#punk rock

Brisbane Trio The Disgruntled Taxpayers Transform Old-School Aussie Punk Into Modern Anthems

This week for Playing Melbourne, we're taking a detour up the East Coast of Australia to Queensland, where 3-piece band The Disgruntled Taxpayers are based in the capital city, Brisbane. We're taking this long, humid and scenic trip because a couple of weeks ago, my beloved Melbourne community...

Cat Woods

Cheekface Assert Boundaries with Cultural Critique on Sophomore LP 'Emphatically No.'

"Listen to your heart (no)/keep on keeping on (no)/just say no to drugs (no)/eat a healthy lunch (no)," goes the chorus of "'Listen To Your Heart.' 'No.'" It's the first song on Emphatically No., the sophomore LP from LA-based indie rock trio Cheekface, out today via New Professor. Guitarist/singer...

Annie White

Grumpster Finds Solance On the Edges of Debut LP Underwhelmed

Over deli sandwiches, Falyn Walsh of Grumpster told me that she thinks some people are meant to become friends. I had met her, along with Lalo Gonzalez Deetz (guitar) and Noel Agtane (drums) at Gilman Brewing some hours earlier, where we discussed the Oakland band’s debut album, Underwhelmed. The...

Sophia Vaccaro

PLAYING THE BAYGrumpster is "Crumbling" in New Video

In the music video for “Crumbling,” by Oakland punk band Grumpster, lead singer Fayln Walsh tears off her baggy '80s color-block shirt during the final breakdown, flinging her limbs with detached singularity in front of a golden-hour graveyard. Cut in between shots of the band playing live, this is...

Sophia Vaccaro

PLAYING THE BAYIvy Jeanne Is Not For Sale

Ivy Jeanne wears many hats. Political femme activist, lead singer of Black Rainbow, muralist, and longtime San Francisco resident, are just a few ways to describe her momentum and dedication to our local community. We chat on Clarion Alley, in front of her very own mural (influenced by the...

Kayla Fong and Zihao Huang

PLAYING BLOOMINGTONWhy Bloomington? An Intro to Hoosier Punk

The back cover of MX-80 Sound LP Out of the Tunnel. Photo by Kim Torgerson (c. 1980) I moved from Brooklyn, New York to Bloomington, Indiana in the fall of 2014 to pursue a PhD in Ethnomusicology at Indiana University - in a nutshell, to study music within its cultural context. Coming from a...

Rebecca Kunin

ONLY NOISEAll The Rage

Long has anger been a stigmatized emotion – more so for women than men, unfortunately. What is an incensed woman to do when she is told for decades that 12 Angry Men look like passionate, dutiful citizens, but one angry woman looks like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction?

Madison Bloom

ONLY NOISEPunk Rock, Patrimony, and Pyrotechnics

I’ve been following allegations that multimillionaire Joe Corré – spawn of fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and late Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren – would set fire to roughly $6,000,000 worth of punk memorabilia.

Madison Bloom

INTERVIEW/EP REVIEWThe Black Black

“Thematically, it’s kind of a break-up song, a song about the replaceable nature of relationships,” the band’s singer/songwriter/guitarist, Jonathan, told us. “Sometimes, you’re replacing the relationship but not the person, and the people blur together.”

Emily Daly

ONLY NOISEPop Anonymous

If concept is the enemy, context is a friend. After all, it was context that first tricked me into liking The Smiths.

Madison Bloom

ONLY NOISEFalling in Love With Punk Rock Through Secondhand Smoke

Mine wasn’t a lesson in grunge, but punk rock, and it began on Valentine’s Day in sixth grade.

Madison Bloom

ALBUM REVIEWBeach Slang "The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us"

A genre can sometimes be a useless, misleading way of explaining what an artist sounds like and allowing listeners to decide ahead of time whether they like them. It’s definitely not the best description to call Beach Slang’s The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us, a straight ahead punk...

Emily Daly