Listening to Bob Mould’s music – his more than a dozen solo albums, his releases leading Sugar in the ’90s, and especially the run of six albums he made with Hüsker Dü in the mid-1990s – and you’re likely to come away with the impression that he’s a pretty intense guy. And while that’s not an inaccurate assumption, it takes into consideration only part of the picture. Mould is a thoughtful, incisive lyricist whose songs can address big themes. At his best, Mould has it both ways, and that’s the case with Blue Hearts, his latest album. Blue Hearts is a collection of topical songs, and the indiv ..read more

Hypnotic psychedelia with a deep groove is the musical stock in trade of Oakland’s Sugar Candy Mountain. Led by multi-instrumentalists Will Halsey and Ash Reiter, the group debuted with a self-released, self-titled album in 2011. Swimming in the same pool of influences that informs modern-day acts like Khruangbin, Allah-Las, and even the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Sugar Candy Mountain is more firmly rooted in classic pop values than many of its contemporaries. The group’s irresistible melodies and lush, yet uncluttered arrangements, make for some alluring listening. Ten years and six albums aft ..read more

For every singer-songwriter who traffics in hushed, poignant melodies and writes naked and self-effacing lyrics, the specter of Elliott Smith looms large. The dearly-departed poet laureate of beautiful and bedeviling ballads died nearly two decades ago, but his influence and impact can still be felt with every new troubadour who has the courage to air their shortcomings. Taylor Vick, the Oakland-based artist who records as Boy Scouts, makes the same kind of melancholy and elegiac music that was Smith’s specialty. While there are traces of contemporary artists like Hand Habits, Cass McCombs, an ..read more

The digital age brought with it some fundamental shifts in music industry paradigms. Tuareg guitarist and songwriter Mdou Moctar was a beneficiary of those changes, leveraging them to catapult himself to prominence in his home country of Niger. More than a decade later, he’s signed to an established label and touring the globe with his distinctive music. He’s currently on the road in North America in support of the politically-charged Afrique Victime, his first release for Matador Records. Moctar owes a debt to smart phones; years before any official release of his music, Moctar’s fans acted a ..read more

Tom Petty was a Southern boy who grew up in the swamps of Florida, raised by a dad who was a travelling salesman. Anthony Gonzalez is from the French Riviera resort town of Antibes, a scenic coastal city a few miles removed from the glitz and glamour of Monaco and Cannes. Petty’s nasally drawl gave a sense of accessibility and earnestness to the catchy heartland rock he practiced over his 40-year musical career (which ended tragically and way too soon in 2017.) As the brainchild behind M83, Gonzalez crafts majestic, sweeping anthems that feel otherworldly and celestial. One artist dealt with t ..read more

It was five years ago when the four Colombia-born members of Combo Chimbita released their debut EP, El Corredor del Jaguar. At the time — and for a couple of years to follow — the group made a point of defining its music as “tropical futurism.” They explained that to mean that the group made music influenced by Latin American cumbia and the otherworldly, Afrocentric and polyrhythmic jazz of Sun Ra. As bassist and keyboardist Prince of Queens told me in 2018, “it’s a way of re-imagining what we are and where we’re going based more on our ancestors than on sci-fi.” And when Combo Chimbita first ..read more

French 79, the electronic artist from Marseilles, was supposed to embark on a U.S. and Canada tour in early 2020, including a stop at San Francisco’s Rickshaw Stop. Then it was rescheduled due to the pandemic. Then it was rescheduled again. Then it was rescheduled a third time — but this time for a different reason: French 79 couldn’t get his U.S. visa in time. “The lawyer told us in July that the visa couldn’t move forward,” says François Gautreau, French 79’s press manager. “We had to admit that we couldn’t make it so we rescheduled again and tried to avoid fees as much as possible.” Artists ..read more

GRAMMY-nominated electronic artist Porter Robinson and the production company, Goldenvoice, will revive the annual Second Sky music festival at the Oakland Arena grounds Sept. 18 and 19. In addition to the in-person debut of Robinson’s new Nurture (Live) show, the two-day event will feature performances from a diverse collection of eight other electronic and indie-adjacent artists. The sold-out inaugural installment took place in 2019 in Oakland’s Middle Harbor Shoreline Park before it went virtual in 2020 due to COVID-19 as a livestream and VR experience called Secret Sky. Since that pivot, R ..read more

Few in the early 1970s might have predicted that one of music’s strangest (and most original) acts would continue to tour and release new music well into the 21st century. But San Francisco-based avant garde collective The Residents have always confounded expectations. Though the group’s history is by design murky and mysterious, it’s generally accepted that the steadfastly anonymous group (of an unspecified number of persons) relocated from Louisiana to the Bay Area in the 1960s. Longtime Residents spokesman (group member?) and graphic artist Homer Flynn says that the individuals who would ev ..read more

Quirky and refined, the Canadian four-piece Fleece sets itself apart on its new record Stunning and Atrocious. The band will showcase the record, and hopefully some of its signature camp, at August Hall on Sept. 18.   A self-proclaimed “queer band,” Fleece capitalizes on its idiosyncrasies rather than capitulating to achieve marketability. In a literal sense, the band uplifts LGBTQ+ identities. Lead singer Matt Rogers sings about dating men, and their recent music video for “Losing Time,” in which the band dons Wild West-style pin-up togs, is a queer cowboy’s wet dream. But, for the ..read more