SF music
fromSFGATE
23 hours agoThe 'Jesus of Cool' returns to rock San Francisco
Nick Lowe has a long-standing affection for San Francisco, performing there since the late 1970s and cherishing his memories of the city.
Clothing that bears the name of a city near or far has become a closet staple for many consumers in recent years, evolving from impulse purchases to mainstream fashion.
Sessa's charming stage presence, irresistible Portuguese vocals, and the whole band's groovy sunshine energy made the entire room fall in love with the musicians from São Paulo.
Music is a healer, and it's time to take your medicine. The Delines have made a side-hustle out of cinematic Americana for more than a decade, anchoring the profound, athletic lyricisms of acclaimed novelist/musician Willy Vlautin.
Beleaguered Louvre president Laurence des Cars quits after a historic heist under her watch. The next morning, a new leader is announced. It's Christophe Leribault from the Palace of Versailles, a true museum animal who ran a few during his career.
I wanted her voice because it's robustly an octave over mine. It's surprisingly, to me, more robust and embodied now than it was in '98, when they recorded Celebrity Skin, Hole's Grammy-nominated third album. Silver, tinkling, all the things I can't do. We're perfect together.
With Portland sextet Abronia, you sort of have to listen past the spectacle. Forget about the overtly Jodorowsky-Morricone vibes, the tenor sax and the pedal steel guitar, the contralto vocals, the gigantic bass drum, the legend of co-founder Eric Crespo's desert vision. What's really going on here?
My driving belief is that we need to be able to communicate, to touch humanity, to try to connect to each other in some way, but I'm also not trying to forgive or underplay the extremities. There was fighting either between different factions or just for fun. Initially, what I saw was deeply shocking. When you're in those environments, it's so venomous and hateful.
The Azn Zine Fest is to show Portland there's a fuck-ton of Asian creatives. When we put out the call for vendors, we were like, 'Maybe 30 to 50 people will respond to our call.' We had probably 120 respond.
The category's been going around social media for a bit, but there's even a domain exclusively for Cigarette Mom Rock. There, the meaning of the genre is described as a "feminine counterpart to 'divorced dad rock,'" but is also meant to conjure up images of your own hard-working '90s mom, driving you to baseball practice with the windows down and a cigarette in one hand.
McCready's story captures the drive and sense of community that forged the powerful backbone of the Seattle music scene of the 1980s, as their world changed forever with the explosion of grunge in the '90s. Farewell to Seasons unflinchingly shows the brutal cost it had for so many artists and musicians as it captures the lived experience of that seminal era.
A group of Gen Zers 200 deep, snaked down Houston Street in hopes of shopping at a pop-up for Rogue, a Y2K-focused vintage retailer operated by the TikTok star. Inside, they browsed racks of vintage picks and vinyl records, but it was the charismatic, acid-green-haired Rogue, who was arguably the biggest draw. She posed for selfies with fans, as she does at all her stores, which are styled like deliberately dishevelled millennial bedrooms, complete with early-2000s ephemera like Britney Spears posters.
Every micro-trend is swiftly dubbed ("Italian summer nails" or some such), and the most elaborate looks are often confined to the wearer's own home - all dolled up and nowhere to go. But before some of today's beauty influencers were born (the late '80s and '90s, let's say), full beats were meant to be flaunted in public. In those years, no group burned brighter than the club kids, whose visual rebellion through makeup signaled a sense of freedom against the somber backdrop of the AIDS epidemic.
Inner Magic is the duo of former Chromatics guitarist Adam Miller and former Smashing Pumpkins guitarist Jeff Schroeder. They met in 2024 and bonded over their love of '80s UK indie legends Felt, krautrock and the Vinnie Vincent Invasion, and then decided they should make music together.
Michigan screamo band Youth Novel returned from hiatus with their excellent self-titled album in 2021, but then members turned their focus towards Heavenly Blue (now known as Heaven's Blinding Hue), who released their debut album We Have the Answer in 2024. But now, Youth Novel are back once again with their new album I Went Through This Experience Smiling. Picking right up where the band left off, it's an intense listen, as pulverizingly heavy as it is deeply beautiful.
"Brooklyn! The news is in and you officially sold out @musichallofwb in record time! Thank you for that! It's bittersweet that it will be our last ever performance in a venue that we love, but what a send off it will be. The rest of the tour is selling quickly so please - if you want to come celebrate Full Collapse, A City By The Light Divided and No Devolucion with us and see Chris Conley perform a rare solo set into the bargain,"
Don't say you were not warned: stories, both in print and broadcast, are already being prepared about the 50th anniversary of punk rock. Indeed, 1976 saw the release of debut albums by the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, the Damned, and the first version of Blank Generation, Richard Hell's anthem. Of course, there are also nitpicky arguments for rejecting 1976 as the annus mirabilis.
It's a true dream to put out a single on Sub Pop, and our new song 'Masks' hopefully honors the spirit of the mythical, sometimes mystical, city of Seattle. Thanks in part to the movie Hype, we have long been obsessed with Seattle, the American underground of the late '80s, and Sub Pop and their tools of world domination. Everything we learned about packaging Chat Pile, we learned from Sub Pop co-founders Jonathan Poneman and Bruce Pavitt.
"When I read the fine print, it was 'an experience with REO Speedwagon's music.' It's none of the original members," Fletcher recalls. "I don't want to promote the show unless it's the real thing. I don't know why you would want to see that. It's just a cover band. To me, that's a little bit strange." He adds, with a sigh, "If there are no original members, who cares?"
Bikini Kill are hitting the road again. Kathleen Hanna and her band, who've toured consistently since reuniting in 2017, will play shows across the United States in September. They're also set to headline Oakland's Mosswood Meltdown on July 19. Check out all of Bikini Kill's 2026 dates below.
The album, he added, "changed our lives. It put us on a map. It gave us a new, broad audience of people that found something in it that they connected with. People have grown up with this record, right alongside us growing up, and I feel like it's important to celebrate it. It's important to acknowledge to people that we appreciate that, despite the obvious commerce involved."