#dan rickershauser

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Sparks Thrill Adoring Kings Theatre Crowd

Sparks – Kings Theatre – September 12, 2025

Where do we begin when it comes to defining Sparks, the never-ending band? Maybe go watch the documentary, The Sparks Brothers by Edgar Wright? Or set aside an entire day and listen through their extensive catalog? Even a full 24 hours wouldn’t get you through all of it, but you’d get the idea. Now you may be wondering, “Who is this person to tell me what to do?” So, let’s start again and kick off this review by asking; “So May We Start?” 

This is how Sparks began their show on Friday at Kings Theatre with the same question, “So May We Start?,” off the soundtrack of Annette, a concept album turned rock opera that eventually became a film starring Adam Driver. (You can see how defining anything within this band’s oeuvre is a challenge.) Brothers Ron and Russell Mael, now in their sixth decade of creative partnership as Sparks, have never been ones to chase subgenres so much as spawn them. “Do Things My Own Way,” performed second — and the second off their latest album, Mad! — serves as good a mission statement for them as any: a song that musically defies any kind of categorization. 

If there’s any consistency to Sparks all these years, it’s how the brothers present themselves visually and theatrically, leaning into their differences with frontman Russell the colorful, charismatic brother always in contrast to his (mostly) silent and seemingly sinister older sibling Ron on keyboards. Russell donned a stunning floral three-piece suit for the occasion. His brother Ron, the yin to Russell’s yang, donned a black satin frock, round glasses and his iconic pencil thin mustache. 

It makes some sense looking at these two against the backdrop of flashing squares of colorful LED lights, that they’d be some of the first to merge disco with rock in the ’70s with the help of the father of disco himself, Giorgio Moroder. Friday’s show hit its fever pitch early with a run through of “Academy Award Performance” and “Beat the Clock,” off No. 1 in Heaven. Then came the serenading comedown, “Please Don’t Fuck Up My World,” written in 2020 when “things seemed kind of bleak and dire and low and behold things have gotten … well more bleak and dire,” said Russell. 

Ron’s seldom heard from but took to the mic for a spoken rendition of “Suburban Homeboy,” off Lil’ Beethoven, one of the strangest songs performed by the “strange” brother, taking the tune’s satire into the stratosphere. 80-year-old Ron later took to center stage to do a running man that tore the place down.

Sparks have a real knack for morphing odd turns of phrase into musical earworms. The crowd at Kings Theatre was filled with a wide range of ages, but everyone had a deep appreciation for the chance to catch Sparks live. They’ll forever be rewarded with hearing “She wears a JanSport Backpack” and “The girl is crying in her latte, sad” bounce around their brains forever, and God willing, the chance to catch Sparks again soon. —Dan Rickershauser | @D4nRicks

Photo courtesy of Dan Rickershauser

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The Second Day of All Things Go Does Not Disappoint

All Things Go – Forest Hills Stadium – September 27, 2025

The unfortunate headline of Day Two of All Things Go was Lola Young collapsing onstage during an emotional set. Thankfully, the latest reports are that she’s doing considerably better. “That was really fucking scary,” said Remi Wolf, addressing the incident during her own set and being the first to update the audience, saying, “My friend Lola is backstage, and she is OK.” The remainder of the night was all about picking people up, with enough gyrations from Remi Wolf and Doechii to get in some trouble with the FCC.

Wolf took the stage in her tennis whites, funking things up with the catchy “Cinderella.” She took everyone through three exercises that involved some vocal runs, kissing your neighbor’s neck and shaking things out. “On three, whatever you have down there, we’re gonna slap it.” The final exercise involved going back upstairs for a good shake of the brain. “New York, I need your idiotic, dumb and stupid. Whatever is weighing on your shoulders, leaver it at the back door.”

Wolf's command of the crowd was commendable, owning the stage with some serious charisma, at one point hopping on the drums to rip a solo at the end of “Kangaroo,” leaving everyone in the audience wondering if there’s anything she can’t do. “That last song was about alcohol and this next song is about fucking in a hotel room,” said Wolf while transitioning from “Liquor Store” to “Toro.” She can belt out high notes with the best of them, sending Tom Cochrane’s “Life Is a Highway” skyward, parading two pride flags across the stage for the song’s crescendo to huge cheers. 

All of All Things Go, but especially the Day Two schedule, was a Baddies’ Lilith Fair, if you will. “All week I’ve been saying to my manager, ‘I’m so ready for the lesbian festival, I’m so ready for the lesbian festival,’” said Doechii at the beginning of her set. “I know you don’t call it that,” she added to some big applause. The self-proclaimed swamp princess performed on a greenery-covered platform as rain began to fall, whipping her long hair and stringy outfit like Spanish moss in the wind. The South was at home in hip-hop’s hometown, with the bass-heavy rumbles of “Bullfrog,” rattling the tennis stadium, the G-funky “Boiled Peanuts” cooling down the crowd as the clouds spit rain. 

The weather complicated Doechii’s wardrobe plans a bit, and after a few attempts to get her shoes back on, she ultimately decided to ditch them and go barefoot. “Anxiety” and “Alter Ego” elicited some giant sing-alongs, making the best of the packed stadium that Doechii had wrapped around her finger. “Denial Is a River” brought out her DJ — DJ Miss Milan, a star in her own right — to center stage to toss the song’s storytelling (and heavy breathing) back and forth. With the festivities up against the curfew, Doechii polled the audience on which final song to play, settling on her verse from “Balloon” as the fans’ favorite, with an apropos last line, “Out in New York, walk around bare-toed / I don’t need a passport, I’m a swamp bitch, oh-oh,” before closing out with a plea to others: “If you have a voice, use it. There is a war going on. There is a genocide going on. Speak out.” —Dan Rickershauser | @D4nRicks

Photos courtesy of Silvia Saponaro | @silvia_saponaro

@silvialovesmusic

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The Jesus Lizard Cut Loose at Brooklyn Steel

The Jesus Lizard – Brooklyn Steel – December 11, 2024

The Jesus Lizard are a band that only resurrects every once in a while, so it’s worth noting that vocalist David Yow looks well these days. He’s got a goatee that gives him an air of distinction. He’s also still got youthful vigor, in a toddler-still-learning-to-walk kind of way. “It’s nice to see your beautiful smiling faces, I want to stick my dick in every mouth I see,” were his first words of the night. One song in and Yow was crowd-surfing deep into the audience. His jacket was off by the second song, his shirt fully unbuttoned by the fourth. 

“I can swim, I can’t swim,” wailed Yow directly into the faces of the audience, really inches from them, as he crowd-surfed again during “Seasick.” For a man who spends about as much time being carried by a crowd as he does onstage, how many times in his career has he been dropped? One would think somewhere between dozens and hundreds of times. A few songs later, quite unexpectedly, the shirt was rebuttoned. “Thank you, New Jersey,” said Yow to some chuckles and groans. 

“Nub” had Yow surfing the stage in a vaguely Hawaiian way, floating quite beautifully over the song’s thudding rhythm, asking a recent amputee how he masturbates. The four-piece firing on all cylinders felt like an all-out assault, just as they do on “Hide & Seek,” the lead track on Rack, their first album in 26 years. The rhythm section’s throwing punches, Duane Denison’s guitar cutting like a knife. 

Yow can sound like both the assailant and the victim, sometimes at the same time. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s a nice guy, I like him just fine / But he’s a mouth breather,” he snarled on “Mouth Breather.” The song takes its refrain from a quote from the late Steve Albini about Slint drummer Britt Walford, delivered by Yow with equal parts bark and bite. Another song ended with him still held up in the middle of the audience. “Well, I’ll just stay here for a while. Could I get a margarita?” But then he changed his mind: “Just let me down and I’ll fucking walk, OK? I’m serious.”

“This is the last song, and we’ll never see you … again,” said Yow before returning for their encore. “I hope you have a wonderful holiday season here in the United States of Fucked Up.” Before a few more songs, "Thank you very much, we'll see you in Boston tomorrow,” repeated Yow a few times, and another lie, as the band returned for a second encore. The night came with many tales of unexpected resurrection, which is something you should ask your doctor about if it lasts longer than four hours. —Dan Rickershauser | @D4nRicks

(The Jesus Lizard play Roadrunner in Boston tonight.)

(The Jesus Lizard play Union Transfer in Philadelphia tomorrow.)

Photos courtesy of Edwina Hay | thisisnotaphotograph.com

@thesearenotphotographs

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King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard Unleash Three-Hour Show on Forest Hills Stadium on Friday Night

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard – Forest Hills Stadium – August 16, 2024

Prior to the Paris Olympics, if someone had mentioned Australia and Raygun in the same sentence, you’d have been forgiven for assuming it the reference was to a song or album by the madly prolific (and sci-fi adjacent) Australian rock outfit King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. While that country’s reputation still recovers from the breakdancer who couldn’t dance, those assembled at Forest Hills Stadium on Friday turned their attention to the Australian rock band that can, and does, do it all. Their three-hour set — the first of two weekend appearances at the venue — kicked off with the live debut of the blues-heavy “Field of Vision,” off the recently released Flight b741, the six-piece’s 26th(!) LP.

The group’s music covers a wide array of genres, and their shaggy fans of all ages were as comfortable in tie-dyes as they were in the mosh pits erupting throughout the night, first for a speedy, ear-splitting rendition of “Gamma Knife.” Fitting for the season, those mosh pits were shaped like hurricanes, with bodies increasingly moving faster toward the center, except for the inevitable one or two standing still in the eye of the storm. Friday’s show gave the band as much room as they needed to display all facets of Gizzardom. 

“Mr. Beat,” a sing-along, evolved into a jam that could be played out into infinity. With the sun still shining, the music was firmly on the boogie end of the spectrum with an equally playful rendition of the harmonica-heavy, aptly titled “Boogieman Sam.” But as day turned into night with a red sun setting into Manhattan’s hazy skies, the set turned toward the sextet’s heavier jams of the brown-acid variety. 

First came the stellar four-song string of Gizzy mind-palace classics, “I’m in Your Mind,” “I’m Not in Your Mind,” “Cellophane” and “I'm in Your Mind Fuzz.” “God is real. God is a black hole,” announced someone from the stage as they kicked off the speed-metal “Self-Immolate,” complete with an extended, slow-burning drum solo from the inimitable Michael Cavanagh. The tune itself immolated amongst a barraging backdrop of animated, burning flames. Their songs off 2019’s Infest the Rats’ Nest remain the high-water mark for intensity and rocking the fuck out, and it was a bold and impressive feat to tear through that material at the midpoint of a three-hour set, leaving it with their human drummer still intact. 

“Gila Monster” was another fan favorite, off last year’s sprawlingly titled PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation. The fans enthusiastically intoning, “Gila, Gila, Gila” felt powerful enough to summon some kind of monster from somewhere in the city, assisted by vocal effects and chants that could’ve rattled out from the depths of a didgeridoo. 

The band welcomed a fan named Gabby to sing a vocal intro to “Nuclear Fusion” that Ambrose Kenny-Smith dubbed “fucking haunting.” Just as impressive as their never-ending discography, King Gizzard & the Wizard Lizard play wildly different sets each night, an audacious feat on its own but especially so when playing three-hour shows.

Somewhere along the way, Friday’s set reached the all gas, no brakes mark and never let up, finishing with “Rattlesnake” and “K.G.L.W.” Welcome to the city that never sleeps to the world’s most prolific band. —Dan Rickershauser | @D4nRicks

(King Gizzard & the Wizard Lizard play the Stage at Suffolk Downs tonight.)

(King Gizzard & the Wizard Lizard play Thompson’s Point in Portland, Maine, tomorrow.)

(King Gizzard & the Wizard Lizard play the Dell Music Center in Philadelphia on 8/27.)

(King Gizzard & the Wizard Lizard play Brown’s Island in Richmond. Va., on 8/28.)

Photos courtesy of Silvia Saponaro | @Silvia_Saponaro

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Queens of the Stone Age Keep Rock Alive on Saturday Night at Forest Hills Stadium

Queens of the Stone Age – Forest Hills Stadium – August 12, 2023

It was a fitting match for the old tennis grounds of Forest Hills, the Queens of the Stone Age in the heart of Queens. Saturday night brought along its summer best calm-before-the-storm weather, frontman (and rock elder statesman) Josh Homme giving the gathering crowd a queen-like wave, with a new gray beard that comes to a fine point. The greeting followed a welcoming kickoff run-through of the now classic “No One Knows,” the buoyancy of its impish guitar riffs setting the stage for the performance to come. 

It's hard to position Homme’s charisma without pointing out how lacking it is from other rock bands, especially of late. The man is equal parts performer and musician, as apparent as ever on “Smooth Sailing,” Homme channeling the song’s lurching drive and launching an angular guitar solo as if he were wrestling a snake. The stop-and-start drive of “My God Is the Sun” felt like someone driving a car with one foot on the gas and the other on the brake. With wind gusts picking up around the same time, the thick smoke coming from machines was pulled into a tight breeze running across the stage. “Sometimes you love and sometimes you lose, and that’s OK,” said Homme, introducing “Emotion Sickness,” off their latest, In Times New Roman…. The tune put all three guitarists to work with dueling guitar riffs and three-part harmonies. 

The best Queens of Stone Age songs come with heel-turn shifts in momentum. “If I Had a Tail” began pop-flavored before getting sucked into a noise-rock black hole. On “I Sat by the Ocean” Homme pulled out a glass slide, making it sound syrupy. The band’s current iteration is thick with guitar heavy hitters — and put to good use: A breakdown at the end of “The Way You Used to Do” sounded Allman Brothers-eque with guitars doubling up on each other and harmonizing. Homme polled the audience to see which new song, “Made to Parade” or “Time & Place,” they preferred, with the former eking out the win. It featured some of his best soloing of the night, hard to believe it was left to audience democracy on whether it would be played. The slow-burning QOTSA classic “Better Living Through Chemistry” followed, pausing before dropping and plowing through a final path of destruction. Next, the hard-hitting new single “Paper Machete” served as something of a resurrection.

Homme conducted a sensual sing-along for “Make It wit Chu,” having groups of the audience trade off the chorus before blues-riffing the song to a climax. “We’re not doing a fake encore where we make you clap for us, we want to stay out here with you,” he said. Forgoing the traditional encore, Queens of the Stone Age remained for three more: After “Little Sister” and “Go with the Flow,” the frontman offered, “Wait ’til you see what we have for you” as an introduction to “A Song for the Dead.” It brings such a relentless take-no-prisoners momentum, one would think the band would have welcomed a break to catch a sip of water before launching into the finale. One would also hope this song is exactly what dying feels like, with the brain spilling out every feel-good chemical it has as it sends the soul through an all-encompassing tunnel of sound and light. With the stage lights barraging the venue with flashes of white, the track deteriorating into noisy guitar feedback, it was a perfect end to the show. Rock ain’t dead — and even if it’s dying, being near death happens to sound fucking awesome. —Dan Rickershauser | @D4nRicks

Photos courtesy of Silvia Saponaro | @Silvia_Saponaro

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Earl Sweatshirt and Action Bronson Cap Off a Two-Night Run in NYC at Terminal 5 on Thursday

Earl Sweatshirt/Action Bronson – Terminal 5 February 17, 2022

Thursday began as a beautiful, unseasonably warm day and the night brought along show No. 2 of Action Bronson and Earl Sweatshirt at Terminal 5, with windy weather whiplashing the city from its temporary spring back into winter. You’d be forgiven for feeling similar whiplash going from Bronson to Sweatshirt, two rappers who share producers, skills and friends but are wildly different personalities and rappers. Bronson you may also know as Bam Bam, Bronsolino, Mr. Baklava, the Flushing Grizzly, the Rap Dennis the Menace or Mr. Wonderful. He’s also perhaps the only person you know to have come out of the pandemic a hundred-plus pounds lighter and ripped, despite many of us saying we’d do the same.

Although slimmed down, the larger-than-life charismatic Queens native was as charming as ever, even with some here-and-there start-that-agains. “You could put a fucking gun to my head and I would not have remembered that second verse,” said Bronson mid-set through one such instance. “This is an anti-drug commercial.” Bronson teased a new album in the works, something that was hard to catch the exact title of, just the very Bronson-esque follow-up explainer: “The most prehistoric predator alive! It’s a love story.” He brought out longtime pal and frequent collaborator the Alchemist for the performance’s finish, air-strumming along to the wistful guitar sample on “Terry” before the set self-immolated into the sunny, psychedelic “Easy Rider.”

The show wrapped with Earl, the introverted, world-weary and wise rapper, with his signature easy flow spilling out of his low register. Pacing the stage, he tore through verse after verse, bringing out just about any guest imaginable, from opener Boldy James to Zelooperz, Mike and the group Armand Hammer. “You can stay up here, hang out,” Earl would say after they finishing, slowly amassing a large collection of guests in the shadows behind the DJ booth. “Every single person I know is here right now, every single bitch in my life.”

The set was heavy with songs off his latest, Sick!, firing off effortless bar after bar, some genius enough to bounce around in your head forever. “Bend, we don’t break, we not the bank” I'd hear on a loop on the walk to Columbus Circle, watching the rain and wind whip through the Manhattan trees. —Dan Rickershauser | @D4nRicks

Photos courtesy of Andrew Pintado | www.drewmartinphoto.com

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Magdalena Bay Blast Terminal 5 into Space

Magdalena Bay – Terminal 5 – April 23, 2025

Magdalena Bay, at least for their latest tour, have built themselves within a unique aesthetic world, think World Wide Web 1.0, one of GeoCities and GeoPets. This all harkens back to a time when the Internet was more fantastical and fun, a little less fascist, a place to escape to and not one from which to escape. Magdalena Bay’s other reoccurring themes of their set on Wednesday night at Terminal 5 included fire, mirrors, time, eyeballs, CD-ROMs and an antique chair that Mica Tenenbaum would return to between songs in moments of feigned exhaustion.

“Welcome to Magdalena Bay and the Imaginal Mystery Tour,” said Tenenbaum, heartily introducing her band and the night. As our funky forefathers have foretold, it’s best to lock everyone into a groove before blasting them into space, something this band has mastered. The Terminal 5 crowd boarded for space before they knew it, with the song “Killing Time” putting some rhythm bone-deep before hitting with g-force. The song eventually morphed in tandem with the visuals into something a little more haunting, with the vibe shifting to The Wizard of Oz at its most terrifying moments. 

“Image” rides a similar dynamic, an incredibly hooky bass and rhythm meeting Tenenbaum’s vocals. She takes a similar approach to her onstage presence, floating about in a flowing jumpsuit like a space ballerina, fluttering her way to the top of a platform above the crowd, then back down and spinning amidst the band. 

Magdalena Bay are such an interesting grab bag of influences — beyond pop — that has won them some broad-based acclaim since the release of 2024’s Imaginal Disk. “That’s My Floor” harkens back to a time when female-fronted pop songs felt rock and roll by default to match the larger zeitgeist of the times. “Top Dog” pulled out some visuals from a similar period, complete with doggy-inspired clip art you might toss into a PowerPoint presentation in the year 2000. 

“Cry for Me” might be the band’s ultimate flex, and it was easily one of their most moving songs of the night. It features a groove worth putting up against the best of them, think all those songs you aren’t surprised to hear the late Quincy Jones had a hand in producing. There was also the crowd favorite and TikTok hit “Killshot,” which dipped into a slowed-down version that’s revived the 2019 song into a modern-day hit. This is a band with a knack for bending time, as much as it feels like their best times are still ahead of them. The show ended with the catchy and self-referential “The Ballad of Matt & Mica” before returning for an encore performance of “The Beginning.” Time may be a flat circle but it's certainly fun when it goes around and around. —Dan Rickershauser | @D4nRicks

(Magdalena Bay Terminal 5 again tomorrow night.)

(Magdalena Bay play Franklin Music Hall on Saturday night.)

(Magdalena Bay and Remi Wolf play FDR Park in Philadelphia on 7/27.)

(Magdalena Bay play The NorVa in Norfolk, Va., on 10/22.)

Photos courtesy of Hillary Safadi | @hillasafadi

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Kevin Morby Embraces Life at Webster Hall on Wednesday Night

Kevin Morby – Webster Hall – October 26, 2022

Kevin Morby is an artist who’s lived many places: The mountains, cities and rivers of this beautiful but crazy country seep their way into his material, and sometimes they’re even the central focus of his songs. “New York City was my home for a long time. I lived here longer than anywhere else in my adult life,” said Morby last night at a sold-out Webster Hall, before introducing his final song, “Harlem River,”about the eight-mile tidal strait separating the Bronx from Manhattan, written just before moving away from the city. His love for his former home is palpable, it rolls through his music like the repeating bass line of “Harlem River.”

“I always dedicate this song to whatever city I am in, but it’s really about New York," Morby said of “City Music.” (Take that, other cities!) He’s since moved many places since, most recently to Kansas City, Kan., alongside his girlfriend, the also incredibly talented singer-songwriter Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee and Plains. You can sense that place and Crutchfield’s influence in his most recent album, This Is a Photograph, recorded and inspired by time he spent in Memphis, Tenn. The LP was printed on his backdrop and the title track opened last night’s set. The song’s refrain, “This is what I’ll miss about being alive,” was the night’s overall vibe, a true celebration shaking off years we’ve all spent perhaps too much time meditating on our own mortality. 

You’d think Morby, donning a flashy fringe gold jack­et, was hitting his Graceland era. If nothing else, the outfit highlighted his constant motion, showcasing that even onstage, Morby is not a man who can sit still. Softer moments in the set, like the gorgeously arranged “Bittersweet, TN,” still had him shifting his weight between his feet. The song featured a gorgeous back-and-forth trading of singing with backing vocalist Elizabeth Moen, a welcome touring member of Morby’s band who really elevated the arrangement with her gorgeous vocals. The new songs shined as bright as some of the best of his career. The jaunty “Rock Bottom,” is an absolute bop that had the Webster Hall balconies bouncing. “Stop Before I Cry,” is an incredibly sweet and moving love letter to Crutchfield. The way his arrangements traced every lyric made them dynamic and alive. Even toward the end of the set, with just Morby and Liam Kazar on slide guitar, it was the slide guitar following along, bringing out the heavy sentiments of the song. 

The encore featured frequent collaborator, past tour mate and New York City’s own Hamilton Leithauser to join in on a cover of (also NYC’s own) Velvet Underground’s “What Goes On.”Leithauser stayed to sing through a verse of “Beautiful Strangers,” as well as Elizabeth Moen taking another. The track is not only one of Morby’s best but maybe one of the best songs by anyone over the past several years, perfectly encapsulating a yearning for an end to these anxious times. Morality weighs heavily on the song but punching through is a sense that love and music is always the antidote. It’s what I'll miss most about being alive.  —Dan Rickershauser | @D4nRick

Photos courtesy of Toby Tenenbaum | @Tobytenenbaum