#will butler and sister squares

[greensparty]

Album Reviews: Will Butler + Sister Squares / The Replacements / The Breeders

What a week this is for album releases! I was lucky enough to review special re-releases from The Replacements and The Breeders and a the new solo project from Will Butler, who left Arcade Fire last year!

Will Butler + Sister Squares Will Butler + Sister Squares

album cover

Arcade Fire co-founder Will Butler is the younger brother of leader Win and he was often overshadowed by Win. After recording last year's Arcade Fire album We, Will announced he had left the band. While he was still a member of Arcade Fire, Will released his first solo album Policy in 2015 and it was just as good as some of Arcade Fire’s albums. I named Policy my #2 Album of 2015 and I was lucky enough to see him live in 2015 just before the album’s release (read my review here). His 2020 album Generations was the next best thing to an Arcade Fire album during that time. Now he has put together a new band Will Butler + Sister Squares and their new album Will Butler + Sister Squares drops today from Merge.

Butler (center) and the Sister Squares

The Sister Squares feature Jenny Shore, who is Will's wife, and her sister Julie, and their childhood friend Sarah Dobbs. Rounding out the group is Miles Frances. You get the sense that there's a camaraderie that lends itself musically. All of them have known each other for a long time and it shows in their music. Very similar to Arcade Fire and Will's solo work, there is a strong dance-rock sound here and some of the band members do dance as well. As for how good this is in terms of Will's discography, it's going to take a lot more listens. In addition to his phenomenal work with Arcade Fire, he is also an Oscar-nominated composer for his work with Her (read my album review of the Her soundtrack here), and he's already released some solid solo albums. Policy was so surprisingly outstanding that it raised the bar pretty high for Generations and now with a whole new band the bar is pretty high as well. They are a very tight unit and there's some bangers on this album for sure. Definitely put this band on your radar!

For info on Will Butler + Sister Squares: http://www.butlerwills.com/

3.5 out of 5 stars

The Replacements Tim (Let It Bleed) Edition

new 2023 box set

There was the Alternative Nation of the 90s, but before then there was the college radio scene in the 80s that was the blueprint for 90s alt-rock. Among the most influential of 1980s college radio darlings was Minneapolis's The Replacements. They emerged out of the MN punk scene in the late 70s / early 80s, but their music evolved over time to be more than just punk. After a few albums on the indie label Twin/Tone (notably Let It Be), they signed to Sire and their major label debut was 1985's Tim produced by the late great Tommy Erdelyi AKA Tommy Ramone. It is often considered to be the band's best album whenever you see Best-Of lists. I actually discovered the band around 1989/90 before they broke up in 1991. But as I was getting into Westerberg's solo work, I worked backwards and got into The Replacements (strange but true). One of my desert island all-time favorites is 1987's Pleased to Meet Me, a perfect album from start to finish. While there was a brief 'Mats (as they are known by fans) reunion from 2012-2015, there have been a great deal of anniversary editions and re-issues of their classic albums in the last few years. The box set Tim (Let It Bleed) edition is being released this week.

The Replacements circa 1985

This actually marks my first Replacements review. I've been lucky enough to review bassist Tommy Stinson's Bash and Pop album Anything Could Happen and their 2017 Boston concert as well as his recent Tommy Stinson's Cowboys in the Campfire album Wronger. What's interesting about this album is that it's album that came right between Let It Be and Please To Meet Me. Wow - what a run of three incredible albums that was. The band (and some fans) have remained unhappy with the mix of the Tim album that Tommy Ramone did. Now with this new box set, it is getting a serious overhaul. Legendary producer Ed Stasium, known for his work with The Ramones, has done a 2023 mix of the album. (Full disclosure: I do know Ed Stasium and he is super cool!) Ed was close friends with Tommy Ramone (who died in 2014) and produced some of his work with The Ramones, has done a multi-track remix of the original recordings. In a way this is one last collaboration between the two! I want to state for the record that I never had an issue with the original 1985 mix, even if the band did. Ed's mix is different than the original and it's out and out amazing! The box set has Ed's 2023 mix on vinyl and CD. Then CD2 is a 2023 remaster of the album. CD3 is rarities and unreleased tracks. Some of them are cool, like the demo and early versions of "Can't Hardly Wait", which finally appeared as a finished version on Pleased to Meet Me. CD4 is a full concert they did at Cabaret Metro in Chicago on Jan. 11, 1986. As if all of this weren't enough there's a booklet with photos and liner notes from 'Mats biographer Bob Mehr.

Bottom line: I out and out loved the original album, so naturally I'm in Music Geek Heaven with this box set. Ed's 2023 mix and the epic liner notes make this worth re-buying for old fans and new fans too! Hey wait - getting rid of the old copy you have and getting this new one would make this a wise, well, um, Replacement!?!

For info on Tim (Let It Bleed) Edition: https://rhino.lnk.to/TimLIBE

4.5 out of 5 stars

The Breeders Last Splash 30th Anniversary Original Analog Edition

album cover

Remember that time The Dandy Warhols had a song called “Cool as Kim Deal” about wanting a girl as cool as Kim Deal, the legendary founding member of The Pixies? Maybe The Dandy Warhols were trying to show off their hipster cred by name dropping her. Or maybe they were stating something so true: Kim Deal is pretty much one of the coolest women in alt-rock...and that is saying something! The Pixies are legends, but her side project with her twin sister Kelley, The Breeders was where she really let loose in an amazing indie rock sound that incorporated elements of low-fi, surf rock, garage, and even country. Their 1990 debut Pod was so well received, the group got back together with a new lineup (Tanya Donnelly was out, Kelley was in). When the album Last Splash dropped in late summer 1993, I was getting heavy into indie rock and they were all over WFNX at the time. “Cannonball”, the first single was unlike anything else at the time. A surfadelic pop nugget about “the bong in this reggae song”. The music video was directed by a young Spike Jonze and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth and we actually played it on my cable access show The Eric and Mike Show in 1994. At school, I traded a CD I didn’t like (can’t remember what) with a kid who had Last Splash and only liked “cannonball”. The album knocked me out. “Saints” is the perfect summer song start to finish. “Do you Love Me Now?” was a great love song. “Drivin’ on 9” was a great country song in the old-school vein. The whole album is all killer, no filler. In the years that followed, the Deal sisters have occasionally come back together with new lineups and done an album or tour. I was lucky enough to see them perform on a taping of Last Call with Carson Daly in Aug. 2002. Then I got to see them do a free concert at McCarren Pool in Brooklyn in July 2008 and it was awesome! In 2013 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of The Last Splash the line-up on that album including drummer Jim McPherson and bassist Josephine Wiggs toured. That went so well they recorded together and released 2018's excellent All Nerve (read my review here) and I actually named it my #1 Album of 2018. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Last Splash a new remastered edition was released today.

The Breeders circa 1993

In 2013, the band released a 20th anniversary edition LSXX that included B-sides, demos and live recordings. For the 30th, there weren't as many bells and whistles. However, the band remastered the original analog tapes (thought to be lost) and they did discover two long lost tracks that are on this release: "Go Man Go", a track that Kim Deal co-wrote with fellow Pixie Black Francis, and "Divine Mascis" a version of "Divine Hammer" sung by J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. Around the time "Saints" had been released as a single, WFNX played a version of "Saints" that was produced by Mascis, so I'm happy to hear there was another collaboration the band did with him.

Bottom line: much like the The Replacements' Tim, the original release of Last Splash is one of my all-time favorites, so it's no surprise that I loved this release. But the sound here is excellent and those bonus tracks are worth getting.

For info on Last Splash: https://thebreeders.ffm.to/lastsplash30.owe

5 out of 5 stars

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume Nine, Number 10

Older, but not a bit wiser, the Hives return

Fall comes with its smell of maple in the leaves, its intimations of mortality and, this year, its share of unsettling events—war in the middle east, AI in everything and the murder of our beloved Bandcamp by capitalist privateers.  (We are not equating these things by any means.)  Like always, we turn to music, the annihilating blare of metal, the agile interplay of improvisation, the well-shaped contours of pop, depending on our individual tastes.  We hope you’ll find something to ease your own personal burden in all this as well.  Contributors include Bryon Hayes, Bill Meyer, Andrew Forell, Tim Clarke, Jonathan Shaw, Ian Mathers, Alex Johnson, Jennifer Kelly and Ray Garraty. 

Due to technical issues we're posting this in two parts, so don't miss the second one.

Ad Hoc — Corpse (Shame File Music / Albert’s Basement)

Ad Hoc was a Melbourne-based improvising unit, an experimental outfit that should have higher prominence. It only took 40-plus years, but Shame File Music and Albert’s Basement are finally spearheading a reissue initiative. Last year saw the arrival of the trio’s sole release, the hypnotic Distance cassette. It disappeared the moment it became available. Corpse documents an unconventional live performance from the group. They prepared their instruments (guitars, an EMS Synthi AKS synth and tape loops) for performance prior to the arrival of the audience and then shut off their amps. When all were seated, the trio turned on the amplifiers and unfurled an aleatoric blast of sound. The resulting music is far removed from the ambient tone clusters of Distance. The first piece shimmers in a way that calls to mind Matthew Bower’s Sunroof project, while the latter piece bathes in guitar noise so thick that it may have influenced The Dead C’s The Operation of the Sonne EP. Ad Hoc have today’s noisemakers beat: Corpse presents itself with a freshness that belies its 1980 provenance.

Bryon Hayes

Axolotl — Abrasive (Souffle Continu)

The French trio Axolotl existed for a few years in the early 1980s, and it reflects the aesthetic concerns of its time. Guitarist Marc Dufourd’s playing betrays some acquaintance with the work of Derek Bailey and Henry Kaiser, and the fibrous tones and agile exchanges between reeds players Jacques Oger and Etienne Brunet recall Evan Parker. All three double on electronics, hand percussion and utterances. These accessories, in combination with the concentration of the album’s 12 tracks, give the music a truculent attitude and just-the-facts brevity that brings to mind punk and post-punk. This may be free improvisation, but it is improvised from a point of view, and it’s that informed attitude that makes the album worth visiting nearly 40 years after its original release.

Bill Meyer

Will Butler + Sister Squares — Self-Titled (Merge)

Will Butler joins with Sister Squares — multi-instrumentalists Jenny (Butler’s wife) and Julie Shore, Sara Dobbs and drummer/producer Miles Francis — for their debut album. Bouncy, heartland rock garlanded with that 1980s Fairlight and Linn drum sound mixes with touches of art rock as Butler emotes wholehearted. The influence of the 20 years Butler spent with Arcade Fire is inescapable, but it feels like the quintet have also been listening to Billy MacKenzie (“Long Grass”) and Russell Mael (“Arrow of Time”) as well as Springsteen, Mellencamp and company. “Hee Loop” sounds like a mash of Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel. The themes and emotions can be big in that Arcade Fire way that’s equal parts exhilarating and exhausting, but the album works best when the band dial down the melodramatic flourishes as on “Car Crash” and “The Window,” where Butler is right in your ear, tired, disillusioned, real. This is a record I wanted to like both more and less. For every heartfelt moment and interesting musical choice, there’s a cringe-inducing gestural overreach that makes you wince. A bit like his former band but with enough promise to persevere with.

Andrew Forell

Claire Deak — Sotto Voce (Lost Tribe Sound)

Melbourne-based composer Claire Deak’s last release on Lost Tribe Sound was 2020’s The Old Capital, a fantastic collaboration with Tony Dupé. In my Dusted review I said, “There’s so much wonderful stuff going on across these seven songs that it’s a delight to revisit.” As its title suggests, Deak’s solo debut, Sotto Voce, very much sits at the opposite end of the musical spectrum. This is subtle, minimal music that softly arises out of silence and speaks an elusive language. The background to the album’s creation is Deak’s exploration of the work of two women composers from the early baroque era, Francesca Caccini (1587–c.1645) and Barbara Strozzi (1619–1677). The dominant musical elements are strings, harp and voice, with other instruments coloring the edges of these understated, starkly beautiful compositions. Across the album’s 42 minutes the music feels, at times, to be battling the entropy of erasure, struggling to be heard amid the cacophony of these overstimulated times. For that reason alone, it’s necessary to invest your attention and listen closely. The experience is eerie and transportive.

Tim Clarke

Mike Donovan — Meets the Mighty Flashlight (Drag City)

On a musical Venn diagram showing the intersecting circles of garage rock, lo-fi, and psych, Mike Donovan has set up his sandbox. With Sic Alps he veered more noisy and lo-fi; with Peacers he favored a straight-ahead garage-rock sound. On this new record with Mike Fellows, AKA The Mighty Flashlight, Donovan steers in the direction of shambolic psychedelic-pop in the vein of the Olivia Tremor Control. (To anyone who knows and loves OTC, this is obviously a very good thing.) The splashy drums and percussion tracks feel like a gestural afterthought rather than a rhythmic backbone the songs are built around, and Donovan and Fellows steer these songs into some choppy, unexpected waters. Opener “Planet Metley” is the clearest and most successful distillation of their aesthetic, offering up a staggering range of ideas in under four minutes, stopping and starting erratically, the bass roving all over the fretboard. At the other end of the spectrum, “Laurel Lotus Dub” is the kind of experiment that sounds like it was more fun to create that it is to listen back to. Between these two extremes there’s the junkshop boogie of “A Capital Pitch,” which features the hilarious line, “Hanging out on the ramparts with some dickheads in black,” the concise drum-machine and organ instrumental “Amalgam Wagon,” and the plaintive, country-flavored “Whistledown.” Wherever Donovan roams it’s usually worth following, and Meets the Mighty Flashlight is a winning collaboration that fizzes with fun.

Tim Clarke

Everything Falls Apart — Everything Falls Apart (Totalism)

“Somn” means sleep, or more poetically death. It’s the title of six of the seven tracks from Everything Falls Apart, the self-titled album from the duo of Belgian bassist Otto Lindholm (born Cyrille de Haes) and English producer Ross Tones. Those titles (numbered six to 11) and the coda “Wonderfully Desolate” tell you only part of the story of the music the pair produce. Their conversation focuses on the nuance of the Lindholm’s double bass which Tones swathes in electronic effects, stretching notes and motifs into near drones in timbres that rise from the murk like lugubrious sentinels. This is seriously heavy music but the dynamism of the duo’s understanding and interplay distinguishes Everything Falls Apart. Whilst many of the pieces focus on stasis and decay, “Somn 9” is a desert storm with clicking percussion, almost didgeridoo like growls from the bass and screeching electronic noise. On “Somn 11”, deep bowed notes support Lindholm’s move through the registers as if shaking from fitful dreams into the morning light. “Wonderfully Desolate” is comparatively unadorned, a string quartet playing against the end times, shimmers of light through the cracks.

Andrew Forell

False Fed — Let Them Eat Fake (Neurot Recordings)

Is it accurate to call a band including members of legendary underground acts Amebix (Stig Miller), Nausea (Roy Mayorga) and Broken Bones (Jeff Janiak) a “supergroup”? It might help to note that Janiak has sung for Discharge since 2014, and Mayorga has done a couple stints as drummer for Ministry. All names to conjure with (though a few of us first encountered Mayorga as a teenager back in the 1980s Lehigh Valley hardcore scene, when he drummed for Youthquake; West Catty Playground Building forever, man). In any case, the players have pooled their talents to create this death-rocking, sorta goth, sorta post-punk record, and it’s a lot of grim, grimy fun. Most of the music is mid-tempo, grand and romantic in its gestures, but shot through with a crusty growl in the guitars and production tone. The best songs speed things up a bit; both “The Tyrant Dies” and “The Big Sleep” have compelling momentum, complementing the stakes of songs’ ideas. It's Armagideon Time, people. Here’s your soundtrack, from dudes that know.

Jonathan Shaw

Hauschka— Philanthropy (City Slang)

German composer Volker Bertelmann’s 15th album of prepared piano pieces under the name Hauschka is noticeably warmer than some of his previous works. Joined by Samuli Kosminen on percussion and electronics and cellist Laura Wiek, Hauschka continues his exploration of the rhythmic and timbral possibilities of his instrument. At times almost jaunty, there are echoes of Bertelmann’s previous experiments with melancholic atmospherics but the general tone here is welcoming and optimistic. Kosminen adds subtle effects which frame rather than obscure the piano. There’s a touch of Satie in Hauschka’s playful iconoclastic approach to the piano and his deceptively simple melodies, especially on “Loved Ones” where Wiek’s plangent cello lines sustain and decay over an allusive harmony that speaks both of innocence and experience. At the other end of the spectrum, the closing piece “Noise” builds abstract ambience from repeated piano notes, smears of cello and a quiet wash of effects as if the players are enveloped in a thick damp fog. A lovely album for both fans and newcomers.

Andrew Forell

The Hives — The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons (Disques Hives)

There are usually going to be some questions when a band comes back with a new record after over a decade, maybe especially so with an act like Swedish garage/punk flamboyants the Hives; can they match the energy of their youth? Are they still willing and able to give us the old thrills? Or have they (and this is usually asked with a small, tasteful shudder of disgust) matured? It doesn’t take very long into first single/first track “Bogus Operandi” for the concerned listener to have reason for a sigh of relief. Anyone who used to (or still does?) blast “Main Offender” or “Hate to Say I Told You So” or “Walk Idiot Walk” should feel the galvanizing charge of a true, Frankensteinian resurrection once the riff hits. And across these not-quite-32 minutes (the brevity is also a promising sign) Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist and the boys kick up exactly the kind of racket you’d want from them, with tracks like “Trapdoor Solution” and “The Bomb” savoring the kind of gleefully dumb fun they’ve always provided (with a nice sideline in some of Almqvist’s deliberately, over-the-top awful narrators on “Two Kinds of Trouble” and “What Did I Ever Do to You?”). They even continue to throw out small, satisfying variations on the classic Hives sound like the brassy swagger of “Stick Up” and the surprisingly heartfelt thrash of “Smoke & Mirrors”. They may have killed off their “sixth member,” but the Hives are otherwise in rude health.

Ian Mathers

Islet — Soft Fascination (Fire)

The Welsh psych-electronic oddballs in Islet are on their fourth full-length now but show no signs of settling down. Soft Fascination is a bonkers mash up of dance pop, art song, hip hop, noise and folk. “Euphoria” floats a feather-light daze, a la Avey Tare, then punctures it the rat-at-tat of snare, the rifle shot rap repartee of Emma Daman Thomas. Gossamer textures of synth weave in and around the main action, snapping tight at intervals, like sails catching a hard wind. The whole thing is butterfly ephemeral with strong wires holding it up, a combination of daydream and architecture. “River Body,” if anything, tips even crazier, with its infectious sing-song, skip-rope vocals, its tootling toy keyboards, its blasts of noise and friction. And what can you make of “Sherry” which bucks and heaves and shouts out “Ay, ay, ay, ay,” like a lost Matias Aguayar cut? “Ay, ay, ay, ay,” indeed.

Jennifer Kelly

Jute Gyte — Unus Mundus Patet (Self-released)

Unus Mundus Patet is not the most dissonant or challenging record Adam Kalmbach has released during his 20-plus-year run under the Jute Gyte moniker. But neither is this black metal for the kvlt trve believers or for the hipster-adjacent sets, be they transcendental or ecstatic or blackgazy. The songs twist and turn in on themselves, always clear in their expressions of complex musical ideas, and also — somehow, someway — listenable and enjoyable. Avant-garde? Sure thing, and likely a much more authentic iteration of that phrase’s meaning than the music many other metal bands churn out under cover of high-minded beard stroking. See the by-turns undulating and fragmenting “Killing a Sword” or the trudging, vertiginous and then utterly thrilling “Philoctetes.” Jute Gyte doesn’t make music for the background, but if you can give these songs your full attention, you’ll be rewarded. Turn it up and open the portal into somewhere much weirder and more marvelous.

Jonathan Shaw

Danny Kamins / Chris Alford / Charles Pagano — The Secret Stop (Musical Eschatology)

Free improvisation may be a little sparser on the ground in the southern USA than it is in Chicago or New York, but The Secret Stop affirms the vigor of those who participate. Guitarist Chris Alford and drummer Charles Pagano play in New Orleans, and Danny Kamins is a saxophonist from Texas; this encounter took place in the Crescent City. As even players in places like the aforementioned northern cities or London will affirm, travel comes with this territory. Their interactions display a capacity to sustain balance when the energy is high and to back off when doing so will transform the music’s tension. Kamins intersperses long, coarse tones with emphatic pops, and Alford evidences a fluent stutter that suggests he’s spent a lot of time studying James “Blood” Ulmer’s sound grammar. Pagano’s cymbal sizzle and mutating not-quite-patterns provide both forward momentum and a framework within which the action occurs.

Bill Meyer

MIKE \ Wiki \ The Alchemist — Faith Is a Rock (ALC)

The long awaited collaboration between The Alchemist and MIKE took a sudden turn when they took on board another New York rapper Wiki who steals the show here. Both Wiki and MIKE were outcasts recording music in the vein of Earl Sweatshirt, even though MIKE was always a better version of Earl with only possibly a tenth of his fame. Knowing no rest, The Alchemist (that is his fourth collab this year) takes both MCs way out of their comfort zone, refusing to pander to the needs. MIKE and Wiki have to deal with The Alchemist’s fast and thick layered production, and it works for all of them. “Mayors A Cop” is a standout here, and Faith Is a Rock is one strong contender for the tape of the year.

Ray Garraty

Camila Nebbia — Una Ofrenda A La Ausencía (Relative Pitch)

The title translates as An Offering To Absence, which of course raises the question, what’s missing? Camila Nebbia is a multidisciplinary artist who grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but has seems to have spent a fair chunk of time moving around Europe in recent years, and is currently based in Berlin. She has a sizable discography, but this correspondent has not heard most of it, so let’s just focus on the album at hand. Its 16 tracks present three facets of her work — acoustic tenor saxophone, electronically adjusted saxophone and poetry — with the first method best represented. The unaccompanied saxophone performances reveal her mastery of both weight-bearing muscularity and adroit tap-dancing on the far side of the fences that confine conventional tonality. But when she layers long tones and feedback, Nebbia becomes a one-woman orchestra transmitting heavy Penderecki vibes. The one poem included, “Dejo que me lieve” (“I let it lie”), is recited in Spanish, and no translation is offered; perhaps home is what’s not there, so she needs to manifest it creatively?

Bill Meyer

[Continued in Part 2, because Tumblr decided we only get 10 audio links.]

[yk084049]

[therarefied]

Will Butler + Sister Squares' “Stop Talking”

[riylcast]

Episode 626: Will Butler (Sister Squares, Arcade Fire)

When the time came to put out a new record, Will Butler formed a band.

Comprised of the group he’d toured with for his 2015 debut, Policy, Will Butler and Sister Squares released a 14 track self-titled album that is as reflective as is it is danceable.

It’s the work of a mature artist, propelled by his two decades playing alongside older brother, Win, in the critically-acclaimed Arcade Fire.

Butler joins us fresh off a long run in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.

[monophonics]

Will Butler + Sister Squares // STOP TALKING 

[hicemusic]

Kurzkritik - September 2023

Chilly Gonzales, Mitski, The National und Will Butler + Sister Squares in der Kurzkritik – September 2023: https://hicemusic.wordpress.com/september-2023/

[beginningspod]

It's time for Beginnings, the podcast where writer and performer Andy Beckerman talks to the comedians, writers, filmmakers and musicians he admires about their earliest creative experiences and the numerous ways in which a creative life can unfold.

On today's episode, I talk to musician Will Butler. Originally from Floriston, California, Will mostly grew up in Texas, and after college moved to Montreal to join his brother's band Arcade Fire. The band was a sensation: their debut Funeral is widely considered by music critics to be one of the greatest albums of the 2000s, and all of Arcade Fire's studio albums have received Grammy nominations. However, Will left the band in 2021 to pursue other projects. As a solo artist, Will has released three albums on one of the best labels out there, Merge Records, and his latest record is no different! Recorded with Sister Squares the self-titled Will Butler + Sister Squares was just released towards the end of September on Merge, and it's great!

I'm on Twitter here and you can get the show with:

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[ccherrycolouredfunk]

will butler + sister squares

barboza | seattle, wa

10.7.23

[musicdiaries]

Will Butler & Sister Squares - Arrow Of Time

[cintade90]

Will Butler + Sister Squares - LONG GRASS

[greensparty]

Stuff I'm Looking Forward To in September

Summer's over and now it's Back to School month! In addition to Labor Day (Sept. 4), 9/11 (Sept. 11), Rosh Hashanah (sundown on Sept. 15 to nightfall on Sept. 17), First Day of Fall (Sept. 23) and Yom Kippur (Sept. 25) here is what's on my radar this month:

Movies:

Stop Making Sense

I guess you could say I've written a great deal about Jonathan Demme's brilliant Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense (for proof, read here). Demme, in his prime, captured the Talking Heads in their prime as they performed over the course of 4 nights in Hollywood. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of those concerts (the film was released in 1984), A24 is re-releasing this legendary film in IMAX on 9/11 before a wider 4K remastered release in Sept. (my review and coverage coming soon!).

Dumb Money

Director Craig Gillespie has done some interesting work based on true stories (i.e. I, Tonya and last year's limited series Pam and Tommy) and now he's doing the movie version of the Gamestop becoming the hottest stock on Wall Street. Opens 9/22.

Drive-Away Dolls

I was a huge fan of the Coen brothers, but after The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, they began working solo. After Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth, I'm excited to see Ethan Coen's solo feature, an action comedy about inept criminals, which is his wheelhouse! Opens 9/22. [ NOTE: This has since been moved to 2024, awaiting exact release date ]

Flora and Son

John Carney has very quietly become one of the best directors of the now. His last feature film Sing Street was my #1 Movie of 2016. Now he's back with this Sundance hit, which once again is about musicians. Can't wait! Opening in select theaters on 9/22 and then streaming on Apple TV+ on 9/29.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

It is very rare that a short film makes my Stuff I'm Looking Forward To list, but when it's director Wes Anderson adapting Roald Dahl, like he did with the adaptation of The Fantastic Mr. Fox, it makes my list! This short premieres on 9/27 on Netflix.

The Kill Room

It's a Pulp Fiction reunion with Uma Thurman and Samuel L. Jackson starring in this thriller, which also stars Thurman's daughter Maya Hawke. Opens 9/29.

Music:

Speedy Ortiz Rabbit Rabbit

It's been five years since the last Speedy Ortiz album, which makes this new one super exciting. Album drops 9/1. (Review to come).

Courtney Barnett End of the Day (music from the film Anonymous Club)

Last year I caught the documentary Anonymous Club about one of my favorite musicians to emerge out of the 2010s Courtney Barnett. Now the instrumental music score that she composed for the doc is getting a release. Album drops on 9/8. (Review to come).

Will Butler + Sister Squares Will Butler + Sister Squares

Will Butler was a vital part of Arcade Fire and before he left the band in 2022, he had already done some great solo albums. He released his first solo album Policy in 2015 and it was just as good as some of Arcade Fire’s albums. I named Policy my #2 Album of 2015 and I was lucky enough to see him live in 2015 just before the album’s release (read my review here). His 2020 album Generations was the next best thing to an Arcade Fire album during that time. Now he has a new album with his new group Sister Squares dropping on 9/22 (Review to come).

The Breeders Last Splash 30th Anniversary Edition

Last month marked the 30th anniversary of one of my all time favorite albums ever, Last Splash by The Breeders (read my remembrance here). To celebrate the band is doing a tour and also releasing a 30th anniversary edition dropping 9/22!

The Replacements Tim Let It Bleed Edition Box Set

I out and out love The Replacements and their 1985 album Tim is considered by many to be their best. Now the album is getting the box set treatment with an Ed Stasium mix of the album, outtakes and concert recordings. Album drops 9/22 (Review to come).

Wilco Cousin

A Wilco release is always a high priority for me. I’ve been lucky enough to get to review the band’s Ode to Joy and Cruel Country albums as well as this year's Record Store Day release Crosseyed Strangers and they certainly are one of the greatest American rock bands of the last 25 years. Hands down! This new album is said to be a return to their early 00s rock sound. Woo hoo! Album drops 9/29.

Conventions:

Collectibles Extravaganza

The team that run the Northeast Comic Con, which I've covered a lot in the past, have a collectibles show at the Boxborough Regency in Boxborough, MA from Sept. 30-Oct. 1. Always a fun time!

[mxdwn]

Will Butler and Sister Squares Share Powerful New Song “Arrow of Time” with Video

[therarefied]

Will Butler + Sister Squares' “Long Grass”

[cbcruk]

Will Butler + Sister Squares - LONG GRASS