The definitive record of live music in Washington, D.C. and beyond for the 2010’s
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My Morning Jacket w/ Neko Case at Merriweather Post Pavilion - 8/12/11
It’s been said that a My Morning Jacket concert has the ability to change you. That’s a bold claim. Rock you? Sure. Energize you? Most definitely. But change you? Pre Friday night, that assertion sounded to me as if it were uttered from the lips of the ultimate My Morning Jacket fanboy. Now, two days after, I have to say: I think they may have been right.
Final Thoughts On The 2011 Newport Folk Festival
It’s taken over week, but we’ve finally got our thoughts in order (you can see all of our pics here) concerning 2011’s Newport Folk Festival. Before we dive in and try to break down each days experience though, I’d like to let you in on a little secret: Without exaggeration, The Newport Folk festival is possibly the best festival running in the country right now.dee.
"This is Bon Iver! (?)": Bon Iver @ The 9:30 Club - 8/2/11
"What the f@$% Justin Vernon?"
That's how I pretty much ended my review of the new album, and now that's how I'll start this review of his bands performance last night at the 9:30 Club.
The biggest question at hand is where was this Justin Vernon when his albums were being made? Assembling a 8 piece orchestra to perform your work isn't an easy feat..bringing together a great one is damn near impossible, yet there before me lay the powerful, sublime, and quite frankly perfect, Bon Iver “orchestra” turning "lead" into gold, over and over again...
See the rest of our shots from the evening over in our photo gallery
2011 Newport Folk Festival Photo Roundup
For two days this past weekend, Fort Adams State Park in Newport, RI, became an impromptu community of musicians and fans coming together to celebrate the thing that they hold most dear: MUSIC.
Real (Electronic) Rock N' Roll: The Glitch Mob @ The 9:30 Club - 7/20/11
Let me begin by saying that, Glitch Mob is not my favorite electronica group. I listen to their LP, Drink The Sea, as well as their recently released EP, We Can Make The World Stop, fairly regularly: I dig their sound, but ultimately I think they need to expand their range a bit before they take the next step. However, any critiques of their studio work notwithstanding, after their show at the 930 Club on Wednesday, I can safely say that they are the best live electronica group I have ever seen.
Glitch Mob, in its current incarnation, is an L.A.-based group of three DJ/producers: Justin “Boreta” Boreta, Ed “ediT” Ma, and Josh “Ooah” Mayer. Their sound has been described variously as trip hop, breaks, electro, hip hop, dub step (which is laughable), intelligent dance music, and (somewhat circularly) glitch hop. Their production is uniformly driven by deep, distorted, at times nearly monotone basslines complemented by huge kick drums, filtered snares, distorted, and synth melodies and samples interspliced and cut up with a turntablist’s sensibility. Their live set moves fairly seamlessly from full-on body rocking slow breakbeats to slightly more uptempo, but no less heavy, straight beats.
Kick-ASS!: EMA @ The Red Palace 7/17/11
Abrasive. Gut wrenching. Delicate. Assured. Powerful.
These are all words that could be used to describe the force of nature that is EMA, but I’m going to use the most appropriate words I can think of to sum up Sunday night’s show at the Red Palace: KICK.ASS.
Playing to a room that was only half full (comfy, but shame on you DC), EMA took the stage to a wall of feedback that set the tone for the rest of the evening. Guitar screaming, dissonant clicks and pops being created by a handheld radio, the song “Butterfly Knife” eventually rose up out of that noise, and Erika M. Anderson (thus the “EMA”) settled in for the set.
International (?) Man of Mystery: Cass McCombs w/Lower Dens @ The Black Cat 7/15/11
The only thing visible besides the silhouettes of the assembled musicians is the occasional glint of a flash off a guitar, or the blinking lights of a random effects pedal. The crowd that has assembled listens eagerly as a dark, man shaped shadow explains from the stage how even though McComb’s is somewhat of a transitory musician, Chicago now claims the singer/songwriter as their own. Members of the crowd shout back “Baltimore!” (which is where his Wikipedia page claims he’s based. He’s not.) but the shadow from the stage isn’t hearing it. Instead he continues to run down the list of everything that makes Cass McComb’s music great. He’s the perfect hype man, though McCombs doesn’t really need it. He finishes, the band takes the stage in front of panels of blinking and shifting lights, and as they opening strains of “Buried Alive” hit the audience, it’s as if a bubble closed tight around the room, and we were all suddenly transported somewhere else.
New Wave In A New Time: Eleanor Friedberger @ The Black Cat 7/12/11
When you’re half of a band as well known as The Fiery Furnaces, people, right or wrong, are going to have expectations. Eleanor Friedbergers’s first victory over those expectations this week was the release of her excellent new solo album, Last Summer. Breezy, poppy and loud when it’s gotta be, Last Summer is an unmitigated hit, as well as being one of our favorite records of the year so far. Her second victory over those expectations this week was the performance that she delivered to a welcoming crowd assembled in the Back Room of the Black Cat on Tuesday, the night of that records release.
My expectation for the show was that it would be somewhat reserved, but perfectly serviceable. I also (wrongly) assumed that Eleanor might be the type who is solely focused on the music, acknowledging the crowd once in a while, but for the most part just performing her material to the people who paid to see it.
R-O-C-K, eh?: Sloan @ Jammin Java 6/27/11
Disclaimer - I am a longtime Sloan fan.
It has been a little over a year and a half since Sloan’s last visit to the DC area in support of their Hit & Run EP. I was at that show, which also took place at Jammin Java, and I have to admit that while I was thrilled to see them in such an intimate setting, I was slightly disappointed, if not a little embarrassed at the turnout, which was low to say the least...
Ten Years After: Junip @ The Black Cat 6/18/11
When a band's debut album is a decade in the making, you know there must be a great backstory there somewhere. Was the album's delay caused by obsessive perfectionism? Artistic differences? The old standby, rock 'n roll excess?
In the case of Junip, a Swedish group that headlined the Black Cat last Saturday, none of the above apply.
Better Late Than Never: Thao and Mirah @ The Black Cat 6/10/11
I live my life with low-grade anxiety, one I suspect I share with lots of music fans—those of us with more interest in music than time in the day to pursue it. I’m anxious that there’s a band out there that I need to be listening to but am not. One that would occupy a very special space in my life if only I’d heard it. And unlike many of my other anxieties, this one has been validated. How, for example, is it that Thao and the Get Down Stay Down’s first album, We Brave Bee Stings and All, had been out for nearly two years before I’d even heard of the band? (Hat tip to the good people at All Songs Considered for clueing me in, thereby further proving that I am, in fact, a demographic stereotype.)
Thao’s blend of percussive indie-pop with smart lyrics – coying at times, biting at others—buried into my head from the first listen and hasn’t left. So it was with great excitement that I tore into the album that Thao put out with collaborator Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn earlier this year. That self-titled album proved an exhilarating, if somewhat disjointed, affair. (Read Kevin’s review here)
Having never seen either artist live, it was with even greater excitement that I headed to the Black Cat last Friday to check out their show. From song one the duo came out swinging...
Hanging with Laura Palmer: Other Lives @ The Red Palace 6/10/11
When I walked into the Red Palace on Friday night, I already felt like I was in a David Lynch story. Strange sideshow oddities peered down on me at obtuse angles as I climbed the steps and made it through the large curtains, I fully expected to see a dwarf dancing in a strobe light with special agent Cooper sitting and watching. But there was no dwarf, or Cooper, to be found, so I assumed this feeling would settle out as the night went on. Largely unfamiliar with The Other Lives catalog of music, I came to their show as an open book, waiting to be filled in with whatever story this 5 piece from Oklahoma was about to tell me.
Never Get Away From The Sprawl: The Arcade Fire @ nTelos Pavilion 6/8/11 (Charlottesville, VA)
The Arcade Fire played a 5,000 seat venue in Charlottesville, Virgina last week and it couldn't have been a better place for them to deliver their songs about the perils of suburban life and the modern world. Sure, C'ville is home to UVA, and that part of town is a gorgeous hamlet full of kudzu covered Jeffersonian architecture. But head to the North and there's nothing but shopping malls framed on all sides by the Blue Ridge mountains. "Dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains and there's no end in sight" indeed. The band was thinking about Houston, TX when they wrote The Suburbs, but the messages contained within it's songs could just as easily been about this smallish Virginia college town.
Now, on to the show...
Sondre Lerche @ The 9:30 Club 6/7/11: Ladykiller-1 You-0
Singer/Songwriter Sondre Lerche took the stage at the 9:30 Club Tuesday night and hundreds of adoring fans were there to greet him. Not unsurprisingly, the ratio of women to men was about infinity to 1. Lerche certainly has all the right qualities to be the perfect indie-chick boyfriend. He’s handsome, funny, and of course he can play mean guitar. As such, I would argue that if your only problem as an artist is that your audience is stacked more in the direction of the finer sex, then I would say you’re not only doing pretty well, but you are in fact living the dream. But the ladies (and men) didn’t turn out Tuesday night for any of that (OK, maybe a little). We all turned up because Lerche is one of the most respected songwriters of the past few years, with seven albums under his belt . Given that his latest, Sondre Lerche, focuses all of the paths that he’s traveled previously into one superlerche of a record, this was material that everyone was excited to see. And Lerche must’ve known this because he brought his big guns with him.
An awesome bomb in your brain: tUnE-YarDs @ The Red Palace - 5/19/11
See that smile to the right there? Well that's what the tUnE-Yards show (damn that's hard to type) on Thursday at The Red Palace was all about. The absolute exuberance and joyfulness of tUne-YarDs alter-ego, Merrill Garbus is hinted at on her butt-shaking, brain-breaking 2011 album whokill, but unleashed on stage it was as infectious as it was endearing.
Garbus isn't making what you would call easy music these days. Her songs are full of crashing conflicting chords laid down over polyrhythmic beats that slip in and out of the music all the while her voice perfoming acrobatics rarely attempted in the pop music sphere, much less pulled off. whokill, her latest album, is a hard, at times brain-breakingly genius record that takes more than a few listens to quite get, and even then it takes a few more before you become completely at ease with it. But once it opens up even some of its secrets to you, it's the most rewarding album that you'll hear all year. So how does it play live?...
Roaring through the night: The Besnard Lakes @ The Black Cat - 5/12/11
It took till nearly the end of the set, but the journey to the cathartic “Like The Ocean, Like The Innocent Pt.1 & Pt.2”, the opening track of the Besnard Lakes 2010 release, The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night, was well worth the wait. Downgraded to the back room of the Black Cat due to poor ticket sales (shame on you DC), the quartet from up north (Montreal to be exact) took it all in stride delivered a scorching set that was as epic as it was sublime...
“Like a velvet bathtub” – Phosphorescent - 5/10/11 at The Red Palace (DC)
That’s how Phosphorescent front man, and for the most part only man, Matthew Houck described his usual voice to the near sold out crowd Tuesday. Poking fun at himself and his vocal “issues” about midway through the set, it was an endearing moment that was typical of the night. His voice noticeably cracking throughout, Houck and his Taking It Easy band tore through a mostly ferocious hour and a half long set that ranged from the quietest of songs (“My Dove, My Lamb” performed solo”) to outright feedback breakdown at the end of “A Picture Of Our Torn Up Praise” that echoed the best moments of Crazy Horse and their legendary band leader.
The Kids Are All Right: Tame Impala w/Yuck @ The Black Cat 5.6.11
Looking like they just stepped off the bus (high school bus that is) both bands brought their brand of revisionist rock to the welcoming arms of a sold out crowd Friday night.
First up was Yuck. If you aren’t familiar with the band, take a little Sonic Youth and mix it with some Smashing Pumpkins and some Pavement. Then throw in a little Jesus and Mary Chain and any other early to mid 90’s band that you can think of. Put it in a blender, press chop, and basically you’ve got Yuck...