Our weekly Go concert recommendations are updated every Monday morning and are always available on jaxmusic.org. For the comprehensive list of this week’s concerts, go to our live music calendar page. Hip Hop/R&B Che Forreign – Wednesday, July 5 Little Alley Shows | Downtown Jacksonville The latest installment in a series of pop-up concerts curated by Downtown vintage boutique Wolf & Cub, Jax singer …
Reissue of 1968 Debut from German Guitarist Volker Kriegel is a Worthy Mix of Early Jazz Fusion and Relic-Kitsch
While hardly a household name on these shores, German jazz guitarist Volker Kriegel (1943-2003) appeared on more than 200 releases and was a founding member of the United Jazz + Rock Ensemble, a large ensemble which included fellow European-based, forward-thinking jazz heavyweights including bassist Eberhard Weber, flugelhornist Kenny Wheeler and trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff. While still in his twenties, Kriegel was …
Brandee Younger | Tiny Desk Concert
NPR Music is celebrating Black Music Month with an array of brand new Tiny Desk concerts. Together, these artists represent the past, present and future of Black music. This month of carefully curated shows is a celebration of Black artists expressing themselves in ways we’ve never seen before, and of the Tiny Desk’s unique way of showcasing that talent. On …
Favorite New Artists Of 2023 (So Far)
On this edition of All Songs Considered, we asked NPR member stations to pick their favorite new artists of 2023. We begin with Matt Shaw from WJCT in Jacksonville, Fla. He chose the grunge-inspired music of Blondshell. Justin Barney from WNXP in Nashville is obsessed with the music of Hannah Jagadu, who recorded her debut as a student at New …
Duval Country-Rockers Dean Winter and the Heat Get Ready to Fire It Up at Their Upcoming Vinyl Release Party at Intuition Ale Works
If you are lucky in country music, you will eventually run into hard luck. Anyone can have gratitude on a sunny Friday pay day. It’s the broke-a** rainy Tuesdays that keep you on your feet or flat on your back. And while country music isn’t all ragged blues and boozy ruminations, arguably the best and most memorable music of that …
North Florida Bands: Sing Out Loud is Accepting Applications for 2023 Festival
Local musicians looking for a chance to perform in front of a live audience (compared to a dead or undead audience) are in luck. The seventh-annual Sing Out Loud Festival is accepting applications from Northeast Florida musicians to perform during the festival, held each year at various venues in and around St. Augustine. The festival is accepting applications from solo …
On new single “Respectfully,” Jacksonville Singer-Songwriter Ebonique Moves with Purpose
Ebonique has returned, in dominance mode no less, with a new single called “Respectfully.” Over nimble guitar work and a hissing drum machine, the Jacksonville-based R&B and soul singer-songwriter states what she notices about how others intentionally gravitate to her for clout. In doing so, she clearly lays down the guidelines of what her purpose is. The confidence and competence …
Here’s the deal with King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
Among the surest ways to feel out of the loop right now is to look at concert listings and notice that artists you’ve never heard — or even heard of — are somehow big enough to play very large venues. These days, it’s a revelation that can strike without warning, no matter who you are or how closely you keep …
Here’s How the Recently Reunited Jacksonville Indie-Rock band The Julius Airwave Makes Their Crunchy, Confident Sound
When Rick Colado, Chris Gibson, and Mark Hubbard started making music together in the late ’90s as The Julius Airwave, their teenage sound was confident and wild. “Our music eventually became restrained and unsure,” says singer and guitarist Colado, “and now, it’s just fun. But we are an indie rock band.” This year, the band has released two new singles—Slow …
The Best Concerts in Jacksonville | June 26-July 2
The Smile, Peter Frampton, Rain Dogs Celebrates 10 years, Heat Fest and more
Our weekly Go concert recommendations are updated every Monday morning and are always available on jaxmusic.org. For the comprehensive list of this week’s concerts, go to our live music calendar page. Jazz Blue Jay Jazz Jam – Tuesday, June 27 Blue Jay Listening Room | Jacksonville Beach Every Tuesday, fun-sized Jax Beach venue Blue Jay Listening Room hosts a rotating cast of standout players …
New Music Friday: The best releases out on June 23
The rapper and singer Coi Leray drops her sophomore full-length COI this week, a genre-hopping, sample-heavy adrenaline rush packed with hooks and swagger. We hear from a number of cuts from the record to open this week’s show, from the bluesy riff rock of “Black Rose” to sweet R&B, ’80s-flavored synth pop, Afro-fusion and more. The album leads us to …
MUNA | Tiny Desk Concert
“It’s very cool to see that everyone who works for NPR is gay,” MUNA singer-guitarist Katie Gavin deadpanned by way of introduction at the band’s Tiny Desk concert. For a band whose latest album is currently soundtracking its second straight Pride Month, MUNA has found a deep kinship with queer audiences — a fact Gavin noted during the lead-in to …
The Rebuilt Heart of Jason Isbell
Luck favors the prepared, as they say, and young Jason Isbell was ready. He had honed his skills as a songwriter and guitar player since he started playing the mandolin back when his hands were too small to wrap around a guitar neck. He would sit alone in his bedroom for days on end, isolated and insulated from his parents’ …
Best Live Music in Jax | Jun. 19-25
Tedeschi Trucks Band, Jagged Edge, Mold!, Little Alley Shows and more.
Our weekly Go concert recommendations are updated every Monday morning and are always available on jaxmusic.org. For the comprehensive list of this week’s concerts, go to our live music calendar page. Metal Weeping – Tuesday, June 19 Rain Dogs | Five Points New Jersey death-metal group Weeping visits Jacksonville, playing Rain Dogs on Tuesday. More Neo-Soul/R&B SouLo Lyon – Thursday, June 21 Little Alley …
American-Roots Maestro Dom Flemons Follows the Roots of the Blues Through Northeast Florida
The rising tide of Black representation in (Mainstream) American roots music has resulted, to no inconsiderable extent, from the efforts of Dominique “Dom” Flemons and his colleagues in the Carolina Chocolate Drops, an exceptional band founded in Durham, North Carolina back in 2005. Flemons’ departure from the group in 2013 initiated what appears to have been the group’s final dissolution …
New Music Friday: The best releases out on June 16
We’ve got two big releases this week from artists who’ve returned after long breaks from their own work: Killer Mike has his first new solo album in more than a decade and Iceland’s Sigur Rós is back with the band’s first new studio album since 2013. Killer Mike’s Michael is steeped in gospel and deeply personal stories that reflect on …
Rachel Angel, Daddy, Folk Is People to Headline this Year’s Queer Country Disco in Jacksonville
Queer Country Disco — the annual event celebrating the music of queer Americana and country artists — is back for another rodeo. Featuring performances by Asheville-by-way-of-Miami alt-country star Rachel Angel, Duval electro-pop artist Daddy and Jax Americana band Folk is People (with more acts to be announced soon), QCD 2023 will be held Saturday, August 12 at WJCT Studios. Founded …
Retro L.A. Rockers Allah-Las Return with Vintage Glam-Rock Bop, “The Stuff”
Notable Crate-diggers, Los Angeles retro-rockers Allah-Las are back with “The Stuff,” an enjoyably simple mid-tempo taste of Zuma 85 (out October 13 via Calico Discos / Innovative Leisure), the group’s first full-length album since 2019’s LAHS. A sarcastic – although by-and-large unoffending – lamentation of the state of modern music in the form of a glam rock bop, sonically “The …
Australian Singer-Songwriter Angie MacMahon’s “Saturn Returning” is a Savvy Revival of Symphonic Rock for Global Romantics
The latest from Australian singer-songwriter Angie McMahon is a plaintive ballad that isn’t afraid to dip into the majestic. “Saturn Returning” slowly paces itself with a simple plucked motif that is gradually overtaken by a borderline-bombastic symphonic wall of sound, as McMahon’s voice mirrors itself into a monolithic, over-dubbed chorale. McMahon’s undeniable and versatile skills as a vocalist help elevate …
Sound & Vision | Visual Artist Edison William Leads Us from the Unreal to the Real and Back Again
Sound & Vision is a semi-regular feature that examines how music influences Northeast Florida artists. Accompanying playlists for each Sound & Vision feature can be found on JME’s spotify channel. The future is ultimately resolute, carved into an unknowable stone. Regardless of our actions, desires, fears, or even the advent of providence and fate, if we are lucky to see it the …
Paul McCartney’s Photos of Early Beatlemania are in a Book and on Display in London
Updated June 13, 2023 at 10:38 AM ET This famous moment in music history is now visible from a different angle. Any capsule history of rock music, or pop music, or the 1960’s will include the Beatles’ arrival in the United States in early 1964. The images are all familiar — young men with bowl haircuts (that they’d later grow …
Jacksonville Hip-Hop Artist Aalana Stands Tall on New Track, “Beretta”
Duval emcee Aalana is back with a new single, “Beretta,” the uber-talented young rapper’s first release since 2022’s “Okay Cool.” There’s little debate as to whether Aalana possesses star power. And on “Beretta,” she flosses her position with hitting phrases, touching on the importance of friendship and connection, wavering on whether either has inherent value in navigating life’s highs – …
Aja Monet’s Debut Album Fuses Art and Advocacy, Poet and Performer
In Black American folklore, music and poetry share the same soul. The poets of the Black Arts movement, particularly Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Audre Lorde and Amiri Baraka, were in touch with jazz as if it were of the same coterie, and they opened the door for the more music-driven spoken-word artists of the 1970s — Gil Scott-Heron, The Last …
Jax Indie-Band Teal Peel Packs an Ocean’s Worth of Character Into New Song “Sandy”
Can’t stand the sight of seagulls They freak you out and they’re kinda annoying as hell So says Jax musician Taylor Paul Neal on the latest Teal Peel single, “Sandy.” Fans of Pavement and Mercury Rev are bound to appreciate the cheeky lyricism of the local indie rock outfit’s new songs. I mean, who among us here in Northeast Florida …
On the Easy-Going ‘Joy’all,’ Jenny Lewis Defiantly Preaches the Pursuit of Happiness
“I once knew someone who said that he didn’t believe in the pursuit of happiness,” Jenny Lewis recently said in an interview about Joy’all, her new solo album. “And I thought, wow, how unfortunate.” The comment sums up a kind of wry wisdom that seems to characterize Lewis’ music: the belief that happiness isn’t a given but must be pursued …
EASYin2D and Mecca thA Marvelous, Two Laidback Duval Emcees, Collab on the Ultra-Chill “Peaches”
Two ascendant Jacksonville-based hip-hop artists known individually for their chill deliveries, Mecca thA Marvelous and L.O.V.E. Culture’s EASYin2D, keep their Duval manners in order while speaking about their dealings with a “Georgia peach” on a new track. From a new, two-song collaborative release called JITS, the song “Peaches” is a mid-tempo head nod, likely to find acknowledgement from anyone who has …
Best Concerts this Week in Jacksonville | June 12-18
My Morning Jacket, flipturn, Dom Flemons, L.O.V.E. Fest, Jazz Discovery Series, Jared Mattson and more
Our weekly Go concert recommendations are updated every Monday morning and are always available on jaxmusic.org. For the comprehensive list of this week’s concerts, go to our live music calendar page. Jazz Taylor Roberts – Monday, June 12 Blue Jay Listening Room | Jacksonville Beach Jacksonville jazz guitarist Taylor Roberts begins his monthly residency at Blue Jay Listening Room in Jax Beach on Monday, playing …
Journeyman Jacksonville Jazz Guitarist Taylor Roberts Brings It On Home With Latest Release
How does one honor any creative tradition without losing one’s identity and wind up stifled in the conventions and style of that very same heritage? Jazz is simultaneously based on an expectation from the audience that one knows the tune and an expectation from the players assembled on the bandstand that one knows how to forget the tune altogether, let …
New Music Friday | The best releases out on June 9
When Amaarae began work on her latest project, Fountain Baby, she knew she wanted it to defy labels. On one hand, it’s defiantly pop, but it’s persistently kaleidoscopic, built on a consistently surprising world of sound that draws from alternative Afrobeats to punk rock, R&B, bubblegum pop and more. As NPR Music editor Sheldon Pearce says on this week’s show, …
Slow, Steady and Loud Wins the Race: Appalachian Death Trap Capture Prog-Metal Heroics with Latest Single
If there is a volatile lottery of success, providence, fortune, etc. in contemporary music, metal is the surely the remotest ball rolling in the hopper. The term “metal” has remained malleable for decades, and the polarities of the genre are so extreme that they easily—if not invitingly—encompass everything from the early-‘80s UK denim-and-leather of Saxon to the current gore-bath of …
On ‘Brand New Life,’ Jazz Harpist Brandee Younger Traces the Dorothy Ashby’s Influence and Charts Her Own Path
Within the jazz idiom, there are only a few harpists that have caught my attention — two of them are incredible Black women. Alice Coltrane, the wife to the iconic John Coltrane, is probably the instrument’s best known acolyte. Detroit born harpist Dorothy Ashby is the another. Ashby, a playwright and public-school educator, was a pioneering harpist, and wrote many …
Live Release from Brötzmann, Bekkas and Drake Trio Blasts World Music Into Free Jazz Multiverse
Taken from the recent Catching Ghosts album, recorded live at the November 2022 Jazzfest Berlin, the trio of German reedman Peter Brötzmann, Moroccan guembri player Majid Bekkas and Chicago-based drummer Hamid Drake tear lesser world music a new one with “Chalaba.” The merger of the Gnawa music that Bekkas brings to the forefront with his vocal and guembri (a type of bass …
On New Live Release, Electropop duo Sylvan Esso Expand, and Redefine, the Parameters of ‘No Rules Sandy’
I relish any opportunity to hear revised in-studio tracks, and I don’t think there’s a better venue for that than Electric Lady’s live in-studio session series. Last month, Durham electropop duo Sylvan Esso released five Live At Electric Lady renditions of tracks from their 2022 record No Rules Sandy (in addition to a cover of Low’s “Will the Night”). The …
Foo Fighters’ ‘But Here We Are’ is heavy, in every sense of the word
Foo Fighters formed in the aftermath of tragedy, as Kurt Cobain‘s 1994 suicide left Dave Grohl reeling and in search of a voice. The band’s self-titled 1995 debut found the drummer and newly minted frontman reinvigorated by grief, while 1997’s The Colour and the Shape doubled as a rousingly hooky therapy session in the aftermath of his divorce. Taken together, …
Mattson 2 Guitarist Jared Mattson Sets out on His Own, Touring his Debut Solo Record with a Stop in Jacksonville
Jared Mattson — guitarist and bassist for the formidable San Diego surf-jazz duo Mattson 2 — has announced his first, solo North American tour, with a stop in Jacksonville. Following the release of his critically adored debut, Peanut (out now on Chaz Bundick, AKA Toro Y Moi‘s Company Records), Mattson is hitting the road. The 20-date Peanut Release Tour will …
Best Live Music in Jacksonville this Week | June 5-11
Logic, Subhumans, Conrad Tao, Rebelution and more
Our weekly Go concert recommendations are updated every Monday morning and are always available on jaxmusic.org. For the comprehensive list of this week’s concerts, go to our live music calendar page. Southern Rock Them Dirty Roses – Tuesday, June 6 Jack Rabbits | San Marco Alabama-bred Southern-rock torchbearers Them Dirty Roses performs at Jack Rabbits with support from Jax’s own keepers of the Southern-rock …