THENEWYORKER,NOVEMBER18, 2019 7
ILLUSTRATION BY MÜGLUCK
The term “bedroom pop” has become shorthand to describe the aes-
thetic of a young generation of D.I.Y. musicians who forgo expensive
studio sessions in favor of scraping songs together at home with a
laptop and maybe a few instruments. For mxmtoon, it also meant
intimacy—a secret kept between her and the strangers on the Internet
who watched the videos she recorded, armed with a ukulele, under the
cover of night. She sang of routine high-school problems, such as crip-
pling self-doubt and unrequited love, with an emotional sophistication
that reminded us that there are some things we never outgrow. Her
audience expanded (which meant revealing her online persona to her
parents) and the secret got out, but the songs on her recently released
début album, “the masquerade,” maintain their profoundly personal
quality. The self-crowned “prom queen of crying” plays a pair of shows
in Manhattan—at Rockwood Music Hall, on Nov. 14, and at Gramercy
Theatre, on Nov. 15.—Briana Younger
INDIEPOP
1
NIGHTLIFE
Musicians and night-club proprietors lead
complicated lives; it’s advisable to check in
advance to confirm engagements.
Roy Haynes
Blue Note
Sitting down to reminisce with the magisterial
drummer Roy Haynes would be a singular
experience: he’s the only musician alive who
can tell you what it was like to play with Lester
Young in the forties; Charlie Parker in the
fifties; Stan Getz and John Coltrane in the
sixties; and Chick Corea and Pat Metheny in
the nineties. Here, this brilliantly idiosyncratic
stylist brings his matchless spirit to one of his
staple venues.—Steve Futterman (Nov. 11-13.)
Lux Prima
Kings Theatre
Karen O and Danger Mouse, the singer and
the producer known together as Lux Prima,
were destined to pair up—both seem addicted
to collaboration. Yet there are constitutional
differences: since she first dive-bombed stages
as the front woman of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs,
Karen O has been a figure of tumult; Danger
Mouse’s tidy productions are studies in control.
The duo’s sweeping album honors both person-
alities, with the singer’s swagger undiminished
by the grandeur of the project. Their staging
of the LP comes replete with a twelve-piece
band, fancy lighting, and costume changes
galore.—Jay Ruttenberg (Nov. 14.)
Neon Indian
Elsewhere
Alan Palomo, the front man of the psyche-
delic electro-pop band Neon Indian, so re-
gretted missing a chance to drop acid with
a friend that he wrote a song about it—and,
as a result, helped pioneer an entire musical
movement. The track, bluntly titled “Should
Have Taken Acid with You,” was featured on
Neon Indian’s 2009 début album, “Psychic
Chasms,” and is considered foundational to the
chillwave subgenre. The group’s days of sonic
experimentation aren’t over: Palomo has said
that a forthcoming album is “a bit of a cumbia
record.”—Julyssa Lopez (Nov. 14.)
Pivot Gang
Bowery Ballroom
When the Chicago rap collective Pivot Gang
released its first project, in 2013, its mem-
bers—the rappers Saba, Joseph Chilliams,
MFn Melo, and Frsh Waters and the pro-
ducers daedaePIVOT and SqueakPIVOT—
sounded young, raw, and hungry. The group’s
début album, “You Can’t Sit with Us,” from
April, is defined by the events of the interven-
ing six years—fame, prison, and the death of
a member, John Walt—but it isn’t burdened
by them. The crew’s familial bonds, blood
and otherwise, create a natural chemistry,
but their ace in the hole is how they trans-
form resilience into refreshing fun.—Briana
Younger (Nov. 14.)
(Sandy) Alex G
Brooklyn Steel
Though the Philadelphia-based musician
(Sandy) Alex G is only twenty-six, his relent-
less output has yielded nearly a dozen projects
that congeal the bluesy twang of Americana
and fuzzy traces of nineties rock into haunting
D.I.Y. inventions that are both elusive and in-
timate. “House of Sugar,” his latest and most
intricate release, sounds like he stacked his
past influences and musical flirtations onto one
another while also probing dark new depths
of his expansive imagination.—J.L. (Nov. 14.)
Craig Richards
Public Records
For twenty years, Craig Richards has been a res-
ident d.j. of the London club Fabric. Though the
club’s bookings range widely, Richards’s style is
the bellwether—simple, dirty house and techno
grooves ornamented with consistently askew
tones and rhythmic accents. His selections are
frequently full of frippery, but at the edges of
a track’s arrangement rather than at its center,
insuring that Richards can play long sets with
little tedium.—Michaelangelo Matos (Nov. 15.)
Chucho Valdés/Chick Corea
Rose Theatre
The piano virtuoso Chucho Valdés first came
to international attention in the early eighties,
with the Cuban fusion band Irakere, and his
roots in both his island’s indigenous music
and straight-ahead jazz remain central to his
musical identity. For this engagement, after
displaying his extravagant skills in a solo set,
Valdés welcomes Chick Corea, an equally gifted
pianist whose own infatuation with Latin music
dates to the beginning of his decades-long ca-
reer.—S.F. (Nov. 15-16.)
Taking Back Sunday
Terminal 5
In the time since Taking Back Sunday formed,
in a Long Island suburb, the angsty teen-aged
fans who saw themselves in the band’s songs
have grown into still more angsty adults; it
turns out that the existential crisis of trying
to function in an increasingly dysfunctional
world is well served by the powerlessness
encapsulated in those lyrics. Thus the my-
thology of the band, and of emo music itself,
prevails. To mark its twentieth anniversary,
