#New Wave

PLAYING DETROITBlow Pop Finds Escape in '80s Sounds with "Friendly" Premiere

Before the pandemic, Keaton Butler and Avery Reidy were just friends. They were also living the hodge-podge lifestyles that most working musicians end up scraping together to make ends meet. Butler was bartending, engineering sound for live shows, and performing in three different bands. Reidy was...

Sara Barron

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PLAYING DETROITPrude Boys Unpack Grief and Grievances on New Seven Inch

Hamtramck-based DIY band Prude Boys (Caroline Thornbury, Quentin Thornbury, and Connor Dodson) recently celebrated the release of their new 7-inch record, The Reunion/Daddy. The songs - put out on the band’s own label, Grumble Records - are a preview of a full-length record the band recorded last...

Sara Barron

LIVE REVIEWSean Nicholas Savage and Dinner @ Baby's All Right

The disco balls were in full force at Baby’s All Right last Saturday, where the night’s festivities could have easily marched under one banner: Night of the Weirdos. That is of course, the highest order of compliments coming from my fingers, and while I knew from firsthand experience what a bizarro...

Madison Bloom

PLAYING DETROITTart Returns as a Trio on New EP Toothache

Sweet, sour and glittering with adrenaline (appropriately named) transcendent Detroit trio Tart have made a reputation for themselves by deconstructing new wave and electroclash to spawn their genre-defying sound. Together, vocalist Zee Bricker, guitarist Adam Michael Lee Padden and drummer Donny...

Jerilyn Jordan

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ONLY NOISEPoison Pen – The Discretely Vicious Songs of Elvis Costello

The best insults are those that fly over our heads. Those that for a minute maybe sound like praise. Those that strike with a delay…like a cut from a sharp blade that doesn’t begin to bleed until several moments after incision.

Madison Bloom

ALBUM REVIEWPOP ETC "Souvenirs"

Berkeley-born and Brooklyn-based trio POP ETC are back with Souvenir, a follow up to 2012's eponymous release. In the last three years, the band has traversed in an even poppier direction, almost a little cheesy. But in a time when "pop" is considered an obscenity, a genre to be left for the...

Ysabella Monton

PLAYING DETROITDJ Duo Haute to Death

It was the day of my grandmother's funeral. Having spent the better portion of my day mourning the loss with my father and chain smoking while driving familiar streets of my hometown where the old bars had new signs, I was unnerved with realizing not everything was as I left it when I moved out and...

Jerilyn Jordan

VIDEO OF THE WEEKThe Ugly Club, "Passengers"

Brooklyn-based psych-pop quartet, The Ugly Club (Ryan Eagan, Talor Mandel, Rick Su-Poi and Ryan McNulty), has perfected an ability to craft songs that straddle the line between gleaming, exuberant dance hits and infectious, complex garage-rock throwback jams. Since their 2012 full length, You Belong...

Marianne White

SHOW REVIEWThe Horrors, live at MHOW

Given the infrequency with which these guys tour, I had no idea what exactly to expect from them as a live act. I got into Primary Colours when it came out in 2009, because of the song "Three Decades", which starts out seeming like disjointed a-harmonious chaos, and becomes, at the exact moment you...

Marianne White