Carly Rae Jepsen The Warfield February 27, 2016 All photos by Bailey Greenwood. In most circumstances you wouldn’t be an outlier if the only Carly Rae Jepsen song you knew was her 2013 hit “Call Me Maybe.” It’s still likely the most famous of Jepsen’s songs. But on a tepid February night at the Warfield during Noise Pop’s festival, the roles would be wholly reversed. The majority of the crowd knew all the words to all of Jepsen’s songs, “Emotion,” “Favourite Colour,” and they had no worry about singing along as they danced. Yes, Jepsen has become an icon for…
Author: Katie Schwarz
Katie Schwarz
Katie is a music geek, culture junkie, and Oakland native. She went from writing about politics to writing about music and working on a memoir. When she was six she stood still for five minutes holding a felt pennant that was stuck under Chris Mullin's armpit.
Pussy Riot The Warfield February 10, 2016 Photos by Jeff Spirer. On a February night in 2016, the Warfield held a bill titled Pussy Riot in Conversation. While the bill didn’t quite convey the focus of the night, the event itself did lead to some interesting thoughts about the art collective and protest even if it missed the key opportunity to compare music and protest in Russia with its American counterparts. Perhaps the first clue that the night was going to take a strange turn would have been the use of two large paper mache heads, one Vladimir Putin and…
Circuit Des Yeux and Julia Holter The Chapel January 31, 2016 All photos by Ashleigh Castro. One woman, Haley Fohr, with a 12-string acoustic guitar running arpeggios and strumming through delays and distortion; a baritone voice, vibrato, hair in her eyes, and occasional lip quiver, evoking folk from the 60s, Fred Neil, John Fahey, and Joni Mitchell, ethereal yet heavy with layers of instrumentation that leads head strong into the unknown. San Francisco has had a recent problem with audience members talking during performances. Perhaps because this show sold out in advance and people couldn’t make a last minute decision…
The 1975 The Fox, Oakland December 17, 2015 All photos by Cedric Letsch. Perhaps the most important thing about being a rock star is knowing your audience. And if that’s the case, then The 1975 have rock stardom covered. Their crowd, which leans toward teenage girls who have a clashing clean cut/alternative look, were enthralled with the band when they played the Oakland Fox. But being a rock star isn’t the same as being a great rock band. During one of their new songs, “Sounds,” due to be released on their upcoming album, the lead singer Matthew Healy told the…