Rolling forward with their recently released full-length album, Low Cost Cobra, local synthwave duo Limo Scene continue with their celebratory obsession with ‘80s new wave sounds. The opening cut from the six-song collection, “Vocode” essentially sets the neon-lit stage for the remainder of the album. A four-on-the-floor beat and soft-funk guitar chord progression ballast the four-minute groove of “Vocode.” A …
Like a tireless explorer laying new eyes on familiar horizons, the great Sufjan Stevens has announced his first album “in full singer-songwriter mode” since 2015’s acclaimed Carrie & Lowell, detailing Javelin (Oct. 6, Asthmatic Kitty) and releasing its lead single “So You Are Tired” on Monday. After nearly a decade of collaboration and experimentation, with a particular focus on the …
The months since WITCH visited Jacksonville to perform on the JME Soundstage inside WJCT Studios have been inarguably momentous. The pioneering Zamrock band released a new album Zango on Desert Daze Recordings via Partisan Records, a label whose increasingly eclectic roster now includes post-punk act Fontaines D.C., UK jazz-fusion outfit Ezra Collective and the catalog of Afrobeat maestro Fela Kuti. …
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, August 14 Blue Jay Listening Room | Jacksonville Beach Duval jazz guitarist Taylor Roberts continues his once-a-month Monday night residency at Blue Jay. Read about Roberts’ new record …
The death of Joan Didion in late 2021 spawned innumerable thinkpieces and essays seeking to both track the influence of Didion’s writing and style, and lionize the already-lionized American author. It was a predictable and totally appropriate exercise. “No one essay writer, except James Baldwin and George Orwell, has spawned more imitators,” Jay Caspian King wrote in the New York …
The last time Swedish band Little Dragon performed for Tiny Desk, the group wasn’t actually at the Desk. Like a number of Tiny Desk alum who played between 2020 and 2022, Little Dragon delivered its debut Tiny Desk as a (home) concert in the band’s Gothenburg studio. That performance provided a comforting balm to many during the early and confusing …
In the ‘70s, while his peers Bob Dylan and Van Morrison exuded personae of mystery or moodiness, Neil Young was capricious to the point of possible self-immolation when it came to the arc of his career. At the end of the decade he was winding down from the deliberate “anti-popularity” of “The Ditch Trilogy.” In the liner notes of his …
The Chicago rapper Noname returns this week with her first new album in five years. Like her earlier works, Sundial is filled with songs that stand at the nexus of slam poetry, literature, jazz and hip-hop. We give a listen to open this week’s show and talk about the ways Noname seeks to serve her community and speak truth to …
Remember Seinfeld’s “Summer of George”? Well, this is about to be the Fall of Faze Wave. The Jacksonville rock four-piece have shared a new single, the hard-charging “Teenage Nightmare,” and announced a fall tour, with eight East Coast shows set for October. Faze Wave are in fine form on “Teenage Nightmare,” a rollicking ode to youthful angst whose jangly rock …
Robbie Robertson, the lead guitarist and the primary songwriter for Canadian rock luminaries The Band, has died at age 80. Family member Dawn Robertson confirmed the news to NPR. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s songwriting credits include several touchstone songs that would go on to establish the blueprint of Americana music, including “The Weight,” “Up On Cripple Creek” …
The musical mind behind the “Cha Cha Slide” — the ubiquitous turn-of-the-millennium dance hit played at celebrations and in gyms across the world — has died. DJ Casper died Monday after a long battle with cancer, his wife told ABC7 in Chicago. He was 58. Born Willie Perry Jr., the Chicago native originally recorded a version of the “Cha Cha …
Amid an especially hot and heavy summer, who among us doesn’t long for an oasis? Enter London-born pop singer-songwriter and producer Georgia, who recently released her third album on Domino Records — from its title and its technicolor artwork to its bright 10 tracks and breezy 36 minutes, Euphoric offers just such an escape from the heat and the humdrum. …
These are weird and wooly times for indie musicians. The record-label industry that was hip checked by alternative rock in the early ‘90s, then flipped by file sharing, has been either expanded or reduced to a-still inscrutable streaming-based existence. Bands that hit platinum plays on Spotify celebrate their million-stream payout with a whopping $300. Musings aside, this wobbly egalitarianism allows …
There are times during Action Bronson‘s Tiny Desk when his vocals momentarily drift. We instruct our guests to face the directional microphones so that our recorders clearly pick up the voices. Action warned us of the improbability of that happening before we started filming and sure enough, the Flushing, Queens emcee strolled off mic a couple of times, did an …
Those unfamiliar with Chrystia Cabral’s SPELLLING are being gifted the ideal entry point: The Bay Area art-pop pathfinder is breathing new life into her output to this point on her forthcoming fourth album, the self-produced SPELLLING & The Mystery School, coming Aug. 25 on Sacred Bones. Our latest preview of the career-spanning LP is “Hard to Please (Reprise),” a revitalized …
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. A cappella Pentatonix – Wednesday, August 9 Daily’s Place | Downtown Jacksonville Inarguably talented, unmistakably twee a cappella pop group Pentatonix performs at Daily’s Place Amphitheater on Wednesday. More Reggae Stephen Marley – …
When Bikini Kill reunited in 2017, later embarking on a tour that united feminist punks across generations, it introduced a clawing, almost desperate question in the back of my brain: Would Le Tigre ever reunite? The art punk, electronic, “whatever-you-wanna-call-it” group, fronted by Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna alongside Johanna Fateman and JD Samson, last toured in 2005, promoting its only …
Ahead of her fall Talk To Me Nice tour, D.C.-born emcee Sa-Roc has shared a new single and video of the same name, our first preview of the as-yet-untitled follow-up to her 2020 Rhymesayers Entertainment debut, The Sharecropper’s Daughter. Produced by resident Rhymesayers studio-wizard Sol Messiah, “Talk To Me Nice” uses both its lyrics and instrumental to send one unmistakable …
When I got downstairs to greet Obongjayar and his bandmates at NPR headquarters, they had already found their way over to some stationary bikes near the lobby to get the adrenaline pumping. OB and crew seemed shy but ready for this moment. During the show, I witnessed my colleagues go from wiping away tears to bouncing and clapping within a …
The Nottingham, U.K. trio Food People stay true to the DIY loose-ethos freedoms of what is considered lo-fi without being unfaithful to the band’s own hazy, cryptic romanticism. A track from their new full-length release, Many Glorious Petals, the four-and-a-half minutes of “Eat Paper” rolls forward as a placid soundtrack for travelers on the road with the vaguest of directions …
Fifty years ago to the day, a few rock fans were arguably still coming down, reeling, rocking and neurologically smoldering, from attending the Watkins Glen Summer Jam. Held on Saturday, July 28, 1973 at the Watkins Glen International grand prix race track in central New York, the one-day festival featured performances from three of the biggest names in rock: The …
Through the years, I’ve developed a ritual for every new Wilco release. Before I press play, I ask myself: which Wilco do I want to hear? Am I hoping that their alt-country roots will come through the soil, or would I rather hear electronica reminiscent of their 2002 hit record Yankee Hotel Foxtrot? Am I craving something with complex piano …
Featuring a few dozen new tunes from local, regional, national and international artists, our Fresh Squeeze playlist includes the best new music emanating from Northeast Florida and beyond. Handpicked by our team of contributors, there are no rules or genre restrictions; just songs we thought were worth a share. Our latest Fresh Squeeze playlist includes new singles from the most-band-iest band …
Taken from her new Flutters EP, the latest from Duval soul and R&B artist Kearsten Monielle is a slow-burn ballad polished to a high sheen. Behind the major-key glimmer of producer Ian Williams, on “All I Want” Monielle serves up a song about letting go of negative energy, supplanted with positive vibrations, navigating what Monielle tells JME was born from …
In August, Jacksonville singer-songwriter rickoLus will embark on a tour of the Sunshine State with Orlando indie-rock band The Pauses. rickoLus is the longtime project of the multi-talented Richard Colado, who, beginning with the power-pop band The Julius Airwave in the early-aughts, has been an integral member of the Northeast Florida music scene for two decades now. For the upcoming …
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, August 1 Blue Jay Listening Room | Jacksonville Beach Every Tuesday, fun-sized Jax Beach venue Blue Jay Listening Room hosts a rotating cast of standout players …
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A year after releasing his last album — and becoming a dad for the first time — Post Malone is back with AUSTIN, a sprawling collection of intimate songs on addiction, afflictions and contradictions. On this week’s show, Atlanta-based culture journalist Gavin Godfrey, critic and reporter Cyrena Touros and writer LaTesha Harris, along with host Robin Hilton, look at the …
The recently released compilation from French label Born Bad Records is a kind of object lesson in true musical innocence, primitivism and an innately non-pretentious DIY that adds up to one of the more unique releases barreling across the Jacksonville Music Experience radar. Recorded from 1962-1982, the compilation Prends Le Temps D’Ecouter – Musique d’expression libre dans les classes Freinet …
In August, veteran Bay Area singer-songwriter and producer Stephen Steinbrink returns with his first new album in five years, and our latest preview of Disappearing Coin (Aug. 18, Western Vinyl) has arrived in the form of the zenned-out “Poured Back in the Stream.” In press materials, Steinbrink says that Disappearing Coin “feels like an integration of all of my past …
Updated July 26, 2023 at 4:33 PM ET Sinéad O’Connor, the Irish singer known for her intense and beautiful voice, her political convictions and the personal tumult that overtook her later years, has died, according to a family statement released to the BBC. She was 56 years old. O’Connor’s recording of “Nothing Compares 2 U” was one of the biggest …
As Pachyman, L.A.-based multi-instrumentalist Pachy García has proven himself a master of dub, the musical style first popularized in late-’60s Jamaica by King Tubby and the late, unimpeachably great Lee “Scratch” Perry. Like his dub daddies and forefathers, Pachyman has made the studio console his lead instrument, bending and transmogrifying recorded audio to his whims to create mesmerizing and enjoyably-chill-AF …
San Francisco’s Pardoner unpacks late-capitalism with nostalgic slacker rock pleasantries on their latest, the sarcastically-named full-length album Peace Loving People (out now on Bar/None Records). Throughout the record, the quartet’s punk tendencies glitter lightly through a newfound tenderness. The group’s blasé sound changes as quick as an Internet trend, bursting into heavy bits of breakdowns and then snapping back into …
The First Coast Music Festival is held on Saturday, July 29 at Underbelly and 1904 Music Hall in Downtown Jacksonville. The event will feature a lineup of 32 local artists and is being promoted as a showcase of the region’s “best independent artists” competing for a “cash prize.” The model the festival has employed to secure this lineup of local, …
Lesa Cline-Ransome and James Ransome met at a “Purple Rain” party when they were 19 — sophomores at Pratt Institute. “I asked her to dance, and we’ve been dancing together ever since,” says James Ransome. Cline-Ransome was in the fashion department. Ransome was an illustration student. They began dating. “I think we knew we were a match because he would …
The latest from Duval rockers Ducats takes the continuous-release, narcoticized-guitar maneuvering of peak My Bloody Valentine and halcyon days Teenage Fanclub well into the 21st century. “Painless” is stylized but hardly flatlined or constrained by any rockist demands. Wobbly guitar shimmers over, under and around vocals unintelligible to the point of any distinguishable words — and that is a compliment. …
