When Sampha first performed at the Tiny Desk in 2017, it was just him and his keys. But for this second round, he had a very specific vision to execute. Accompanied by a spirited four-piece band who double as his background singers and percussionists, each member relishes in making music in multiple, creative configurations. Sampha Lahai Sisay’s music is known …
From the not-yet-fully developed prefrontal cortex of guitarist and songwriter Sam Baglino (kid is 21-years young), Jacksonville indie-rock band Seagate‘s Tapes Volume I is a six-song release of lo-fi, careening electro-shock-punk jollies. Opening track “Mind Control” hits hard, with a crushing groove and hyper guitar hook that is, whether through accident or intention, straight-up 1970s protean punk that is tasty …
It’s a big day for the Real Estate market—no, not that one. The New Jersey-native indie-rock veterans have announced their sixth album, Daniel (Feb. 23, Domino Recording Co.), as well as a 2024 North American tour, and shared the music video for free-flowing lead single “Water Underground.” Real Estate—Martin Courtney (vocals, guitar), Alex Bleeker (bass, vocals), Matt Kallman (keyboards), Julian …
In 2023 one of the quickest ways for an emerging musician to gain recognition – regardless of field or genre – is to participate in competitions, and after three decades, the Herbie Hancock Jazz Competition (formally, the Thelonious Monk Competition) continues to launch the careers of jazz musicians. Participants apply via demo recordings of pre-selected songs. The demo is then …
“Cherry Leaves and Razor Blades,” the just-released track from Duval indie rockers Rose Wilder is also apparently their swan song and final release, and that reality can surely influence that experience of hearing the song. In some ways the song is a less-gory transfusion of prime-era My Bloody Valentine, especially with the swirl of lead vocals, but with a decidedly …
The opening track from her forthcoming double-album (All Life Long), the nearly-nine-minute “All Life Long (for organ)” is an impressive development of Kali Malone’s near-decade of composing monolithic drone-based music. Since 2012, the Denver-born Malone has lived in Stockholm, Sweden (where she studied electroacoustic music at the Royal College of Music), and is a kindred spirit to a captivating scene …
On the new single “311!,” Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Gallant passionately pleads for his companion’s location over Grammy-nominated superconductor Terrace Martin’s production. On the single from the Maryland-bred R&B/Soul artist’s Sneek, a new collab album with Martin (out now on Martin’s O’Connor label), Gallant directs listeners through the jazz soundscape at a soulful-tempo as he calculates his past interactions with the lost …
Our weekly Go concert recommendations are updated every Monday morning. For a comprehensive list of this week’s concerts, go to our live music calendar page. Indie Rock Manchester Orchestra – Tuesday, November 28 Florida Theatre | Downtown Jacksonville After nearly 20 years as a band, Atlanta, GA indie-rock hitmakers Manchester Orchestra are still going strong. They play Florida Theatre with KC indie-rockers The Get …
Americana: is it a musical genre or a collective of musicians? How has roots music influenced our country’s politics and culture, and in what ways does this section of music still have room to grow? Mandi Bates Bailey explores this subject matter in her new book, The Downhome Sound: Diversity and Politics in Americana Music. Dr. Bailey is a professor …
Calling all new wave nerds: you’re guaranteed to fall in love with Glass Chapel, a synth-heavy post-punk act hailing from Jacksonville. The trio, made up of Jake Phillips, Angela Sitzler and Nick Phitides, cites influence by punk acts of today, like Soft Kill, and yesterday, such as The Cure. Glass Chapel has released a slew of singles and remixes this …
Polly Harvey has inhabited many characters throughout her 30-year career and always dressed the part: catsuit-rocking glam queen, high-collared Victorian wraith, mini-skirted libertine, feather-adorned warrior. Bringing the story told in her latest album, I Inside the Old Year Dying to the Tiny Desk, she stands at the microphone in a draped dress the wintry color of a gray alder tree, …
By the standards of the 2020s, when younger audiences metabolize music so quickly that performers need to keep a constant flow of memeable, streamable content coming, Brittany Howard‘s been laying low. Since wrapping the tour promoting her 2019 solo album Jaime and commissioning remixes of it from peers, she’s resurfaced only a handful of times leading up to the announcement …
Our weekly Go concert recommendations are updated every Monday morning. For a comprehensive list of this week’s concerts, go to our live music calendar page. Jazz Blue Jay Jazz Jam – Tuesday, November 21 Blue Jay Listening Room | Jacksonville Beach If you’re expecting visitors this week, we suggest treating your early arrivals to one of the region’s best weekly jazz jams at Blue …
The handpan is widely regarded as one of the most calm, peaceful and meditative musical instruments out there. That sound, and the settings in which it is most often heard, are about as far as it gets from the ambient sounds that used to surround John Giunta. In a previous life, a time that feels so long ago, Giunta was …
The biggest surprise of the week came today, with the first new album of original music from André 3000. Surprising because 1) We weren’t expecting it and 2) Because the record does not contain a single bar of rhymes. Read more about the flute-forward New Blue Sun and listen to a single from the record and five more tracks below. …
This week’s biggest music news was broken elsewhere on NPR Music — that’d be the release of Andre 3000’s first album in 17 years, New Blue Sun — so be sure to head there for André’s long and illuminative interview with our own Rodney Carmichael. But there are other new records worth highlighting this week. Superstar rappers 2 Chainz and …
Nu-Radiohead—that is, English trio The Smile, featuring that band’s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood alongside Sons of Kemet’s Tom Skinner—have announced their second studio album. Titled Wall of Eyes and produced by past Yorke collaborator Sam Petts-Davies, the LP is due out Jan. 26, 2024, on XL Recordings. The band this week shared the Paul Thomas Anderson-directed music video for …
Media Contact: Neily Braren, Promotion & Marketing Associate 904.318.2633 • nbraren@wjct.org WJCT Public Media Shares New Seasons of Two Hit Podcasts Bygone Jax and Untold Stories return this fall for another season of storytelling November 16, 2023 — JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — WJCT Public Media today announced the return of two of its podcasts, Bygone Jax: Our Unsung History and Untold …
At a certain point in the winding lifespan of André 3000’s musical journey, there came a time when we as fans began to worry less about his lack of creative output and more about his general well-being. He’d ascended pop’s mountaintop as the outrageous half of OutKast, the best-selling hip-hop duo of all time. Then, without much explanation, he bowed …
Taken from the new various-artists compilation My Greatest Revenge: Flamenco Recordings, 1904-1938, the track “It Was Because I Didn’t Feel Like It” by vocalist Juanito Mojama is a poignant audio document of both autochthonic-folk music—in this case, flamenco—as well as a mysterious Spanish musician whose career has been barely tracked in other similar compilations and a handful of academic essays. …
A collaboration between Duval new-soul and hip-hop artists Bright Purpel and multi-instrumentalist and producer Culture School offers up a radiant glow. The second track from Culture School’s new release Nail Salon, the three-and-a-half minutes of “Purpel” moves along courtesy of an unhurried chromatic keyboard riff, with Culture School (Quinn Spencer) and Bright Purpel (K.UTIE and Jeremy Ryan) trading off lyrics …
Out of the thousand and some Tiny Desk concerts to date, it’s seldom an artist returns to the Desk. But when they do, there are a couple requirements: come in a new iteration or present something completely different. In this case, the Chicago-bred, emcee-activist Noname does both when she performs some revolutionary raps from her third album, Sundial, and premieres …
Our weekly Go concert recommendations are updated every Monday morning. For a comprehensive list of this week’s concerts, go to our live music calendar page. Indie Rock Black Kids – Wednesday, November 15 Intuition Ale Works | Downtown Jacksonville Fifteen years ago, the dance-forward Jacksonville indie rock band Black Kids went from the dance floor of Art Bar Thursday Night to Late Night with …
It’s Friday, so it’s time for new music. Here are six brand-new songs the JME team has been enjoying lately. Stream ‘em on your preferred platform by clicking the STREAM button below each description. Want this in your inbox? Sign up for the JME Newsletter. On Tuesdays, we send you our picks for the best concerts of the week in …
Tracy Chapman was honored with Song of the Year for her 1988 folk anthem “Fast Car” at the Country Music Awards on Wednesday, becoming the first Black songwriter to ever win the award. “Fast Car” peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart following its release more than 30 years ago. The song was nominated for three Grammys …
R&B singer-songwriter SZA leads the pack of nominees for the 66th annual Grammy Awards, with nine nods, the Recording Academy announced Friday. Her sophomore album, SOS, is a contender for album of the year, with her hit “Kill Bill” up for record and song of the year. SZA’s competition in those categories includes pop stars Miley Cyrus (“Flowers”), Olivia Rodrigo …
On her debut studio album, Heaven Knows, the English singer and producer PinkPantheress navigates a heady mix of gothic horror and blissful solitude. It’s a record that reflects on the ways we survive trauma only to exist in a kind of uncertain purgatory — alive, unsure of the future and, ultimately, how it’s OK to not be OK. We open …
In April, we welcomed the Mattson 2 to Hotel Palms in Atlantic Beach. Over the course of the last decade, the San Diego based duo, made up of twin brothers Jonathan and Jared Mattson, have consistently displayed a kind of casual alchemy. The identical-twin brothers Jonathan (drums) and Jared (guitar, bass) Mattson pull on the threads of ‘60s Southern California …
Melbourne, Australia’s own experimental-rock juggernauts King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have announced an extensive 2024 tour of North America and Europe in support of their latest album The Silver Cord, including a stop at the St. Augustine Amphitheatre next November. If there are two things King Gizzard are known for, it’s the ever-shifting postures of their elastic maximalist sound …
For those asking “What ever happened to Black Kids?” the short answer is that the Jacksonville, Florida-bred indie-rock band is doing just fine. Black Kids remain a popular and in-demand live act. In November, they’ll play alongside The Cure, Alanis Morissette, Arcade Fire, The Breeders and other generation-defining acts at the Corona Capital music festival in Mexico City. Prior to …
Heading at you with rolled-up sleeves and tube amps a-blazin’, local garage-fiends Yaupon Holly are the apparent chimera of Motörhead and Mudhoney and their recent single “No Aces” is intent on banging your head via generous skull-crackery. Kicking off with an impressive jazzy intro by drummer Michael Glime, “No Aces” shows its hand immediately with guitarists Marcelo Celi and Bryson …
Let’s get the most obvious critique out of the way first: “Now and Then,” the song billed as The Beatles‘ final single, can’t possibly live up to “Let It Be,” “Strawberry Fields Forever” or whatever happens to serve as your personal favorite Beatles song. The song began as a modest demo — just John Lennon, recording on a boombox at …
Jeff Tweedy wishes his new book had been his first book. He writes that World Within a Song: Music That Changed My Life and Life That Changed My Music “is the one I probably would have written first if I were more ambitious, and if I had been a little more clear-eyed about what I care most for in this …
The driving principle of the music and formation of Cosmic Link radiates from connection. Whether through 21st-century creative networking or even ineffable serendipity, the alt-soul duo of Duval singer-songwriter Jay Myztroh and Bristol, UK-based producer Ben Dubuisson seem to give it up for a higher power. Their new 12-song eponymous release seems more intent on widening one’s consciousness than filling …
Our weekly Go concert recommendations are updated every Monday morning. For a comprehensive list of this week’s concerts, go to our live music calendar page. Jazz Blue Jay Jazz Jam – Tuesday, November 7 Blue Jay Listening Room | Jacksonville Beach While you never know who is going to show up for the weekly jazz jam at fun-size Jax Beach venue Blue Jay Listening …
After releasing her self-titled debut studio album in 2016, rapper and singer Tkay Maidza felt stuck. She was writing songs that, Maidza says, she didn’t even like. So she walked away from music-making and took half a year to untether herself from the things holding her back. But Maidza eventually hit reset and returned to the studio to make Sweet …
