Floating on a cloud of love with Alice Phoebe Lou Sophia Shen April 16, 2024 Concerts, Festivals, and Live Reviews Friday, April 12, just before the latest round of rainfall would begin to kiss the streets of San Francisco, synth pop princess Alice Phoebe Lou delivered a heartfelt and cathartic set to an entranced audience ...
Freak the Freak Out! Nico Chodor and Sophia Shen November 13, 2023 Concerts, Festivals, and Live Reviews, Metal, Rock, Shoegaze Last weekend, right on the heels of San Francisco’s multi-day, multi-venue Psyched! Fest, we crossed state lines for a Pacific Northwestern analogue: Freakout Fest in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. The ...
Partying like it’s the late 1900s: the Breeders and Belly at the Warfield Sophia Shen October 27, 2023 Concerts, Festivals, and Live Reviews, Rock, San Francisco 1 Comment Working as a stagehand at a music venue, you see enough middle-aged men whose bands you’ve never heard of strut across a stage. Thus, attending the Breeders’ 30th anniversary tour of their 1993 album Last S...
From indie pop to Afrobeat: The Listening Dolls at Neck of the Woods Sophia Shen August 16, 2023 Afrobeats, Concerts, Festivals, and Live Reviews, indie, indie scene, indie-pop, Music History, Rock, San Francisco The Devil works hard, but LA-based music organization The Listening Dolls works harder. The Listening Dolls, co-founded and directed by SF native Martine Kolderup-Lane, was born late last year through the jo...
Believe the Hype: ALG at Rickshaw Stop Sophia Shen July 5, 2023 Concerts, Festivals, and Live Previews On Thursday night, after submitting my two half-baked Session A finals and thus closing the door on a veritable lifetime of summer school, I slicked my hair back, donned a blazer, and set off towards Rickshaw S...
Floating through “Icy Blue”: new Chammeili album contemplates change Sophia Shen January 2, 2023 Album Review Characterized by dreamy doubled vocals and temperamental time signatures, Berkeley-based indie band Chammeili’s 2022 record Icy Blue provides listeners with a bird’s eye view of the trials, tribulations, an...
Bloom and Grow: Luna Li enthralls all at Rickshaw Stop Sophia Shen October 17, 2022 Berkeley, Concerts, Festivals, and Live Reviews, indie-pop, Interview, LGBTQ+ Friday, October 14 at Rickshaw Stop saw a radiant, arresting performance by the rising Asian Canadian indie sweetheart Luna Li, accompanied by the playfully moody up-and-coming Los Angeles project zzzahara. Emb...
Mannequin Pussy power: Philadelphia punk band takes Upper Sproul Sophia Shen May 31, 2022 Concerts, Festivals, and Live Reviews On Thursday, April 14, indie punk group Mannequin Pussy rocked Upper Sproul, sparking a daytime mosh that triumphed over the gloomy weather conditions and chased the rainy day blues away. This was an unexpected...
Less than Pristine: Snail Mail at the Fox Sophia Shen April 27, 2022 Concerts, Festivals, and Live Reviews 1 Comment In the wake of her sophomore album Valentine (2021), an LP that marked a sonic shift in the Snail Mail catalogue, Baltimore’s Lindsey Jordan and her band voyaged west to pay a visit to the Fox Theater on Apri...
Berkeley’s Musical Exchange Sophia Shen April 17, 2022 Columns and Opinions In the words of Clem Zimmer, Cal alum and synth punk virtuoso, the Bay Area has a rich DIY music tradition. Zooming in on UC Berkeley and its adjacent co-op houses, backyard stages, and student stomping grounds...
Mitski and me Sophia Shen April 5, 2022 Berkeley, Columns and Opinions By the time my friend and I arrived at the Fox for the Mitski concert on March 5, the formidable line was already snaking down the block, terminating on the far side of the adjacent parking lot. With Mitski’s...