—K. Ross Hoffman Fri., Sept. 27, 9 p.m., $20-$29, with Trash Talk, TLA, 334 South St., 215922-1011, tlaphilly.com.
[ rock/pop ]
✚ JENNY OWEN YOUNGS Ignore this summer’s “I’m super gay” sensationalism over Jenny Owen Youngs’ coming out and just listen to her damn records. (Elephant in the room: addressed.) A graduate of SUNY Purchase’s music program with a studio composition degree, Youngs is essentially the Walter White of breezy and intelligently crafted pop, minus all the other implications that comparison conjures. She makes the pure stuff. The production value alone on her last LP, 2012’s An Unwavering Band of Light, is
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[ the agenda ]
she’s making it look easy. —Marc Snitzer Fri., Sept. 27, 9 p.m., $12, with PJ Bond and The Bigness, Boot & Saddle, 1131 S. Broad St., 267-639-4528, bootandsaddlephilly.com.
[ block party ]
✚ PEARL STREET BLOCK PARTY throwing in velvety vocal layers to back the rhythm-savvy chorus: “Numb’s no good/ but it sure beats the hurt.” By the time the bridge rolls around and it’s just her and a kick drum sharing the track, it’s clear that Youngs knows well enough what she’s doing, and
Two weeks ago, City Paper’s cover story focused on the barriers faced by artist Dave Kyu and his ambitious Write Sky project, which called for skywriting planes to blast evocative messages over Chinatown North/Eraserhood/etc. Regardless of those challenges,
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flush with all the instrumental flourishes, backing-vocal tracks and surprising percussion experiments to trigger dopamine receptors just right. Case in point: “Pirates,” a sly tune that showcases Youngs’ smoky, sexy voice hitting all sorts of falsetto highs and sultry lows before
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gourmet food metaphors that helped make his incessant, piggish sex brags a bit easier to stomach. This year’s Saaab Stories (Vice) is straight-up icky from the cover on down. Meanwhile, Detroit’s squeakyvoiced, frizz-headed Brown has proven himself as insouciantly good-natured as he is gleefully vulgar, making friends left and right with countless irrepressible guest verses and his inimitable hipsterraver thrift-store swag. The forthcoming Old (Fools Gold) is a typically batshit party out of bounds, with everyone from A$AP Rocky and Freddie Gibbs to Purity Ring and Charli XCX on the invite list and an ampedup Brown switching at will between ghetto-life real talk and pill-popping debauchery, equally comfy atop Oh No’s feisty, crate-digging boom-bap and next-level neon trapbangers from Rustie, A-Trak
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s LOVED: Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees s LOVED: David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars HATED: Chris Cleave, Little Bee ³ Recommendation: Bees! There are so many books with bees in the title: Rosalind Wiseman’s pop-psychology Mean Girls sourcebook Queen Bees and Wannabees; Myla Goldberg’s Great American Spelling Bee Novel, Bee Season. (Actually, Bee Season is sweet even without having “bee”in the title.) But you’re tired of bees, you say? Oh, fine; the Grumpy Librarian always provides. The GL doesn’t blame you for your distaste for the political manipulations of Little Bee and suggests you wash away the sour taste with another novel starring a Nigerian immigrant: Teju Cole’s lyrical Open City. Here’s hoping your enjoyment of Guterson implies appreciation of postcolonial poetics. Though Open City is metaphysically dense and almost old-fashioned in form (there are no quotation marks and few breaks in the text), Cole creates a narrator of paradoxical sympathy and alienation. Folks seem to keep calling Open City “Sebaldian,” and while Cole deals with ideas of identity, memory and loss with skill, his novel is less formally mannered than Sebald’s Austerlitz. It is a book to be read slowly, and outdoors. (grumpylibrarian@citypaper.net) Send the Grumpy Librarian two books you like and one you hate and she’ll tell you what to read.
Asian Arts Initiative — the organization behind Kyu’s project — remains dedicated to celebrating the multifaceted vibrancy of the neighborhood it calls home. This Saturday, on the 1200 block of Pearl Street, landscape architect Walter Hood kicks off the Pearl Street Block Party with furniturebuilding workshops, the results of which will be used for that evening’s community feast. Performances and interactive arts displays from illustrious community staples like Vox Populi and Marginal Utility will dazzle and delight all afternoon long. —Sameer Rao Sat., Sept. 28, 2-5 p.m. (feast at 5 p.m.), free, Pearl Street between 12th and 13th, 215-557-0455, asianartsinitiative.org.
[ rock/experimental ]
✚ DUSTIN WONG/ THE DODOS Mild-mannered delaypedal phenom and longtime Baltimore scenester Dustin Wong (who recently relocated to his native Tokyo) has established a highly specific and uniquely rewarding approach to solo guitar composition/improvisation over the course of his three exploratory, loop-based Thrill Jockey opuses. His latest, the carefully titled Mediation of Ecstatic Energy, is being billed as the conclusion of a trilogy, but it feels equally like a springboard for something new. While 2010’s Infinite