Javelin

Tom Van Buskirk, the thoughtful Los Angeles-based half of polyglot pan-tropical duo Javelin, has some mixed feelings about social media. "When I follow someone on Twitter and all I get is a barrage of RT's or straight-up PR shit, it kind of offends me, and they never know. It's just funny that we put all this stock in a little interaction." It's partially the subject of the song "Friending"--which is, yes, a Facebook reference--off Javelin's forthcoming record, Hi Beams, coming out in March on David Byrne's Luaka Bop imprint. The other idea for the song came from Van Buskirk's teenage brother and graffiti enthusiast in New Zealand, who once boasted he was friends with a famous tagger in New York. "It took me a minute to realize that he meant Facebook friends," he tells me over the phone. "It's a strange world we live in."

See also: Last Night We Were Literally on a Boat With Keepaway, Javelin, and a Newly Five-Year-Old Music Slut

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The iconic and staunchly independent label Thrill Jockey Records may be Chicago-based since the mid '90s, but its roots lie here in New York and along the grimy Path train tunnel where Hoboken stands. Two decades ago, L.E.S. resident Bettina Richards founded Thrill Jockey while working the rounds at the legendary Hoboken record store hub, Pier Platters. Culling together loans and emptying her savings, she signed NYC-via-Austria prog-punk downtowners, H.P. Zinker (who also recorded for Matador Records) and thus her trajectory towards launching her label to seminal status—along with Sub Pop, Matador and Dischord—began. Ultimately, Richards moved to the more econo Chicago and stockpiled her Thrill Jockey stable with a mélange of trailblazers from a host of disparate genres. From the post-jazz stylings of Tortoise and The Sea and the Cake, Trans Am's Kraut-rock pummel, sax giant Fred Anderson's free jazz and the backporch country of Freakwater, Richards molded a label cache of ginormous proportions.

Recently the label has undergoing yet another dramatic resurgence by raiding Brooklyn's stash of visionary bands. In just the last couple of years, Richards has swooped up Kid Millions' percussive army Man Forever, psych-meditators Guardian Alien, electronic mashing machine and ex-Parts & Labor dude Dan Friel, twang riffers D. Charles Speer and the Helix, experimentalist space-jammers Rhyton, black-metal terrorizing crew Liturgy, finger-picking songsmith Luke Roberts and psychedelic monster rockers, White Hills. A bulk of these artists—new Thrill Jockey arrivals and vets like Tortoise—will be on hand this weekend to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Richards' label.

Sound of the City spoke to Richard on the phone from the Thrill Jockey office to talk about her label, from then to now.

You started Thrill Jockey in New York before relocating to Chicago. You'll be here this weekend for the anniversary shows, I presume. How often do you come back to NYC?

I get to New York the most often of anywhere, probably it seems like every other month out there. I lived there for a long time so I have a free place to stay and I have a desk and an office that I can use—so that makes it easier.

It must be major culture shock when you see what New York has transformed into since your time here.

I lived on the Lower East Side, yeah. It was junkie heaven.

And you worked at Pier Platters in Hoboken?

I worked at Pier Platters and I used to do some stuff once I started the label to get extra money with the people that owned Max Fish and they used to have a coffee shop next it and when people filmed commercials and stuff, I'd sit there all night so that they didn't destroy the café and stuff. All that, like Ludlow Street and that whole area is nothing like it was.

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If you're thumbing through the print edition (God bless your soul), it's hard to miss the three pages of recommended events that open the issue. Because the internet makes those a little less obvious, here are our five picks for concerts this week.

Tomorrow, the Pistol Annies come to Midtown's Terminal 5, a long way from Brooklyn but closer than Long Island or New Jersey. Nick Murray writes:

As a solo artist, it took Texas native Miranda Lambert less than a decade to go from second runner-up on a country-themed Idol to the genre's queen bee, winning CMA album of the year for her 2009 return-to-form Revolution. Lately, however, her best music has been coming from retro-oriented supergroup Pistol Annies, which includes both Nashville journeywoman Ashley Monroe and songwriter Angaleena Presley, the pen behind recent hits including Ashton Shepherd's "Look It Up" and Lambert's own "Fastest Girl in Town." Tonight, the trio brings tunes like the self-explanatory "Hell on Heels" and "Bad Example" to Terminal 5, setting a bad example that all New Yorkers would do best to follow.

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In this week's print edition of the Village Voice, Jesse Jarnow profiled former Ponytail guitarist and recent New York transplant Dustin Wong. The improv-based composer talked about the making of his new album, Dreams Say, View, Create, Shadow Leads noting that "I'll start with shapes within the fret board--this little square goes into a little rectangle, and I'll play it with a triangle. The melodies are shapes. There's a triangle that's breaking up the square, and within that, there's an oval."

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"I've been inspired by Japan for many years and have a true love, appreciation and respect for the Japanese people and their culture," said early American-adopter and purveyor of Japan's Harajuku girl style, Gwen Stefani. "The disaster in Japan is beyond heartbreaking and I want to do anything I can do to help." Stefani has already donated $1 million to Save the Children's Japanese relief efforts, and sometime this week she'll be selling Harajuku Lovers t-shirts of her own design for the same cause. Stefani is, as you may've noticed, isn't the only artist who is attempting to rally for relief efforts. A guide to some of the best.

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