Four years of Bay Area Music Love! Celebrate with us on Saturday, November 9
Sour Widows, Tony Jay, Pocket Full of Crumbs, Margot James, and DJ Nocean Beach at El Rio during the day + Charles Hawthorne and Farsight at Mothership at night
We’re going big. Next month we’re celebrating four years of Bay Area Music Love with four of our favorite local bands, four of our favorite DJs, and 10 hours of music.
Sour Widows headlines our day party at El Rio, with support from Pocket Full of Crumbs, Tony Jay, Margot James, and DJ Nocean Beach, representing the best in local shoegaze and alt rock. Read the rest of this newsletter for info about the great albums each of these artists have released this year. (Reviews by Ronny Kerr.)
That same night, we move next door to Mothership for Charles Hawthorne and Farsight for an eclectic evening of dance floor heaters from two of the Bay’s most creative selectors, each given a full two hours to stretch out and play. White Crate resident ronny ronny ronny will be opening up the festivities.
Get tickets to Sour Widows at El Rio →
RSVP for Charles Hawthorne & Farsight at Mothership →
— White Crate
SOUR WIDOWS
“We all deserve to be cherished through our hardships, even when we are at our most difficult to love.”
Revival of a Friend by Sour Widows is a moody alt rock hinterland, an extravagant grunge palace assembled from simple pieces of the craft. What sets it apart? Touch. Texture. Co-produced, engineered, and mixed by Tiny Telephone’s Maryam Qudus, the album sounds pristine: each floor tom, snare, guitar string, and crying out voice given its space to breathe separately—and to organically meld into the whole. Traversing these sonic landscapes, one feels cradled by a warm, furious heart. Instead of cruelty or bitterness, there is a grounding gratitude strummed in love.
TONY JAY
“It destroys me every day”
Truly a “Treasury of Reveries,” as one song here is aptly titled, Knife Is But A Dream is the latest album by Tony Jay, aka Michael Ramos. Jointly released by Bay Area labels Paisley Shirt and Slumberland as well as Japan’s Galaxy Train, the lo-fi endeavor was entirely composed and recorded at home by Ramos alone. Well, alone with his cat Penny going “through a time of delicate health.” You probably wouldn’t know it, but Penny provides guitar muting, keyboard playing, and backup vocals on a few tracks.
One of those bright lights in the Bay Area indie music constellation, Ramos also performs with Flowertown and Al Harper, and recently collaborated with Chime School on their album The Boy Who Ran the Paisley Hotel. So it may come as no surprise that the sounds here fit neatly into our local fog pop scene—melancholy, sedate, mellow strumming rumination. Amid the sung pieces, instrumentals (“Doubtfully Yours”, “The Softest String”) fade in and out like apparitions, reinforcing the work as some sort of lost film depicting not just people and relationships, but landscapes, lifeless things, the passing weather.
POCKET FULL OF CRUMBS
Maybe you’re a Gen X Slacker and you can still remember making friends for life at those wild house shows in the 90s. Or maybe you didn’t quite live it, but you’ve damn well enjoyed arguing with coworkers whether there’s any album quite as good as Slint’s Spiderland. Or maybe your ears are so young and fresh that you really have never heard anything quite like this.
Either way, there’s no denying it: This rips.
In My Hands I Hold a Lucky Cricket is the second album for SF trio Pocket Full of Crumbs, and it’s their first to land on local label Cherub Dream Records. Beyond the unforgettable title, the new album worms into your brain through lo-fi indie rock adorned with shoegaze and post-rock—minus all the noise and drama. It’s got a carefree, easy gait, inviting a warm reception on the first listen but (like other legendary predecessors in this field) hinting at secret delights in repeat listens.
MARGOT JAMES
“What is freedom if you’re not leaving your family in tears?”
Seemingly out of nowhere, Oakland singer-songwriter Margot James emerges with Talker, a seven-track suite of buzzing electric keyboard, gently rocking blues rhythms, and a bright husky voice melodious with introspection and growth. It feels all the more “out of nowhere” because (full disclosure) Margot is a good friend of one of my good friends; I knew she sang and played the piano, but like this?
Recorded at Hand Me Down Studios and featuring a crew of collaborators, none of the songs here warrant a skip: The album opens with the moody slow brooding “Eyes” (paired with a music video filmed in Perugia, Italy), before moving into the ironically light-hearted “Pirouette,” the country dance of “Pinky Fingers,” and so on. Each song a little piece of Margot’s heart, but warm and gentle with the revelations.
SHOW RECS
Our top show recommendations for the coming week:
[jazz] Art of the Song ft. SFJAZZ Collective — Oct 24-27 at SFJAZZ
[indie] CUT THE BREAKERS ft. Tune-Yards, Yea-Ming, Daniel Lee DiEmidio, Ryan Christopher Parks — Oct 24 at the Golden Bull
[indie] Tauwoo & Emily Afton (double album release party), Dani Offline — Oct 24 at Rickshaw Stop
[r&b] Lady OFLO (album release), Frak, SundaY — Oct 24 at Bottom of the Hill
[latin] La Doña — Oct 25 at Oakland Museum of California
[alternative] Toro y Moi, Aminé, Kenny Mason — Oct 25 at the Greek Theatre
[latin] Cumbia de Los Muertos ft. Discos Resaca Collective, Ritmos Tropicosmos, DJ Sizzle — Oct 25 at Freight & Salvage
[club] TECH GRL, DJ JUANNY, Fiera Ferari, Freaky Emo, SNAQ, DMN TWNK, FINISHHER — Oct 25 at F8
[acid] Carlos Souffront — Oct 25 at 1566 Carroll Ave, SF
[experimental] Togetherness ft. Salimatu Amabebe, Joel St. Julien, Martin Perna, Matt Brownell, Cat Lauigan, Zekarias Musele Thompson & more — Oct 26 at Gray Area
[experimental] Sholeh Asgary (album release), Leila Abdul-Rauf, Thea Farhadian, Silvia Matheus — Oct 26 at Temescal Art Center
[indie] New Issue, Madeline Kenney, Silverware — Oct 26 at Martial Arts
[electronic] Naked Roommate (record release), Egyptian Lover, Bodhi's War — Oct 26 at Thee Stork Club
[hip hop] RNJ, Sonny SOUF, Know Expressions?, Lyrical C, Mr. Universol, Under the Bridge — Oct 26 at Elbo Room Jack London
[club] Kush Jones, YungerAdrian, Tomu DJ, Boogie Knight b2b Kuma, New Nostalgia — Oct 26 at Monarch
[club] NO BIAS x CRIP ECSTASY Bored Lord, Dj Fridge, Obstac, zewmageddon — Oct 26 at DM organizers for location
[americana] Aux Meadows, Curling (solo), Donald Beaman — Oct 27 at Mars Record Shop
[rock] Lofi Legs (album release), Coryphantha, Bruised Banana, YY Gray — Oct 27 at the Golden Bull
[alternative] Tanukichan, Glixen — Oct 29 at the Independent
SUPPORT BAY AREA MUSIC! Get access to our full Bay Area concert calendar, featuring specially curated recommendations for upcoming shows in SF and Oakland.
