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Wallace Baine on February 4, 2020
Rhiannon Giddens casts quite a shadow in the realm of bluegrass and Southern folk these days. The singer-songwriter is a banjo and fiddle virtuoso who first garnered critical praise for her work in the North Carolina-based combo the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Recently named the Frank Sinatra Chair in the Performing Arts at…
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Metro Staff on January 30, 2020
On their first-ever US tour, this all-female Japanese math-rock trio make San Jose their one Bay Area stop, and with good reason. Math rock and J-pop have always had a sizable influence on the sound of San Jose’s underground. Reminiscent of the music of Yvette Young—the South Bay’s own female guitar hero—Paranoid…
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Matei Predescu on January 30, 2020
Sacramento-born chillwave producer Scott Hansen, also known as Tycho, received a Grammy nomination for Epoch, his 2016 album of ambient electronic instrumentals that seamlessly blends live instrumentation with drum machines and DAW production. Backed by a live band for most of his performances, Tycho finds a middle ground between live instrumentalists, sampling…
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Matei Predescu on January 30, 2020
Experimental post-rock sextet Caspian, active since 2003, stacks multiple guitar and synth textures in billowing layers. At times, their songs take more than seven minutes to fully develop: Sprawling pieces like “Castles High, Marble Bright” from the eponymous 2016 EP build tension with guitar harmonies that weave in and out of dissonance…
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Metro Staff on January 30, 2020
South Korea has always had a major footprint here. Kias and Hyundais are ubiquitous. Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance Trilogy and Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer—and his 2020 Academy Award Best Picture nominee Parasite—are popular and critically acclaimed. It’s unclear if bangs-sporting boy bands will ever be an American export again. But we’re happy to allow…
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Matei Predescu on January 30, 2020
Good Times Ahead (also known as GTA) is the project of house-DJ duo Julio Mejia and Matt Toth. They’ve racked up millions of plays on streaming platforms and toured with the likes of Tiesto, Calvin Harris and Rihanna, selling out shows across the world. Their self-titled 2016 album included features from rappers…
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Metro Staff on January 30, 2020
Do you miss the old Kanye? Chop-up-the-soul Kanye? What about Carson Daly, Blink-182, the Backstreet Boys and Korn? C’mon. If “Freak on a Leash” comes on the radio, are you really gonna touch that dial? Point is, Popgang Presents and The Ritz are taking it all the way back to the golden…
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Bill Kopp on January 29, 2020
Five-time Grammy Award nominee Ottmar Liebert is German-born. His music is rooted in the traditions of Spain. And he lives in the American Southwest. Somehow, he combines these disparate elements into a guitar-based music with one foot in tradition and the other in a modern, highly accessible pop style.
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For more than a year now I’ve let you live rent-free in my home. You brought your crazy cat, a basement full of boxes and your alcoholic drama under my roof—and I was OK with that, up to a point. I really, really tried to tough things out because I hoped that…
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Metro Staff on January 22, 2020
One of the strangest pop stars of the 2010s, Riff Raff has cut a jagged neon line through rap, country and reality TV and has even dabbled in professional wrestling. Though the Houston performer began honing his outlandish persona in the late 2000s—appearing on MTV’s From G’s to Gents with the network’s…
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