For the first edition of his new We Outside column, Pranav Trewn dives into the state of the US festival market in 2024 – filling IG with posters eager to grab your attention, but relying on mass appeal names in efforts to offer a “well-rounded” lineup.

Peter Holslin examines the highlights of the 2016 FYF Festival held last weekend in LA's Exposition Park.

Sam O’ Grady was introduced to me as “knowing ‘Capital Punishment’ by heart, the only girl I know into MOP, and a damn fine writer.” That is something worth inscribing on a tombstone. This is her dispatch from a Canadian music festival that is apparently a very big deal in Canadia. Osheaga is like a […]

Aaron Matthews doesn’t recommend the Texas-Style BBQ in Toronto. Now in its 17th year, NXNE is the closest thing Canada ever gets to SXSW; 5 days of live shows sprawled across over 20 venues in downtown Toronto. The city has to close off Yonge Street, the main thoroughfare, just to accommodate the number of pedestrians […]

Aaron Matthews’ favorite DJ is Toni Kukoc.  For 3 glorious days in July, the peaceful fishing village of Petrcane, Croatia finds itself to subject to a British invasion the likes of which haven’t been witnessed since the days of colonization, or possibly the Beatles. Their destination: the second annual Soundwave Festival, A strict anti-drug policy […]

Sach O likes Brooklyn band! Alert the Press! Are Chin Chin the best contemporary funk band on the circuit today? In a scene so amorphous as to run from indie darlings Hercules and Love Affair to Meters revivalists Baby Charles to Wu-Tang disciples the El Michels Affair, it’s hard to make a definitive claim, but […]

Now in its 30th year, the Montreal Jazz Fest is only tangentially about Jazz or even music. As the city’s biggest annual event, the amount of tourist dollars riding on the event is enough to record Blue Note sides from now until infinity and the lineup is accordingly focus grouped and carefully weighed so as […]

As I wriggled out of the teeming crowd that clotted for M.I.A, I eavesdropped on the Spalding basketball-bronzed sorority sisters speaking behind me: “If I was like a dude, I would totally want to do M.I.A.” Personally, M.I.A. doesn’t really do it for me, but I get where they’re coming from. After all, I’ve long […]

Bret Easton Ellis once pointed out that the inhabitants of Los Angeles never stop babbling about the freeways. Then again, he penned, Less than Zero during the comparatively halcyon Tom Bradley days, prior to the total arteriosclerosis of the 405 and 101. Nowadays, surviving requires a serenity towards the iron inferno of rush hour. Consider […]

Ted DiBiase knows a winner when he sees one. That’s how he earned the nickname “The Million Dollar Man” when those Cash Money clowns were still learning to ice their first teeth. And rest assured, Teddy B. would’ve inevitably proclaimed Day 3 of Outside Lands, the winner of the match, even if he would’ve declared it from inside […]