The return of Beanie Sigel. And new albums from Sheer Mag, Pissed Jeans, and Meek Mill.
Three Philly bands with new albums, Sting with the Philadelphia Orchestra, a big weekend at City Winery, and a brand new Philly festival of shoegaze bands.
Stars aligned Friday when not one but three of the city’s most formidable bands released new albums on the same day. All are headed out on tours that will bring them back home for Philly dates.
The bonanza begins with Mannequin Pussy, whose I Got Heaven will be celebrated with an in-store appearance at Repo Records on South Street on Wednesday.
Equally significant in showing how potent the Philly scene is are Pissed Jeans with their first album in seven years, and Sheer Mag, with their first in five.
Pissed Jeans’ Half Divorced is the sixth album by the Matt Korvette-led band originally founded in Allentown. It’s a concise, noisy, and unrelenting platter of scrappy hard-core punk, acerbic in its take on adulthood. The blunt, all-too-relatable “Sixty Two Thousand Dollars In Debt” is funnier than it sounds.
More downright hilarious is “Everywhere Is Bad,” which dismisses any place you might consider living in three words or less. The band’s hometown gets dissed first. “Philadelphia … Trashy streets!” rhymes with “San Francisco ... No more freaks!” Never fear: New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Austin, Rome, and Death Valley also get trashed. The band plays Underground Arts on March 15.
Like I Got Heaven and Half Divorced, Sheer Mag’s Playing Favorites is full of punchy, impactful songs. No time is wasted. The Tina Halliday-fronted band now signed to Jack White’s Third Man label again pull from 70s riff-rock heroes like Thin Lizzy and AC/DC.
The raw sound hasn’t been sweetened, but the songs are catchier than ever. 2024 could indeed be the #YearOfTheSheer. They’re at First Unitarian Church on May 10.
Meek Mill’s new EP, Heathenism, is the Philly rapper’s first new music since Too Good To Be True, his 2023′s dual album with Rick Ross. On “Times Like This,” he nods to “Dreams & Nightmares” and reflects on how far he’s come from growing up in North Philly to living in “a mansion with palm trees” and hanging with Fanatics billionaire Michael Rubin.
Beanie Sigel is turning 50. The tough-talking rhymer born Dwight Grant, who took his name from the street he grew up on in South Philly, released his debut The Truth in 2000, and most recent full length, This Time, a dozen years ago. But he reunited with his State Property crew at last year’s Roots Picnic. Friday’s show at the Met is billed as “The Bully on Broad Street,” promising special guests.
It’s Sting weekend. The Police man plays sold-out shows at the Kimmel Center on Friday and Saturday with the Philadelphia Orchestra. And on Saturday morning, he’s appearing at the Free Library with novelist Colum McCann and Diane Foley, coauthors of American Mother. The book is about Foley and her journalist son James, who was beheaded by ISIS in Syria in 2014. Sting wrote “The Empty Chair” for a 2017 documentary about Foley.
Philly shoegaze band Nothing is launching its own festival, Slide Away. It consists of two multi-act shows, one in Philly and one in Los Angeles. Friday’s Philly show will be headlined by the Dominic Palermo-led band playing its 2014 debut Guilty of Everything, plus Swirlies, Lovesliescrushing, Tagabow, Mint Field, Knifeplay, Astrobrite, and Glixen. The L.A. edition is on March 30 and will feature Nothing and a different roster of bands.
Philly trombonist Jeff Bradshaw plays two shows at City Winery on Friday, part of a big weekend at the venue. New Orleans funk and spoken word band Tank & the Bangas plays two shows upstairs at the Loft on Saturday. The Sun Ra Arkestra plays downstairs in the only Philly gig before leader Marshall Allen turns 100 in May.
Canadian guitar-pop band Ducks Ltd., whose Harm’s Way is an early 2024 standout, plays Kung Fu Necktie Friday. Philly’s very own Grocer opens. East L.A. band Las Cafeteras mix traditional music from Veracruz, Mexico, with hip-hop and ska, and is coming to World Cafe Live on Saturday.
Don’t hold it against Faye Webster that she’s an Atlanta Braves fans. The Georgia songwriter with a knack for pensive slow jams has just released the excellent Underdressed at the Symphony and has announced a Dell Music Center show July 26.
Leeds, England post-punk band Yard Act has expanded its range beyond James Smith’s spoken-sung observations on Where’s My Utopia? They’re coming back to Philly, but not until Oct. 10 at Union Transfer.
The late Lou Reed would have turned 82 last week, and a tribute record, The Power of the Heart, featuring Lucinda Williams, Angel Olsen, Rufus Wainwright, Bobby Rush, and Joan Jett, comes out April 19. Keith Richards’ cover of Reed’s “Waiting For My Man” is pretty much a perfect pairing.