Published

An Interview With Dark Waves

Valentine’s Day has passed us by, but if you still find yourself pining for your former lover, perhaps it is time to light a couple of candles, grab a big bottle of wine, and put on the moody, atmospheric indie pop of Dark Waves.

The well-crafted songs may not necessarily cheer you up, but that isn’t what you really need anyway when you are trying to get over a broken heart. Sometimes the only medicine is time and the knowledge that others have been where you have been and have clawed their way out of the abyss and back up into the light. That has to be a comfort, right?

More at Punchland.

Review: Jib Kidder – Teaspoon to the Ocean

Don’t try and place particular labels on multi-instrumentalist Jib Kidder and his music. He certainly doesn’t. On his bandcamp page, his concise profile reads, in its entirety, “No genre, no hometown, hard 2 pin down since Y2K.”

Over the years the artist, born as Sean Schuster-Craig but who performs as Jib Kidder, has seemed to change his style as easily as one may change their socks. His first big break came in 2009 when “Windowdipper,” a glitchy, hip-hop, MS-DOS sampling banger was used on So You Think You Can Dance, but his current batch of tunes veer in an almost entirely different direction.

More at Punchland.

An Interview With Weyes Blood

Natalie Mering, better known as the principal force behind indie-folk band Weyes Blood, creates music that would probably sound just as home in the ’60s as it does from a stage in 2014.

Earlier this month, Mering played Glasslands and her ethereal voice transported the crowd (or at least this writer) to a time when most likely had never even been born.

We had a chance to catch up with Mering, and she told us about how she came up with her stage name, her feelings about America in the age of the Michael Brown/Eric Garner non-indictments, how she first began playing with Jackie-O Motherfucker and Ariel Pink, and much more.

More at Punchland.

How To Dress Well at Glasslands

Tom Krell, better known by his stage name How to Dress Well, usually plays larger venues than Glasslands these days, but he took time out of his schedule to play one of the final shows at the soon-to-be-closed Williamsburg haunt. The Tuesday night (Dec. 16) concert brought Krell back to the place where he played one of his very first New York shows prior to the release of his debut album, Love Remains, in 2010.

More at Punchland.

Confessions Of A Celeb Tattoo Artist

Celebrity tattoo artist Romeo Lacoste, 25, seems to be doing pretty well for himself. He parties with Justin Bieber, he goes backstage at the hottest concerts, and he’s got a phone filled with the contacts of the world’s biggest stars.

After growing up in Montreal and Florida, Lacoste headed to California in 2010 to further his career as a tattoo artist. By 2013, Lacoste landed a primetime spot on the third season of Oxygen’s Best Ink. And since then, he has experienced the kind of meteoric career rise that most attain only in their dreams.

More at The Dishh.

An Interview With Syvia

A few minutes after walking through the door of Greenwich Village’s The Bitter End, it became clear that Syvia would not be playing for one of its usual crowds. The members of the dark, Scandinavian-inspired electronic rock band stood to the side of the stage as a singer-songwriter finished his set with a string of covers.

If a Taylor Swift jam and Marc Cohen’s “Walking in Memphis” were the kind of tunes that got the crowd leaping out of their seats, throwing high-fives in every direction, and screaming with pleasure, what chance did Syvia have at capturing the attention of the room?

Fortunately, Ruthy Mirsky (vocals and keyboard), Frank Banisi (guitar), Sheldon Chow (bass and keyboard), and Richard Moyle Jr. (drums) came to play, and their brooding songs (including the just released new single “Soon“) soon won over the cover-loving crowd.

More at Punchland.

An Interview With Typefighter

Throw together a bit of Weezer, a bit of Jimmy Eat World, a heap of Washington D.C. charm (of course, that’s a thing!), and four beards of varying lengths, and you’ve got Typefighter, purveyors of nostalgic ’90s garage-pop.

We caught up with Ryan McLaughlin (lead vocals and guitar), Thomas Orgren (vocals and guitar), Will Waikart (drums), and John Scoops (bass) before they jumped onstage at Mercury Lounge on November 7th and melted the faces off of just about everyone in the building.

It was their second-to-last performance on a mini-tour with Canadian rockers PUP and Brooklyn’s own Chumped, and in between some light stage banter they got the crowd moving on a cold November night. (Though, probably no one was jumping around as much as the extremely energetic Scoops!)

More at Punchland.

An Interview With Emily Wolfe

It’s a good thing this interview will be read and not heard, because after knocking back a few too many open bar whiskeys, our slurred questions to Austin-based rocker Emily Wolfe probably made us sound like a semi-conscious stroke victim.

Fortunately, Emily is a good sport, and we had a few minutes to chat before she jumped on-stage with her bandmates (keyboardist and singer Hannah Hagar, bassist Sam Pankey and drummer Jeffrey Olson) for a scorching CMJ day three set at The Delancey.

More at Punchland.

What’s Really Real? 10 CGI Movies That Raised The Bar

You’ll have to search hard to find a new movie that doesn’t have any CGI special effects. From the monsters that level entire city blocks to everyday effects, like changing the color of a room’s wallpaper, CGI is in just about every modern movie – and most of the time we can’t even tell what isn’t real.

10 Things We Want To See In ‘Bad Boys III’

The most badass cops in the precinct are returning and we can’t wait to see what they have in store. Will Smith and Martin Lawrence made buddy-cop history when Bad Boys exploded onto the screen in 1995 with a shower of explosions, gun duels and rapid-fire jokes. Bad Boys II continued the winning formula and even added the very sexy Gabrielle Union as Smith’s love interest and Lawrence’s sister.