The UK based Black feminist punk trio, Big Joanie, (who put out one of FTA’s favorite records of 2022) have just announced their first tour of North America. The tour will see the band hitting cities in the US and Canada on both coasts split into two legs, making stops at Treefort Fest on the first leg and two stops in NYC during the second leg on 5/25 at Union Pool (now sold out) and a just added show at Baby’s All Right the following day. These shows by the critically acclaimed band are highly anticipated and come as very welcome news to start the year off.
Along with the announcement they also shared a live video for their song “Cactus Tree.” Watch the video and see all tour dates below.
The long running indie greats have announced their ninth album, The Price of Progress, and shared the first single from it, the driving rocker “Sideways Skull.” The song “is a rocking song about rock and rollers,” says frontman Craig Finn. “In this case, they’ve been taken out of the game for a bit of rest, but still keep their dreams alive as they discuss past glories.” Going on to say “We loved the big sound of this when Tad Kubler brought it into the band, and the studio performance of it felt especially joyful. We’re happy to put this forth as a first look at The Price of Progress, and the album’s title even comes from this song.”
Additionally, the band will celebrate their 20th anniversary with a busy schedule of shows throughout the year which begins on 1/28 at Music Hall of Williamsburg and will be a full circle moment for the band. They share “This will be a special event, with the show taking place exactly 20 years after the band’s first live performance, on the same site (then North Six). Two Dark Birds will be the special opener at Music Hall, harkening back to the January 2003 show where The Hold Steady opened for Two Dark Birds’ Steve Koester at North Six.”
All current tour dates below. Check out our recent coverage from night two of their Massive Nights 2022 run.
1/28- Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
2/2- Baltimore, MD @ Ottobar
2/3- Washington DC @ Black Cat
2/4- Philadelphia, PA @ Brooklyn Bowl
3/10- London, UK @ Electric Ballroom
3/11- London, UK @ Electric Ballroom
3/12 London, UK @ Colours Hoxton
5/12- New York, NY @ WFUV Highline Bash
6/30- Chicago, IL @ The Salt Shed
7/1- Chicago, IL @ The Salt Shed
7/2- Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle
11/29-12/2- Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Bowl for Massive Nights 2023
The Price of Progress will release in full on 3/31 via Positive Jams. Listen to “Sideways Skull” below:
Welcome to my list of what I loved 2022! It was a huge year for great releases and I’m so excited to share with you the things I loved the most. This is not presented as or meant to be a definitive “best of” list, the contributors who wished to send lists did so and we all made our own lists of what we love. All of them serve as personal snapshots into what we were listening to and loved rather than a definitive list as one monolith called “Full Time Aesthetic”. The lists are in alphabetical order and as such, aren’t ranked, it’s just about sharing what we love and care about the most aka “tell me a punk runs this blog without telling me a punk runs this blog.”
This blog truly is a sum of its parts and I feel that all of the lists reflect that so well and run a massively wide gamut of sounds, styles, and level of notoriety—from slick pop records by the world’s biggest stars recorded on million dollar budgets with famous producers down to lovingly self recorded/released DIY noise punk gems from the local NYC music community and beyond. Additionally, it was very important to me on my own list to make sure I was representing smaller releases that may not get much other attention on these types of lists and to shine a bit of a light on them. Some of these releases I’ve had more time with than others since some came out later than others, but no matter when they arrived, all of them were crucial in some way during my 2022 and will stick with me for many years to come.
I’m sure on this list in particular, you will see a good number of things you aren’t familiar with and you may also be surprised to see certain things not on it. I listened to far more music than what is represented here, a lot of it was fantastic and I loved it, but these are the releases that truly resonated most with me and I found myself going back to again and again, enthralled by what was contained within. I hope that if you see things you haven’t heard/heard of before, you’ll take the time to dig in and explore because I promise there are absolutely amazing releases front to back on this list (and the contributors lists as well). I founded this blog and continue to work really hard on it (and so do each and every one of the contributors) purely because I love sharing the gift and the joy of music with everyone I meet. It is a labor of love before it is anything else and I care deeply about every artist I personally cover, as does everyone who shares their time and talents with FTA, and by extension, all of our readers. Please enjoy this gift of amazing music from me to you.
If you missed our list last year, it has loads of heavy hitters from 2021 so be sure to check it out. Also be sure to check out the FTA contributors list of favorites from 2022 which you can find here. Both lists are PACKED with incredible releases from the past two years and have plenty to explore.
One can’t possibly have a conversation about noise or experimental music without mentioning the pioneering duo, Lightning Bolt. They formed almost three decades ago in the wonderfully weird creative hotbed of Providence, RI and they’ve long been on the periphery of my consciousness (though not yet in the 90s, I wasn’t that cool as a teen).
My first introduction to them came in the form of a track on a stellar and very formative comp that came out in 2002 on the now defunct label, 5 Rue Christine (which at the time was an offshoot of Kill Rocks Stars devoted to putting out more experimental releases), If The 20th Century Didn’t Exist It Would Be Necessary To Invent It. That time period was sort of the end of the heyday of the cheap record label/zine comps where you could get 20-25 songs for a few bucks and discover all sorts of new shit to explore, perhaps even finding your new favorite band. It was always (and still is) supremely satisfying to strike musical gold this way, much more so than playlists are now or downloading random MP3s were during the same era. You got the “brand assurance” of knowing the label or zine releasing it so you could bank on the fact that it probably was good/well curated, but you still had to have a little skin in the game and make a bit of an investment which yeah, sometimes turned out to be a bust, but a lot of times it paid off in spades.
And pay off that comp surely did, I played that CD over and over again until it eventually got lost, but I never forgot the music I learned about from it. Today, it is available on KRS’ Bandcamp and I highly recommend you shelling out the five clams for it because it is still one of my favorites to this day. Or if CDs are more your thing, there are some cheap copies for sale on Discogs too.
Read Pitchfork’s review from when it came out. It doesn’t mention Lightning Bolt’s song but does highlight several other standout tracks and states “The Twenty-First Century is more of a starting point for further research than a complete picture of whatever scene encapsulates these bands,” and yeah, I can agree with that. That’s kind of the whole point of a comp like this to begin with.
Anyway, waxing nostalgic about great comps of yore aside, once I discovered them, it’s safe to say that Lightning Bolt was always there to form the soundtrack to some of my more high-strung moments and potent feelings, and I loved them for that. But something was missing because I somehow had never seen them live in all those years. I had heard that their shows were intense and sweaty affairs, played “in the round” with the audience encircling them (one of the best ways to see a band if you ask me). I longed put an end to my missing streak and finally got a chance to when they hit Brooklyn last week.
The Brians—Brian Gibson on bass and Brian Chippendale on drums and vocals—didn’t disappoint and their live set was everything I had heard to expect and more. The crowd immediately burst into a frenzy and I very quickly jumped up onto one of the speakers to hunker down with my camera for the show in a little makeshift photo pit of sorts as the duo pummeled the audience with song after song in a heavy noise barrage. Gibson remained stoic while Chippendale’s hands blasted out white hot rapid fire beats and his arms flew like an octopus around his drum kit (that looked ready to collapse at any moment and indeed, the bottom head of his snare drum broke within the first five minutes) to match his distorted and frantically echoing vocals.
Chippendale interacted with the audience several times, apologizing for having his coat on when he came on stage (the venue had a mandatory and very overpriced coatcheck), commenting on one person’s bootleg shirt (but saying he didn’t mind) and shutting down a tough guy who got too aggressive in an already harried crowd. Though a high strung evening, Chippendale kept the night light and fun with these interactions.
The show was opened by Detroit band Decliner who I unfortunately just missed as I walked in, and baby baby_explores, the Providence synth post punk band that had been on the duration of the tour with Lightning Bolt.
I admittedly was not in the best mood when I walked into the venue that night (dumb life shit) and it was a damp, cold night outside on top of it which wasn’t helping matters. But true to form, Lightning Bolt put a sound and a sonic vibration to how I was feeling and it was just the cobweb clearing I needed. After the show, the irritation I had felt about unrelated things faded away, quite literally rattled out of me by the noisey onslaught, and I felt a refreshed, cathartic energy as I stepped back out into the chilly night time air. That’s the power of longevity and the power of noise. And I’ll fucking take it.
Scroll down for video, pics of the show (photos by Kate Hoos)
When Sasami comes to town, you can bet on where I’ll be. I had already seen her twice this year (see pics from her show in Philadelphia in March and her show at BRIC in July) and felt fine with that, figuring she’d come back around this way when she released another record. I was resigned to wait, but then I was sent a text message containing the flyer for a headline show she was playing at Baby’s All Right, and I excitedly rushed to my datebook (yes, I keep a handwritten datebook) to make sure I was free that night, because no way was I missing out on the third time to see her this year. Fortunately I was free and I looked forward to the show with great anticipation. (Subsequent to this show being announced, she was also announced as the opener for Wet Leg for their Webster Hall gig to follow a day after this one, a show I was in fact already going to be attending because I was working at the venue that night. Two Sasami shows in two days? And one for a paycheck? Sign me up!)
I have heaped plenty of praise on Sasami as a songwriter and performer in my past write-ups of her songs and shows, and all of it is more than well deserved. And I’m writing this after the Webster Hall show, so I have actually now seen her perform four times in one year, twice on a small stage as the headliner and twice on bigger stages as the opener—an opener who frankly stole the show both times. Seriously, absolutely no shade to the other bands who played with her at those shows, they are great songwriters and have catchy, enjoyable music that I listen to quite often (particularly Wet Leg recently). Their shows are very fun, but there is no denying that none of those bands have a live set that comes anywhere near the level or high caliber of performance that Sasami does, end of story.
Each experience is great (though I don’t love that her sets are shorter when she opens) because to see her take over a large space and completely fill it is compelling and stirring, seeing a performer reach that far and emanate so much energy to a crowd that may not have even been there to see her in the first place, and then surely very quickly winning them over, cementing their fandom then and there.
But while small rooms feel like they can barely contain her, and they won’t much longer, I have to say it is the preferred way to see her. Because those rooms are PACKED with people who came to see her and revel in her power as a performer; those who rush to the front to be close giving back as much as she puts out, singing along to every single word, radiating a massive fucking joy that is incredible and intoxicating to be around.
For these shows she was again backed by the rock solid trio of musicians who make up the metal band Barishi—Graham Brooks on guitar, Jon Kelley on bass, and Dylan Blake on drums—and the foursome again put on a spellbinding show. (Blake told me after the Webster show the trio should be playing a show of their own at Saint Vitus sometime this year.) They hit many of the songs from her stunning full length, Squeeze (which spoiler alert, is on my soon to be published favorites of 2022 list), with highlights being the hypnotic “Say It,” the demonic “Need It To Work” in all its double kick roll glory and of course her frenzied System of A Down cover.
She also debuted a brand new song solo, saying she had just finished writing it that day and thought it would be “fun to make myself nervous” joking afterwards that “sad girl is back” since it is (currently) more subdued than the heavier material on Squeeze and more akin to the work on her 2019 self titled debut. That could change in time if she chooses to continue in the metal/industrial vein or it could be something completely different. I am very much looking forward to whatever she releases next because being such a dynamic songwriter, anything is possible for the direction of one of her songs and every possibility is intriguing.
Jigsaw Youth, the heavy grunge/metal rockers from Staten Island opened the show and were the perfect band to set the mood for the evening. I have known them since they were teenagers when I booked them for Punk Island 2017 and played a benefit house show with them the same year and it has been awesome to see their growth in that time. They have gotten a lot heavier over the years since those earlier shows and have now fully veered away from the punky riot grrrl vibe that defined that era of their music to embrace big metallic riffs. There is a richness and maturity to their sound now and it really was the perfect counterpoint and kickoff to lead into Sasami’s set, one of the best matched bills sonically I’d seen all year. They played some of their newest material, the just released songs “No Mercy” and “Skin,” also adding in a thick and loud cover of Blur’s infectious and iconic singalong anthem “Song 2” to really get the crowd riled up.
These nights came at the very tail end of an absolutely huge year of live music for me. Just when I thought the year was winding down and coming to a close, all the best shows already locked in and behind me, Sasami came back around again to deliver not one, but two knockout punches. A back to back cherry on top of a killer year, much to my delight and the rest of two very thrilled audiences.
Scroll down for setlist, fan shot video, pics of the show (photos by Kate Hoos)
Setlist: The Greatest, Need It to Work, Skin a Rat, Not The Time, Say It, Call Me Home, Sorry Entertainer (Daniel Johnston), New Untitled song, Take Care, Feminine Water Turmoil, Not A Love Song, Toxicity (SOAD cover)
Full show video complete with epic and awesome stage banter
