Alan Lugo

Hank, Cupcakes, lipstick

Club-diva bass-burp duo Hank & Cupcakes have only paid New York City rents for two years, but have already experienced the first-hand (dis)pleasure of being apprehended by our local law enforcement. Detained "for putting three bumper stickers on lightpoles in Williamsburg," the Israeli-formed team testify via e-mail that this vandalism charge caused them to be held "under arrest for 37 hours"--in other words, "completely out of proportion to the crime we had committed." This ordeal led them to identify with this paper's very own "NYPD Tapes" series, Graham Rayman's five-part investigation that captured supervisors telling officers to manipulate crime statistics and make illegal arrests on audio tape. This is also why an issue of the Voice plays a supporting role in second of two videos for their grope-pop anthem, "Ain't No Love," which Hank & Cupcakes will most certainly play it at their free show tonight at Brooklyn Bowl. You might as well check it out if you're still in town. It's not like you can get Kanye West tickets or anything.

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Best Coast Tumblr

Bobb, Bethany, and Snacks

It's become increasingly impossible to mention Best Coast, the three-person vehicle for noise-pop Cali-queen Bethany Cosentino, without referencing her pet Snacks. That darn cat is on the cover of her debut full-length Crazy For You, nonchalantly poised amid an oceanic sunset, his homestate's shape tracing his butt. He's illustrated on the cover of Cosentino's boyfriend's record, Wavves' King of the Beach, holding a spliff. The kitty's even on Twitter. But Best Coast, who headlines the Bowery Ballroom tonight, aren't the only ones this year whose muse has been a domestic creature. Behold, five reasons why 2010 is the year of the indie pet.

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Sam Horine

Open wide

Of all the things we here at Sound of the City emphatically endorse--Janelle Monae, the Mountain Goats, Matt & Kim, Ohio sports teams, responsible reporting of M.I.A.'s Tamil Tigers Tweets--the frantic live antics of Israeli stunt-garage trio Monotonix are high up there. Ami Shalev, a curly-maned lion of a frontman, almost always ends up shirtless, in shorts and sneakers, his squiggly rug of chest hair as much an identifying characteristic as the sharply accented consonants of his faux-metal roar. Last night, lager-bathed well-wishers were once again treated to an up-close-and-personal proximity to frontman Ami Shalev's pubic-hairy chest, courtesy of our pre-Siren-partying marketing department. Sam Horine took photos. You're lucky that dude is wearing pants at all.

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Antibalas

So swept up in announcing the first batch of performers for this year's Siren Festival, we neglected to mention that afrobeat collective Antibalas is playing the after-party for the Obies, the Voice's very own annual Off-Broadway Awards, on May 17 at Webster Hall. Their theater connection stems from Fela!, the show Rob Harvilla chronicled at great length last fall in a profile you should really read. Show starts at 10pm, costs $15, and we could really use the support, maybe you heard?
[Obies]

Self-portrait of the artist

Awfully adorable interview with our very own Rob Harvilla over at Glide Magazine's Hidden Track, which the rest of us at SOTC discovered via "Village Voice" Google Alert, because Rob's humble like that. But since our "current shopkeep of the Voice's storied music department" is off serving jury duty, he can't stop me from celebrating/politely embarrassing him.

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​"Eat it Michael Musto: you're no Bruce Vilanch!" So goes James Murphy's pernicious insult of our dearly beloved and long-serving nightlife columnist on "Pow Pow," one of two partial tracks to leak last night from LCD Soundsystem's much anticipated, yet to be titled third record, due in May. (The other single, "Drunk Girls," is boisterous and clever and can be heard here.) Musto, of course, knows how to dish it out, too. So we figured we'd ask him what he thought about James Murphy's incursion into his otherwise peaceful Friday:

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So far Liars and The Silent League have come in for review--the first two of a new decade for Christopher R. Weingarten, who is really getting tired of all of those people who keep saying he doesn't like music. This year's target? "As many as I can without making myself miserable." Also, Chris, if you think we're not referring to you full time from now on as "the Takeru Kobayashi of rock crit," you don't know SOTC very well. Happy new year, friend! [1000TimesYes]

​From Ted's website today, where he belatedly got around to announcing his new album and new single "Even Heroes Have To Die," about which Pitchfork's Tom Breihan wrote yesterday: "From the sound of that one, Leo may have been spending some serious time listening to fellow Jersey natives the Gaslight Anthem." Or not! Ted then goes on for a while about "breaking balls" and kindly refrains from bringing Clipse into this whole thing. Update! Tom responds:

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Item #8: Swagger on a hundred thousand trillion. Photo by Christopher Struman, via

​A Polo vest, according to this SPIN article written by Voice editor Stacey Anderson. "I was wearing this a lot over the summer, and then Chris Baio, our bassist, sent me a picture of Juelz Santana wearing the exact same thing," Koenig explains. "I'm really interested in the cultural implications of Polo -- how it's this nexus of preppy and hip-hop." [SPIN]

​Allow us to get a bit navel-gazing here for a second and say that if you ever had any interest in Fela Kuti the man or the bizarre process by which a complicated and politically volatile biography gets turned into a Broadway show marketed (at least in part) to people from Illinois who couldn't locate Nigeria on a map, please take a moment to read Rob Harvilla's feature on Fela! in this week's paper. There are many things in it you did not already know.