Latest Posts

Tonight: New Politics

November 28, 2014

New Politics are set to play a sold-out show at the Town Ballroom tonight on their 2014 “Everywhere I Go” Tour. The Danish headlining group is full of indie rock rowdiness and pop panache at once, and we’ll be sure to see some goofy (but impressive) breaking by frontman David Boyd. New Politics have proven themselves to be postured enough to be a 107.7 FM favorite but punk enough to get the audience screaming back at them as they’re shaking it. The triple threat lineup includes Bad Suns and Somekindawonderful. Bad Suns incorporates SoCal post-punk echoes in modern rock music. Somekindawonderful formed in an Ohio bar and is now a tight crew of emotionally heavy, brooding rockers. Audience members tonight are pretty much guaranteed to leave the Town Ballroom totally dazed from sweating, yelling, and dancing. It’s going to get loud. The all-ages show goes down at the Town Ballroom[...]

Taylor Swift’s 1989 and Your Taste in Music

October 29, 2014

Taylor Swift’s album 1989 dropped this week, marking a full departure from her cosmopolitan country-pop sound. Vocally, she is breathy, jaded, lower than before. Musically, there is less guitar and more echoing drums. Everyone is freaking out about it—in its opening week, it’s probably going to break a million sales. Smart Girls on Stupid Music go off again on their favorite Taylor tracks and what they think about your taste in music. Sarah: I am excited for 1989, though after an initial listen-through, I wonder if the lyrical handling of heart-heavy subjects is not as skillful as Taylor Swift’s material has been in the past (i.e. “Haters gonna hate, hate, hate”). What I’m most interested in is the wildly positive reception the album has received so far. Is it because it’s full on pop, and doesn’t have the country (ok, faux-country) label tagged to it? After all, we did grow[...]

Tonight: Jeffrey Lewis & the Jrams

October 21, 2014

Tonight, make a mini-road-trip to Boiler 54 in Medina to catch Jeffrey Lewis and the Jrams, with openers, freak-folk collective from Rochester, Seth Faergolzia and the 23 Psaegz. I absolutely love Jeffrey Lewis. He is a nerdy comic book hero who has mastered the art of grumblesome talk-singing. Lewis never fails to whip out the best analogies and jokes about anxiety, art, and the human condition—with tongue always in cheek, while still being a very serious sort of folk punk. You might recognize him from his covers of Crass songs, in which he turned the driving line (affected accent) “Banned from the Roxy… OKAY” into an acoustic romp. Or maybe from him waxing poetic about being a “Cult Boyfriend,” or how wonderful it’d really be to get accosted by Bonnie Prince Billy. Come out for a contemplative, cartoony, fun and folksy time. The show is at Boiler 54 (115 W[...]

Taylor Swift – “Out of the Woods”

October 14, 2014

Sarah and Moira are the queens of over thinking and the proud embarrassments of your Spotify feed. They chat about life, love, Buffalo, pop culture, social justice for sensitive girls, and pop music. They feel feminist guilt. They wax poetic. Today’s topic? Taylor Swift released a new song at midnight: “Out of the Woods.” Listen to “Out of the Woods” here (at least until we can get an embedded code).

Tonight: Code Orange Kids

October 3, 2014

Code Orange Kids live up to their name in age only. Though they are young, they have an extremely mature grip on their hardcore, punk sound. Signed to Deathwish, they have already toured, recorded with, and garnered praise from genre greats such as members of Converge. Catch them on their return to Buffalo at the Waiting Room tonight with Twitching Tongues, Discourse, Malfunction, and Modern Problems: doors are at 6pm, all ages allowed. $12 to get in. (Bring earplugs, it’ll be heavy!)

Bisexual Awareness Week

September 23, 2014

It’s Bisexual Awareness Week! We live in a society that loves to compartmentalize sex, and because of that, non-monosexual individuals are up against low cognizance from the public and difficulty expressing themselves to the community, which translates into their private and intimate lives. There are many identities under the polysexual umbrella, like fluid, queer, pansexual—a helpful image is included below! According to Autostraddle, individuals who fall in identities under this love umbrella face very low rates of being “out” about their sexuality (28%) opposed to the rate among gay and lesbian individuals (70%). Autostraddle also has a badass-and-bi list of important things you can do this week! Here are forty super-hot, super-sensitive, sometimes-sad-sometimes-triumphant songs that are either by openly bisexual artists, or about fluid sexuality! Or both. Because you can be both. 1) “For Our Elegant Caste” – Of Montreal 2) “Lola” – The Raincoats 3) “Pink Matter” – Frank[...]

Taylor Swift – “Shake It Off”

August 19, 2014

The popular image of pathetic-failure-chic is tired as hell. See: He’s Just Not That Into You, Girl Most Likely, and other movies in which potentially capable women get sucked into very cute, very milquetoast humiliations and histrionics. Taylor Swift can often be the aural embodiment of perpetuating those stereotypes. Girls! It’s Victimhood lite! Now in adorable and sassy flavors. The Bechdel Test is just based on a little conversation between two characters in a 1985 comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For by Allison Bechdel. It is usually applied to film, but it works for other media. All the film/album/novel/what-have-you needs is a) at least two women who b) have conversations c) about something other than a man. The heteronormativity and the perfect image of a relationship, the super sublime womanhood and manhood we’re supposed to aspire to, really does run so deep that the art which rewards this complex[...]

Future Islands at Mr. Smalls (8/8/14)

August 11, 2014

This past weekend a couple of minor (okay, very minor) Buffalo imports hit up the Steel City as part of the Quad City Blogger Tour while one of Pittsburgh’s best-bred acts, the splice king Girl Talk, invaded Canalside. Hitching a ride with Buffalo Eats, a couple of us buffaBLOGGERS took full advantage of the wonderful accommodations that our host city, and more specifically the staff at Visit Pittsburgh, supplied. Between exploring some Pittsburgh attractions (the museum of megalomaniacal Andy Warhol may have been our favorite), and a lot of good eating and drinking (did I mention we traveled with Buffalo Eats?), we somehow managed to make a musical weekend out of it. Friday night in Millvale, about a ten minute drive across one of Pitt’s many bridges, we hit up Mr. Smalls for a sold-out performance from Baltimore’s Future Islands. It’s a super-quick ride over the river from downtown Pittsburgh[...]

Tonight: Drake vs Lil Wayne

August 5, 2014

Drake and Lil Wayne are kicking off their tour locally tonight so we can all hang with the Young Money Club and see the saddest twenty-something of Toronto in action. A new Street Fighter themed trailer for the tour’s associated smartphone app even seems to promise battles between the “Sage” and “Protégé.” Drive out to the Darien Lake Performing Arts Center tonight if you’re trying to catch as many happy Lil Wayne giggles in your butterfly basket as possible. But in all reality, drive out for Drake. Drake at all costs. Drake is so hot right now. He even gave us “Make Me Proud,” the hip-hop song our generation truly deserves. The event starts at 7:00 p.m. and tickets are $35.00 for lawn seating, or range from $49.50 to $125.50 for reserved seating.

Jenny Lewis – The Voyager

July 29, 2014

“The voyager is in every boy and girl, / if you want to get to heaven / get out of this world.” On July 29th, Jenny Lewis released her first solo effort, The Voyager, since the sensual alt-country album Acid Tongue of 2008. I expect a lot from Jenny Lewis. I expected sci-fi to blast us off and let us escape, I expected sex to ground us, I expected sliding guitars to remind us of where we come from. Yet, squarely in the middle of the album, she croons, “Forgive me my candor.” The Voyager probes, sent on their mission in 1977, are the furthest that human-made objects have ever been from planet Earth. They famously contain a disc, a Golden Record each, an audio-visual capsule of life on our planet. These records are at once extraordinary and accessible: they contain greetings, mathematics, measurements, silhouettes, and songs. Yet, in order for their beauty to be unpacked,[...]

Jenny Lewis at Toronto Urban Roots Festival (7/6/14)

July 7, 2014

You may have seen some photos of Jenny Lewis mugging in a rainbow-cream pantsuit airbrushed with clouds and stars lately. Now that I’ve seen her showboat in it on stage in some cerulean sci-fi shades, I’m pretty much convinced that she is ready to bust out of her mortal corporeal form and just become the total goddess she knows she is, space-Barbie style. Furthermore, I’m even more excited for her new record to come out on July 29th, titled The Voyager. Jenny is an indie star and it’s fabulous to see her embrace all of the selves she has ever been for us on stage: her setlist for TURF (Toronto Urban Roots Fest) yesterday even included two anthems from Rilo Kiley’s More Adventurous and The Execution of All Things. She also revisited quite a few Under the Blacklight classics, such as “Close Call” and “Silver Lining.” Under the Blacklight, the[...]