others. Coogan studied opera at the prestigious Mozarteum University of Salzburg in Austria, before moving to Seattle, where she worked as a fisheries biologist in Washington State and Alaska, which goes a long way to explaining her frequent use of water as a metaphor. In fact, a drought in the Finger Lakes region of New York where she lived in part was a factor in the immediacy she brought to the new album.
William Matheny is set to release his new album, Strange Constellations, on February 24. You can pre-order the album HERE. Check out the track "Living Half To Death" from the album below.
New York, he will be in Brooklyn at Union Hall on February 26. See below for more details and tour dates.
2/24: 123 Pleasant Street, Morgantown, WV (w/Ona, Adam Remnant)
2/25: The V Club, Huntington, WV (w/Ona, Adam Remnant)
2/26: Union Hall, Brooklyn, NY (w/Loose Cattle, Charles Bissell of The Wrens)
2/27: Bourbon & Branch, Philadelphia, PA (w/Dan Ex Machina, David F. Bello of The World Is a Beautful Place and I am No Longer Afraid to Die, Stephanie Cottingham of Ortolan)
2/28: DC9, Washington, DC (w/The Paranoid Style, Wylder)
3/1: Pale Fire Brewing Co., Harrisonburg, VA (w/Bishops, Uncle Bengine & the Restraining Orders)
3/2: The Green Lantern, Lexington, KY
3/3: The Country, Nashville, TN (w/The Barons)
3/4: The Caledonia Lounge, Athens, GA (w/Yip Deceiver, Casper & the Cookies)
3/7: Folk School Coffee Parlor, Ludlow, KY
3/10: Be Here Now, Muncie, IN
3/11: Water Main, Richmond, KY
3/12: The Burlington, Chicago, IL (w/MAKS the Fox, Mark Panick of Razorhouse, Kelsey Wild)
3/13: Growler’s, Memphis, TN (w/James & the Ultrasounds)
3/14: SXSW @ Beerland, Austin, TX (Keeled Scales day party)
3/15: SXSW @ The Hole in the Wall, Austin, TX — (Chicken Ranch Records showcase)
Matthew Logan Vasquez is set to release his new album, Does What He Wants, on April 21 via Dine Alone Records; the album can be pre-ordered HERE. He will be hitting the road in support of the new album making a stop in Brooklyn at Rough Trade NYC on April 29. See below for more details and tour dates.
