The New Jersey-based company Party City will close its doors permanently after 40 years of being in the business of balloons and such. I’m not breaking any news here; it’s been reported since December. The retailer had more than 850 stores in 45 states and Puerto Rico before closing more than 80 locations over the past two years. Its remaining 700-plus stores will close between now and February 28. Holy ice cream. That’s a lot of people out of work. Families who lost their breadwinner. But what else does this tell us?
America has had a serious vibe shift over the past decade; folks are not throwing parties like they used to. At least that’s what the cold hard facts would indicate. But what is more important: plates or purpose?
That is the idea running through two new albums coming out over the next few months. Two artists, FKA twigs and Destroyer, who in the past I might not have considered, but this objective about music creating the purpose for celebration has been sticking in my brain…
We’re going to need that type of energy over the next four years. Ya dig? Sleepmaxxing or stress dancing to The Greatest Showman…..Not gone to cut it.
EUSEXUA, twigs’ third studio album, is an amalgamation of the words “sex” and “euphoria.” It does at times feel and sound like an all-you-can-eat buffet of beats, blips, and blops. It’s electronic, trip-hopping, cold, and nasty in a steely nature when it needs to be. More importantly, it came to UK singer, dancer, and actor Tahliah Debrett Barnett during a break from shooting The Crow reboot in Prague.
The artist found her way outside the city to a warehouse rave, where hundreds of strangers were moving, dancing—more importantly, vibing—to loud hypnotic techno. That flash woke the English polymath out of the “brain fog” she’d been stumbling around in for years. The a-ha moment led to the creation of the word EUSEXUA, and better yet, an album that moves around like a rave with several different rooms representing so many textures of music meant for stirring activity.
Grab it up here.
Dan Bejar’s project Destroyer never really caught my fancy, but I always kept a light on or candle lit in the window because people I respect always tried to hip me to his schtick. With the first single “Bologna,” featuring Fiver’s Simone Schmidt, giving the right amount of burnish to the loungey, bongos-laden, Roxy Music meets Air-type luxuriance, I might have found my entryway to the Bejar multiverse. It’s a divine concoction built for multiple plays and a stealth two-step dance for two across a dancefloor with mystery thriller-type crosscurrents.
I’m holding space for album Dan’s Boogie, pre-order it here.
But hey, Mang… it’s Under The Stars. Your weekly rundown of what is popping in The Bay and beyond. A column that presents new music releases, upcoming shows, opinions, and other adjacent items. We keep moving with the changes and thinking outside the margins.
Spend some time with us…… Let’s activate!
1001 STEVIES X PRETTY BEAT PRESENT ‘GIRL CULTURE IS SACRED: AN ABORTION BENEFIT SHOW’ AT EL RIO, FEBRUARY 8
We are blowing in the winds of political disgust (again!), and things have already spiraled into the absurdly unfunny. It will trend more to the terrible, people, before it starts to turn the corner. Aghast. Sorrowful. Consumed by horror.
Those are just a few mood switches working through the country since January 20. And we’re not talking about MLK Day either. All we can do is mobilize, energize, and combine powers to feed many needs.
Here is a hub to build from: 1001 Stevies x Pretty Beat are throwing an afternoon rager called Girl Culture is Sacred, 3pm-8pm, to channel collective anger into communal activism on the patio of SF legacy business and LGBTQ community hub El Rio.
The event will benefit Louisiana Abortion Fund, a nonprofit that provides low-barrier access and assistance for reproductive health care throughout the Southern US.
On the bill to shake your ass so your mind and wallet will follow is: The Furious Tits; Baycoin Beats (playing selections from The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill); and Tracey Holland’s SF-indie-scene supergroup 1001 Stevies themselves (featuring SF artists Oona, Suzanimal, and Tolula, among others)—all paying homage to the Alt girlies, with a mix of the ’90s-’00s alt, punk, riot grrrl, R&B, and soul.
Since 2017, 1001 Stevies (yes, a tribute to Stevie Nicks) has produced multi-city concert events to raise funds and awareness for abortion access and reproductive justice. You can read up on them here.
Pretty Beat, a local org that supports artists of under-represented genders working in nonlinear media, to present this celebration of groundbreaking artists. People, make this your ground-floor mobilization.
More info here.
SALAMI ROSE JOE LOUIS, “ARMS FELL ASLEEP” (BRAINFEEDER)
There is a possibility we as a music-listening audience may be sleeping heavily on the outer-world talents of Bay Area multi-instrumentalist, arranger, and songwriter Salami Rose Joe Louis, aka Lindsay Olsen. Release after release from this University of California at Santa Cruz graduate enters sui generis alternative-electronic-jazz territory; Rose keeps her foot dead on the “I must challenge you” accelerator at all times.
Ideas about the way soundscapes can navigate through storytelling or attempts to confront and explore a range of subjects such as climate change, the power of imagery, propaganda, depression, societal greed, isolation, and the trappings of societal conditioning, roam freely through arrangements that ebb and flow without hard and fast rules.
Rose’s brilliance stays illuminated while working with fellow heavy hitters who delve into uncomfortable arrangements: Flying Lotus (Brainfeeder is his label), The Cinematic Orchestra, Toro y Moi, Tune-Yards, Clairo, and MNDSGN, to name a couple.
Why do I bring this up now? Well, it took 30 years for the mass consumption of Kate Bush, right?
I’m not saying Rose is looking for that long of a disconnect—if anything, Rose keeps popping out projects at a, dare I say, Prince-like rhythm. But I ask you to just run the video for “Z E E C O M P L E X” a couple of times through; take in the bizarre world being created on the spot by Rose and her fellow musicians.
I think we have a genius among us, a humble one too.
Can’t wait for the new album Sungazer, or any type of new release from this artist.
Each project is a new opportunity to crack a dense, many-sided code.
Pre-order here.
OLIVARES, VAZ OLIVER, OLIMPIADA (BROKEN CLOVER RECORDS)
To be a comprehensive DJ in San Francisco, hmmm.
At one time, it meant keeping an ear open for everything that didn’t make it onto terrestrial radio, the big and uncomfortable clubs, or all the obvious places where your ears would be overwhelmed by the mass-market music pumped out through corporate channels.
So where do you go?
Trusted record shops where the folks behind the glass case had new arrivals in, old records that people might not be checking for, local band releases that haven’t yet made a significant impact nationally, and of course, the record shops own quirky selections. You’d also stay alert by checking out your fellow DJs in the city, observing what they played, how they played it, and to whom they played it.
In 2018, Mickey Darius took a bold step and launched his label, Broken Clover Records. Over the past five years, the imprint has steadily established its identity within music circles.
Just as Brainfeeder is renowned for electronic music and instrumental hip-hop coming from Los Angeles, International Anthem is redefining jazz for the 21st century in Chicago, and Slumberland Records in Oakland is known for its roster of dream-pop artists and genre-bending indie bands, Broken Clover Records has become a symbol of San Francisco’s eclectic music palette.
The label’s mission statement embodies the spirit of the city by claiming “to connect a community of musicians and audiences, prioritizing support for overlooked art. No genre is off-limits, and all content is left of center.”
This statement reflects their vision accurately; it’s Mickey Darius’ bold step. From the psychotropic journey, flashing textures, and half-remembered sounds burbling up from the past on Trip Show‘s 2021 house beat breaker The Far East is the Near West and the Wild West is the Near East to the queer tales told out on the cold and lonely prairie by Secret Emchy Society and all, there are oh so many, the non-interlocking projects in between, this is an imprint that feels so very San Francisco in a specific vein; No way in hell should it make sense, but like fog in Alamo Square Park on the 4th of July. It just does.
They’re dropping what may be their most mind-expanding release to date on February 14th (the label’s fifth birthday), the forthcoming solo debut by TUTUPATU multi-instrumentalist Olivares, from Madrid.
Olimpiada is quasi-library music, with patchwork stretches of ’70s Krautrock and a slew of textures that skew from electronic and dub sources to ambient frequencies. It brings the stouthearted label into new and elevated vistas, pushing the imprint’s eclectic nature further.
Pre-order here.
CY CURNIN OF THE FIXX AT SWEETWATER MUSIC HALL, FEBRUARY 22
When MTV got off the ground in the early ’80s, they didn’t check to see if enough American bands had videos to showcase on their airwaves. Overseas artists did. They came to the game prepared with the knowledge; just the record and a quick spin on Dick Clark was not going to get the job done. Little visuals, movies, or music videos were needed to accompany the viewer from the living room to the record store.
There was this band, The Fixx, from London—for all I knew at that time, they were Australian, like INXS. But their lead singer, Cy Curnin, had this freaky Bowie look going in the video for “One Thing Leads to Another,” and it kind of became a jam. Lemme tell ya, The Fixx ate, quite well, off these herky-jerky new wave, art rock joints with bizarre minimalist visuals. Cy Curnin will be running down those Fixx darts at Sweetwaters, and I’m kinda curious to see if that big head of dyed lettuce still has that fauxhawk dimension to it. Get ready to bathe in a swath of MTV new wave hits.
Grab tickets here.
