Courtesy Bad Boy/Interscope

Moroccan-born, Bronx-raised rapper French Montana is at a photo shoot in Tompkins Square Park's basketball court. He's shooting the shit in fluent French with the photographer. A gaggle of scruffy teen skaters recognize him and look over as he saunters slowly—always slowly—about.

See also: French Montana's Excuse My French Listening Party - HiLo - 5/7/13

More »

I don't understand plenty about Australia--Vegemite, the platypus' existence as a non-mythical creature, etc.--but what I truly don't get is how everyone in Melbourne could've kept Clairy Browne and the Bangin' Rackettes all to themselves since Baby Caught The Bus came out the first time around in 2009, leaving those of us in the States without the potent swinging/snarling/gut-wrenchingly heartbroken/euphorically party-anthemic elixir they effortlessly pour down our thirsty throats.

Thankfully, change is afoot, as Baby Caught The Bus sees its official US debut on Vanguard Records today. This spring, Clairy and the other eight Bangin' Rackettes "traveled the breadth of the country" as Browne puts it, embarking on a 30-day tour after a rabble-rousing slew of shows at South by Southwest. They hit the small club circuit, walloping unsuspecting patrons with lyrics wrought with calculating emotional warfare and an untouchable live show that walks a delicate tightrope between total fucking chaos and a vivacious, exquisitely choreographed production. One can argue that the neo-soul sounds of Clairy Browne and the Bangin' Rackettes are at best familiar and worst unoriginal--Winehouse, Duffy and Adele have all revived the Motown sound and redefined soul music already, right?--but for Browne, brutal honesty onstage and off is what keeps her and the Bangin' Rackettes from merely resuscitating the brassy confidence and bleeding-heart confessions of the glory days of soul.

See also: Live: Jenny Scheinman Warms Up The Village Vanguard

More »

Biohazard's Evan Seinfeld

Excerpted from the book Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal, published by It Books and available May 14

New York is a music mecca—the Brill Building, Broadway, street performers, subway buskers, the Metropolitan opera—but it's not known for its abundance of successful metal bands.

Sure, the city has produced some heralded heavy luminaries, including KISS, Anthrax, and Helmet. But for a volatile period from the mid-'80s to the early '90s, a batch of passionate, aggressive, and sometimes violent bands terrorized the Lower East Side, even turning legendary new wave/punk club CBGB into a metal mainstay on weekend afternoons in the '80s. The phenom was all the more surprising because back in the day, if a New York punk fan lined up for a Slayer show, or a headbanger dared enter the moshpit at a GBH gig, fists were likely to fly. Never mind the sonic similarities between the Sex Pistols and Anthrax—the cultural divide between metal and punk was too great for any band to breach at the time. Then a few bands brave enough to merge the two styles finally surfaced. In keeping with the city's gritty rep, they often featured thuggish musicians who were equally adept at swinging a beer bottle as slinging a guitar.

More »

Emily Reiman

It's 10:30 a.m. in Seattle at Sub Pop Records HQ and Mark Arm—the mercurial, spit-slinging singer for proto-grunge legends and original "Loser" poster boys Mudhoney—is about to hit the work iron as, arguably, the most famous record label warehouse manager ever. But first the usually pissy frontman is in celebration mode. Sub Pop, Mudhoney's longtime label (and Arm's employer) is marking its 25th year in the biz, and his band's massive world tour is set to launch.

More »

Jim Eno

When Jim Eno converted his garage into Public Hi-Fi Studios in 1998, he didn't think owning a studio would involve doing anything other than making music. About a month before he launched Public Hi-Fi Records in March, however, everything hit at once. "Studio owner = booking agent, tech, IT support, plumber, janitor, photographer, customer service rep, runner, career planner, interviewer," he tweeted during one particularly brutal week in February.

"Without the limitations of 140 characters, I could have added a lot more," says the Spoon drummer and producer for artists like Heartless Bastards, !!!, Telekinesis, and Har Mar Superstar. "I never thought owning a studio was going to be all these incredibly non-creative tasks." Yet somehow, between juggling his Instagram account with fixing the studio toilet and building a reverb chamber in a concrete drainage tube, Eno has somehow found the time to launch his own independent record label.

See also: The Ghost of Spoon Lingers - On the defiantly skeletal Transference, which only a recession could love

More »

For the longest time, Solana Rowe just wanted to be Lisa Simpson.

"She was so jazzy. She played the saxophone. She was an outsider," the 23-year-old musician giggles in a basement bar in the East Village, leaning back into a brick wall. She touches the pile of floppy curly hair on top of her head, and winks. "She had big hair."

More »

"I think, for me, more than anything, [the name] Jack's [Mannequin] had run its course," reflects Andrew McMahon, the engine that had driven Jack's Mannequin from solo experiment to full-fledged movement. In 2012, however, McMahon retired the moniker of his more intimate solo project that manifested during a hiatus from cult-favorite band Something Corporate. The songwriter and pianist had had successful careers with both acts, but they seemed to exist in separate spheres of a Venn Diagram where his voice and lyrics of love and personal growth acted as the only intersection. "It seemed like the most logical thing, which was to get by on my songs and my own name and make it possible to play all these songs I've written at various times in my life and let them live in one space as Andrew McMahon."

See also: Live: Jack's Mannequin Make Themselves At Home At Irving Plaza

More »

Honus Honus

"I'm not a woe-is-me person, and this band isn't a pity party for me --it's a celebration of an accidental career," says Ryan Kattner, aka "Honus Honus," frontman of the long-running Philadelphia junkyard-carnival rock orchestra Man Man.

From a tour stop in Cleveland -- it's the band's first run of U.S. dates since last June, and a chance to road-test new songs from their as-yet-untitled fifth album, due later this year -- Kattner's thinking back to the reception Man Man's last album, 2011's sardonically titled Life Fantastic, earned from critics and fans. Specifically, the fact that it was universally seen as the band's darkest album, and it probably was. Lyrically more autobiographical than anything Kattner previously committed to tape, Life Fantastic was crafted slowly and painfully over a three-year period that included the disintegration of a troubled long-term relationship, the deaths of close friends, intra-band turmoil, and the grim depression that naturally accompanies such trauma.

More »

Photo by Eric Sison

Picking up the phone at her South Philly home, GANG singer Amanda Damron says, sternly, that I've interrupted her while she was watching the Beyoncé documentary on HBO. There's a brief, awkward silence, then she bursts into laughter.

"It's OK, I probably know everything that's in it, I'm obsessed with her, but it's just so awesome to watch," she says. "I love her, she's my hero!"

See also: The Completely Real, Totally Not Fake Deleted Destiny's Child Scenes From Beyoncé's HBO Doc

More »

John Denver

John Denver is coming to town, and he's bringing his old bandmates with him. Together, they're kicking off the "Rocky Mountain High Concert" U.S. tour in Westbury on Friday (at the NYCB Theatre at Westbury), and then looping back around to Best Buy Theatre on Tuesday, February 12. And they'll be playing all the hits, all the songs you've known and loved for the past four decades: "Take Me Home, Country Roads." "Leaving on a Jet Plane." "Annie's Song." "Rocky Mountain High." Lots more. What's that, you say? John Denver's been dead since 1997? No problem.

See also: Music Artists Who, Like Roky Erickson, Have Struggled With Mental Illness

More »