Everyone's a Critic
“Mister Sister,” hymn to a cross-dressing or possibly transgendered “you” who escapes to “everyone’s party wish list,” makes even more sense in the wake of the Surpreme Court decision in June, which applied specifically to …
The Observatory in North Park continued its winning streak of knockout concerts by playing host to Australia’s Tame Impala on a sweltering August night. It was yet another sellout show for the venue, and the …
Short and sweet is Mac Demarco’s Another One. Recorded in his New York apartment, you feel at home with melodic songwriting and romantic forget-me-nots. The eight-song “mini-LP” owns the typical joyful quirkiness of its predecessors, …
Orange County skate-punk band the Adolescents always puts on an energetic show, even after 35 years of running the gamut of punk hits. The band was full of fire as they played tune after tune …
DJ Artistic and Sleeping Giant Music are known for high-quality hip-hop artists they hand select. Tonight was no different, as veteran hip-hop duo Blackalicious rocked an enthusiastic crowd in Solana Beach’s Belly Up Tavern. Emcee …
Despite her sweet melodies, Kacey Musgraves wrote about one bleak way of life on her 2013 record Same Trailer, Different Park. The record brought her Grammy awards and with them the pressure to be the …
Back with John Lennon-esque vocals and dreamy, psychedelic overtones, Tame Impala returns with their third LP, Currents. The Australian natives have a knack for creating music that is both retro and remarkably modern and relevant. …
Anthony Ferraro deserves a mighty high-five for coming up with a band name so perfectly representative of the music he creates. His five-piece band, Astronauts, etc, specializes in the mellow, spaced-out pop that AIR has …
The British band Pins works the smooth and jagged angles that intersect dream-pop, shoegaze, and garage punk to create a stylized sophomore record. Wild Nights thematically glorifies universal moments of lust and danger; later, when …
The second installment of Borderland Noisefest landed at La Caja Fuerte, a newer venue in the art and culture passageway of Pasaje Rodriguez, Tijuana. Featuring bands and projects from Los Angeles, San Diego, and Tijuana, …
Soul to soothe the soul. That’s what Coming Home, the debut album of 25-year-old Leon Bridges, is and does. When you listen to this album you can appreciate the sound of actual instruments being keenly …
Thanks to my older brothers, I developed an early appreciation for the Allman Brothers Band’s Southern rock as a child in the 1970s. Some 40-odd years later, hearing “Statesboro Blues” or “Ramblin’ Man” brings me …
This is the album Muse was built to make. Bombastic, hard-hitting, and pretentious (in a good way), Drones takes the trio’s brand of paranoid space rock and brings it to an all-new level of science-fiction …
So what if Brian Wilson took the stage 15 minutes earlier than scheduled? Or if he performed 50-year-old songs in their original key, even though some of the notes are by now a little out …
Disco! Disco! Disco! Okay, provisional disco. With Andy (of all people) Taylor of Duran Duran at the board and onboard with song scribbling, the world’s two most creatively obnoxious long-in-the-tooth juvenile miscreants spend a half-hour …
There’s nothing as entertaining as seeing an artist at the top of his game in an intimate venue. Such was the case when nine-time Grammy-winner John Legend made a stop in San Diego prior to …