JT's: Just in Case
My last memory of JT’s Pub & Grill prior to Friday night was pissing off a large group of drunken Steelers fans during a playoff game by blaring the cheesiest country music imaginable from the jukebox. Vitriolic shouts and icy …
Soda Bar Serves Nerdy Art Rap
Los Angeles-based alt-rapper Busdriver commanded the Soda Bar’s minute stage like a chameleon, blending with shifting sounds and patterns. “I’m just here to hold your hand when you die,” he proclaimed over the jittery flute of “Imaginary Places,” as the …
Sage Francis En Route to Save Solana Beach
Rhode Island’s Sage Francis emerged from the turn of the century indie rap boom and backpacker movement as the godfather of confessional hip-hop. Set against a genre historically predisposed toward image over reality, Sage favored a poetic delivery fraught with …
Doomtree's Low-Hanging Boom Bap
The seven-headed beast Doomtree roared through a sold-out Casbah and brought their nuanced, inspirational boom bap along for the ride. Through a setlist consisting largely of No Kings material and a canvas of war drums, P.O.S. and his Midwestern comrades …
Pterodactyl Spills Out at Tin Can Ale House
Fifth Avenue sat quiet just prior to midnight, as the haunting wail of Kera & the Lesbians owned the little rectangle of a venue that is Tin Can Ale House. Hailing from Escondido, the band has built a solid local …
Astronautalis Splashes Down at Casbah
By the time Astronautalis finished a six-minute freestyle that weaved together a fable about Louisiana BBQ, an invincible dog, and harpoons, any residual doubters in the Casbah were definitively silenced. This Minneapolis-based wordsmith, consistently one of folk rap's finest showmen, …