This Music Monday looks ahead to a busy week of shows with Allison Russell, Diana Ross, and a double bill of hard rocking Philly bands at Union Transfer. Plus, there’s new music from Bjork & Rosalia, Guided By Voices, Jon Batiste, and Philly indie luminaries Steve Gunn and Mary Lattimore.
Canadian-born singer songwriter Russell is on tour with her all-female band in support of The Returner, her impressive, optimistic follow-up to her breakout debut Outside Child, which was my 2021 album of the year. She plays World Cafe Live on Wednesday.
The Philly heavy rock double bill is headlined by Baroness, the Germantown-based progressive metal led by singer-guitarist and visual artist John Baizley, and featuring guitarist Gina Gleason whose sixth album Stone, came out in September. They’re joined at UT by Sheer Mag, the Tina Halliday-fronted quartet whose long awaited sophomore album Playing Favorites is due on Third Man Records in March.
Diana Ross is the highlight of a vintage Motown weekend. The Supremes singer is headlining the Etess Arena at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City on Saturday.
That same night in the same boardwalk resort, the Temptations and Four Tops team up at Hard Rock’s smaller Sound Waves venue. Could a duet be in store? Allow me to suggest “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me,” the 1968 Supremes-Temps hit and Philly soul classic written by Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff and Jerry Ross.
On Sunday night, The Temptations and Four Tops head to Philly — without Ross — to play the Keswick Theatre in Glenside. Each Motown group has one founding member, the Four Tops’ Abdul “Duke” Fatir and the Temps’ Otis Williams. The Temps’ musical Ain’t Too Proud, opens at the Academy of Music on January 3.
More music of note: Lydia Loveless, who continues to move from alt-country to a more rocked out sound on the excellent new Nothing’s Gonna Stand In My Way Again plays Johnny Brenda’s Thursday. On Friday, the Mountain Goats — the John Danielle led band featuring drummer Jon Wurster, the voice of Philly Boy Roy on The Best Show with Tom Scharpling — play the Queen in Wilmington.
Steve Van Zandt — Bruce Springsteen’s guitarist and the subject of a recent 60 Minutes profile — will join Jason Shupbach, Dean of the Westphal College of Media Arts & Design — for a virtual talk related to the Electrified: 50 Years of Electric Factory exhibit at Drexel on Friday.
British band Bar Italia have released two albums on Matador Records this year. The latest is The Twits. They go underground at the First Unitarian Church basement on Saturday. That same night, Philly soft rock band Work Drugs throw their 11th annual annual Holiday Spectacle at World Cafe Live supporting their new album, Dreams Rule Desire.
There’s space on this playlist for Bill Callahan. The moody and often masterful artist formerly known as Smog is at Ardmore Music Hall on Monday. And Fridayy also plays on Monday: That is, Fridayy, the Philly hip-hop-R&B singer born Francis Leblanc, who’s at the TLA.
Bjork and Rosalia have teamed up on “Oral,” a song that the arty Icelandic singer originally recorded in the late 1990s. She’s brought in Catalan singer Rosalia for a benefit single to oppose farmed salmon fishing in Iceland. It’s the catchiest Bjork in quite some time, and the two singers face off with swords in the video.
Jon Batiste’s “It Never Want Away” is a new ballad from the Netflix doc American Symphony that focuses on the New Orleans musician’s relationship with his partner Suleika Jouad, as she undergoes treatment for cancer and he writes a symphony. Batiste plays the Fillmore March 17.
Still amazingly prolific garage rock band Guided By Voices’ new album Nowhere To Go but Up is their third this year. Tina Turner’s Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll box set covers the solo stretch of her legendary career, including “One of the Living,” the Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome song whose video was shot at Eastern State Penitentiary.
And the compilation album of the week is Light in the Attic & Friends, in which artists cover acts that have been re-issued on the Los Angeles archival label. Lansdowne-raised guitarist Steve Gunn joins Bridget St. John on Michael Chapman’s “Rabbit Hills” and harpist Mary Lattimore essays Hiroshi Yoshimura’s “Blink.”
