Welcome to Under The Stars, babe. A quasi-weekly column that presents new music releases, upcoming shows, still with the strong ass opinions this week, and other adjacent items. We keep moving with the changes and thinking outside the margins. We’ve been doing this for awhile… Thanks for spending some time with us… and RIP Bob Weir…
RICKSHAW STAFF CURATES SHOWS, JANUARY 14-30
Listen. Some venues truly understand how the local music scene operates. They just get it. Dan Strachota, talent buyer and managing partner at Rickshaw Stop, is giving agency to industry professionals—bartenders, door staff, DJs, and waitstaff—because they know all too well the things that work (and sometimes don’t).
What better arbiter of talent than the staff who watches bands and DJs perform, and monitors crowd energy night after night? Add to it, they exchange notes with other bar staff throughout the city. Talk about who killed it even on their off days, at other venues and establishments, grabbing discounted drinks and such from other industry professionals. It’s called networking.
So, for the second half of January, Rickshaw Stop is cashing in on that built-in brain trust by turning the keys to the club over to its staff. Dan Strachota has worked it out with his co-workers to come up with a roster of live events—featuring local acts, touring bands, and Bay Area DJs—that speaks to the venue staff and the city, for that matter.
And, cousin, it looks like it’s gonna crush. With shoegaze showcases, Italo Disco dance nights, garage-rock and psychy freakouts, dark wave blowouts? All the things you’d see at those rando, underground locations will be popping off at 155 Fell Street, instead.
Who, you may ask?
Self-described “psychedelic cabaret thing” band Grooblen hits on the 15th, performing via the auspices of sound people Carmen Caruso and John Karr. The “Now That’s What I Call Italo Disco” party, featuring FSQ, Colours 87, DJ PlayStation, DJ Cira, and Maneuve, gets an in from barback Andreas Spindler on the 17th. Local SF fave trio Buzzed Lightbeer, with their “Dionysian fuzzy slop rock,” have been booked by door person Briana Cimino for the 21st, and 48 Hills’ own fave Fake Your Own Death will appear courtesy of house manager Jasper Darsana on the 30th. Oh, this looks legit.
“Rickshaw Stop has always prided itself on supporting and reflecting the local scene, and many of our staffers are deeply enmeshed in it,” stated Strachota. “Whether that be by playing in bands (HEAT, Agouti), DJing events (the Italo Disco series), putting on shows (Hot Goth Girlfriend, Friends on the Internet), or just being pals or working alongside great bands (all of them).”
Expect other venues to adopt this sure-fire, amazing idea immediately. And grab your tickets here.
RHYMIES
In the wake of beloved SF shoegaze band Seablite giving their final chef’s kiss farewell late last year, I got intel (seven months late) about Seabliter Lauren Matsui’s new project, called Rhymies. Yes, I’m very familiar with her other band, Neutrals; they rock as well.
And indeed, we did miss listing and attending the live performance at Little Hill Lounge in El Cerrito last Friday. But this solo project, where Matsui gets hands-on with the Yamahas, Rolands, and Korgs, delivering atmospheric ’80s melodies? Buddy. That analog past, those tangible, lived-in pastel emotions… No notes.
On the first song, “Bal Masque” from her magnificent four-track EP I Dream Watching, there is an atmospheric, soaring, and descending squall in the sky, ever so faint in the background, that moves like early, very minimal INXS, circa ’82.
I know. It’s specific and random all at once, but that’s the care being put into this solo project. No nostalgia cake here, just really pristine synthpop meets New Wave stuff a young Madonna and Cocteau Twins might have danced to at The Mudd Club, put through that Matsui feathery vox. Pick up the I Dream Watching EP here.
PAVEMENT AT MOSSWOOD MELTDOWN, OAKLAND, FRIDAY, JULY 17
If this is the appetizer, expect mighty fine eating for the main course.
Reverberations ran through the Bay Area when it was announced last week that indie legends Pavement, with Vivian Girls and Wednesday in support, would return to the Bay Area to kick off the 2026 edition of the Mosswood Meltdown Festival, with cinematic legend John Waters returning as host. That they are booked to play the “pre-party” suggests a lavish array of talent being assembled for the Saturday and Sunday lineup. A full roster will be announced in the coming weeks. More info here.
TONY MOLINA, ON THIS DAY (SLUMBERLAND / OLDE FADE / SPEAKEASY STUDIOS SF)
I may catch hell for saying so, but upon first listening to Tony Molina, you feel as if you’ve been transported, just dropped directly, into the opening of a classic Wes Anderson film. Charming, melancholic vistas are Molina’s music, that perfect swirl of folk, classical, and a touch of baroque-psych bizness. Miolina has been churning out projects for over two decades, and you can hear a little Elliot Smith in his rustle-soft delivery, set against a hook-riff-melody formula that never seems redundant or patronizing.
His new project, On This Day, already physically sold-out on Bandcamp, is built with 21 songs that feel like they were dug up, dusted off, and excavated from the unmarked bins at Amoeba. Produced and recorded by Tony and Alicia Vanden Heuvel in their San Francisco home studio, these brief heartbreakers—the longest song here is two minutes and 15 seconds—show he’s direct, sometimes coming with sugary horn lines to cushion all the insecurity, despair, and regret that we all feel at times. Molina bravely and oh-so-gently coos about it all.
Never will you be so jacked to become immediately heartsick. On This Day feels like a modern, locally made classic. Pick it up here digitally, or at your local record store.
JEREMIAH CHIU AND MARTA SOFIA HONER AT JOE HENDERSON LAB, JANUARY 25
LA-based duo of synthesizer player Jeremiah Chiu and violist Marta Sofia Honer, who record for the International Anthem label, merge acoustic and electronic sounds, blending the different audio shades that exist in the interplay of the stringed and the modular, through improvisation, feel, and on-the-fly expression. This live sampling-in-the-moment can be spectacular, featuring overlapping and spontaneous compositions seamlessly outpouring. (The two originally hail from Chicago’s lively improvisational and experimental music scene, so they know.) Performing an early and late set in a venue built for spontaneity, they’ll provide a night filled with electronic quirk and ambient hum.
Grab tickets here.
