Speedy Ortiz‘s music may sound jagged around the edges, but it comes bundled with glimmers of sunny pop, clever lyrics and smartly deployed lap steel. The band’s new fourth album, Rabbit Rabbit, finds singer-songwriter Sadie Dupuis wrangling with abuse and trauma, learning to let go of anger and writing about the activism that’s fueled her life and career. (She’s a …
Media Contact: Neily Braren, Promotion & Marketing Associate 904.318.2633 • nbraren@wjct.org WJCT Public Media Partners with Kids Hope Alliance to Present Family & Community Learning Workshops Funding from competitive KHA grant program will support a series of free workshops across Northeast Florida for children ages 3-5 and their families JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — August 31, 2023 — WJCT Public Media, in partnership …
This essay originally appeared in NPR Music’s weekly newsletter. Subscribe to the newsletter here. There’s a scene in an old episode of The Simpsons wherein Lisa laments that no one listens to kids. Grandpa Simpson, embroiled in a B plot of his own, chimes in that no one listens to old people, either — at which point Homer pops by …
The start is chaotic for sure, but that’s the intent. Two minutes of craziness is an accurate description of the intro and outro of “Head Bedlam.” “A sonic description of us looking at Twitter particularly during the pandemic,” leader Christian McBride explains after the first tune of his Tiny Desk set, “when you put your phone down, that’s when the …
Ten years ago, sometime after Speedy Ortiz transformed itself from a Sadie Dupuis solo project into a functioning rock band, its jagged and clever early singles caught the attention of NPR Music’s Lars Gotrich. So we reached out to inquire about a Tiny Desk concert, only to learn that the timing wasn’t quite right: The group didn’t have any days …
Jacksonville artists Ebonique, Broadway Louie and Kearsten Monielle, along with DJ Larry Love, will perform as part of the Sing Out Loud festival’s 904 Soul showcase on Saturday, September 9 at Dog Rose Brewing in St. Augustine’s historic district. The showcase was put together by Mr. Al Pete, the Jacksonville hip-hop artist, DJ, media mogul and contributor to the Jacksonville …
Hip-hop has been effectively deradicalized by middle age, botched love and commercialism, to the extent that so-called “conscious rap” often sounds like a grift to feed a void in the market — the hungry ghost of authenticity. Plenty of the music is no longer a visceral and spirit-driven creative endeavor. It might be realer to just make indifferent music in …
When tracking the enigmatic creative life of Sun Ra, it truly depends on which orbit you traverse. Over the course of his 79 years on this planet, Sun Ra worked with blues artist Wynonie Harris and big band Fletcher Henderson, later to and rub shoulders with esoteric-roots rockers NRBQ and guitar-throttlers Sonic Youth. Sun Ra released more than 100 albums …
Our weekly Go concert recommendations are updated every Monday morning and are always available on jaxmusic.org. For the comprehensive list of this week’s concerts, go to our live music calendar page. Reggae Jemere Morgan – Wednesday, August 30 Jack Rabbits | San Marco Grandson of reggae legend Denroy Morgan and son of Morgan Heritage member Gramps Morgan, Jemere Morgan brings his fusion of contemporary …
It’s been a little over a year-and-a-half since Mitski’s Laurel Hell took over the Billboard Albums Chart in the kind of indie coup d’état not seen since Frank Ocean’s Blonde. Mainstream breakthrough notwithstanding, the experimentalist singer-songwriter-turned-pop-megastar continues to push forward, announcing a new record, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We (out September 15th via Dead Oceans), from which the …
Nigerian singer Burna Boy is one of the biggest pop stars in the world, as well as a global superstar by any metric. His seventh album has a title that promises the victory lap for which he’s long-overdue: It’s called I Told Them… The record continues to expand Burna Boy’s Afro-fusion palette, as he draws inspiration from ’90s hip-hop and …
L’Rain — aka Brooklyn-based experimental singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, composer and curator Taja Cheek — has announced her third album, the confrontationally titled I Killed Your Dog (Oct. 13, Mexican Summer). Our second preview of the “anti-break-up” record after June’s standalone single (and, it turns out, I Killed Your Dog’s closer) “New Year’s UnResolution” is the technicolor “Pet Rock,” out now alongside …
For lovers of reggae music, Sugar Minott was a veritable force of nature. When he died at age 54 in 2010, he left behind an impressive body of work. While still in his teens in the late ‘60s, Minott cofounded the African Brothers, a band savvy at blending R&B and soul with a strong Rastafari vibe. In the subsequent decades …
Chicago-based singer-songwriter Ella Williams recently announced her third album as Squirrel Flower, and ahead of the fall release of Tomorrow’s Fire (Oct. 13, Polyvinyl Record Co.), she’s shared a new single (and music video) from the LP, the Bruce Springsteen-inspired “Alley Light.” Though the light touch of Squirrel Flower’s 2020 full-length debut I Was Born Swimming earned her the “indie …
It’s a neat coincidence that Tuesday, August 22, was the day that The Mountain Goats announced their highly-anticipated return to Jacksonville, because that was also the 40th birthday of arguably their biggest fan: the late local musician and ace facilitator Dave Hargrove, the man largely responsible for spreading the Mountain Goats’ gospel to many people here in Northeast Florida, including myself. …
Considering the semi-infinite roster of SoundCloud (with a bandwidth-buckling 30 million musicians currently featured on the DIY site), it’s easy for an artist to be lost or overlooked in that digital cumulus. “Shake” is the new single from Duval solo artist Jordan Blackburn and the closing track from his seven-song debut, Abnormal Hues. According to his EPK, Blackburn is a …
A few weeks back, the Jacksonville Music Experience conducted an in-no-way-scientific poll of our Instagram followers (a small-but-mighty bunch nearing 2K; follow here) based on the following prompt: Fave Local Release of 2023. Of the four-dozen or so respondents, nearly half said they either liked Bobby Kid‘s Babyface or a song from the band’s new full-length album. In some ways …
Our weekly Go concert recommendations are updated every Monday morning and are always available on jaxmusic.org. For the comprehensive list of this week’s concerts, go to our live music calendar page. Punk The Menzingers – Tuesday, August 22 Underbelly | Downtown Jacksonville From Joe Biden’s hometown of Scranton, PA – also the fictional home of Dunder Mifflin – punk band the Menzingers visit Underbelly …
After beating out Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and others for the 2022 album of the year Grammy — and after stepping down as the bandleader for The Late Show With Stephen Colbert — Jon Batiste is back with a new album this week called World Music Radio. As the name suggests, it’s a sprawling exploration of what global music can …
Welcome to Songwriting School, where we talk to local songwriters about how they wrote one specific song. As frontman of Jacksonville based indie-rock band Teal Peel, songwriter Taylor Neal is the first to admit to his own perfectionism. He held onto some of the band’s songs for several years prior to releasing them. But when you hear the recordings, his …
When drummer Tony Allen passed away in April 2020, he left behind a musical legacy both pronounced and subtle. As the longtime main drummer for Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat ensemble, including a truly searing album where he played stick-to-stick with UK (ex-Cream) drummer Ginger Baker, Allen introduced a jazz-funk style of playing that pointed back to Africa while also directing contemporary …
From the time we launched the Jacksonville Music Experience a couple years back, we’ve been covering the city’s music scene, cranking out hundreds of new-music reviews, interviews with emerging bands and longform features on the history of music in Jacksonville, all while keeping our readers up to speed on the latest music news from around the world. We’ve also been …
No one knew Sonic Youth was making its last stand — not even Sonic Youth itself. “It was a period of regrouping. But in spite of some personal problems, it was still business as normal: ‘We’re going out to do a summer show in our hometown,’ ” admits co-founder Lee Ranaldo from his New York apartment. This cycle was not …
Duval DIY indie-pop duo Coastal Creature are plotting the fall release of their debut EP, but in the meantime, they’ve shared a new tune to keep you cool through the summer swelter. Lead single “Lemonade” is out as of this week, with a music video to follow in early September. Erica Reese and Parker Dixon, then recent Florida transplants, met …
Brooklyn-based indie singer-songwriter Farrah Hanna serenades listeners with her latest single, “TMILTM,” a heartbreak ballad that asks a former lover the questions left unspoken. Originally from Virginia, Hannah’s making a mark on the Big Apple’s big indie scene, recently performing at the beloved Bushwick art-and-performance hub Rubulad with Jacksonville-bred artist Brianna Maclean (Primary School). “TMILTM,” is the first single released …
Rolling forward with their recently released full-length album, Low Cost Cobra, local synthwave duo Limo Scene continue with their celebratory obsession with ‘80s new wave sounds. The opening cut from the six-song collection, “Vocode” essentially sets the neon-lit stage for the remainder of the album. A four-on-the-floor beat and soft-funk guitar chord progression ballast the four-minute groove of “Vocode.” A …
Like a tireless explorer laying new eyes on familiar horizons, the great Sufjan Stevens has announced his first album “in full singer-songwriter mode” since 2015’s acclaimed Carrie & Lowell, detailing Javelin (Oct. 6, Asthmatic Kitty) and releasing its lead single “So You Are Tired” on Monday. After nearly a decade of collaboration and experimentation, with a particular focus on the …
The months since WITCH visited Jacksonville to perform on the JME Soundstage inside WJCT Studios have been inarguably momentous. The pioneering Zamrock band released a new album Zango on Desert Daze Recordings via Partisan Records, a label whose increasingly eclectic roster now includes post-punk act Fontaines D.C., UK jazz-fusion outfit Ezra Collective and the catalog of Afrobeat maestro Fela Kuti. …
Our weekly Go concert recommendations are updated every Monday morning and are always available on jaxmusic.org. For the comprehensive list of this week’s concerts, go to our live music calendar page. Jazz Taylor Roberts – Monday, August 14 Blue Jay Listening Room | Jacksonville Beach Duval jazz guitarist Taylor Roberts continues his once-a-month Monday night residency at Blue Jay. Read about Roberts’ new record …
The death of Joan Didion in late 2021 spawned innumerable thinkpieces and essays seeking to both track the influence of Didion’s writing and style, and lionize the already-lionized American author. It was a predictable and totally appropriate exercise. “No one essay writer, except James Baldwin and George Orwell, has spawned more imitators,” Jay Caspian King wrote in the New York …
The last time Swedish band Little Dragon performed for Tiny Desk, the group wasn’t actually at the Desk. Like a number of Tiny Desk alum who played between 2020 and 2022, Little Dragon delivered its debut Tiny Desk as a (home) concert in the band’s Gothenburg studio. That performance provided a comforting balm to many during the early and confusing …
In the ‘70s, while his peers Bob Dylan and Van Morrison exuded personae of mystery or moodiness, Neil Young was capricious to the point of possible self-immolation when it came to the arc of his career. At the end of the decade he was winding down from the deliberate “anti-popularity” of “The Ditch Trilogy.” In the liner notes of his …
The Chicago rapper Noname returns this week with her first new album in five years. Like her earlier works, Sundial is filled with songs that stand at the nexus of slam poetry, literature, jazz and hip-hop. We give a listen to open this week’s show and talk about the ways Noname seeks to serve her community and speak truth to …
Remember Seinfeld’s “Summer of George”? Well, this is about to be the Fall of Faze Wave. The Jacksonville rock four-piece have shared a new single, the hard-charging “Teenage Nightmare,” and announced a fall tour, with eight East Coast shows set for October. Faze Wave are in fine form on “Teenage Nightmare,” a rollicking ode to youthful angst whose jangly rock …
Robbie Robertson, the lead guitarist and the primary songwriter for Canadian rock luminaries The Band, has died at age 80. Family member Dawn Robertson confirmed the news to NPR. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s songwriting credits include several touchstone songs that would go on to establish the blueprint of Americana music, including “The Weight,” “Up On Cripple Creek” …
The musical mind behind the “Cha Cha Slide” — the ubiquitous turn-of-the-millennium dance hit played at celebrations and in gyms across the world — has died. DJ Casper died Monday after a long battle with cancer, his wife told ABC7 in Chicago. He was 58. Born Willie Perry Jr., the Chicago native originally recorded a version of the “Cha Cha …
