The band will kick off their tour on March 13th in Olympia, Washington with a special Interfaith Benefit show. Interfaith Works Nightly Shelter is a shelter/homeless program that works specifically with women and LGBTQ adults in that area. After that, the band will remain on the road through a Milwaukee gig on May 24th. Tickets go on sale November 8th.
Bikini Kill have announced a 2020 international tour. The tour kicks off in March with a benefit for Interfaith Works in Olympia, Washington. Check below for the full list of shows.
Today, the iconic ’90s punk group Bikini Kill announced a 14-date 2020 world tour, kicking off where the band was founded, in Olympia, Wash. on March 13. This first show, at Capitol Theater, is a special one, as it will benefit local female- and LGBTQ- focused homeless shelter, Interfaith Works.
Bikini Kill have announced a 2020 concert in Olympia, Washington. The show is set for Friday, March 13 at the Capitol Theater and will benefit the nonprofit Interfaith Works.
The fourth-quarter deluge continues this week with a slew of new releases, including the crooning, quirky soul of Rex Orange County, R&B singer Gallant, queer pop icon King Princess and more, plus the first new album in seven years from Neil Young & Crazy Horse. NPR Music’s Lyndsey McKenna and Stephen Thompson join host Robin Hilton as they share their picks for the best new albums out on Oct. 25.
Featured Albums:
Mikal Cronin — Seeker
Featured Song: “I’ve Got Reason”
This week: orchestral synthpop fireworks from Anna Meredith; synthpop synthpop from Black Marble; High Llamas main man Sean O’Hagan goes solo and brings an old Microdisney bandmate along; Mikal Cronin undergoes trial by fire on his first solo album in four years; and San Francisco’s The Gonks do twee punk right.
For more reviews on new album, check out Andrew’s Notable Releases, and other records out today I liked (but didn’t review) include: Young Guv’s GUV II, Guided by Voices’ Sweating the Plague, and UK band Dry Cleaning’s second EP of 2019. And if you need more Basement-approved stuff there’s: Wire are back with a new album; The Orielles announced their second album; and Taos duo Tan Cologne are better than their name.
Today, Mikal Cronin returns with the new record Seeker, an exciting document of change and reinvention. It notably breaks the California artist’s streak of self-titled albums, the last of which was 2015’s MCIII, and was also written when Cronin was at a fork in the road, personally and professionally. Staring down failed relationships, the working grind of being a musician and nagging writer’s block, he “needed to clean up, to stop leaning on external crutches to get through the anxiety,” Cronin says of that time. “I needed to grow the fuck up.”
Although humans cause almost 90 percent of forest fires, when left to its own devices, nature will likewise purge overgrowth in a purifying blaze. Following the destruction is a period of rebirth, and it was with this Phoenix-like revival in mind that baroque garage-rocker Mikal Cronin descended south to demo his first album in four years. What he didn’t anticipate was that he’d actually confront the heat.
Mikal Cronin, “Seeker” (Merge Records). The new guitar-rock album from the native Southern Californian was born in solitude after a series of busted-up relationships and a creeping sense that, in his words, “I needed to clean up, to stop leaning on external crutches to get through the anxiety. I needed to grow the … up.”
For a time in the late-aughts and the first half of this decade, the Bay Area was home to one of the best, most vibrant rock scenes in the country — producing garage heroes like Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees (known now simply as Oh Sees), Hunx and His Punx, Girls, Shannon and the Clams and Mikal Cronin.
And then it wasn’t.
It’s a familiar story: A writer hits a wall and needs to seek out isolation to reconnect with their work. That cliché that path has become wasn’t lost on Mikal Cronin, even as he took it himself to begin the process of creating his first new record since 2015’s MCIII. After a steady streak of putting out a new album every other year since 2011, Cronin took his case of writer’s block and touring exhaustion out to a literal cabin the woods. What he found there were the songs that make up the appropriately titled Seeker, a heady collection of rock and roll and devastating solitude.
The Lowdown: Mikal Cronin has done wonderful work with artists like Charlie and the Moonhearts, Ty Segall, and Thee Oh Sees; yet, it’s often his solo material that shines brightest. His first three self-titled outings, released in 2011, 2013, and 2015, respectively, were endearing hodgepodges of indie, garage, psychedelic rock, and power pop that continually cemented him as one of today’s most characteristic singer-songwriters.
As always, there’s a new Oh Sees record coming out soon—and, as always, we still have no idea what to expect even after a handful of tracks have been released. The first three singles on the massive double LP range from jazz fusion to garage punk, with the band helpfully describing the album as “SoundCloud hip-hop reversed, a far-flung nemesis of contemporary country and flaccid algorithmic pop-barf.”
Next week, Oh Sees are releasing a new album, Face Stabber. The prolific band has shared a handful of tracks from it already, including “Henchlock,” “Poisoned Stones,” and “Heartworm,” and today they’re back with another one, “Captain Loosely,” a squelching instrumental that feels surprisingly meditative and spacey for the band.
Californian psych-rockers Oh Sees have shared their intense new single “Captain Loosely”, which is dedicated to the victims of the El Paso mass shooting.
Oh Sees have made a video for “Captain Loosely” which is from their upcoming album, Face Stabber (which is out next week). The video was directed by Matt Yoka and shot on the U.S./Mexico border in Texas, and they’ve dedicated it to the victims of the August 3 El Paso mass shooting.
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard recently announced their second album of 2019, Infest the Rats’ Nest. It’s out August 16 via Flightless/ATO. Today, they’ve shared a new music video for their new song “Organ Farmer.” In the clip directed by John Angus Stewart, the band wield some tools and try their hand at destroying a car. Watch it happen below.
Event Listen for Ezra Furman’s 9/8 show in Detroit
Ezra Furman in Toronto @ Lee’s Place, Mon September 9, 2019
“Ezra Furman returns with his first single for Clam Down AKA I Should Not Be Alone off his new album Twelve Nudes (due 8/30/19).”
Their songs excoriated rape culture, their motto was ‘girls to the front’ – and they inspired Nirvana’s biggest hit. Now Bikini Kill are back with a mission still relevant in 2019
And a few boys, too. When riot grrrl pioneers Bikini Kill played their first New York show in 22 years, these are the fans who showed up — one as early as noon and two who hadn’t told their parents. Hi mom and dad!
Less than a month after a spate of state legislatures voted to enact sweeping abortion restrictions, 3,000 people, mostly women, swarmed Kings Theatre in Brooklyn to bang their heads, shake their hips, and scream. It wasn’t a protest, but the audience was angry. Bikini Kill, one of the preeminent feminist punk bands of the riot grrrl movement of the 1990s, was playing one of four sold-out shows in New York—their first since they broke up in 1997, the year that I was born.
“Billboard’s running calendar of upcoming releases to make sure you’re in the know”
Bikini Kill have been performing their first shows in 22 years, and Joan Jett recently was featured as a special guest on a stop in true riot grrrl fashion.
