Standout Track: No. 3, “Jennifer,” the handclappy-yet-dystopian single from Southern Problems’ debut Space. Singer/guitarist Dan Schwartz says that “Jennifer,” set in the not-too-distant future, imagines a time when D.C.’s infrastructure has collapsed and another city (“The Crust”) has to be built on top. It’s a local anthem told from the perspective of a character “lamenting [...]
Short reviews of films from this year's DC Shorts Film Festival
Though it's a hodgepodge of different tones and genres, Showcase 12 mostly focuses on relationships between two characters. Whether the pairs are boyfriend/girlfriend (Try a Little Harder), father/daughter (The Christmas Tree) or dude/zombie (What's Life Got To Do With It), Showcase 12 isn't lacking in dynamic [...]
The case against the three women of Pussy Riot—the Russian feminist punk collective whose Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich could be sentenced to three years in a labor camp for performing a protest song in a Russian Orthodox church—has captivated activists and musicians worldwide. Tomorrow evening, D.C. will get a chance to show [...]
Shark Week
EP
Standout Track: No. 2, “If You Want Me to Stay (for a While),” the bluesy, boozy garage-rock jam off Mount Pleasant fourpiece Shark Week’s self-titled debut EP, is scheduled for release Aug. 10, two days before Shark Week begins on the Discovery Channel. There’s a spritz of surf rock to Eric Myers’ infectious [...]
Reload those staplers and commandeer your boss' Xerox machine—it's time for D.C. Zinefest.
The second annual DIY expo, put on by the D.C. Zinefest Collective, hits St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church tomorrow from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and this year, more than 35 zinesters, cartoonists, distributors, and independent publishers are signed up to [...]
“Diane [Foglizzo] and I write songs as a way to work through [our] intense friendship and creative partnership,” said Katy Otto in a recent interview. Anyone who's seen a show by Trophy Wife—her band with Foglizzo—can confirm that their music embodies that idea perfectly.
Foglizzo and Otto play shows facing each other, not to exclude the [...]
Don’t let the mock politeness of its title deceive: Vancouver punks White Lung’s latest record, Sorry, is an unapologetically blistering 20 minutes of music. Imagine The Germs, Jawbreaker, and early Hole dumped into a blender with the knob set to thrash. Repping for Vancouver’s quietly but steadily thriving DIY scene (which also includes their former tourmates, [...]
Even by more old-fashioned standards, the debut album from Mount Pleasant avant-poppers Frau Eva had a prolonged gestation period. Three years have passed since the group released its Rip Out the Threads EP, and even than that since the group first tested out its deconstructed folk ditties on D.C. stages. In an age of practice-session demos [...]
Let’s get this elephant-sized full disclosure out of the way: Our story begins in the office of Washington City Paper. Actually, it begins on the floor of the office of Washington City Paper.
“Pam [Berry] and I would come into the office at 8 in the morning on weekends when no one else was working, and we’d [...]
Back in February, I wrote about The Black Sparks—middle-school punk upstarts who've been wowing the D.C. all-ages circuit with their electric, sweat-soaked live shows. And—as if the gods were offering up some sort of cosmic alternative to Justin Bieber's freshly released, distressingly post-pubescent single "Boyfriend"—The Black Sparks have just uploaded some gleefully youthful tunes in [...]
