Tonight at Club Underground is The Smiths x Joy Division night. Both floors of the Grand Star Jazz Club in Chinatown will be open, with Larry G. and I playing open-to-close sets. First floor music is The Smiths and Joy Division, plus the Underground mix of indie, post-punk, Britpop, new wave and more. Upstairs will be a solid night of The Smiths and Morrissey. Advance tickets are available now, but you can also get them at the door tonight. We open at 9:30 p.m. and this is a 21+ party.  

New Interview: Lapêche

For Krista Holly Diem of Lapêche, a dance background came in handy when it was time to make the video for “Happy 4U,” from the band’s recently released third album, Autotelic. “The subject matter of the song is pretty heavy and I wanted to do something that was kind of silly and danceable in a way, almost in a way where you’re dancing and crying at the same time,” she says on a recent video call from Salt Lake City, where Diem and her husband, Lapéche bassist Dave Diem, are based.

Read more in “Lapêche Dances Through Third Album Autotelic”

New Music Reviews

If your taste in music lives at the intersection of 1980s alternative, 1990s Britpop and 2000s indie- and if we know each other IRL, there’s a good chance it does- then this is your week for new music.  Heavenly just dropped their first full-length album in 30 years! Plus, Voxtrot has released their first new album since the MySpace era. And, of course, you know Gorillaz are back.

Heavenly

Highway to Heavenly

Some thirty years have passed since Heavenly’s last full-length album, but the English indie pop band managed to pick up without losing a beat. Highway to Heavenly continues the group’s legacy of smart, feminist pop with Amelia Fletcher’s lyrics now exploring the personal and the political from a 21st century perspective. Previously released singles “Portland Town” and “Scene Stealing,” the latter of which was also released in Spanish as “Roba Escenas,” are certainly highlights, but my favorite is “Deflicted,” a ‘60s throwback with hints of psych and northern soul that includes the all-too-relevant line, “trust your eyes, not their lies.” 

Gorillaz

The Mountain

Gorillaz have been climbing The Mountain for months, with anticipation growing as they dropped singles like “The Happy Dictator,” one of my picks for the best political songs of 2025, and “Damascus.” That said, you might already have an opinion on the album, but do yourself a favor and listen to The Mountain in full, from start to finish, now that it’s out. Clocking in at one hour and six minutes, The Mountain is an epic album by today's standards. Its ambitious in scope as well. Though a number of the songs stand out on their own, the real magic lies in the album as the whole. It’s in how Gorillaz made an album inspired by Indian music, but also incorporate Latin American and Middle Eastern sounds into the mix. It’s a project that brings together a diverse range of artists, from Johnny Marr to Syrian dabke star Omar Souleyman to Argentine rapper Trueno to sitar player Anoushka Shankar. They incorporated outtakes from Gorillaz collaborators who have since passed, like Mark E Smith and Proof. It’s thematically concerned with death and spirituality, but it can also be read as a political album. There’s just a lot going on in here. I’m writing this in the middle of my third listen to the album since it was released on Thursday night and I still don’t think I’ve heard enough of it to really write about it. Tl;dr Listen to The Mountain for yourself. 

Read more in “Gorillaz reach The Mountain + New Music from Heavenly, Voxtrot and Jupe Jupe” 

Essay

One of the first things I learned after moving to Chinatown was to avoid walking down Broadway on the weekends. This was well over a decade ago- before the high rent apartments and perennial line at Howlin’ Ray’s were a thing- and the sidewalk scene on the neighborhood’s main drag was poppin’ throughout the weekends. Back then, trying to get from Point A to Point B was like maneuvering your way through a house party where your goal is to squeeze through a tightly packed crowd of people and stuff without knocking over a vase or getting stabbed by a pointy plant. Then the pandemic happened and, perhaps like most of downtown save for Little Tokyo, the crowds didn’t come back in the same numbers.

On the Saturday after Lunar New Year, though, Chinatown felt like it did before lockdown. I walked along Broadway- after the past six years, I forgot my old rule- and quickly backed up against a wall, near a row of plants, to let large group of teenagers pass. I got caught in wave after wave of gridlock and teetered along the curb trying to bypass the nearly impenetrable crowd in front of Yang Chow and the oversized stroller parked between a store and a rack of tchotchkes. At Scoops, which was my destination, my first two ice cream choices were sold out and the third nearly so. It had been busy all day, I heard, and, even as dinner time approached, people were still hanging around. 

Read more in “The Day the Crowds Came Back to Chinatown” 

That’s it for this week. Hope to see you on the dance floor tonight at Club Underground for The Smiths x Joy Division night.

Liz O.