Photos: Chloe Catajan, Martin Lacey and courtesy NAPA — The Killers turned the heat up in Napa on the second day of BottleRock Napa Valley Saturday. The Las Vegas band may not have been responsible for the noticeable increase in sunshine, but it brought the glitz and glamor to its…

  Photo: Jay Demetillo This is the second in a three-part series. Read the introduction to learn how I’m scoring my list and find out about my “special consideration” in PART 1. Favorite Shows 2016 | Favorite Shows 2015 | Favorite Shows 2014 Favorite Shows 2013 | Favorite Shows 2012 11 – CATHEDRALS at the Mezzanine – June…

Photos: Alessio Neri OAKLAND — If the story that Jack Antonoff told at his band Bleachers‘ concert at the Fox Theater was remotely accurate, the stars of the show were not the band members—though Antonoff, his two drummers and two multi-instrumentalists performed memorably—but their crew of sound techs, managers…

The Who performs at Golden Gate Park at Outside Lands on Aug, 13, 2017. Photos: Alessio Neri SAN FRANCISCO —The weather forecast was calling for Sunday to be the one sunny day at Outside Lands in Golden Gate Park. But by the time headliners The Who took the stage,…

Every week there’s a plethora of new music at our fingertips. Artists on platforms like Spotify and Bandcamp are plentiful, and the radio offers a steady deluge of new singles, but who has time to sort through all that? RIFF does! We’ve pooled our resources to find some of…

Charli XCX performs at the Fox Theater in Oakland on July 23, 2015. Roman Gokhman/STAFF. Perhaps the point Charlotte Aitchison was trying to make at the Fox Theater in Oakland Thursday evening was one of irony–-combining grrl power anthems with faux pole dancing and flashing of the lower half…

The performance was solid throughout, but it was at the midpoint, somewhere near a cover of Tom Petty’s “Don’t Come Around Here No More,” that Jack Antonoff, who spoke about nursing a cold and having a generally rough day, came alive, interacting with the sold-out crowd and showing off.…

Jack Antonoff is more than just the guitarist in fun. Before joining that band he led the successful New Jersey band Steel Train. He’s also a producer, having been nominated for a Golden Globe for his collaboration with Taylor Swift on her song “Sweeter Than Fiction.” He has also worked with…