94 Recent ItemsPhotos: Annuals [Atlanta, GA; 01/26/07]
Photos by Stephen Lindley; writeup by Andy DeLoachAce Fu's Annuals rocked Atlanta's Variety Playhouse this past weekend, filling in the spaces where there should have been more people standing (or dancing, for that matter) with their Brian-Wilson-in-a-hippie-drum-circle stylings. Unfazed by the poor crowd turnout, the Raleigh sextet delivered its musical wares with an emotionally charged energy that lent credence to all those Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, and Animal Collective comparisons.
Slightly brash and yet somehow somber too, lead singer Adam Baker managed to balance his youthful flair with the maturity suggested by some of his lyrics. And considering the average age of the band members is 20.5, Baker and band have plenty of time to temper their varied influences. For now, Annuals proved themselves worthy of the hype and ready for more.
The band kicks off the second leg of its winter tour in late February. Dates and more photo action ahead.
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Photos: Deerhoof/Hella/Busdriver [Los Angeles, CA; 01/24/06]
Photos by David HorvitzHyper-prog trio Deerhoof kicked off a tour last night in support of their Best New Music-garnering LP Friend Opportunity-- and if these shots from photographer and Xiu Xiu tour manager David Horvitz are any indication, it looks like the one-two-three punch of Deerhoof, Hella, and Busdriver just might have rocked the pants off of fans at Los Angeles' El Rey Theatre.
Bonus! Check out the merch table photo below, where Deerhoof's Greg Saunier had one heck of a friend opportunity: that's Minuteman/Stooge Mike Watt busting out some bucks for a Deerhoof CD, along with acclaimed artist and illustrator Raymond Pettibon (left), whose work graces the covers of numerous Black Flag and SST Records releases, as well as Sonic Youth's Goo.
Speaking of artists, don't forget to share your own masterpieces with other Deerhoof fanatics at the band's art website. There's a long road ahead for our hoofers-- check out the remaining dates below.
DEERHOOF
BUSDRIVER
HELLA
BFF
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Photos: Of Montreal [San Antonio, TX; 01/21/07]
Photos by Zach VowellThough the term "show" has come to connote any old indie rock concert, rarely do you see a band as steeped in showmanship and entertainment as Of Montreal. Genuinely interested in serving up more than just richly textured pop to their audiences, Kevin Barnes and company delivered a non-stop 90-minute set comprised of equal parts back catalogue highlights, tracks from their latest LP, Best New Music selection Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? (Polyvinyl), and circus-like theatrics.
Barnes (performing as his alter ego "Georgie Fruit") sang into a golden mic and played guitar throughout his four or so costume changes, while his merry band of stylish road warriors-- including fellow Elephant 6er the Late B.P. Helium (aka Bryan Poole) on guitar-- relished every song and successfully translated Barnes' home-recorded music for the White Rabbit's stage. You couldn't help but smile at the sunny pop vibes bouncing through everyone, especially when Barnes nailed "Gronlandic Edit"'s soaring high notes: "I just want to hold the dee-vi-i-i-i-i-ine in mi-i-i-ine, and forgeehhhhhhhhhhhhtt all of the beauuuuutteeee's waaaaasted."
Throughout Of Montreal's first appearance in San Antonio, whether he was waving a giant lobster claw arm or donning a ten-foot tall robe atop a ladder just as tall, Barnes' extravagant stage antics mirrored the band's myriad musical influences-- and, yes, they played up their glam tendencies most of all. Barnes was strutting around and singing like Prince by the end of the set, and earlier they even indulged in a rousing rendition of Bowie's Ziggy Stardust rawker "Moonage Daydream". But musically and visually, the show gobbled up all those influences and spit out a unique treat, and-- despite one errant drum track and Barnes' inability to smoothly slip out of the long robe and down the ladder-- Of Montreal made it look easy.
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Photos: Mission of Burma [New York, NY; 01/19/07]
Mission of Burma took off on one of their intermittent mini-tours over the past two weekends, hitting Chicago, Atlanta, Boston, and New York City. Pitchfork photographer William Kirk caught Friday night's show at New York City's Irving Plaza, capturing Burma in all their furious glory.
Sorry, no nude pix here. Just lots and lots of rocking.
Photos: Andrew Bird [New York, NY; 01/17/06]
Photos of January 17 performance at Bowery Ballroom, NYC, by Jessica Suarez Live review of January 13 performance at the Hideout, Chicago, by Matthew Solarski
(Fun fact! Among the Bird-brained Bowery Ballroom attendees... MONICA LEWINSKY!!)
Is it possible to be too talented? Joined by a drummer (Martin Dosh), a bassist (Alpha Consumer's Jeremy Ylvisaker), and enough talent to raise the Titanic, singer/guitarist/ violinist/pedal-pusher/world-class whistler Andrew Bird promised-- and, for the most part, delivered-- a "marathon" set of mostly brand new material (much from his forthcoming Fat Possum full length, Armchair Apocrypha, out March 20) to the flock of fans fortunate enough to score tickets to this refreshingly intimate hometown performance.
An aura of big things to come pervaded the evening's proceedings, with Andrew himself admitting he's not likely to play so tiny a Chicago venue again anytime soon (his next Chicago gig will be at the 2500-capacity Riviera; the Hideout holds less than 200). It's not surprising, really: Bird has plenty going for him, from his grace with the violin and easy-to-digest voice to his fondness for pedals and storied whistling prowess, right down to his avian good looks and caddish charm. It's enough to take any NPR groupie to giddy stratospheres (and yes, Pitchfork is far from immune). And it certainly impresses dates and girlfriends.
The new music, for the most part, didn't diverge in any alarming fashion from the old music. There were plenty of lush, latticed backdrops built from pizzicato loops, quite a few SAT words and clever turns of phrase (and a few awkward ones as well), one or two rousing rock-outs and radio-ready choruses ("Plasticities" could well be a hit), and sundry sudden virtuosic turns on the violin.
Onstage these assorted talents engage in a somewhat precarious dance, and they don't always jell convincingly-- but every second or third song Bird will stumble into something magical. It's thrilling, in a way, being held in suspense, waiting for the next perfect moment, but frustrating too.
On record, Bird's juggling act is tempered significantly, his talents more often in harmony than not. Live, perhaps a little refinement is in order-- and the nice thing about being too talented? Even if Andrew trims it back a bit, he still has so much to offer.
Follow that Bird as he migrates to Australia and Europe in the coming weeks.
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Mastodon Attacked by Gorillas!
(Tool members in gorilla suits, that is)
Oh, Tool. Such jokers! Including 3D glasses with the artwork for your new album, writing songs with titles like "Rosetta Stoned", ambushing your opening band while wearing ape costumes. It's just a constant party with you guys, right?
Said ambush took place last night at Zurich, Switzerland's Hallenstadium, while Tool tourmates Mastodon were busy melting Swiss faces. We're not sure what, exactly, happened, but judging from these photos, it appears that organ grinding was involved.
Think that's funny? How about this: Mastodon are nominated for a Grammy for Best Metal Performance for their song "Colony of Birchmen" from Blood Mountain. Now that's hilarious.
More photos and Mastodon tour dates below.
Photos: ATP Nightmare Before Christmas [Somerset, England; 12/08-10/06]
Last weekend, what seemed like the entire noise-rock universe gathered in Somerset, England for All Tomorrow's Parties' Nightmare Before Christmas festival, curated by scene godfather Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth. We are so jealous of everybody who went.
And Thurston didn't take his curatorial role lightly, oh no. Dude was everywhere. Not only did he play two sets with Sonic Youth and one with side project Bark Haze, but he also jumped onstage with Be Your Own Pet and sang backup for Negative Approach.
Andrew Kesin, General Manager of Moore's Ecstatic Peace label, was kind enough to share a small slice of the thousands of photos he took at the event. Pix of performances from Sonic Youth, the Stooges, Gang of Four, Flipper (with Krist Novoselic!), Be Your Own Pet, the Melvins, Negative Approach, Six Organs of Admittance, Wooden Wand, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Wolf Eyes, Comets on Fire, Dead Machines, Hair Police, Awesome Color, Bark Haze, 16 Bitch Pile-Up, Monotract, and MV + EE are below.
For a lot more, including performance photos from Nurse With Wound, Dinosaur Jr., No Neck Blues Band, Prurient, Sun City Girls, and many, many others, as well as off-stage goofing, check out Kesin's extensive photo gallery on the Ecstatic Peace site.
Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth
Iggy Pop
Gang of Four
Flipper
Be Your Own Pet
Be Your Own Pet with Thurston Moore
Photos: Spank Rock [Portland, OR; 12/09/06]
All photos by Nilina Mason-Campbell.With posturing, fist pumps, old school choreographed dancing, and unrivaled body rhythm, Spank Rock resembled a modernized Jamel Shabazz photograph come to life-- crossed with Michael Jackson circa the Off the Wall era-- when they took to the stage at Berbati's Pan before a deafeningly enthusiastic mob this past Saturday.
They knocked out their most beloved songs in a one-two punch, opening with "Air Cock Thrust" and then launching into "Rick Rubin", leading the crowd in a chorus of shout outs to both Rubin and Nick Cannon during the latter. By the fourth song they had a bold young lady crawling onto the stage, and by the sixth MC Naeem Juwan was simulating a variety of sexual positions with her. Mid-set, the Gossip's Brace Paine made a request from the audience for "Lindsay Lohan", the Pase Rock jam on which Spank Rock and Amanda Blank guest. The new song popped up on Spank's MySpace recently and when they performed it the audience nearly tore the roof off the club.
Before the band headed off for an aftershow at Dunes, nearly every lady in attendance had graced the stage. The night was as much about Spank Rock's hyper sexuality as it was about the beats, the hand claps, and the sweat from dancing and shouting-- from band and audience alike.
Spank Rock play L.A. tonight and hit up Australia and New Zealand early next year for the Big Day Out festival. [MORE...]
Yo La Tengo Forsake Hanukkah
Bonus: Concert photos from Barcelona!
Jews all across indie-land (or at least all across Hoboken, New Jersey) will hang their heads in sorrow next week when Hanukkah rolls around, as Yo La Tengo will not perform their traditional run of star-studded Hanukkah shows at their hometown club, Maxwell's. What a shonda!
Way back in October, the band posted a note on their website, saying, "We have concluded that our touring schedule is such we just wouldn't be able to put together a lineup as Hanukkahriffic as years past." Said Hanukkahrifficness was embodied by such special guests as Lambchop, David Cross, Conor Oberst, Calexico, Calvin Johnson, Jon Spencer, Janeane Garofalo, and Todd Barry.
But don't worry-- they skipped 2003 too, and we all survived OK.
Citizens of Japan, Australia, and Singapore will be able to celebrate the Festival of Lights with the band two (or three) months late, as Yo La Tengo have announced a tour that will take them to those lands in February and March.
And for an early Hanukkah present, Yo La Tengo have made available to Beat Your Ass Season Pass holders (remember that?) an exclusive download of a live version of their latest single "Mr. Tough", recorded in Brussels on their most recent European tour. The rest of us will have to wait until January 9, when the band will release a live iTunes Session EP.
Here at Pitchfork, we're getting into the holiday spirit too, and thanks to reader Xavi Guasch of the Spanish website PopMuzik, we're able to share with you a few photos from Yo La Tengo's November 30 show at Barcelona's Apolo.
If you speak Spanish, you can read Xavi's review of the show here. I think he says that they played "Pass the Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind", "Tom Courtenay", "Mr. Tough", "Watch Out for Me Ronnie", "I Feel Like Going Home", "You Can Have It All", "Sugarcube", "Tears Are in Your Eyes", and covers of the Kinks' "Better Things" and Love's "A House Is Not a Motel".
More photos and tour dates below.
Photos: DeVotchKa / My Brightest Diamond [Chicago, IL; 12/02/06]
Two acts intent on whisking us away to far off places-- or at least away from a Chicago in deep freeze mode-- DeVotchKa and My Brightest Diamond-- worked their respective magicks before a sold-out house at the Logan Square Auditorium this past Saturday.Shara Worden of opener My Brightest Diamond wasted no time hushing the chatty crowd, taking the stage alone in an emerald-hued dress and siccing her crystal-clear, classically-trained voice upon us via a measured cover of showtune "Feeling Good", famously interpreted by Nina Simone.
Then joined by a bassist, drummer, and laptop, Worden delivered a solid and frequently enchanting set of tunes, mostly from her 2006 Asthmatic Kitty debut, Bring Me the Workhorse. With the disc's lush orchestrations reduced to digital samples, the focus shifted to Worden's imaginative lyrics and impressionist guitarwork, the latter rough around the edges but refreshingly so. She also made her classical pedigree known, namedropping Pierre Boulez (in "Dragonfly") and covering a Kurt Weill ditty in French. And just when the mood got a bit too heavy during the brooding outro to album closer "Workhorse", Worden hit us with a surprise sudden cover of "Tainted Love". Slightly cheesy, perhaps, but a welcome sparkle all the same.
Hailing from the Rockies or thereabouts, DeVotchKa took us to the more fashionable Balkans, riding a wave of hype descending from their recent soundtrack to Little Miss Sunshine. The four DeVotchKans must be praised for their versatility-- on an abundance of visually exciting instruments, no less: the upright bassist also played the Sousaphone (and decked it out in Christmas lights), the fiddler accordion, the percussionist trumpet and accordion, and the singer, flanked by a small arsenal of music-makers, switched between several guitars, vintage microphone, mandolin, and theremin.
Markedly more upbeat than those of fellow gypsy revivalist Beirut, the songs DeVotchKa conjured using these diverse instruments had a warm, fuzzy feel, evoking nostalgia in the company of friends and revelers rather than an isolated longing. Expressive frontman Nick Urata, whose reverbed vocals billowed through the cavernous ballroom, contributed to this image by taking swigs from a bottle of Yellow Tail between songs and toasting the audience, a sea of bobbing smiles as far as I could see.
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Photos: Beach House [Austin, TX; 11/19/06]
For Beach House, texture is key-- and although this performance at Austin's Emo's was awash in glorious layers, it nevertheless deviated slightly from the recordings on the band's Recommended, self-titled Carpark debut. And that was no crime; hearing Victoria Legrand's shimmering organ subdued every so often beneath Alex Scally's guitar (or the minimal percussion, pushed even further back into the mix) couldn't have been more enthralling.Niece of French composer Michel Legrand, Victoria allowed her voice, which swoops from high and fine to low and commanding, to remain the prime mover; it shone through brilliantly despite a slight echo effect on her mic. In fact, the echo wasn't even that apparent until Legrand spoke up to defend the duo's choice of Jimmy Buffett for their pre-set house music. But instead of plinky keyboards and hi-hat hack work, the band delivered gauzy depth.
The set's most bracing moments, however, came when Legrand let loose on the climaxes for "Tokyo Witch" ("I would love to heal you now") and "Master of None" ("Jack of all trades/ Master of none/ Cry all the time/ 'Cause I'm not having fun"), twice abandoning Beach House's hypnotic textures and atmosphere for something more heart-piercing. The latter track, by far the most up-tempo number on Beach House, closed the set, leaving the crowd eager for the band's next move.
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Photos: More Scandalous Xiu Xiu Tour Polaroids
So last time, we got a candid look at the wild-n-crazy kids of Xiu Xiu and their hotel room antics as the trio (with documentarian/photographer/tour manager/merch guy David Horvitz in tow) made its way across North America in support of The Air Force. That tour has finally wrapped up, but the insanity lives on in this latest batch of Polaroids from Horvitz, taken on film submitted by fans-- which means they might just wind up in your mailbox in the near future. Hide your mom. Click to catch your pals Jamie, Caralee, Ches, and David in action, with special guests Deerhoof, BARR, and Vu Vu the stuffed seal, tour mascot extraordinaire. I think it's safe to say the ante has been upped this time. NSFW, unless you work at some fetish shop or something. [MORE...]
Report: Morrissey [Chicago, IL; 11/21/06]
Things fans of Morrissey do unabashedly: wear Morrissey t-shirts to Morrissey's show, do their hair up in Morrissey-esque tufts, scream and shriek and squeal like it's the second coming when the man so much as exposes his belly button. These Moz-philes turned out en masse for their savior's lone U.S. appearance this season-- numbers enough to sell out Chicago's Aragon Ballroom, a cavernous space decked out like Atlantis with the heavens painted on the ceiling. In other words, an apt setting for our Pope of Mope and his starstruck congregation.Opener and fellow Attack Records chum Kristeen Young made an awful lot of racket with just a cheap keyboard, some samples, and a drummer. Recalling Kate Bush at her most rambunctious (think, perhaps, "Sat in Your Lap"), Young's bombastic pop songs effectively filled the enormous space and overpowered the chatterboxes, even if they taxed after a while, sometimes becoming gratingly shrill or bulbous. Quite a shock to learn she's from St. Louis. And turns out she has a song called "Kill the Father"-- one wonders if it's a proactive response to Moz's "The Father Who Must Be Killed", from this year's Ringleader of the Tormentors. At least they're on the same page when it comes to both melodrama and patricide.
We were teased between sets by projected performance videos from pop idols of yore-- Elvis, Jacques Brel, Brigitte Bardot-- and prior to Young's set, the inexplicable blasting of Dvořák's famous cello concerto (perhaps playing off the concertmaster cover image from Tormentors?). So the room was pretty much saturated in drama and theatrics by the time Moz took the stage in a sharp crimson dress shirt to the tune of a thousand banshee wails.
Moz and his nondescript, uniformed five-man band wasted no time, tommy-gunning through Smiths favorite "Panic" and his own "First of the Gang to Die" and "The Youngest Was the Most Loved", setting a trend that would endure through the night: Smiths classic, couple newer songs, diva-like one-liner to audience. Moz began those quips by diva-fying Twain's exaggerated death reports line, and later invited a fan to help him rail on Americans for not being "sufficiently intelligent" enough to pay attention to him. Indeed, I chatted with a security guard prior to the show who'd never heard of this "Morrissey guy".
The band, meanwhile, were at their best when they slipped out of workman mode and breathed atmosphere behind the Moz man's wailings, using a room-rattling symphonic gong and bass drum to conjure up a thunderstorm during "Life Is a Pigsty", which cleared the way for that epochal whirlybird guitar that could only mean "How Soon Is Now" had arrived at last. The night's biggest travesties, however? No "Suedehead", and only a one-song encore (a good one though: "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want").
All said, Moz is an ace showman and it's not often you witness a man in his late forties, mane graying, tearing off his shirt, flinging it into the audience, and looking ridiculously sexy while doing so. [MORE...]
Photos/Videos: Frida Hyvonen [Chicago, IL; 11/19/06]
The quaint, cramped, and normally noisy Beat Kitchen miraculously proved an ideal venue for Frida Hyvönen's Chicago debut, as the tall, charming, and alarmingly frank Swede rolled through town to share selections from her solid Secretly Canadian debut, Until Death Comes. Frida romped through nearly everything on Death, starting off a bit rusty but gaining confidence as the night wore on-- and as the wine glasses ("Chardonnay!" she joked) atop her compact piano multiplied. The refreshingly attentive audience took kindly to her between-song banter and idle ivory-tickling, the former made all the more endearing in slightly broken, delightfully accented English.
Only "The Modern" came across a mite thin and anticlimactic in the hushed room-- minus the multi-tracked vocals that enliven its finale on record-- but Frida more than made up for it with a handful of new tunes, including a song about touring England, an ace set-closer, and a "Heart and Soul"-esque sampling from her score to the prancing-pooch dance production Püdel.
Watch Frida perform and explain that Püdel tune, as well as Infinite Mixtape selection "I Drive My Friend", by clicking the magic YouTube triangles below.
"I Drive My Friend"
Song from Püdel
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Photos: Shellac [Minneapolis, MN; 11/18/06]
Illustrious, Steve Albini-led Chicago trio Shellac played a surprise show at Minneapolis' 7th St. Entry this past Saturday-- at noon, no less-- prior to their official gig that night at First Avenue. Lucky reader Pierre was onhand to witness the controlled mayhem unfold, and kindly sent us these photos, in classy black and white. Todd Trainer, you are still a creepy dude, but we love you.
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Photos: Sufjan Stevens [Reykjavik, Iceland; 11/17/06]
Photos by Leó Stefánsson. Text by Atli Bollason.Image-google Sufjan Stevens, and you won't find a single result where the man is smiling. His gaze is usually set on some far-away point, his eyes dreamy, his thoughts, presumably, not dwelling in the past but constantly set on the future-- possibly on that point in time when he completes the last of his fifty state albums?
Pair that careful posturing with his prolific output and tremendous skill, and Stevens has already achieved something of a mythical status among his fans. When playing Reykjavík's downtown Fríkirkja (Independent Church) this past weekend, as with his recent U.S. tour, Sufjan further contributed to that image (or was he mocking it?) by donning an enormous pair of wings-- spanning nearly two meters-- and some sort of huge, tribal mask.
Reykjavík was the group's last stop on their tour through Europe in support of The Avalanche. Curiously, Sufjan and friends played not a single song from that album (excepting shades of the various versions of "Chicago"), instead opting for tracks from Michigan, Seven Swans, and Illinois, along with one new song. [MORE...]
Photos: The Sugarcubes [Reykjavík, Iceland; 11/17/06]
All photos by Leó Stefánsson
Last night in Reykjavik, Iceland, the legendary alt-pop group the Sugarcubes reunited for the first time in 14 years. Known for late 80s and early 90s college radio hits like "Birthday" and "Motorcrash", as well as for launching Björk's career, the Sugarcubes performed at a benefit for their former record label, the non-profit Icelandic imprint Smekkleysa SM.
From the looks of these photos, taken by Pitchfork's Icelandic friend Leó Stefánsson, it seems to have been an amazing show. (How is it that Björk never appears to get any older?) We're very jealous right now.
Photos: Charalambides [Austin, TX, 11/15/06]
"It's nice to be back in our second hometown," began Christina Carter in a gentle voice. It was hard to reconcile that cautiously introductory tone with the subsequent power that leapt from Carter's vocal cords, even though I knew it was coming. But there it was.
With the Charalambides live lineup consisting of only Christina and her former husband Tom Carter, the skeletal arrangements of their latest record A Vintage Burden (Kranky) didn't make the grade at 1 a.m. on a Wednesday night at Emo's, even though half the set came from that album. Christina's voice soared over Tom's ferocious rhythm guitar work, which he looped and supplemented with near-bluesy picking and further noisy experimentation. Rocking back and forth on his heels, Tom exhibits a passing resemblance to J. Mascis, but there was no guitar-hero moments here, only a fleshed-out platter of layered chords and effects. Fortunately, he left the wailing to Christina.
This is not to say that Tom kept it low-key. Juggling the loops and other rising swells of guitar required constant intensity, and to conclude a particularly rowdy closing number, he cathartically tossed his guitar to the ground, spun around, and kicked a small amp over on its back. He approached the mic and said, "Thanks for stickin' around, I'm pretty sure that's it." And sure enough, the house music cued up. More Charalambides photos and tour dates below.
Photos: "Daily Show" Anniversary [New York, NY; 11/16/06]
As previously reported, indie rock and topical comedy collided last night at New York City's Irving Plaza as Superchunk, the Mountain Goats, and Clem Snide took the stage along with cast members from "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" to celebrate the award-winning Comedy Central series' 10th anniversary and raise money for 826NYC. "Ten F#@king Years" (The Concert), they eloquently named it. Photographer Kathryn Yu attended the f#@king gala and took some lovely f#@king photos for us.Superchunk
The Mountain Goats
Clem Snide
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Photos: Tanned Tin [Castellon, Spain; 11/09-11/11/06]
As previously reported, the Tanned Tin festival hit Castellón de la Plana, Spain this past weekend, treating the city's citizens to five consecutive days of indie rock goodness, mostly of the folksy and/or experimental variety. Pitchfork reader Jeff Harvey was lucky enough to partake of the festivities and kind enough to share a few photos. Looks to have been a fabulous time.I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness [Teatre Principal; 11/09/06]
David Thomas Broughton [Casino Antiguo; 11/10/06]
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Photos: NovemberFest [Columbia, SC; 11/06-11/12/06]
All photos by Jen RayNovemberFest at the (Art) Garage was something Columbia, South Carolina-- a city resigned to being passed over by touring bands-- very much needed. Indeed, having the Slits, the Mountain Goats, Jennifer O'Connor, Richard Buckner, the Apes, Venice Is Sinking, Two Dollar Guitar, and others play in the same week at the same venue was almost too much for our overlooked town. But if anything, the DIY vibe that swept through the festive week gave us a sense of spirit and, hopefully, identity.
The Slits / The Apes [11/07/06]
The Apes rampaged the room, while the Slits-- who said it was their best show in seven years-- nearly emptied it. [MORE...]
Photos: Modest Mouse [New York, NY; 11/13/06]
Modest Mouse continued debuting their new guitarist, some upstart named Johnny Marr, at a sold out gig at New York City's Nokia Theatre last night-- the first of five shows in the city spread across three different venues. You've seen the video of this promising rookie in action, now scope these lovely photos, courtesy of Pitchfork's NYC photographer William Kirk. This Marr guy looks good; we have a feeling he might amount to something someday.
As previously reported, Modest Marr-Mouse skitter about NYC this week, then play a London gig and jet off for Australia through the new year. Dates and more photos ahead. [MORE...]
Report: Be the Riottt! Festival [San Francisco, CA; 11/11/06]
With sparsely-attended Veterans' Day festivities underway in San Francisco's Civic Center plaza (because nothing pays tribute to our esteemed men and women of war quite like a high school drill team in miniskirts and garters performing LeAnn Rimes' "Can't Fight the Moonlight"), the city's young and adventurous began lining up outside the nearby Bill Graham Civic Center for the inaugural Be the Riottt! festival.
Put together by burgeoning music/art/culture website Riottt.com, Be the Riottt! basically united those two towering bastions of underground music: white dudes with guitars and black dudes with microphones and turntables-- with a few laptops and ladies tossed in for good measure. By genre statistics, however, the fest boasted a pretty diverse lineup, with heavy doses of indie rock (the Rapture, the Wrens, Deerhoof, Xiu Xiu, Metric, Tokyo Police Club) and hip hop (Clipse, Living Legends, Zion I, Sage Francis, P.O.S.), a few sprinkles of dancier stuff (Girl Talk, the Presets, Weird Science), and a couple random screamo bands snuck in for no apparent reason (Fall of Troy, Heavy Heavy Low Low).
Riottt! birthed this baby with a bang, and was kind enough to treat Pitchfork to a Frisco trip to witness the blood, the sweat, and the joyous tears of that birth live. A quiet Riottt! this most certainly was not.
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Photos: Islands [Portland, OR; 11/07/06]
All photos by Nilina Mason-Campbell.Unicorns-spawned Islands treaded Les Savy Fav territory at Portland, Oregon's Disjecta this past Tuesday, using props to enhance their performance, if only for absurdity's sake. Couple a noose and a mannequin head with Nick Diamonds' mime-like makeup and his penchant for snatching items from audience members and you have a show heavy on band-audience interaction in the middle of general ridiculousness and musical greatness.
The band tossed four new tunes into its set, all of them typical Islands fare-- diverse, danceable pop-- and by far some of their strongest yet. Of the fourteen-song set, the crowd responded most enthusiastically to Return to the Sea's "Rough Gem" and "Where There's a Will, There's a Whalebone". And while L.A. emcee Busdriver was onboard to deliver his "Whalebone" verse last time Islands rolled through town, this time opener Subtitle joined the band onstage to recite his part.
Despite a smaller Islands line-up than shows previous, a delayed start time, and the towing of some concert-goers' cars during a changeover, the infectious energy from Islands appeared to conquer all.
Islands' tour with Subtitle and Blueprint continues through Thanksgiving. Dates and additional photos ahead. [MORE...]
Photos: The Rapture / Hot Chip / Lo-Fi-Fnk [Philadelphia, PA; 11/03/06]
Text and photos by Maria Tessa Sciarrino
For the journos and bloggers complaining about how boring this year's CMJ was: all it would have taken to shut you up was a few extra dollars and a ride on the Chinatown bus to Philadelphia's Pure for the Hacienda-riffic party Making Time. Proof that Making Time has totally aped the arc of that fabled club: the hundreds of glow sticks dumped on the audience at the end of the Happy Mondays'...err...Hot Chip's set.
In comparison to the rest of the acts, Lo-Fi-Fnk's performance felt downright precious. The Swedish group was about as shambolic as indie electro can get, with sound problems, an inability to properly play their keyboards, and plenty of youthful bouncing around. This could have spelled disaster if it weren't for their awesome touring bassist, who held Lo-Fi-Fnk's collective shit together with her delicately sparse basslines and pretty backup vocals.
Here's how to decide whether the Rapture or Hot Chip put on the better show: toss a coin. No lie. The evening was more about the audience and band feeding off each other; at times I watched the floor bend like a trampoline (knocking over some of Hot Chip's equipment in the process) from the energy of the crowd, who seemed to inhale every note of both bands.
Crowds this energetic often get passed off as annoying, but strangely enough, nobody seemed to mind the stage divers and waves of people crushing those up front. It was a refreshing change of pace. And I didn't mind either when the following morning, I discovered all their merrymaking left me bruised. Dance floor justice, I guess.
The Rapture:
Hot Chip:
Photos: Les Savy Fav [New York, NY; 11/07/06]
Pitchfork's New York City photographer William Kirk just sent us these amazing photos from Les Savy Fav's performance at the Museum of Modern Art last night. We have absolutely no idea what was going on, other than that it was some sort of art project involving cell phones. But hey, any art project that uses Les Savy Fav as a prop gets our seal of approval.
More photos below.
Photos: Lady Sovereign [Chicago, IL; 11/04/06]
After weathering a line that wrapped almost the entire perimeter of venue the Metro's block-- and enduring Radio Disney-grade blah-rock from prettyboy opener Young Love-- a nearly-packed Chicago crowd made way for the S-O-V. "TRL" queen Lady Sovereign took to the stage late Saturday night in a big, not-too-baggy t-shirt bearing her own lyric: "Funky Little Monkey With the Tiniest Ears." Backed by a four-piece band (five-string bass, drums, DJ, and street artist)-- and, impressively, no sidekick/hype-person-- she hissed, growled, wheezed, and spat her way through a short but mostly electrifying set that included "Ch Ching", "Random", and said lyric's source and her biggest hit to date, "Love Me or Hate Me" (from Sov's just released and long overdue Def Jam debut, Public Warning!).Our funky little monkey looked a little fatigued and a bit de-funked as she staggered through "Tango", but she pulled herself together right good for some extended screaming during a cover of the Sex Pistols' "Pretty Vacant". Sov also demonstrated a flair for physical comedy, swiping her onstage graffiti artist's brush and painting her cheek bright red (to get random, you see), and sharing a clown-sized frown with the audience after she tossed her beer all over them, then went for a sip and came up empty-mouthed. "Underage!" shouted some goon, who must've forgot that wherever Sov goes, she reigns.
Lady Sovereign's tour with Young Love continues through December. Dates and more photos ahead. [MORE...]
CMJ Report: Saturday [Brandon Stosuy]
All photos by Jane Lea.MGR [Sin-é; 11 p.m.]
MGR is Mike Gallagher of Isis on solo, pedal-pushing guitar. During his suitably oceanic set-- giving an indirect nod to the Zodiac's water bearer via a well-tailored Aquarius Records t-shirt-- a friend turned to me and said, "he's definitely in Isis." True.
Made Out of Babies [Sin-é; 11:45 p.m.]
Double-timing vocalist Julie Christmas yowls for Made Out of Babies and Battle of Mice; if you close your eyes and take the Pepsi Challenge, it's easy telling them apart: Think coiled Am Rep rock for the former, layered blue-lit Isis (and, say, Slint-y Godflesh) the latter. A pivotal ingredient: Battle of Mice's guitarist/bassist/keyboardist, Josh Graham, also vibrates six-strings in Red Sparowes and dreams Neurosis' art direction. MOoB's more straight-up blisters were best exemplified during their Sin-é set when the bassist, Cooper, started a story with lumberjack guitarist Brendan Tobin, but Christmas opted to slice to the chase, interrupting with her screaming "Silverback". A two-man pit immediately spilled backwards.
Unfortunately, every action wasn't so whopping. They also performed "Proud to Drown" (more water), which finds Christmas boasting, "I can feel your insides shake." Judging from the band's sophomore album, Coward, that's what I was expecting; oddly though, as if showing deferential homage to the festival's close (the downward arc of a denouement?), the club's sound was anti-climactically quiet.
CMJ Report: Saturday [Amy Phillips]
All photos by William Kirk.
CMJ ended with a bang Saturday night, as Clipse flattened the Knitting Factory with a too-brief set of pure fire. From the opening "Virginia" through the closing "Mr. Me Too", Pusha T and Malice gave the overjoyed crowd everything we wanted...except previews of songs from their excruciatingly delayed forthcoming album Hell Hath No Fury. Other than the singles ("Mr. Me Too" and "Wamp Wamp"), I'm pretty sure Clipse didn't play anything from Hell, instead concentrating on "classic" material like "What Happened to That Boy?", "Cot Damn", "Pussy", and, of course, "Grindin'". As Pitchforker Jessica Suarez wondered, maybe they're so afraid of a leak they won't even let the songs touch the air outside of an extremely controlled environment? Clipse also didn't play "Zen", which was made doubly frustrating by the fact that the DJ spun it directly following their set. What a tease!
Not that any of that necessarily mattered when Pusha and Malice were on stage; we were happy to take whatever we could get. The pair, joined for part of the set by fellow Re-Up Gang members Ab-Liva and Sandman, maintained an intensely high level of energy and focus throughout their performance, feeding off of the crowd's enthusiasm. Pusha has one of the most expressive pairs of eyes in hip hop, lending his threats and boasts the gravitas to elevate them even above their recorded power.
Clipse [Knitting Factory; 1:00 a.m.]
CMJ Report: Saturday [Marc Hogan]
The Fall [Hiro Ballroom; c. 9:15 p.m.]
If you're at all familiar with Mark E. Smith, you sort of expect him to fuck with you. So it wasn't entirely disappointing when, around the time Smith and the current incarnation of the Fall were expected to take the stage at the Hiro Ballroom, some guy with a laptop came out instead and poked big-screen PowerBook fun at easy targets-- Tom Jones, fat Elvis, Barbra Streisand-- in the guise of avant-garde audiovisual.
By the time Smith took the stage, the band's rhythm-heavy post-punk assault was well overdue. Though the whole thing was over in five or six songs (only the guys with video cameras know for sure), Smith's typically inscrutable persona and the solid grooves (two bass guitars, after San Francisco-based openers the Ohsees didn't even have one!) made for time well spent right through to a bristling cover of the Move's "I Can Hear the Grass Grow". And then it was all over, despite vain, half-hearted efforts to get the clever bastard back out for an encore.
CMJ Report: Friday [Brandon Stosuy]
All photos by Jane Lea, except Grubbs et al by Brandon Stosuy
David Grubbs and Steve Moore with Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley
of Sunn 0))) [Rockstar Bar; 5 p.m.]
I live in Brooklyn, but the TV Eye/Southern Lord event at Rockstar Bar was the first of this year's CMJ-related shows I attended in my own borough. Wait, I thought Manhattan's cultural life was dead? I'd planned to see Fucked Up tear through that Avail-bating Toronto hardcore at Northsix, but the kids were stuck at the Canadian border (I checked their blog to make sure), so I didn't trek to the Jade Tree showcase.
No worries: There was free beer (thanks) and the wooden mermaid centerpiece at Rockstar to keep me company and help me drown those sorrows. The musical focus of the evening was Greg Anderson and a freshly shaven Stephen O'Malley joined by Earth's Steve Moore (on trombone, Korg) and David Grubbs (on guitar) for a set of drone with additional details.
Grubbs is a much busier, less patient player than Anderson or O'Malley, often adding arpeggios and contra chords to their sustain. He was also the most expressive-- rocking and rolling and picking like slow-mo Townshend. O'Malley offered ecstatic faces here/there; Anderson kept his back to the audience. Moore fell somewhere between O'Malley and Grubbs. The lights went out for a few seconds, and I welcomed that veil of black. Choreographical analysis aside, Anderson and O'Malley are clearly the essential nucleus in any Sunn 0)))-related outing; additions are fun, and the band has always explored collaboration, but Grubbs's Gastr Del Sol-nimble fingers felt unnecessary. The band's amazing when working with the right vocalists-- á la Malefic and Wrest-- but when you have instruments as heavy as theirs, why bother adding a noodling guitar? There was even a moment when things sorta fell apart.
That said, a small dream of mine is a collaboration between Sunn 0))) and Tony Conrad. The Rockstar set, though not revelatory, seemed like a revelatory step in the right direction. Check the equation: Grubbs has worked with Conrad and now Sunn's done stuff with Grubbs. We can solve it with the transitive property, or something, I think.
The Drones [Mercury Lounge; 8 p.m.]
Bought some pretzels to counter the free beer and then headed into the Mercury Lounge in time to catch Drones drummer Michael Noga telling a story about finding cocaine and used condoms in a room at the Carter (he joking pronounced it with an English accent-- hard "r"-- after noting that nobody knew what he was talking about otherwise).
I've especially dug this rabid, Australian quartet since last year's Wait Long by the River and the Bodies of Your Enemies Will Float By, and am happy to report that new offering, Gala Mill, is even better. So, uh, why the hell haven't they caught on in the States? Who knows...makes no sense to me.
They went from story hour into a superbly ragged rendition of "Shark Fin Blues". Frontman Gareth Liddiard looks to be about 7' tall (from my vantage) and yet puts his mic a bit above his head, forcing himself to look upward as he snarls and spits. They shredded another great song from Wait Long by the River and showcased some new material. The Drones are forever coming apart at the seams-- they start from the simplest element (say a repetitive bass line) and slowly add layers and swagger until it seems the song will lose its stitching. By the end of the set, the drums had literally fallen apart, but Noga kept banging the cymbal mercilessly.
I noticed that more and more impeccably dressed folks were pouring in, but couldn't understand why; after the set, I went outside and saw Albert Hammond Jr. penciled in for the headlining set. That guy can draw a crowd, but the Drones can't? What the fuck...
American Heritage [Ace of Clubs; 9:30 p.m.]
I was too late to see Unearthly Trance, sadly, but did catch the Atlanta/Chicago trio American Heritage. They've been around close to a decade (during which time they did a 2003 split 7" with Mastodon) and have gone through various flavor shifts, but have never hooked me. Accordingly, I've been on the fence about their recent Translation Loss full length, Millenarian; it's brutally relentless and tight, but lacking in personality. Well, live they bring the personality. Hell, I should've known that a band with a song titled "It's Like Fucking a Napkin Full of Toenails" and who list "Snappily-dressed throngs of fascists marching dutifully off a cliff, tumbling past doe-eyed unicorns who look startled for a moment but soon go back to grazing on four-leaf clovers and blue diamonds" under "influences" on their MySpace page would have good between-song banter. For instance, a story about punching butts and the "brown light district" sorta went well with a discussion about the brown note the night prior.
Dysrhythmia [Ace of Clubs; 10:30 p.m.]
Not only did they have the sweetest sound check all festival ("That sounds fantastic, thanks"), the proggy Brooklyn guitar/six-string bass/drum trio Dysrhythmia forced me to catch my breath twice. Their arty instrumental metal is Don Caballero for people who hate Don Caballero. And maybe for those who like Shellac? Not since I saw Albini and co. years ago has a bass lacerated my eardrums so fully. Earlier, the slightly nerdy drummer, Jeff Eber, was seen practicing his rat-a-tat-tat, as great drummers are apt to do. My girlfriend got into a conversation with a woman in the audience who was there to see her nephew. I'm guessing it was guitarist Kevin Hufnagel because she didn't stop snapping photos of him. Man-- technically sick metal and family? Heaven. Their most recent Relapse full-length, Barriers and Passages, came out in May.
CMJ Report: Friday [Amy Phillips]
All photos by William Kirk.
The day began within the sterile confines of the Apple Store in SoHo, where the Decemberists made an afternoon appearance. The band was in "stripped-down acoustic storytelling" mode according to a jovial Colin Meloy, which meant Nate Query on upright bass, Jenny Conlee on accordion, John Moen on a single snare drum (played with brushes), new touring member Lisa Molinaro (of fellow Portland band Talkdemonic) on violin, and, of course, both Meloy and Chris Funk on acoustic guitar (Funk picked up a mandolin for a couple songs.)
The six-song set-- comprised of "July, July", "We Both Go Down Together", "The Perfect Crime #2", "Myla Goldberg", "Yankee Bayonet", and "O Valencia!"-- was lovely and subdued, with the Apple Store's excellent sound system coaxing out the nuances of the Decemberists' folksier side.
The Decemberists [Apple Store SoHo; 1 p.m.]
Don Juan Dracula [Pianos; 5 p.m.]
The Low Frequency in Stereo [Pianos; 6 p.m.]
120 Days [Pianos; 7 p.m.]
The Blow [Irving Plaza; 10 p.m.]
I'm a fan of the raw pop-punk of the Grates' debut album Gravity Won't Get You High, and I'd heard about their infamously high-energy live show, but nothing could have prepared me for the performance singer Patience Hodgson gave last night at the Bowery Ballroom. The club had emptied out after Mew's set, leaving a scattered gathering of about 100 fans and curious onlookers. But Hodgson didn't take the diminished crowd as any sort of slight; in fact, she used it to her advantage, turning the Bowery metaphorically into her bedroom, letting us all watch as she bounced on her bed and sang with a hairbrush into the mirror.
As perpetually smiling drummer Alana Skyring and nondescript guitarist John Patterson bashed out their three-chord bursts, Hodgson whirled, jumped, and tore around the stage, long hair flying and tulle skirt fluttering in the self-created breeze. When it came time to play the ballad "Rock Boys", Hodgson leaped down onto the floor, bringing her mic stand and one of those long fluttery ribbon stick toy things out into the middle of the floor of the venue. Surrounded by a circle of happy fans, she sang the song while twirling the ribbon around her head. From my vantage point in the balcony, it looked like the punk rockest maypole dance ever. The most startling aspect of Hodgson's performance was that despite all of her gymnastic moves, her voice remained as strong as on the record.
Hodgson is compared to Karen O quite a bit (for good reason), and though I'm a fan of both and think each woman brings her own unique spin on the crazy-frontperson game, for one night, Hodgson was clearly the better rock star.
The Grates [Bowery Ballroom; 12:00 a.m.]
CMJ Report: Friday [Marc Hogan]
All photos by Marc Hogan
Excepter [Hiro Ballroom; 6 p.m.]
Last time I saw these Brooklyn experimentalists, their equipment malfunctioned, New York's most prominent recently fired rock critic was yawning in the corner, and another semi-prominent, notorious rock riffer kept assuring me they were usually actually awesome. At the Maritime Hotel's tony Hiro Ballroom, Excepter were in excellent form, their electro-kraut-noise improv living up to their surprisingly coherent full-length, Alternation. In fact, for all the megaphones, dentist-drill noises, shamanic seriousness, and incongruously goofy headwear, I realized these guys can also be as twee as they are avant-garde. No, for real: One of their more bizarre instruments is a toy monkey with cymbals, John Ryan Fell was totally the only person actually wearing his badge around his neck (so lame it's...cool?), and at one point I swear I heard someone singing, "One boy for you/ One girl for me." If my job is to articulate why I like or dislike certain music, perhaps one reason I so enjoy Excepter is because they never let you off easy.
The Decemberists [Hammerstein Ballroom; 9 p.m.]
It was a thrill just to see the Decemberists playing in front of so many people, i.e. more than 3,000 if you believe the internets. Colin Meloy and his merry madrigalists were a little blown away, too-- "We're going to do our best to pretend we're playing at the Mercury Lounge right now"-- but they ultimately used the increased scale to their advantage, much like they did on The Crane Wife. Fans on the floor and two balconies indulged the theatrical PDX popsters by participating in Meloy-encouraged dance competitions, sing-alongs, vocal warmup drills, and the "Myla Goldberg" shoutout to NYC. For an encore, members of the band marched into the crowd to reenact "The Charge of the Light Brigade". The final song, "I Was Meant for the Stage", took on new meaning in Hammerstein's vast setting-- yes, Meloy was meant for this stage, too. But it's still a fucking trip.
The Big Sleep [Pianos; 11 p.m.]
I always imagined the whole point of events like CMJ was to discover music you hadn't heard before, but my luck hasn't been too good the past two years. Pulling into Pianos as part of the Frenchkiss showcase, The Big Sleep were my pleasant surprise of the night. The Brooklyn-based trio banged out muscular avant-rock textures with a totally bonkers Mick Fleetwood bugeye drummer who did those Zep things Dom Leone loves and a guitarist as content to hash out blues riffs (over bassist Sonya Balchandani's teutonic drone) as ear-splitting electronic noise. It would've been next to impossible to buy beer in this sardines-packt crowd, so at least the music was pretty kickass.
CMJ Report: Friday [Ryan Schreiber]
All photos by Ryan Schreiber, except Mew by William Kirk
Lavender Diamond [205 Bar; 5 p.m.]
With more than a year's worth of under-the-radar critical adoration behind them (but still no album), Los Angeles four-piece Lavender Diamond have quietly signed with a high-profile U.S. indie label (plus, Rough Trade in the UK!), and deservedly so: "You Broke My Heart", the lead track off their 2005 self-released The Cavalry of Light EP, guaranteed that alone. Opening the Chicago-based Windish Agency's four-artist bill at Chrystie Street's 205 Bar, frontwoman Becky Stark projected just the right balance of charisma and flighty eccentricity, her sheepish banter hinting at a charming if possibly slightly cracked personality behind the rapturous voice. Even more than that song, that voice is what revellers are quick to mention; strong yet somehow serene, Stark's carefully trained alto is Lavender Diamond's most striking characteristic. But as compelling a character as Stark makes, their stage show could stand some development. I mean, we know the backing dudes are getting on in years and everything, but you know, just for the audience, it kind of rules if the band is standing up.
Loney, Dear [205 Bar; 6 p.m.]
Another group from Stockholm with fey, introspective lyrics, a self-depricating frontman, and nine members? Awesome. So we know what Sweden's arts council goes in for. It's a nice utopian concept and all, inviting all your friends to be in your band, but that's what you have a MySpace for. The question is, how many of those members do you really need? Recent Sub Pop signing Loney, Dear had the answer last night: One. Just the dude who writes the admittedly pretty catchy songs that I suppose sounded sort of really fantastic amped up to bursting in that cozy, tinfoiled little room. Granted, I might be playing up the nine members thing a bit too much, just because the Windish website describes them as "the one-man band with nine members." Truth is, only five of them were in tow. I guess I'm just crabby 'cause so many of these Stockholm indie pop bands are really obnoxiously great, despite being more or less indistinguishable. So, Sweden, I got this great idea: Put out a record that sucks. Think how fucking leftfield that would be!
Rjd2 & Peanut Butter Wolf [205 Bar; 5 p.m.]
Meanwhile, downstairs, the mellowest DJ set ever was in full force. Like, Bill Withers' "Lovely Day" mellow. It was day four; they knew people would be beat. No one in that room needed another round of Rex the Dog and Jacques Lu Cont remixes. Sometimes sweet-vocaled 70s soul shit is all you need. Don't tell people I said that.
Deerhoof [Hiro Ballroom; 8:45 p.m.]
In the absence of now-departed member Chris Cohen, some might say Deerhoof are just without...something. And I mean something besides a member. But as missed as Cohen's fancy fretwork and creative contributions might be, the band somehow sounded as confident and complete as ever, tightening up arrangements and rocking the classics front to back. Proof positive economy pays. Stockholm, are you on this?
Mew [Bowery Ballroom; 11 p.m.]
Well, it's taken about 30 years, but kids, in 2006, prog-rock's finally made its sweeping, bombastic, pretentious return. And no, it's still not cool, unless you live in Denmark, where apparently Mew are the most important cultural development since uncomfortable furniture. Yes, I felt way too old to be there, and it was at times a bit difficult to look past their self-consciously precious frontman, projected backdrops of kittens playing violins, and a keyboardist with a classic Yankovic hairstyle. But it was also kinda great how every single New Yorker in the room absolutely despised them, and how everyone who'd flown in from, say, the midwest, kind of got into their Built to Spill meets M83 meets Edgar Winter Group vibe. Let me stress again how not cool these guys are. But you know what? Write a song as anthemic and addictive as "Apocalypso"-- and then have the balls to call it "Apocalypso"-- and we'll just go off and be huge nerds together.
Thunderbirds Are Now! [Pianos; 12 a.m.]
CMJ Report: Thursday [Brandon Stosuy]
All photos by Casey McKinney.Shy Child [Webster Hall; 7 p.m.]
The Cake Shop revved Silver Apples' "Oscillations" immediately after 120 Days' Tuesday set. The next day at Webster Hall, we got entropic NYC synth/drum duo Shy Child, whose opener "The Noise Won't Stop" continued the Apples' rattle and late-1960s racket-- albeit well aware of the sad fact that electroclash did exist a few years ago in Williamsburg. Was I the only one who heard some Rapture vocalisms from singing keyboardist Pete Cafarella? Quick fact: He's also in Supersystem.
Whatever-- the people wanted disco. Brighter spotlights and a crowd's collectively bigger smiles welcomed a cowbell's entrance, while the rat-a-tat/whirl-whirl formula grew pretty standardized until a guest saxophonist appeared from the shadows. At one point Cafarella jokingly announced the show as a "dinner set"-- and that he and his drummer compatriot planned to get dinner afterwards. If that's really the case, it's too damn bad because then they missed an absolutely brilliant effort by my favorite NYC crew not named Excepter.
Gang Gang Dance [Webster Hall; 8 p.m.]
What can I say? I've always loved Gang Gang Dance's ability to create real-time collage-- those celebratory switches from a split kaleidoscope soundtracked by Punjabi MC to blood-soaked terror. Take that, Girl Talk. But hell, when did Liz Bougatsos become the city's most captivating front woman? We're talking serious avant-diva action! Injecting some vibrancy into Webster Hall's vast air, she donned a Ghostface Killah t-shirt as dress (fashionable torn shoulder showing), strange weight-lifter pajama pants, and boots. The band's second-best fashion move: Tim Dewitt's high back drums. The quartet opened on an Enya atmospheric tip before digging into God's Money's refracted, cat-and-mouse punk-dub: A slithery beast of fainting steam, tumbling calypso, wicked Björkian balladeering, slinky Greek musicals, and Hot 97 (Brian DeGraw = Timbaland).
Malajube [Mercury Lounge; 9 p.m.]
On a night that felt like –40 degrees, Montreal's Malajube brought the hot rock. The new album, Trompe-L'oeil, is a sweet pop trill; live, I heard Drive Like Jehu (no kidding) tucked inside the fair-trade vocals. You can tell they come from the north: Malajube have the thickest heads of hair ever, the kind where faux hawks occur unintentionally. The five Canadians were wearing a palette of t-shirts, bouncing and sweating through "Le Crabe" et al "for the benefit of [our] ears" while I drank Blue Moons, wondered about the connection between Quebec and keyboards, and realized the especially funny keyboardist/guitarist (pretending to use his guitar as a hammer, etc.) reminded me of the guy on "SNL" who plays the Falconer. Befitting the overall Sassy vibe, girls to my right squealed when the set reached a foaming finale. The last band I saw at the Mercury Lounge who brought the pop so mightily were Malajube's neighbors, Sunset Rubdown.
Wizardzz [Pussycat Lounge; 1 a.m., or so...]
I had every intention of catching Blue Cheer at the Knitting Factory-- my second reunion show in as many nights, god help me-- but the Load/Cock Rock Disco showcase was, as I should've suspected, running behind schedule. Seriously, noise rockers are the biggest procrastinators. But, wanting to check out Brian Gibson's other non-Lighting Bolt band, I opted to accept the fluctuating schedule and overlong laptop drum-n-mace and bask in Wizardzz's glow.
The Pussycat's the ideal noise-show hovel: The second floor of a strip joint, it's outfitted with dirty carpet, a catwalk (perfect for laptops!), a lap dance couch (perfect for laptops!), stars on the walls, a Smog chandelier, black light, mirrors...felt like I was in the church of Quintron. Most of the bands played too long, but when Wizardzz-- Gibson and Bug Sized Mind's Rich Porter-- started smoking immediately following "Welcome to the TerrorDome", they kicked it all professional-like in their silky-ass outfits, never speaking to the audience, just getting down to shredding. The duo's debut, Hidden City of Taurmond, had hints of this sort of thing, so I was pleased to witness them nailing that swampy, psyched Ornette Coleman dervish, especially in a stripper funhouse of color. While I was nodding my head, thinking of Barkley's Barnyard Critters, and trying to figure out Porter's pedal situation, they ended in mid-stride, before anyone expected it. Perfect.
Heading down the stairs and onto the street (where a bunch of guys in suits milled about, though it was close to 2 a.m.), I suddenly felt revitalized, liked I could watch noise nonstop for another ten hours.
CMJ Report: Thursday [Amy Phillips]
All photos by William Kirk
My second CMJ day began at the Kill Rock Stars/5RC party at Mo Pitkin's, with a performance by the astonishing Marnie Stern. One of KRS' newest signings, Stern looks like Kirsten Dunst and shreds like Mick Barr. But unlike Barr and so many other guitar virtuoso dudes, Stern sings while she manhandles her ax, cooing about glass slippers and diamonds as her nimble fingers fly across the fretboard. I'm eagerly anticipating Stern's debut album, In Advance of the Broken Arm, produced by Hella's Zach Hill and due out January 23. Her brief solo set was a revelation.
No such revelations were to be had during Loney, Dear's performance opening Sub Pop's CMJ extravaganza at the Bowery Ballroom. The Swedish group, centered around Emil Svanängen's tender indie pop songs, were perfectly competent, but lacked any sort of magic. Svanängen stood stock still, staring at a fixed point out in space in front of him, his expressionless face retaining the same look throughout the set. When he told the crowd he was happy to be there, I didn't believe him.
Loney, Dear [Bowery Ballroom; 7 p.m.]
Given that Oxford Collapse's Michael Pace is the singer/guitarist in a power trio that happens to be signed to Sub Pop, I gotta hand it to him for having the balls to wear a plaid button-down shirt to his label's showcase. Not that anyone would ever confuse Pace with Kurt Cobain--in addition to his brown curly hair, thick moustache, and goatee, Pace dedicated a song to Pat O'Brien and joked about receiving a neck massage before the show to relieve his symptoms of "metal neck" (aka headbanging too hard).
Oxford Collapse's focused, intense performance, which included several standouts from their new album Remember the Night Parties, highlighted how much Oxford Collapse are basically an early-90s emo band (see: Cap'n Jazz).
Oxford Collapse [Bowery Ballroom; 8 p.m.]
CSS [Bowery Ballroom; 10 p.m.]
The Thermals [Bowery Ballroom; 11 p.m.]
The Shins [Bowery Ballroom; 1 a.m.]
CMJ Report: Thursday [Marc Hogan]
Frida Hyvönen [Skirball Center at NYU; 8 p.m.]
Swedish pianist Frida Hyvönen plays soft dinner music with jarringly sexual lyrics, and she likes grapes. "It's a very social fruit," she explained. As her fingers dashed playfully across the ivories, Hyvönen sang about cocks and reminded us not to take off our pants. The smattering of New York University kids who arrived early, before the Wrens and Walkmen-- "I've got, like, two papers due tomorrow"..."Dude, why are you even HERE?"-- politely applauded.
The Wrens [Skirball Center at NYU; 9 p.m.]
Whatever it is, the Wrens still have it. They came out one at time, with singer/ multi-instrumentalist Charles Bissell hidden somewhere within a huge hooded jacket. Before the show was over, he'd harmonized a cappella with the crowd, climbed on top of a speaker, and invited the more fervent fans to sing along onstage. If everyone chooses sides, at least we were all on the same one.
The Walkmen [Skirball Center at NYU; 10 p.m.]
The Walkmen followed the Wrens' emotive crescendos with Hamilton Leithauser's scratchy-chested howls. The Dylan-tinged fare from the New York indie rockers' most recent album of original material, A Hundred Miles Off, makes a bit more sense in a live context, enhanced by horns on songs like "Louisiana". And yes, they still played "The Rat".
Califone [Tonic; 11:15 p.m.]
Let's just hope Califone aren't the next casualty of airline luggage-losing. Despite their rootsy sound, Tim Rutili's troupe rely on a stage-filling assortment of gear, from 12-string guitars to laptops. Rutili sprinkled in a spot-on Willie Nelson cover for kicks, but most of the set explored the atmospheric post-Americana of this year's Roots & Crowns.
CMJ Report: Thursday [Nitsuh Abebe]
When the breakcore freaks of Cock Rock Disco and the noise blasters of Load Records team up for a CMJ showcase, you expect some sort of violent, tacky strangeness-- you just don't expect it to spill out over the whole neighborhood. Nevertheless, I kick off Thursday night in front of the Pussycat Lounge, a strip club/venue just two blocks from the giant hole in the ground that serves as NYC's saddest, weirdest tourist trap, and next door to the store where-- much later tonight-- an Italian stripper will apologize to me personally for Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia. Go figure.Food for Animals [Pussycat Lounge]
The showcase is chaos from the first minute, and probably best summed up by the put-upon soundman who, when asked for a little more bass on Food for Animals' second Macintosh, replies: "I don't know, is it supposed to sound like that?" It was: The beats this act's two MCs shout their way through keep shattering and screeching and flailing their way into pink noise. I ask three people if they noticed what the guys were actually saying: It's a "no" all around.
Baby Calendar [Cake Shop; 10 p.m.]
After a little more shatter and screech, I'm moved to skip across town and recuperate at what should be the twee-est show on the Lower East Side-- a showcase for Athens, Georgia's Happy Happy Birthday to Me Records. (Name notwithstanding, this label does not appear to be owned by a pirate or leprechaun.) The mid-show highlight turns out to be Baby Calendar, a Miami three-piece whose indie pop is more about big bursts of cheer and Mates of State harmony than any doe-eyed shambling. They're so genial that the drummer even strips on request.
Drumcorps [Pussycat Lounge]
Back at the (ahem) Pussycat Lounge, the noise continues with a terrific set from Drumcorps: Between his metal grind, clenched-teeth breakbeats, and extensive dreadlocks, Aaron Spectre makes a pretty good argument for what a young Trent Reznor might have done if he were born a decade later and way less interested in sex. This guy's stage routine is so twitchy and hyperactive that when he takes a drink of water between songs, he forgets to calm down and winds up taking the world's first Extreme Grindcore Sip.
At this point, the room's developed the five standard indicators of a NOIZE show: (a) a distinct biological odor; (b) someone in the corner sleeping through something horrifically loud; (c) someone wearing a mask and dancing so lasciviously that you do everything in your power to avoid brushing up against him; (d) a running order that gets nonsensically switched around, to the point where I totally miss Duran Duran Duran; and (e) hand-made costumes. The door prize clearly goes to one of the following: either White Mice, from Providence...
White Mice [Pussycat Lounge]
...or Droon, from Antwerp, Belgium, who hefts his ASCII keytar and plays, inexplicably, for only about two minutes.
Droon [Pussycat Lounge]
The magic of it all is that during the ride home, the ringing in my ears is actually oscillating, in highly disturbing patterns. Which is good, because it drowns out whatever kid in my neighborhood spends the hour between 3:30 and 4:30 screaming loudly at regular intervals. NYC: WTF?
CMJ Report: Wednesday [Brandon Stosuy]
All photos by Casey McKinney
The Twilight Sad [Fontana's; 8 p.m.]
CMJ boot camp began on trash night in Chinatown, Metallica's "Master of Puppets" lifting spirits in Fontana's upstairs bar. Meanwhile, in the basement, noisy Glasgow pop group the Twilight Sad tore eardrums: The quartet's self-titled EP's great, but I imagine if I hadn't heard it three dozen times, I would've failed to untangle the melodies from the feedback. They opened with vocalist James Graham wielding a drum stick and smashing cymbals along with the fresh-faced, Campbell Soup-kid drummer. But it was the Daniel Johnston t-shirt wearing guitarist who stole the show with his awkward teenage Kevin Shields impersonation-- all the more charming because he was out of tune. Strumming in a slapdash style, now again sipping from a cup with a Yankees logo on it, he looked bored and utterly fascinated at the same time. Still, despite the white noise hubbub, the general focal point remained the swoony Graham, who another Pitchforker later called the most attractive man alive. Well, he must've been scared of his own beauty because he kept his eyes shut for 75% of the set, issuing romantic utterances about kids on fire in the bedroom, running out of time, the invisible boy, and feeling bitter, so very bitter. Halfway through, amplifier problems led to a slight delay, so a bearded oldster jumped on stage and read, gently, a poem, "Twilight Sad." It was a great calm in the storm, but had me wondering: What came first, the poem or the band? Anyone?
Beach House [Cake Shop; 10:15 p.m.]
Ushering in a different sort of calm, downer Baltimore duo Beach House quietly owned the Cake Shop. The room was packed, leaving eyes to rest on hippies nodding themselves to careful, contented sleep on the bar, while others lined like trees against the wood-paneled wall, swaying. Beneath the field of cricket stars, it felt like we were indeed holed-up at the band's namesake, about to attend a Magnetic Fields/Brightblack Morning Light apple orchard picnic. Musically, the guitar/keys/vocals were Damon & Naomi backed by meteor slides. The male half of the band looks a lot like Devendra Banhart-- I was waiting for him to get up and flail shirtless with henna on his head. Thankfully, they remained subtle and downcast, digging into a "Lovelier Girl" before disappearing like a soft-edged dream.
The Slits [Knitting Factory; 12 a.m.]
A friend pointed out that the Slits more than made up for the Twilight Sad's lack of tuning. True…how long does it take to get those strings aligned? "Girls invented punk rock, not England" filtered from the P.A. before the seven- to eight-person band started playing. Ari Up-- dressed in a dayglo Jah paint-splatter sorta cheerleader outfit–- was insistent on reminding us everything she invented after forming the band in 1976. Or, she spoke in the third person, e.g. "now this is a Slits' bass." Later, her smiling but still annoying refusal to continue playing until the sound person got rid of some monitor boom reminded me why I generally avoid reunions: zero urgency, lack of context. She mentioned their first NYC gig (besides Up, only bassist Tessa Pollitt is an original member) in 1979 on 2nd avenue. Maybe it would've been better then? For our troubles, we heard "Typical Girls", "Shoplifting", and "Newtown", but the background singers couldn't sing and I wondered if eight people making music together have ever sounded so thin. I could concoct something phatter with a match and a Dixie Cup. Trust me.
120 Days [Cake Shop; 2 a.m.]
It's fitting that dudes named after a de Sade text would have me out until 4 a.m. on a school night. There were sound problems here, too, with repeated requests for more drum machine in the monitor. That aside, 120 Days played the best set of day two. (The Strokes boy band that bounced before them stood off to the side smoking cigarettes and peering all Springsteen-like, knowing they'd been beaten, at least this time.) When I saw the quartet in Oslo, it was obvious they were onto something; this late Cake Shop show proved that the fuckers have arrived-- the sound was denser than when it flew outdoors (obviously; there's less space to disappear into) and there was joyful Happy Mondays dancing by the band and audience. As vocalist Ådne Meisfjord noted, "Oh, the girls are dancing." Sure-- of course, the boys were dancing, too.
For his part, Meisfjord stripped down to his undershirt and made like a raver. A wonderfully extended "Come Out (Come Down, Fade Out, Be Gone)" arrived as a finale, complete with pause/breath-catch/skree extension. Around that time, a girl told me she'd traveled all the way from Toronto to catch the band, though she'd seen them in her city a few days earlier. I might not trek that far, but I'd definitely check them out again…maybe at one of the 3,000 other shows they're playing this week.
CMJ Report: Wednesday [Amy Phillips]
All photos by William Kirk
The Knife's performance at Webster Hall last night wasn't just great, it was kind of revelatory. Olof and Karin Dreijer, dressed in black coveralls and black ski masks (or was it blackface makeup?), were just a small part of the entire immersive experience, a combination rave/art installation/laser light show.
They stood both behind and in front of screens, on which were projected trippy geometric shapes, childish drawings, and ghastly figures, and were flanked on the stage by balloons bearing images of distorted faces. The way the elaborate light show hit their own faces made the pair look alternately like jack-o-lanterns, monkeys, or bank robbers, which pretty much sums up the varying moods of the performance: mischievous, playful, terrifying.
I'm not sure how much live music the Dreijers actually performed. Karin's mouth definitely moved, and Olof was certainly hitting something with his giant drum sticks, but it wasn't clear whether or not those motions corresponded with anything inside the crystal clear, surround sound sonic stew enveloping the venue. They played rejiggered versions of Silent Shout favorites such as "Like a Pen", "We Share Our Mothers' Health", "Forest Families", and the title track, and even threw in a shimmering, subdued take on "Heartbeats". The music was flashier and more dance-oriented than on record, much closer to Euro-trance/cheese/trash than I'm used to. Of course, it sounded amazing. So we're confronted with the reality of one of the best albums of the year, by one of Pitchfork's favorite bands, delivered using tropes that send the authenticity police into fits of rage: lip-synching, silly dancing, cool light show, superclub dance beats. Does that mean the Knife's performance was insincere, or lightweight, or somehow less worthy than that of a band sweating through a set, pounding on their own instruments and pouring their hearts out on the mic? Fuck no. Does it mean that we need to alter our antiquated notions of "worthiness" and "realness" in pop music performance? Fuck yes.
The Knife [Webster Hall; 11:30 p.m.]
After being flattened by the Knife, I headed to this weird (but kinda cool) afterparty at the West Side meat market Club B.E.D. It was dubbed the "Zombie Prom", so the place was full of people with fake blood on their faces and, inexplicably, a pair of dudes dressed up like Pac-Man. (Nobody seemed to care that Halloween was a day earlier.) But the main attraction was a performance by Lupe Fiasco, who tore up the place like it was a stadium packed with screaming fans, rather than a half-full loft space populated by distracted VIPs.
I was hoping to hear him perform "The Cool", given that this was the ZOMBIE prom, and it's possible that he did, but I arrived about halfway into his set. So I caught "I Gotcha", "Kick, Push", "Daydreamin'", and other Food & Liquor tracks, as well as a mixtape cut in which he rhymes over Gorillaz. Lupe was sporting a pencil-thin moustache, and while I usually am quite anti-moustache in general, it looked pretty badass on him.
Lupe Fiasco [Club B.E.D.; 1 a.m.]
Photos: Lee "Scratch" Perry's Shoes! + Tour
The headdresses, the
microphones, the Js...it's safe to say we've been aware of Lee "Scratch"
Perry's colorful personality for quite some time now. But nothing, nothing
could have prepared us for the kicks the reggae man wore to an interview at
SIRIUS Satellite Radio's New York City headquarters last September.
Really, bag the Jamaican flag and replace it with these babies, because they embody the country and its music like nothing I've ever seen before. Plus it's nice to know the seventy-year-old Perry is still in good health-- he'd have to be to lift these clunkers off the ground. The photos come courtesy of SIRIUS's Elise Brown. Scope one more after the jump. [MORE...]
CMJ Report: Wednesday [Nitsuh Abebe]
Dr. Dog [Bowery Ballroom; 10:25 p.m.]
Wednesday night at the Bowery Ballroom felt like a Battle of the Bands' Awkward Names. The shaggy hippies of Dr. Dog played a pretty glorious pop set, but is that a medical degree that dog has? (These guys seem more homeopathic.)
Cold War Kids [Bowery Ballroom; 11:25 p.m.]
Then the skinny-jeaned Christians of Cold War Kids staggered around for a bit, their singer coming off like an embittered Taylor Hicks yelling at you from the next barstool. (The band name denotes that they grew up amid crisis and drama, man.)
Tapes 'n Tapes [Bowery Ballroom; 12:30 a.m.]
Then came Tapes 'n Tapes (where's the other apostrophe, guys?), who turned out a markedly high-energy and bottom-heavy set-- tight and professional, packed with rockers from their earlier days, and a decent distance from the slacker delicacy of their debut LP, The Loon. Don't let their half-beards fool you: These guys bounced, beamed, and thanked the kids in front politely, like a band that's enjoying success in both senses of the word "enjoy."
CMJ Report: Wednesday [Ryan Schreiber]
Professor Murder [Pianos; 10:00 p.m.]
Lit from the fading embers of dancepunk, Professor Murder's set at Pianos proved everything their Pitchfork-recommended debut EP, Professor Murder Rides the Subway, suggested: You can't bury the genre that's not dead. Drawing as much from dub's legendary forefathers as from Solid Gold-era Gang of Four, Professor Murder's mellotron-drenched, echoplex-informed art-funk packed the room. But how does a band with just a five-song EP (one of which is a 22-second segue) handle a full set? Easy: Start late, and preview plenty of new material. If the evening's performance was any indication, their forthcoming debut could be a cold-blooded killer.
Figurines [Mercury Lounge; 1:00 a.m.]
So this was the sixth time I've seen Denmark-based rockers the Figurines...since March. It's not that I go out of my way to catch them whenever they're in town (alright, I sorta do); they're just that hard-working. Their latest album, Skeleton, finally saw North American release this year after having been available in their homeland since February 2005, establishing them, in my mind, as one of this year's most underrecognized indie bands. Their shows are always competent, if not necessarily revelatory-- but last night, as on the recent Chicago stop of their just-completed U.S. tour, they were tight beyond belief, easily winning over a crowd that had mostly turned out to see...
Girl Talk [Mercury Lounge; 2:00 a.m.]
I was sure after seeing the Knife's set at Webster Hall just two hours earlier that I'd already witnessed the quintessential CMJ performance of 2006. But for all the mind-blowing spectacle that went into the Sweden electronic duo's psilocybic special effects, Girl Talk's DJ/not-DJ set at Mercury Lounge was way more fun. Blowing up the show we saw at Chicago's Empty Bottle in September for a stage nearly twice the size, GT mastermind Gregg Gillis wasn't 10 minutes into his set before he'd invited up more than 50 people to dance (and eventually strip him to his underwear).
Girl Talk records give the impression of slaved-over mash-ups, meticulously stretched and pitchshifted to sync flawlessly, but last night's set list was worlds apart from the one I'd seen just over a month earlier, suggesting he may work faster than anyone realizes. In addition to completely reworking popular moments from the awesome Night Ripper, he also made room for brand new cuts (including Kelis' "Bossy" and Nelly Furtado's "Maneater"), spontaneously connecting one track to the next. Playing well beyond his usual 45 minutes, he finished out the set by announcing, "I promised I wouldn't pull out this Nirvana shit tonight, but...", ending an already massive set with his notoriously PA-shattering cover of "Scentless Apprentice". By the time it was all over, at 3:00 in the morning, the crowd was half-naked, drenched in beer, sweat, and a little blood from that one poor stagediver-- and ready to get back up at noon the next day and start all over again.
Photos: Secret Machines [Atlanta, GA; 10/31/06]
What began feeling like an off night for New York's Secret Machines-- with Beck performing a secret gig elsewhere in the very same building, no less-- wound up an electric showcase of what the trio does best. Atlanta's Center Stage proved an ideal venue for this Halloween stop on the Machines' in-the-round tour, a heavily-reverbed affair that included highlights "Alone, Jealous and Stoned", "Better Bring Your Friends", "The Road Leads Where It's Led", and intense finale, "First Wave Intact". Best of all, with the unique setup, everyone in the house had an excellent seat for a powerful and driven set.Secret Machines wrap up their in-the-round jaunt this weekend, including two CMJ gigs, then hit up Argentina and Mexico later this month. Dates and more photos ahead. [MORE...]
CMJ Report: Tuesday [Marc Hogan]
The Rapture [Bowery Ballroom; 11 p.m.]
Photo by Brendan Reid.
Season's greetings from the Rapture's singer/bassist, Mattie Safer: "What's up, Halloweiners?" Other than statuesque rockstar frontman Luke Jenner's too-short skeleton costume pantlegs, he must've meant. Jenner's exposed ankles and the band's cute, playfully choreographed "Monster Mash" entrance added welcome unpretentiousness to a night of taut dance-rock, lofty vocal yowls, and costume-wearing indie kids who apparently still remembered learning how to dance. Newer songs like "The Devil" reached the spooks up in the rafters, but older favorites like "House of Jealous Lovers" and "Sister Savior" provoked the most frenzied funky-getting. Out of the races, and on till All Saints' Day.
Video: Bonnie "Prince" Billy: "Cold & Wet" + Photos
Hey hey, here's a video that's not so bonnie at all. In fact, this Einar Baldvin-directed clip for Bonnie "Prince" Billy's "Cold & Wet", from this year's excellent The Letting Go, is far more goddamn cynical, sadistic, and depressing than anything featuring cutesy cartoon bears and crocodiles has any right to be. It does, however, teach us how babies are made-- but I still don't get what all that baby-making fuss is about.As previously reported, "Cold & Wet" arrives in tasty 12" and CD single format on November 14, via Drag City. The CD version comes with this video, so you can take it home with you and watch it over and over and share it with mom, dad, kid sister-- the whole family. Just in time for Thanksgiving!
As an added bonus-- and a reminder of the sincere man behind the music-- check out ace photographer Mike White's shots of Bonnie "Prince" Billy performing at Chicago's Portage Park Theater on October 16. [MORE...]
Photos: Voxtrot [Austin, TX; 10/28/06]
Halloween weekend in Austin inevitably turns out hundreds of costumed carousers in the middle of Sixth Street, and last Saturday was no exception. Inside Emo's it was a more gentlemanly affair, with Voxtrot frontman Ramesh Srivastava taking the stage in a rented tux. Srivastava's "wife" (assuming no actual married couple would dress up like it was their wedding day again) appeared late in the show bearing full champagne glasses to celebrate keyboardist Jared Van Fleet's 24th birthday. A toast was made.
Throughout the set, Srivastava grinned and joked, obviously riding as high as the crowd was on the anticipation for the group's forthcoming EP Your Biggest Fan, and the band's ever-elusive debut LP, due sometime early next year. But despite all the loose talk and Saturday night good vibes, the band did not lose track of the quiet intensity that drives the best of their first two EPs.
Jason Chronis' bass rode a taut, quickly-moving course through the heart of each song, whether it was new material or previously released (the set was roughly split in half). That made up slightly for the diminished emphasis on Srivastava's vocals (which Chronis' basslines often mimic) in the live setting. It's not as if the singer's voice wasn't heard; it's just hard to follow the lyrics at a show, and more often than not Chronis could tell the story just as well.
If there could be one real complaint lodged against Voxtrot this time around it's that the rock side of their sound was amped up at the expense of their pop songcraft, and that at times the band did lose their knack for nuanced shifts and transitions. Each song's components barreled into one another, leaving a little desire for a quieter set. But that's a minor reservation, and it's only made in the face of a fun time, so really it's no complaint at all. It's spoiled to complain like that, actually!
For more photos and Voxtrot's remaining tour dates, see below. [MORE...]
Photos: Jamie Lidell [Austin, TX; 10/26/06]
Last Thursday at the Parish in Austin, Texas, Phoenix-based laptopper Back Ted N-Ted threw down such a Warp-like platter of skittish beats and fractured (but groovin') samples that I began to wonder whether Jamie Lidell would be returning to his Super_Collider and Muddlin Gear days. The short answer turned out to be: not quite. A one-man show, Lidell stepped up to his table of gear and mic stand and gave the crowd (a good portion of which seemed stuck on Jamie after they saw him open for Beck) a heaping dose of Multiply soul.
But it wasn't all Motown tributes and nods to Otis Redding-- Lidell had, after all, graced the stage barefoot and in a black-trimmed, leopard-print robe like a prizefighting kickboxer, and he burst into a giddy smile when greeted by the sizable audience's welcome. He was having fun and he wasn't going to be playing Multiply by the numbers.
Lidell's latest album did provide most of the night's material, but over the course of the set he manned several extended beats and breakdowns from behind the decks, often injecting winding combos of scats and beatboxing, both of which were heavily processed in real time by Lidell. Deviations from the recordings managed to unfold as a balance between assured production and playful programming.
All of this came to a head on the encore, when Lidell flipped on the beat for "Multiply". The crowd went apeshit singing along to the chorus, and, in response, Lidell offered up the mic to certain crowd members from his perch on the stage. That fun over with, Lidell swung over to the sample machine and laptop to perpetuate the song a few more measures before doing that weird thing that European performers do as they exit the spotlight, where they clap for their appreciative audience. I think he bowed abruptly several times, too.
For more photos and tour dates, see below. [MORE...]
Photos: School Deerhoof Ballet
Photos by Alice Bissell
Earlier this week, something amazing happened. The North Haven Community School in North Haven, Maine put on a ballet featuring participation from both students and community members. It was called the Milk Man Ballet, and was based on Deerhoof's 2004 album Milk Man.
Drama teacher Courtney Naliboff and choreographer Ken Jones collaborated with the band members on the production's music, and students from elementary, middle, and high school danced. The band attended both performances, which took place October 23 and 24 at Waterman's Community Center, as well as rehearsals.
These wonderful photographs were taken by Alice Bissell, who works at the school. Special thanks to reader Adam Lachman for sending them in. [MORE...]
Photos: Beck [New York, NY; 10/22/06]
Only four days after his wildly eclectic show at the Theater at Madison Square Garden, Beck settled down at the Angel Orensanz Foundation Center-- a one-time synagogue on Manhattan's Lower East Side-- for an impromptu acoustic set. The gothic downtown venue is located in the same neighborhood where he began his career in the late 1980s as part of NYC's anti-folk scene, and the night's casual atmosphere harkened back to such bygone days. It was a rare opportunity to see the still-chugging hippie-philosopher in such an intimate space, and Beck took advantage of his picturesque surroundings by relying heavily on his more subdued fare. The quaint, lo-fi set-up featured his five-man touring band proving their wide-ranging virtuosity while playing with spoons, plates, tom-toms, and a vintage Casio. Though somber tracks from Sea Change and The Information dominated the set (a stunning "The Golden Age", with the group backing Beck by softly tapping wine glasses, won the night's spine-tingler award), there were many spontaneous, lighter moments including a junk-band take on "Where It's At" that had keyboardist Brian LeBarton scrambling for an adequate setting on the Casio (after testing a couple duds, the band decided on "bassoon" with some audience help).
Compared to the puppetry, prop antics, and prose-raps that fill his current stage show, this concert was a refreshing palette cleanser with Beck highlighting his fine singing voice and deep catalogue. As his two-year-old son Cosimo-- sporting can-style ear muffs-- looked on near the front of the stage, his smiley dad tried out a couple new songs along with the old favorites, and even broke out an ace take on the Louvin Brothers' twangy "You're Running Wild". Who knows, maybe the country tune could be a hint at a rewarding new path for the trailblazer, who once again confirmed his versatility while allowing for some little-seen warmth on this night.
Beck and puppets crash Philadelphia's Tower Theatre tonight. More photos ahead. [MORE...]
Photos: Califone [Chicago, IL; 10/21/06]
Chicago's Califone jam-packed and sold-out hometown trendsetter-center the Empty Bottle this past Saturday, treating the devout (and a few head-shakers) to ruminations in realms folky, bluesy, and country-esque-- most adorned in unique percussion courtesy of Jerry Garcia look-alike Ben Massarella and experimental flourishes from pedal-pushing frontman (and potential Woody Allen stand-in) Tim Rutili.Austin's Peter and the Wolf (of sailboat tour fame) opened, featuring songwriter Red Hunter on guitar and a stage packed with nine junkyard percussionists-- including Califone drummer Joe Adamik and assorted Chicagoans-- hitting everything from pots and pans to jack-o-lanterns, garbage can lids, and a skeleton puppet. Recent Thrill Jockey signee Angela Desveaux and band followed up Hunter's ramshackle folkery with a fine set of polished alt-country tunes, lyrically sound and easy on the ears.
Califone took to the stage at last around midnight, playing a wide range of songs spanning their large catalogue and including Infinite Mixtape selection and Psychic TV cover "The Orchids", from this year's Best New Music'd Roots & Crowns.
While a good third of the attending trickled out over of the course of the nearly two-hour set, those with the patience to remain greeted Tim Rutili's every murmur with rapturous applause. Apart from a few pleasantries, Rutili kept mum through most of it-- until some drunkard used tuning-time to shout something about a jam, prompting Rutili's austere countenance to crack momentarily for a sarcastic utterance: "Fuckin' Bob Marley, man!" Riotous laughs all around.
Although the Saturday night crowd proved a bit too chatty to allow Califone to fully cast their spell, those who came for the music likely went home haunted by it-- and completely satisfied.
Califone hop the pond for a week, then return to North America for an extensive tour next month. Dates and more photos ahead. [MORE...]
Photos: Iceland Airwaves Festival Pt. 4 [Reykjavik; 10/21/06]
Photos by Leó Stefánsson unless otherwise indicated. Click for parts one, two, and three.The final night of Iceland Airwaves really didn't feel like the final night for two reasons: first of all, Sunday night-- featuring a single local showcase-- is actually the final night. Secondly, it felt a bit anti-climactic after Friday's incredibly strong lineup. This is not to say that it made one bit of a difference to the inebriated locals and foreigners wandering the streets-- Reykjavik, for better or worse, might just be the drunkest city in the world: witness the hipster kid jumping on the hood of a passing car and shattering the windshield with a swift kick. No one batted an eye.
The night began much less violently with Nortón's set at Gaukurinn. These young Icelandic musicians (including photographer Leó Stefánsson) play in various Reykjavik bands, and have combined here to bring back 1980s Clash/Blondie disco, jerky electro, and funky house. The initially sparse crowd grew as the band tested the dancefloor with trombone, keys, guitar, and laptop.
At Iðnó, Icelandic chanteuse Kira Kira (aka Kristin Björk Kristjansdottir) began her set to a darkened, hushed theater. Comparisons to another Icelandic Björk are tempting here, but not really accurate, as her childlike voice floated in and out of ambient electronics and ethereal piano tones.
Over in the National Theatre Basement, Hjatalin, who've had several radio hits this past summer, played somber, adult contemporary love songs for an adoring, youthful crowd. Back at Nasa, popular Icelandic band Benny Crespo's Gang performed confident, sweeping alt-rock to a more lively audience.
The UK's Fields were up next, and this possible next big thing began their set with perfectly harmonized vocals before launching into their thankfully not post-punk-referencing indie rock-- it's just nice to hear something different once in a while.
Finally, over at the Reykjavik Art Museum, the decidedly post-punk-referencing sibling act the Cribs (pictured above) were wrapping up, using their guitars in an onstage light saber duel. The headliner of the night, Kaiser Chiefs, closed the night and peppered their vivacious set with cheesy quips like, "You're a good-looking people!" and "So I heard Reykjavik likes to drink!" This is a medium-sized band with one album and an arena-rock mentality, and while their music is tight and fun, they can lay it on pretty thick.
And that about wraps up Iceland Airwaves for this year. This well-run festival is much smaller than the continental behemoths that rule the European summers, but the unbelievable zest for music and celebration in Reykjavik made these past four nights feel much larger than they were.
More photos ahead. [MORE...]
Photos: Iceland Airwaves Festival Pt. 3 [Reykjavik; 10/20/06]
Photos by Leó Stefánsson. Click for parts one and two.As the Reykjavik weekend got into full swing, night three of Iceland Airwaves found the venues completely packed, the streets flooded with music fans, and the city full of staggering drunks roaming about until six in the morning.
The night began with the wonderful Benni Hemm Hemm at the Reykjavik Art Museum. Benni's sentimental ballads draw as much from lo-fi indie as they do from country, and are enhanced by a full brass section that flares up at the appropriate moments, lending his performance an epic quality.
Up next were crowd-favorite Canadians Islands, dressed all in white and playing their indie-rock showtunes like their lives depended on it. Nick Diamonds even graciously busted out a new tune for the eager audience, a promise of good things to come from this band.
This was a hard act to follow, but Iceland's Apparat Organ Quartet (pictured above, and really a quintet-- doesn't the drummer count?) was up for the challenge. Playing a mad scientist array of vintage synths and organs, the Quartet, crisply attired in smart suits, blazed through poppy electro and massive industrial waves of analog sound.
Over at Gaukurinn, Icelandic favorites Jeff Who? pressed their new wave-influenced power-pop into the faces of what seemed like a dangerously over-capacity crowd. If one person moved, everybody moved in this morass of flesh and beer. And move they did, as the audience sang along over throbbing basslines and caterwauling synths, clearly showing their approval for this popular band.
But the obvious focus of the night was Wolf Parade. After taking the stage and dealing with some feedback problems, the band launched into its catalogue of quirky rock with boundless energy. The vocals may have been buried in the mix and two keys may have broken off a keyboard, but nobody gave a shit. Wolf Parade owned the night, creatively enhancing the songs from their debut, Apologies to the Queen Mary, with moments of improv and uninhibited gusto.
Click on by tomorrow for Pitchfork's final Iceland Airwaves installment. [MORE...]
Photos: Iceland Airwaves Festival Pt. 2 [Reykjavik; 10/19/06]
Photos by Leó Stefánsson, unless otherwise indiciated. Scope part one here. Night two of Iceland Airwaves 2006 began at the Reykjavik Art Museum, a beautiful modern space that has been temporarily transformed into a concert venue for the duration of the festival. The sound was immaculate and the set times tight, as has been the case for much of the festival thus far.
First up, the always dependable and eternally cutesy Mates of State. Was that another cover of Gnarls Barkley summerjam "Crazy", heavy on the melodrama, thrown into the end of the set? Indeed, and the attendees ate it up. Up next was Hot Club de Paris. This Liverpool trio-- and recent Moshi Moshi signing-- rocks the a cappella and tight, jerky post-punk in a fashion very similar to the Futureheads. And they had the appropriate jokes, noting that there's a chain of grocery stores in the UK called Iceland. Again, the crowd loved it. And why not? We needed to get primed for the amazing tap-dancing circus that is Tilly and the Wall, whose whirling dervish performance was a true celebration on stage and plastered dreamy smiles upon every face.
Elsewhere, Nico Muhly, an American Julliard graduate, performed his neo-classical experiments with Icelandic super-producer Valgeir Sigurdsson (Björk, Bonnie "Prince" Billy's The Letting Go). But this festival is all about kinetic energy, so a trip over to Nasa to see hardcore kingpins and hometown heroes Reykjavik! next didn't feel out of place at all. The screechy Blood Brothers/At the Drive-In-style rawk got a bit tiresome, but Emily Haines-fronted Metric were there to pick up the slack with their dreamy and occasionally aggressive Canuck pop. Unabashedly soaking up the adoring crowd's sweat and cheers, the band didn't skimp on the prolonged jams.
Finally, rounding out the night was Sweden's amazing Love Is All (pictured above), who skronked out their no-wave roots with incredible tightness, muted scratch guitar, and dying-goose saxophone ablaze. Rumor has it that the weekends in Reykjavik find the kids smashing their beer glasses in the streets, so tonight I'll be wearing my galoshes.
Stay tuned for installments from Iceland Airwaves through the weekend. More photos ahead. [MORE...]
Photos: Scandalous Xiu Xiu Tour Polaroids
Put the graphic in photographic
As Xiu Xiu forge ahead with what has certainly been one of the more-thoroughly- documented indie tours in recent memory (remaining dates below), road manager David Horvitz has happily offered Pitchfork a batch of scandalous Xiu tour Polaroids, hell bent on corrupting the minds of our readership.
Well, okay-- one semi-scandalous pic (the line about rocking out with one's cock out comes to mind), a little knife play, a little blood, and a bunch of family-friendly vacation shots. As you may recall, Horvitz invited fans to drop off film at their local Xiu gig, promising to mail participants unique photos of Xiu gang hilarity on the road.
Best of all, it's not too late to get your own prized piece of original photographic Xiu tour memorabilia-- if you're lucky, it just might be NSFW. Buy ye some film (Polaroid 600, plz) and get ye to a Xiu show now. [MORE...]
Photos: Iceland Airwaves Festival Pt. 1 [Reykjavik; 10/18/06]
All photos by Leó Stefánsson unless otherwise indicated.
As the first night of the 2006 Iceland Airwaves festival got underway, the kids poured into the freezing cold streets of the vibrant city of Reykjavik-- a precursor to the madness to come as the weekend approaches, the bands get bigger, and the crowds get drunker. This night was mostly made up of Icelandic bands, of which there seems to be an endless supply-- and several of these very young musicians proved their mettle.
At Grand Rokk, a venue right off the main shopping street of the city center, the teenage Retro Stefson (pictured above)-- a rambunctious bunch of kids-- injected a healthy dose of bossa nova into their blend of keys, samplers, and guitars. They wrapped up their set with an impromptu cover of Wu-Tang Clan's "Ain't Nothin' ta Fuck Wit". Apparently, neither are they.
Retro Stefson were followed by the workhorse power-pop of Spengjuhöllin. But the highlight of the night was the singer-songwriter Helgi Valur, performing at a small bar called Dillon. His backing band, consisting of trombone, cello, bass, and drums, lent his raw, folksy, Springsteen-esque rock a vigor much appreciated by the small crowd.
Finally, last night ratified the dubious concept of Icelandic hip hop, with Original Melody and Forgotten Lores performing to a rapturous crowd at Nasa. Rapping in English and Icelandic, these crews brought the motherfucking ruckus like they invented the shit.
And it only gets better from here. Keep your mouse situated at the Fork for more photo installments from the Iceland Airwaves festival, which continues through Sunday. [MORE...]
Photos: Lily Allen [Chicago, IL; 10/16/06]
So Lily Allen more or less met expectations at Chicago's Double Door last night-- and expectations were admittedly low. Towing along a bassist, a keyboardist/laptop attendant, and a bored-looking horn section, she sleepwalked through set opener "LDN"-- nervously clutching a cigarette and gazing offstage, eyes glazed over, as though imagining all the places she'd rather be-- then launched into a rather tepid rendition of 50 Cent-jacking, non-album Granny dis track, "Nan, You're a Window Shopper".Allen gained confidence as the set went on, but that set was barely 40 minutes long, so the confidence didn't get very far. Fair enough for a gal with only a couple mixes and one album, which doesn't hit the States until next year. And yet, one hopes for more onstage charisma from Allen, whose excellent Alright, Still shines with wit, a keen sense of humor, and yes, even heart.
Lily has a way to go before she can work a sizable crowd, but she does have the songs, and most in attendance here-- an Internet-savvy bunch, no doubt-- seemed to be enjoying themselves, whether intent on doing so no matter what, or too drunk to notice anything was lacking.
DJ Mark Ronson opened with a very impressive set of mash-ups, pureeing everything from Britney Spears, Lupe Fiasco, and Dizzee Rascal to Thom Yorke, the Smiths, and Regina Spektor. More than anyone else on stage last night, he actually seemed enthused to be performing.
Allen embarks on a tour of UK Academies and Universities this weekend, then opens two gigs for Scissor Sisters. Dates and more photos ahead. [MORE...]
Photos/Video: The Evens [Chicago, IL; 10/13/06]
There's a reason DIY deity and Evens guitarist Ian MacKaye still commands the level of respect he does, and it has something to do with his ability to tow a fine line. He preaches without proselytizing, regales without rambling, rocks out without, well, looking like a total wanker. Together with drummer/co-vocalist Amy Farina, MacKaye drew several hundred followers out to Chicago's Pulaski Park Field House-- essentially a gymnasium-- for a five-dollar gig on a chilly Friday the 13th.MacKaye kept the lights up so he could look into the eyes of all in attendance ("We make this show together," he explained). He talked about how government exists to slow people down, enthused about how having a self-contained tour setup allowed them to play in atypical spaces (like beneath a giant whale skeleton), marveled at the idea that music is sacred and probably existed long before language, and bantered back and forth with the audience and Farina about hiring a "tea lad."
The Evens also used the near-reverential silence during songs to their advantage, playing up the dynamics in their compositions-- including several new ones from forthcoming disc The Evens Get Evens (November 6, Dischord)-- following rock-outs with delicate strums and letting shouts dissolve into whispers. They even got most of the crowd whistling and then tongue-clicking along at random for the intro to "Sara Lee", which made for one of the most unique auditory experiences I've ever had.
The whole deal was so thoroughly awesome that we can forgive MacKaye if, when he really gets to yelling, he sounds just a wee bit like Bobcat Goldthwait.
Click below for a full-length video of this evening's performance of "If It's Water", from the Evens' self-titled 2005 debut LP.
More photos and remaining tour dates ahead. [MORE...]
Photos: Beck [Chicago, IL; 10/14/06]
This weekend Beck brought his Information tour to the UIC Pavilion in Chicago, but more importantly, he brought puppets. As previously reported, Beck has been accompanied on his latest outing by a marionette version of his band, whose puppeteers and film crew crowded the entire back half of the stage, projecting images of the pantomiming puppets in infinite regress onto the back wall.
But even puppets provided barely enough energy to keep the crowd focused on the stodgy Beck, who mostly stuck to his guitar and signature foot-shuffling, while rolling through a laundry-list set from the new record. He played Information tracks "Nausea", "Cellphone's Dead", and "Think I'm in Love", opening the night with the tried-and-true combo of "Loser" and "Devil's Haircut".
More photos and remaining puppet shows ahead. [MORE...]
Stream: Art Brut: "Nag Nag Nag Nag" + bonus photos!
Surprise surprise! The new Art Brut track features Eddie Argos shouting over punky chords and a sloppy rhythm. No news there. However, the production on their forthcoming single "Nag Nag Nag Nag" (due November 13 on Mute) is much slicker than that of Bang Bang Rock & Roll, and the band seems more sure of itself.
As usual, Argos' lyrics are both simple and profound at the same time, musing on what it's like to be an adult with an adolescent obsession-- rock n roll. Funny, I think about that every day.
Click below for photos from Art Brut's show last night at the Metro here in Chicago, taken by Andres Delahoz, as well as Art Brut's latest tour dates. [MORE...]
Photos: Okkervil River [Chicago, IL; 10/07/06]
Austin's Okkervil River have evolved into a formidable live act with a devoted, wildly enthusiastic fanbase and a quality catalog of tunes, so it was hardly a surprise when they brought down the house this past Saturday at the first of two sold out shows at Chicago's Schubas.
Highlights included Black Sheep Boy scorcher "For Real", rollicker "The Latest Toughs", murder ballad "Westfall", sing-along encore closer "Okkervil River Song", and a spirited cover of Bill Fay's "Pictures of Adolf Again". Conspicuously absent was new ditty "The President's Dead", however Okkervil frontman Will Sheff did promise an almost entirely different setlist for fans lucky enough to score tickets to the second Chicago gig.
Remaining dates and photos ahead. [MORE...]
Photos: The Hold Steady [Austin, TX; 10/08/06]
The many faces of Craig Finn: telling stories, cracking jokes, exhorting the crowd's good sense, shouting without any use for a microphone, sneering, falling into sympathy with the boys and girls in America, condemning (on occasion), and when it's all said and done, giving you a damn good time.
At Emo's on Sunday, the Hold Steady delivered their trademark evocative narratives and riff-heavy forgetfulness, each song (mostly culled from Boys and Girls in America) bearing a Finn expression as its emblem. And as much attention as the frontman draws, it's a tall credit to Tad, Franz & co. that the music faithfully framed their leader with such energy and just enough Tecate-fueled sloppiness.
And as fresh as Boys and Girls standouts like "Stuck Between Stations", "First Night", and "Chips Ahoy!" sounded, it came as a welcome treat that the Separation Sunday tracks that peppered the set hit with the force of already classic material. For some reason, it's not so annoying when a Hold Steady fan shouts along to "Stevie Nix" or yells "I love you, Franz!" Even at its most sinister levels, the music and Finn's face urge the crowd to join the surely-doomed party.
More photos and tour dates below. [MORE...]
Photos: Built to Spill [Philadelphia, PA; 10/07/2006]
Live concert stream tonight on NPR
Photos and show review by Maria Tessa Sciarrino
Just in case someone tries to tell you otherwise, Saturday night's sold out Built to Spill show at Philadelphia's Trocadero did not change anyone's life. There was some mild rocking with a dose of heavy jamming, there were constantly hand-holding couples in the audience covering every inch of floorspace.
Openers Camper Van Beethoven forgot to change the "Hello New York!" in their video projections. That was almost offensive as Terrell Owens going to the Dallas Cowboys. Well, at least David Lowery didn't crack any "sixth borough" jokes.
The Troc's expert staff whisked away all traces of CVB in what felt like record time, giving Built to Spill ample room to kick out the jams. The short change-over may have also been the root of the sound problems that marred the first four or five songs of their set with a loud buzzing sound, rendering Doug Martsch's vocals totally inaudible. (But really, who goes to a Built to Spill show for the lyrics?)
Only slightly less irritating was the frat dude next to me, screaming for "The Plan" at every free moment. (He got his request.) Overall, it was a lukewarm set with not too much to engage the audience or the band, save for a version of the Halo Benders' "Will Work for Food" and one new tune.
That splitting headache I encountered halfway through it all wasn't from the sheer awesomeness that is Built to Spill. No, that was my brain fighting to stay awake.
Tonight, you can enjoy that wonderful feeling from the privacy of your own home by listening to NPR.org's live stream of Built to Spill's show at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC. It starts at 9:00 pm EST.
More photos and tour dates below. [MORE...]
Photos: TV on the Radio / Grizzly Bear [Chicago, IL; 10/09/06]
Boasting an impressive and likely unmatched 8.9 Pitchfork batting average for 2006, the Best New Tour roared into Chicago's Metro last night, featuring fellow Brooklyn chums TV on the Radio (whose Return to Cookie Mountain garnered 9.1 from this here website) and Grizzly Bear (whose Yellow House earned a not-too-shabby 8.7).Grizzly kicked things off by demonstrating their intricate, measured approach to crafting textured, swelling mid-afternoon anthems, incorporating autoharp, flute, and clarinet in with the ol' guitar-bass-drums mix. They came across as four men sharing and communicating via a slightly different wavelength than the rest of us, and those with the patience to soak it all in were generously rewarded by this fine set.
TVotR broke out the gate with Tunde Adebimpe sermonizing ceilingward and gesticulating like he was trying to exorcise his left arm. For the most part they harnessed the fire at the heart of Cookie Mountain, with "Blues From Down Here", "Wolf Like Me", and encore surprise oldie "Staring at the Sun"-- which Adebimpe facetiously introduced as a cover of Paris Hilton's "Stars Are Blind"-- coming off particularly well. Unfortunately, the atmospheric elements-- particularly that awesome horn loop on "I Was a Lover"-- sometimes became buried in the mix. At their best, however, the boys treated the sold-out crowd to one hell of a rousing performance. Plus they invited the Grizzlies onstage to spazz around joyously for the encore.
More photos and remaining tour dates ahead. [MORE...]
Photos: Pop Montreal [10/06-07/06]
And that's that for Pop Montreal 2006. As Canadians enjoy an extended holiday weekend today in observation of Thanksgiving Day, Pitchfork recaps just some of the highlights in pictures, all out of order, just because.
TAPES N' TAPES [Saturday, October 7; Ukrainian Federation]
BEACH HOUSE [Saturday, October 7; O Patro Vys]
KID SISTER [Friday, October 6; Academy Club]
Photos: Joanna Newsom: Pop Montreal [10/05/06]
Pop Montreal is officially in full swing, as the festival overtakes more than 30 of the city's downtown venues. But for all the buzz surrounding this weekend's upcoming sets from Roky Erickson, Dr. Octagon, Sunset Rubdown, Tapes n' Tapes, Islands, Beirut, Gary Wilson, Cadence Weapon, Tim Hecker, Flosstradamus and Kid Sister, and Pitchfork faves Beach House, the festival's most anticipated performance came last night, as Joanna Newsom took to the stage of a downtown church for a set consisting largely of material from her stunning forthcoming album, Ys.
In attendance were old friends David Byrne and The Arcade Fire, plus (of course) your pals at Pitchfork who managed to snap the following shots... for the internet!
Photos: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah / Architecture in Helsinki [Chicago, IL; 10/04/06]
The Clap Your Takka Say Helsinki tour caravan rolled into Chicago last night for the second of two gigs at the Vic, drawing out the thrift-t-adorned, hair-flipping masses in earnest. Indeed, hands were clapped, and quite a few "yeah"s were said.Too-polite Takka Takka opened with a blistering, face-meltingly polite set of polite indie rock tunes played to an annoyingly polite, well-mannered crowd, and that was pretty much that. Perhaps two-thirds into their set they snuck in a more intricate, darker-hued number that hinted at an auspicious future direction. More of that, gentlemen, and you may escape the indie rock cesspool yet!
Architecture in Helsinki (from Melbourne, Australia) pranced onstage next to teach a valuable lesson in crafting carefree, constantly fun, and delightfully danceable ADHD jams and another equally valuable lesson in engaging a crowd-- and a rapturous one at that. They shimmied their way through a set of mostly new tunes, with primary singer Cameron Bird hopscotching from guitar to keyboard to drum pad and back, sporting a Raekwon t-shirt and a terrifically tacky multi-colored cap which he later removed to let loose a boyish tuft of sandy-blond hair.
After Architecture's exuberant presentation, headliner Clap Your Hands Say Yeah came off a bit staid and standoffish, but that didn't seem to dampen crowd spirits an ounce. Indeed, Clap were the only act on the bill playing a whole bunch of tunes folks had heard before (and likely love). Those favorites from the self-titled debut went over well enough-- despite some broken strings and equipment glitches-- but it was new jams like the melodious "Some Loud Thunder" and the sinister-sounding "Satan Said Dance" that showed the most promise.
Still, singer Alec Ounsworth's yelpy, yappy, nasal vocals are a tough pill to swallow, even in this age of idiosyncratic yelpers like Brock, Darnielle, and Krug. Folks often play the Byrne card in reviews of the record, but here Ounsworth came across like Dan Bejar impersonating Eric Cartman, which was pretty much as obnoxious as it sounds-- funny thing is, nobody seemed to mind. Kids these days!
Keep your eyes peeled for an interview with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and news on the forthcoming record. Remaining tour dates and more photos ahead. [MORE...]
Photos: Xiu Xiu / Serena Maneesh [Austin, TX; 9/29/06]
Pretty soon after I realized that everyone around me at Emo's waiting for Xiu Xiu was wearing Xs on their hands (due to being underage, not to rabid Xiu Xiu fan-dom), Jamie Stewart and Caralee McElroy took the stage as a trio, this time bringing a live drummer, Ches Smith (aka opening act Cong for Brums) in tow. The added momentum suited the material from their latest album, The Air Force, well, and gave a nice shot in the arm to crowd favorites like "I Luv the Valley OH!".
Stewart's voice was buried deeper in the mix than expected (judging from past encounters), leaving me to conclude that the night was about songs rather than edgy emoting. It was a welcome change at first, but what's a Xiu Xiu show without having to confront Stewart's vocals head-on? And what was up with his buzz cut?
Over in the adjoining room of Emo's, Serena Maneesh prompted a question of their own: where was Amazonian bassist Hilma Nikolaisen? Her presence was missed, though Norwegian psych/motorik/nu-gaze sextet wasted no time in barreling through the still-fresh material from their self-titled debut.
Frontman Emil Nikolaisen's vocals were mixed even further into oblivion than Jamie Stewart's had been, but I couldn't care less. Tommy Akerholdt's drums had already swept the music into a headlong frenzy that didn't really relent, save for some extended psych-noise treats and a rather dubby version of "Don't Come Down Here". By the end of the show, Nikolaisen's makeup had survived the Texas heat, but he still felt the need to don his sequined mic-stand dressing during the concluding freak-out of "Your Blood in Mine".
More Xiu Xiu and Serena Maneesh photos and tour dates below. [MORE...]
Photos: Mew [Chicago, IL; 10/02/06]
Danish dreamweavers Mew left cloud cuckoo land for moment to play a gig in Chicago last night, bringing along a massive projected backdrop that spilled fantastical, eerie, and often unsettling imagery over the entire back wall of the Metro. It proved a perfect complement to the painfully un-hip (in a good way) aesthetic of Mew, here a five-piece comprised of two guitars, bass, drums, and keyboard, and all bad haircuts, un-ironic mustaches, and corny lyrics about giraffes and rockets. Fairytale stuff.
Yet somehow, like Peter Pan or The Little Prince, these were fairytales with considerable emotional heft, for kids and adults alike. Mew weren't afraid to punch up the drama with soaring harmonic choruses that wound up being bridges to even higher-altitude choruses. The set included a number of tunes from this year's Pitchfork Recommended And the Glass Handed Kites, as well as older favorites, including a scintillating rendition of "Am I Wry? No".
Singer Jonas Bjerre was the focal point, a starry-eyed man-child with considerable range (most of it in the upper registers), a street urchin trying to sing his way into our hearts and our homes. Turns out he creates the video projections too, the most oddly memorable of which featured an interminably hovering fleet of dolls and stuffed animals playing violins. Elegiac and wondrous in equal measure, it more or less encapsulated the unique appeal of a band bored or just plain oblivious to de rigeur cynicism and intent on conjuring its own fascinating, sonorous universe.
Mew continue weaving across the country with Kasabian, then play a string of headline shows. Dates and more photos ahead. [MORE...]
Photos: Flosstradamus [Chicago, IL; 09/27/06]
Comprised of Autobot and J2K, Chicago DJ duo Flosstradamus did what they do best last night, packing their home-city's Town Hall Pub once again-- barstool to jukebox to photo booth and every nook in between. The Pitchfork Fest alums satisfied the guilty pleasures of every hipster in attendance, mixing songs from the likes of Daft Punk, Deee-Lite, Justin Timberlake, Jackson 5, and-- like any smart party people-- Technotronic's "Pump Up the Jam". However, none of these deep cuts got anything close to the reaction of the Alan Parsons Project's "Sirus"-- well known here as the Chicago Bulls opening theme song. Yes, you did, in fact, miss out. But you're in luck: where Flosstradamus goes, parties follow. Dates and more photos ahead. [MORE...]
Photos: Wire Fest [Empty Bottle; Chicago, IL; 09/22/06]
Eclecticism reigned once again at Chicago's Empty Bottle Friday night, as The Wire brought together four acts from three different continents to play the third night of the Adventures in Modern Music festival (for a recap of night one, click here). The grab bag bill included Brazil's Tetine, France's Colleen, Portland's Yellow Swans, and Chicago's own Spires That in the Sunset Rise. [MORE...]
Photos: Wire Fest [Chicago, IL; Empty Bottle; 09/20/06]
The Wire's 2006 Adventures in Modern Music festival kicked off at Chicago's Empty Bottle Wednesday night with a typically eclectic bill, featuring ambient laptopper Tim Hecker, nu-folkie Jana Hunter, metal ensemble Rhys Chatham's Essentialist, and, in an extremely rare live appearance-- one of his first since he began releasing records nearly 30 years ago-- the mysterious blues-man Jandek. [MORE...]
Photos: Junior Boys [Emo's; Austin, TX; 9/15/06]
The last time Junior Boys made it to Austin, the Boys' leader Jeremy Greenspan had caught some stomach virus, and he seemed a little road-weary for it. Not that the music suffered, but this time around Greenspan and co. brought both a kinetic, bubbly performance and their haranguing sense of humor.
Amongst the many quips, when his laptop crashed and booted back up with Limewire, Greenspan laughed and said, "I wonder if the new Junior Boys is on there." Greenspan's partner on the beats, Matt Didemus, didn't seem to care, and, indeed, barely seemed awake. But with a live drummer providing mostly cymbals and percussive accents, the trio was far from sleepwalking. It helped that the So This Is Goodbye songs catch on like wildfire, but they still need Greenspan to sing and dance to them. And in case you were wondering, the live rendition of "Under the Sun" still kills.
More photos, as well as the Junior Boys' current tour itinerary, below. [MORE...]
Photos: Lupe Fiasco [Metro; Chicago, IL; 09/19/06]
"For those who don't already know," a sweat-soaked, de-spectacled Lupe Fiasco announced three-quarters through this secret, MySpace-sponsored record release gig at Chicago's Metro, "this is, like, the happiest day of my life."
And with good reason. Just yesterday, Lupe dropped one hell of a debut album, Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor. Last night, he celebrated by treating several hundred of his closest friends to this free hometown show. They chanted his name, sang along with every word, and called out requests-- and Lupe more or less delivered.
For his part, Fiasco brought verve and spunk, hopping about the stage, temple veins popping out as he spit rhyme after rhyme, all of them pretty much flawless. When he wasn't rapping, he was half dancing, or pantomiming all the Jay-Z lines on "Pressure", or taking a breather while his recorded voice carried on behind him-- yes, he was essentially rapping over the album (apparently he had lost his voice recently), but this didn't hamper his skills or the energy a bit. [MORE...]
Photos: Joanna Newsom / Smog [The Parish, Austin, TX, 09/19/06]
Lucky Austinites were treated to a last-minute show from Joanna Newsom and Smog last night at the Parish, after Newsom was able to borrow a harp. She played a mix of tracks from Ys and The Milk-Eyed Mender for the packed crowd, most of which exited after her opening set. Bill Callahan opened with a solo version of "The Well", and was then joined by Newsom on keyboards for a set similar to their last performance in Austin. They played mostly material from the latest Smog album, A River Ain't Too Much to Love, as well as oldies "Cold Blooded Old Times" and "Blood Red Bird".
Check out Joanna's shoes! [MORE...]
Photos: Sufjan Stevens [Paramount Theater; Austin, TX; 09/16/06]
From cub scouts to swan-angels to cheerleaders to...butterflies? Sufjan Steven's most ambitious tour to date set up shop at Austin, Texas' Paramount Theater this weekend for the second of two packed shows. While Stevens donned wings of a different sort, his sizable backing ensemble sported adorable, matching butterfly wings for the duration of the main set. Sufjan dubbed his band the "Chinese Butterfly Brigade" (the wings symbolize "transcendence and elevation," see), and together they fluttered through tunes from Michigan, Illinois, Seven Swans, and this year's The Avalanche-- even "Dear Mr Supercomputer". Stevens and Co. also treated Sufjanatics to a promising, string-laden brand new tune titled "Majesty Snowbird". Lighter on the marching band and community choir vibes of much of Sufjan's repertoire, it hinted at a slightly more mature treatment future U.S. states might be getting.
For the encore, Sufjan shed the wings, appearing in a sleeveless black t-shirt to perform a fine rendition of crowd-pleaser "Chicago". My Brightest Diamond, featuring Butterfly Brigadier Shara Worden, opened. The Sufjan/Diamond butterfly tour continues through next month; dates and more photos ahead. [MORE...]
Photos: I'm From Barcelona [Rough Trade Records, London, 09/16/06]
Pitchfork reader Michael Drohan was lucky enough to catch Swedish indie-pop juggernaut I'm From Barcelona's performance at the Rough Trade Shop's Covent Garden location last weekend, and he snapped a few photos for us. "If you've never been to the shop, it's tiny," Drohan says. "It's in the basement of a skate shop, and there's barely enough room to move around in there as it is, but they packed about 20-some members of the band in there (with a trombone, some saxophones, ukuleles, snare drum, high hat, and some of those keyboard things you blow into**), plus, I'd wager, 30-50 fans.
"The place became very hot and very sweaty very quick, but everyone was enjoying themselves. How could you not with these tunes? On the last song, the lead singer led the band up the spiral staircase outside to the small alley the shop sits in, and then played a few more songs outside, even putting the chorus of Madonna's "Like a Prayer" into one of the songs. It was a pretty cool time."
We are so, so jealous.
** We think he's referring to melodicas
Photos: Cat Power [Vic Theater; Chicago, IL, 09/13/06]
About an hour ago, Chan Marshall wrapped up a set at Chicago's Vic Theater. Accompanied by the Memphis Rhythm Band for roughly half of the show, Marshall turned out first-class performances of "Living Proof", "Lived in Bars", and others off her latest LP, The Greatest. But many of the highlights came during the stripped-down solo session in the middle of the set, as she blew through versions of the Velvet Underground's "I Found a Reason" (a staple since The Covers Record), the traditional "House of the Rising Sun" (available on her new iTunes live session EP), and perhaps most notably, Bonnie "Prince" Billy's "Wolf Among Wolves".
When the band returned, she tackled Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" (who HASN'T covered it at this point?), ran through a revved-up take on the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction", and delivered an eerily slick megamix of old Cat Power favorites "Cross Bones Style" and "Nude as the News".
Only three U.S. dates remain (all in Texas, actually) before Marshall moves on to one in Mexico, and eventually, a handful in Europe. For a list of remaining tour dates, check here, but for now, we have some photos for you:
Photos: The Dears [Schubas, Chicago; 09/07/06]
Montreal drama kings and queens the Dears rolled into Chicago's Schubas last Thursday, bringing along a lavish light show and a set polished to a shine, heavy on tunes from 2004's breakthrough No Cities Left, but surprisingly shorter on selections from their latest, this year's Gang of Losers. What the sextet lacked in spontaneity and warmth, it made up for in craft and spectacle-- playing tight, extended and enriching dramatic interludes, and punctuating cathartic moments with guitar histrionics and dazzling flashes.
Apart from singing, frontman Murray Lightburn kept mum throughout the first half of the set, not once acknowledging his audience. On the one hand, it preserved the mystique and austerity of these tunes that take themselves so seriously; on the other, it seemed frustratingly at odds with a band whose lyrics are so full of we-feel-your-pain-isms.
Graciously, some onstage joke broke Lightburn's gruff visage midway through the performance, and we got a sly smile out of the man. He later used the breakdown in "Postcard From Purgatory" to offer thanks at last to the audience (who seemed largely enrapt regardless), claiming that was all he had to say. Fair enough. Gentleman's voice sounded superb, rich in tone and dexterously painting words and navigating registers. Now if only we could get those lyrics up to snuff...
The Dears play three more U.S. dates in the coming weeks, then jet off for an extensive tour of Europe. Dates and more photos ahead. [MORE...]
Photos: Comets on Fire [Empty Bottle, Chicago, IL; 09/03/06]
The beginning of the Comets on Fire set at Chicago's Empty Bottle this past weekend captured what I imagine the end of the world will feel like-- ears pummelled, lungs collapsed, body contorted from a constant assault of sonic booms. Simply put: fucking awesome. The California crew played old and new material, including songs from the recently released Sub Pop LP Avatar. The first few songs showcased the Comets that most people may know: Utrillo Kushner drumming in purely menacing and spasmodic fashion, while Ethan Miller laid into his vocals and guitar like a grizzly bear-- and we ain't talkin' the pretty, Warp-signed variety either.
But when Kushner switched to keyboards, the quintet shelved the hysterics to share a newer sound heard on Avatar. With Miller's gentle vocals over the melodic spirals of distorted guitar, you probably saw a few tears in the crowd of rough-and-tumble hipsters. Simply put: beautiful. Though the audience wanted more by the time Comets finished, they were just too tired, said Miller. Understandably so; soundtracking the apocalypse is hard, people.
Fatigued or no, CoF keep truckin' next month. Dates and more photos ahead. [MORE...]
Photos: Scratch Acid [Emo's, Austin, TX; 09/02/06]
As evidenced by the dense crowd at Austin's Emo's last Saturday, folks couldn't wait to have hometown favorites Scratch Acid back in their lives. They formed mosh pits out of enthusiasm rather than convention and stage-dove to the tune of guitarist Brett Bradford's punishing chords and David Yow's disturbing exhortations. Meanwhile, the sing-along contingent would have been annoying if the David Sims/Rey Washam rhythm section weren't so on-point, keeping everyone locked into tunes from the great Scratch Acid repetoire. Yow, on cue, lost his shirt almost immediately, and instantly poured everything from his short but imposing frame into the mic. Despite the nearly 20 year hiatus, the band played tight. They even pulled off an ace rendition of "El Espectro", which required Bradford on vocals, Sims on guitar, and Yow on bass. Sure, nostalgia and people who had actually been to a show at Raul's ran rampant, but that had nothing to do with the music. Everything coming out of the speakers kicked the crowd's ass even though they, young or old, had been waiting for it for years. Get ready, Chicago and Seattle-- you're next.
Dates and photos ahead. [MORE...]
Photos: So Many Dynamos [The Note; 08/24/06]
Palindromic spazz-core phenoms So Many Dynamos crash-landed at Chicago's the Note last Thursday, shell-shocking bystanders with Dismemberment Plan-derived seizure pop from their latest, Flashlights (due next month via Skrocki Records). Dudes looked ordinary and innocuous enough setting up, but once the lights went out, the St. Louis-based fourpiece let out the electricity in fits and jolts-- jittery, stop-start guitars, clipped shouts, hairpin rhythmic turns-- like so many, er, energy-producing machines. Yeah. Impressively, they sustained that manic energy throughout, and this remarkably consistent performance suggested So Many Dynamos are at least sharing a rung with Thunderbirds Are Now! on the admittedly tall ladder to the vacated Plan throne.The gents celebrate the release of Flashlights by reuniting with the road next month. Dates and photos after the jump. [MORE...]
Photos: Aloha [Schubas, Chicago; 08/20/06]
Fluid was the word of the night as dewy, jazz-tinged indie rockers Aloha entertained a sell-out Chicago crowd at Schubas last Sunday-- band members shifted fluidly from instrument to instrument, songs transitioned into one another in fluid, kaleidoscopic fashion (the highlight, appropriately: "Boys in the Bathtub" into "Water Your Hands"), Cale Parks drummed like he had fluid tentacles instead of jointed arms, and vocalist Tony Cavallario's expressive eyes seemed ready to cry out saline tear-fluid at any moment. Now if only they had covered Andrew W.K.'s "I Get Wet"...Aloha say hello to Japan this October. Tour dates and more photos after the jump. [MORE...]
Photos: Japanther / This Bike Is a Pipe Bomb [Beat Kitchen; 08/12/06]
The kids are alright, and they came out en masse to pack Chicago's Beat Kitchen last weekend for Mauled by Tigers Fest, which featured rousing performances by Brooklyn's Japanther, Pensacola, Florida's This Bike Is a Pipe Bomb, and several other Plan-It-X punk notables. A series of last-minute play-order swaps caught drummer Ted Helmick of This Bike (who were supposed to play last) off-guard, but that didn't stop the friendly, country-tinged punk trio from cutting through a high-energy set that included standouts "Imperfection" and "Mouseteeth"-- and ended with a good dozen slap-happy youngins bum-rushing the stage.
Japanther played last, with their bad-ass banner, trademark telephone-mics, and corny-ass but charming, silver-streaked, matching costumes. Just as they found their fire, however, some fiend (The Man??) pulled the plug on the gig, and the kids were sent home with barely 10 minutes of Japanther in their systems. So off they went, all devious smiles, giddy and eager to make mischief with a certain band's sticker.
Photos after the jump. [MORE...]
Photos: Lollapalooza 2006 [Grant Park, Chicago, IL; 4-6 August, 2006]
Last weekend, people gathered as Chicago's Grant Park hosted three days of blood, sweat and tears known to the masses as Lollapalooza 2006. Over 130 artists hit the festival's eight stages (nearly twice as many as last year on both counts), and considering the hike it took to get from one side of the park to the other, chances are you didn't get to see all of them. That's where we come in! Our piecemeal crew of ragtag Pitchforkers spent the weekend soaking up the rock, hitching rides on golf carts, and screwing off in the photo pit. While you'll have to hold off until tomorrow for Pitchfork's full coverage of the event, you can sneak a peek at some of the highlights below: [MORE...]
Photos: Beauty Pill [Empty Bottle; 07/24/06]
Chicagoans turned out to the Empty Bottle in earnest-- on a Monday night, no less-- to catch the return of Dischord sons and daughters Beauty Pill. Now a sextet with several new members, the Chad Clark-fronted act was at its best when performing fleshed-out renditions of fractured pop favorites like "The Cigarette Girl From the Future". More intricate and understated numbers featuring semi-new recruit Jean Cook on vocals fell a bit flat against the barroom din, but gee does the demo of that new tune "Ann the Word" sound good on MySpace.
Speaking of the 'Space, in a recent blog post (current mood = cheerful), Clark proclaimed he has "the most lovely bandmates"-- watching him exchange smiles with them throughout the set, one couldn't help but believe he means it, and smile right along. Also, he is one tall dude.
Photos and remaining tour dates: [MORE...]
Photos: Wicker Park Summer Fest [07/22/06-07/23/06]
Two days, two-dozen-odd bands, sunshine, drizzle, corn-on-a-stick, and hipsters with strollers, all in the shadow of the famed Chicago "El" tracks: With the The Big One mere days away, we got our festival feet wet last weekend to the tune of the Wicker Park Summer Fest. Musical highlights included a rousing, funk-heavy set by the Coup, a lush indie-pop parade from Canada's the Hidden Cameras, and erratic antics courtesy of local ruffians Make Believe. Also groovy: Dead Meadow, DeVotchKa, Slumber Party, and Starlight Mints. For the curious, that's Make Believe's Tim Kinsella above, pictured with one, ahem, captive audience member.
Pix ahoy!: [MORE...]
Photos: Casiotone for the Painfully Alone / This Song Is a Mess but So Am I [South Union Arts; 07/21/06]
It was Attack of the Unwieldy Band Names as Casiotone for the Painfully Alone and This Song Is a Mess but So Am I shared two unique approaches to cathartic, bedroom music-making-- beneath a neon crucifix, no less-- at Chicago's church turned performance-space-cum-art-gallery, South Union Arts.
For TSIAMBSAI, it was all about spazz calisthenics performed over relentless, Xiu Xiu-esque beats played at ear-numbing decibel levels. Sounds pretty awful on paper, but it was surprisingly hypnotic to behold. Bathed in devilish red floodlights, This Song's Freddy Ruppert shrieked and flailed his way to salvation, and given the enthusiastic applause, it seemed his pew-seated audience was right there with him.
Casiotone literally utilized the church pulpit for his keyboards and delivered a lush, synth-pop sermon on being lonely, desperate, and twentysomething. While far too brief a set to get completely wrapped up in, Casiotone's Owen Ashworth conjured an impressive array of sounds from his fairly primitive set-up, putting those who stuck around in just the right mood to go home and sob into a dark corner somewhere. Amen, brother.
Pretty pictures and remaining dates are just a click away. [MORE...]
Photos: Ghostface Killah and Rick Ross [Logan Square Auditorium; 07/20/06]
Hate to blaspheme, but Rick Ross wound up the highlight of this generally depressing show put together by Boost Mobile to reward folks who volunteered to clean a local park. (Awesome idea, seriously, but next time promote it better, please.) Ross delivered a brief but high-energy set that included "Chevy Ridin' High" and, of course, "Hustlin'". Despite the small and confoundingly unenthused crowd, he actually seemed happy to be onstage, never missing an opportunity to remind us that it took him "15 years to reach this point."
Props to the WGCI DJ who worked the crowd between sets, tossing out t-shirts and praise and inviting audience members onstage to freestyle and play "Simon Says". When attempts to start a motorcycle dance-off were thwarted because the house DJ didn't even have "It's Goin' Down", however, it became clear what kind of night this was going to be.
No doubt put off by the lukewarm reception, Ghostface headlined and went through the motions and the hits and not much else; he had a towel draped over his shoulders, but never needed to use it.
Hopefully Ghost is saving his energy for the upcoming Wu-Tang tour. Photos and dates after the jump: [MORE...]
Photos: Professor Murder [Hideout; 07/15/06]
Last night they came to party: Rapture-ous NYC upstarts Professor Murder-- whose "Champion" has been bumpin' hard at P4KHQ for months now-- rode the subway all the way to their first Chicago gig this weekend. Kicking things off by declaring, "This is what we look like, this is what we sound like," whistle-toting lead vocalist Mike Bell-Smith and his mates whipped the sparse but happy-footed crowd into a polite frenzy. The word of the night was percussion-- at any given point as many as six of P-Murder's eight hands wielded drumsticks. A party was no doubt started, but the boys will have to diversify their sound a mite to keep it poppin' well into the a.m. We wish them luck.
Photos, EP info, and remaining tour dates a mere mouse-click away. [MORE...]
Photos: Shearwater [Beat Kitchen; 07/01/06]
No longer a mere tributary of the mighty Okkervil River, rag-tag foursome Shearwater took flight last Saturday at Chicago's Beat Kitchen, proving themselves every bit as mighty-- and considerably more graceful. Foil to Okkervil's manic Will Sheff (who shared songwriting duties on the first three Shearwater records but was not present at this gig), soft-spoken and mild-mannered lead singer Jonathan Meiburg was kind enough to explain the provenance of several tunes from this year's excellent Palo Santo: a beautiful tapestry ("La Dame et la Licorne"), some spooky trees from the Galapagos ("Palo Santo"), and a depiction of the Virgin Mary ascending to heaven on a cloud of babies ("Hail, Mary"). Nice!
Meiburg was just as apt to cast a hush across the audience with his measured delivery as he was to shatter it with a sudden proclamation at high volume-- his band showing restraint, then rocking out correspondingly. The crowd appeared to relish every moment of the all-too-short set: while tuning Meiburg asked if there were any questions, prompting one in attendance to shout, "Are you playing anywhere tomorrow within driving distance?!!"
Photos and remaining tour dates: [MORE...]
Photos: Man Man [Subterranean; 06/07/06]
For us to say Man Man are "fucking awesome" live is nothing new (I mean, we did invite them to play the Pitchfork Music Festival), but with their most recent U.S. tour having come to a close last Sunday-- and some staffers now having seen them more than 12 times-- we decided we have to show you what goes on: Five frenzied Philly-via-Brooklyn maniacs, swathed with warpaint, gleefully hammering out deranged, fire-eyed art-rock that sounds like Tom Waits tackling an armada of wild gypsys in an Eastern European gladiator pit. (They have those in Zagreb, right?) For proof of the absurd spectacle, we hereby present as evidence several incriminating images from their June 7th soiree at Chicago's Subterranean venue... [MORE...]
Photos: Band of Horses [Schubas; 06/06/06]
Embarking late last month on their first major North American headlining tour, Seattle faves Band of Horses hit Chicago on 6/6/6. The show marked the sixth (!) date of a two-month jaunt that wraps up with a performance at this summer's Pitchfork Music Festival. The practice sessions paid off: In the brief time since their tentative but charming set at this year's SXSW, the band's become far tighter, more confident, and more spontaneous. They even rocked an impromptu cover of Hall & Oates' "You Make My Dreams" with the dude from opening band Mt. Egypt. More pics and tour dates o'er here: [MORE...]
Welcome to Austin, Texas in the middle of March. Welcome to South by Southwest.
If you're the kind of person who likes to complain about how it used to be "all about the music" and now it's "all about marketing," don't come here. Also stay away if you hate publicists, street teamers, A&R reps, label managers, marketers, journalists, bloggers, and Toyota (their Yaris car is being hawked here 'til kingdom come).
But for those of us who revel in the silliness of the pop music business, this is paradise. I've been here less than 24 hours and I've already seen two fantastic bands and spent time with friends I only communicate with through email during the rest of the year. And did I mention the staggering amount of free stuff, not all of it trash?
But enough existential yammering, on to the music.
Field Music were quite disappointing, offering serviceable, if a bit lethargic, takes on their spiky post-punk. Nothing was as sharp as it is on their record--the vocal harmonies didn't sparkle, the hooks sagged. Plus, the Emo's stage was flanked by a pair of mysterious cameramen, who filmed not only every second of Field Music's performance, but every second of the crowd milling about in between acts.
Photo: Serena Maneesh
I don't particularly care for Serena Maneesh's album, but then again, I'm not a sucker for anything shoegaze (like so many people I know). So I expected the Norwegian band's live show to be as boring as their album, with lots of staring at the floor. Well, apparently nobody told Serena Maneesh that you're supposed to look like you don't care when you play this kind of music. From frontman Emil Nikolaisen's Hendrix-meets-Stevie Nicks outfit and guitar bashing to the statuesque bassist's awkward pogoing, this was clearly a performance from people who grew up watching metal videos on MTV. Not at all a bad thing! The music was still dull, though, and there was way too much jamming.
Photo: Rumble Strips
The Rumble Strips' set at the Blender Balcony was criminally under-attended; maybe everybody was at the "secret" Flaming Lips gig or the Matador showcase. Suckers. What they missed was one of the most exciting new bands in Britain, a twee-ish, post-punk-ish four-piece featuring a trumpet player and a saxophonist and fronted by a guy who yelps like Morrissey gone David Byrne. (It also helps that he's foxy like Travis Morrison.) The Rumble Strips were bouncy and happy and completely unpretentious, and for a half an hour, I loved life and that was that.
The Ark are also bouncy and happy, but they're completely pretentious in the best possible way. Best described as "the Swedish Cheap Trick", these guys dress like hookers and play like they're in a sold-out hockey arena. Smoke machines, choreographed moves, a shirtless frotman in a Scott Weiland hat, a guitar solo played by the guitarist's teeth-why the fuck weren't more people there to see them? When the keyboardist/backup singer hit a particularly low note, the lead singer remarked that the sound "makes the small hairs on my scrotum stretch out to infinity." Could Belle and Sebastian really top that?
Stay tuned for daily updates from SXSW.
Do you have a news tip for us? Anything crazy happen at a show you attended recently? Do you have inside info on the bands we cover? Is one of your favorite artists (that's not somebody you know personally) releasing a new record you'd like to see covered? You will remain completely anonymous, unless we are given your express permission to reveal your identity. (Please note that publicists, managers, booking agents, and other artist representatives are generally exempt from this rule, but will also be granted anonymity if requested.)
Mon: 01-29-07: 08:15 PM CST
Police to Reunite for Arresting Grammys Performance
Mon: 01-29-07: 05:00 PM CST
Clipse Announce Winter Tour
Mon: 01-29-07: 04:30 PM CST
Decemberists Get Embroidery Treatment
Mon: 01-29-07: 04:00 PM CST
Rogue Wave's Spurgeon Receives Kidney
Mon: 01-29-07: 03:11 PM CST
Flaming Lips, Metric, Lil Jon Team Up With Playboy
Today's Other Headlines
- Anticon Signs SJ Esau, Thee More Shallows
- Photos: Annuals [Atlanta, GA; 01/26/07]
- Maria Taylor Enlists Siblings, Oberst for New Solo LP
- Ponys, Roky, Brightblack, Annuals to Play Noise Pop
- Earl Greyhound OK After Tour Van Accident
Browse
Mon: 01-29-07
- Police to Reunite for Arresting Grammys Performance
- Anticon Signs SJ Esau, Thee More Shallows
- Photos: Annuals [Atlanta, GA; 01/26/07]
- Clipse Announce Winter Tour
- Decemberists Get Embroidery Treatment
- Maria Taylor Enlists Siblings, Oberst for New Solo LP
- Rogue Wave's Spurgeon Receives Kidney
- Ponys, Roky, Brightblack, Annuals to Play Noise Pop
- Earl Greyhound OK After Tour Van Accident
- Flaming Lips, Metric, Lil Jon Team Up With Playboy
- Klaxons Send Myths Stateside via Rinse/DGC
- Exclusive: Xiu Xiu, Larsen Team for New XXL Album
- Arcade Fire Launch Most Anticipated Tour of All Time
- Exclusive: Cornelius' Sensuous Comes to the States
- Pitchfork Seeks Business Intern
- T.V. Eye: January 29-February 3, 2007
- Ted Leo Expands Living With Chumbawumba Cover
- Pitchfork Music Festival SXSW Party Revealed!
- Afghan Whigs Retrospective Revealed
- Pretty Girls Make Graves Split
Fri: 01-26-07
- Chatham Gets Sonic Youth, Godspeed for "Guitar Trio"
- Okkervil River's Will Sheff Tours With Josh Ritter
- Modest Mouse Unveil Dead Tracklist, Release Date
- The Good, the Bad and the Queen Kick Off Tour
- Tapes 'n Tapes Schedule North American Tour
- Animal Collective's Avey Tare Records With ex-Múm Gal
- Brian Eno Producing New Coldplay Album
- Kaiser Chief Wilson Chats Album, Na's, No's, Hit'n'Run
- Mastodon Kick Off Winter Tour
- Pattern Is Movement Tour With David Bazan
- Smashing Pumpkins Announce First Reunion Shows
- Secretly Canadian Artists Cover Each Other for Comp
- Shins, Lily Allen, Cold War Kids Play KCRW Fundraiser
- Danny! = Next Def Jux Artist
- Girl Talk Seeks Dancers for Vegas Gig
- Q-Tip Readies Renaissance, Kamaal LPs
- Badly Drawn Boy Tours Europe, North America
- RJD2 Extends North American Tour
Thu: 01-25-07
- Beck's Information Deluxe Edition Revealed
- Photos: Deerhoof/Hella/Busdriver [Los Angeles, CA; 01/24/06]
- Capitol and Virgin Totally Hook Up
- Photos: Of Montreal [San Antonio, TX; 01/21/07]
- Joanna Newsom Tours Australia, New Zealand, Japan
- Lemonheads Tour America, Down Under
- Tom Waits Settles Another Goddamn Lawsuit
- Yo La Tengo Hit the Road
- Datarock Transmit Grooves on North American Tour
- The Rapture Launch Winter Tour
- Times New Viking Sign to Matador, Prep Second LP
- Scott Walker Documentary Drifts Into Theatres
- Shining Put Their Noses to the Grindstone on New LP
- Neko Case Launches Bi-Continental Tour
- Pollard Preps Self-Released EP, LPs for Merge, Ipecac
Wed: 01-24-07
- Perry Farrell's Satellite Party Gets Ultra Payloaded
- The Decemberists Offer iTunes Live From SoHo EP
- Apostle of Hustle Sing National Anthem of Nowhere
- Phil Elverum Re-Adopts Microphones Name for New 7"
- Stuart Murdoch, Will Oldham, Jarvis Head Kiddie Comp
- Can You Make an Album in 28 Days?
- Faust Founder/Producer Uwe Nettelbeck Passes On
- Dinosaur Jr. Reveal Reunion Album Details
- Jennifer O'Connor Tours, Joins Sykes, Dump for 7" Club
- !!!'s Offer Talks Myth Takes, Out Hud, Politics, Welfare
- The Kooks Return to North America
- The Knife's Silent Shout to Become Three-Disc Set
Tue: 01-23-07
- Producer Disco D Commits Suicide
- Yorke Pimps Liars, Spank Rock, Malkmus on iTunes
- Walkmen, Kaiser Chiefs to Tour Together
- Lady Sovereign to Open for Gwen Stefani
- Junior Boys Extend Tour Stateside, Canadaways
- Toto, Spin Doctors, Marky Mark Sign on for Coachella
- Menomena Announce North American Tour
- Band of Horses Saddle Up for Studio, Enhance Lineup
- The Books Announce Spring Tour
- Jarvis Gets U.S. Release Date, Tours Europe
- Hella Kick Off Tour, Get Ready for Outer Space
- LCD Soundsystem to Fans: Send Silver to #1!
Mon: 01-22-07
- Photos: Mission of Burma [New York, NY; 01/19/07]
- Jesus and Mary Chain to Play Coachella!
- Touch and Go Revisit Festival With Video Awesomeness
- Kristin Hersh Talks New Album
- Silver Jews, Avey Tare, Enon, Black Dice on RBR Comp
- Kanye West Applies for Graduation With Chris Martin
- Maximo Park Reveal Our Earthly Pleasures
- Enon Cancel Dates With Of Montreal
- Corsano + Hair Police + Mouthus + Giffoni = Death Unit
- Funkstorung Release Farewell Remix Album
- Deerhoof Give Friends Art Opportunity
- T.V. Eye: January 22-29, 2007
- Jarvis, Lily, New Pornos, Ghostface Added to Coachella
- Ted Leo/Pharmacists to Tour U.S./Canada
Sun: 01-21-07
Fri: 01-19-07
- Pitchfork Music Festival 2007: July 14-15, Chicago
- Kanye West, RZA, DJ Premier on Beat Kings DVD
- Apples in Stereo Tour in Support of New Album
- Summer Hymns, Winter Tour
- Islands' Nick Thorburn Talks All Kinds of Crazy Stuff
- Rock Plaza Central Sign to Yep Roc
- Dosh Drops EP, Dashes Off on Tour
- Fujiya & Miyagi Schedule U.S. Shows
- Lily Allen Announces American Tour
- Ghost Prepare for Stormy Nights
- Iron & Wine and Calexico Tour Japan
- Exclusive: The Pipettes to Charm North America
- Arcade Fire Announce UK Single
- Radiohead Working on Album Again
- Bjork Taps Antony, Timbaland, Lightning Bolt for LP
- Of Montreal Launch Tour, Release Digital Single
Thu: 01-18-07
- The Constantines Tour Canada
- Exclusive: Bonde do Role Sign to Domino
- Lee Hazlewood Taps Granddaughter for Final Album
- Cage Launches Winter Tour
- Mark Eitzel Embarks on East Coast Tour
- Cat Power, Seu Jorge Become Works of Public Art
- Photos: Andrew Bird [New York, NY; 01/17/06]
- Bright Eyes Sign to Polydor Outside North America
- David Kilgour Cleans Up With The Far Now
- Tweedy Reveals Wilco LP Title, Release Date
- Exclusive: Decemberists Announce Spring U.S. Tour
- Parts & Labor, Jana Hunter Cover Oneida's "Sheets"
- Songs of Green Pheasant Sends Aerial Days Stateside
- Pre-Thermals Material Collected on Urban Legends LP
- Turbulence Promises Album Will Do Good
- Echo & the Bunnymen Expand Songs to Learn and Sing
- Built to Spill Show Europe What They're Made Of
Wed: 01-17-07
- Plan B Plans American Invasion
- Castanets Strike Out on Tour With Shapes and Sizes
- Exclusive: Mystery Jets Sign to Dim Mak
- Low Add European Dates to Tour
- Exclusive: Richard Buckner Tours With Six Parts Seven
- Band of Horses Trot Out on Tiny Tour
- Paul Weller Celebrates 30 Years With DVD/Box, Tour
- DJs Drama & Cannon Arrested for "Illegal" CDs
- Deerhoof Launch World Tour
- Camera Obscura Kick Off Tour, Share Single, Video
- Exclusive: Gustav Ejstes Talks New Dungen Album
Tue: 01-16-07
- Morrissey Seeks California Love on Tour
- Subtle Make Plans With TV on the Radio, Launch Tour
- Drag City Brings Boris' Rainbow to U.S.
- ? of ? & the Mysterians Loses House, Valuables to Fire
- Bonnie "Prince" Billy Preps New Single
- Ninja Tune/Big Dada Prep Diplo, Wiley, Bug Releases
- Junior Boys Remixed by Hot Chip, Prep EPs, Tour
- Slint Rock Spiderland at Primavera Sound Festival
- Postal Service Cheat on USPS-- With UPS!
- Stones Throw Releases Retrospective Comp
- Sonic Youth Tour Japan with Vooredoms (Boredoms)
Mon: 01-15-07
- Frightened Rabbit Hit the States
- Exclusive: Page France Reveal LP, MP3, Headlights Tour
- Sigur Rós: "New Album in the Works"
- Annuals Prep EP, Tour With Dears, Aqueduct
- Leonard Cohen Given Reissue Treatment
- Sonic Youth, Murdoch, Watt, Suzuki on Future Pilot LP
- The Hold Steady Tour With the Thermals
- T.V. Eye: January 15-19, 2007
- Dr. Dog Tour With Bobby Bare Jr.
- V2 Closes Shop on New Releases, White Stripes Are Free
- Ben Gibbard Goes Hollywood
- Kevin Shields: MBV Will "100%" Make Another Album
Sun: 01-14-07
Fri: 01-12-07
- Marnie Stern Melts Your Face With KRS LP, Tour, MP3
- Video: Jelly Donut vs. Lady Sovereign
- Exclusive MP3: Grizzly Bear: "Knife (Girl Talk Remix)"
- The Stranglers Choke Out New Album Stateside
- Sneakers Release Retrospective Compilation
- Exclusive: MP3: Busdriver: "Less Yes's, More No's"
- Dntel Sub Pop Debut Revealed
- Vashti, Vetiver, Juana Molina, Adem Launch Tour
- Hold Steady Invade Britain
- The Ponys Tour Before Turning the Lights Out
- Arab Strap Drop Tears Stateside, Prep Solo Discs
- Exclusive: Mando Diao Share U.S. Release Details, MP3
- Video Premiere: Rob Crow: "I Hate You, Rob Crow"
- MP3: The Pack: "Candy"
- Yo La Tengo, Walkmen, PB&J; Head Laneway Fest
- El Perro Del Mar Tours America Del Norte
- Viva Voce to Support Shins on Tour
Thu: 01-11-07
- Gruff Rhys Coming to America Thanks to Conor Oberst
- Kieran Hebden and Steve Reid Speak in Tongues, Tour
- Bill Callahan Dumps Smog Name, Drops LP
- Benjy Ferree Launches U.S. Tour
- Misra + Absolutely Kosher = <3
- Decemberists Auction Instruments, Clothes for Charity
- Kanye West Gets HBO Show
- Video: Justin Timberlake/Rock Plaza Central: "SexyBack"
- Ex-Test Icicle Balls With Saddle Creek Peeps
- Video Premiere: Beach House: "Master of None"
- Lily Allen Announces U.S. LP Bonus Features
Wed: 01-10-07
- Sov Fights Donut, Parties With Playboy, Helps Islands
- Kanye, Gnarls, Girl Talk Take on Jackie Chan, China
- Field Music Record Futureheads, Share Video
- Mastodon Bring Video Game to Blood Mountain
- Talkdemonic to Tour West Coast
- Video: Bloc Party: "I Still Remember"
- Sam Prekop Talks New Sea and Cake Disc
- Exclusive: Blonde Redhead Reveal 23, Announce Tour
- Rough Trade Inks North American Licensing Deal
- Thurston, Carl Newman Write About Favorite Shows
- The Rapture Announce American Tour
- Patti Smith to Release Covers Album
Tue: 01-09-07
- Exclusive: I'm From Barcelona Introduce U.S. Tracklist
- Mark Ronson Recruits Lily Allen, ODB for Album
- caUSE co-MOTION! Incite Brouhaha on Tour
- Strokes' Hammond Jr. to Release Debut in U.S.
- Kaiser Chiefs Reveal Album Details, Tour
- Video: My Brightest Diamond: "Something of an End (David Keith Remix)"
- Animal Collective Sign to Domino, Tour
- Video: ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead: "Naked Sun"
- Bright Eyes Emotes Across North America
- Whitman, Forrest, Belong, Pioulard Record Ringtones
- Video: Clinic: "If You Could Read Your Mind"
- Burrito Brother Kleinow Dead at 72
- Mos Def Album Magically Disappears
- Exclusive: MP3: !!!: "Heart of Hearts"
Mon: 01-08-07
- PB&J;, Patrick Wolf, 120 Days Head Dutch Fest
- John Reis' Sultans Hang up the Crown
- Cold War Kids Tour With Tokyo Police Club
- Simian, Long Winters on Music for Robots Comp
- Emily Haines Serenades NPR Listeners
- M. Ward, Jim James, Ladyhawk Featured on FADER 7”
- The Broken West (Formerly the Brokedown) Plan Tour
- Bloc Party Announce North American Tour
- Do Make Say Think Make Album, Do Tour
- MP3: Beirut: "Elephant Gun"
- Pharoahe Monch Shares New Song, Controversial Video
- A-Trak Releases One of Everything
- R.E.M., Patti Smith, Grandmaster Flash Make Rock Hall
- Ted Leo to Play NYC Benefit for Robbins Family
- T.V. Eye: January 8-15, 2007
Sun: 01-07-07
Sat: 01-06-07
Fri: 01-05-07
- Xiu Xiu, BARR, Grouper Get Artsy-Fartsy
- Video: Deerhunter: "Strange Lights"
- Calexico, Rogue Wave, Pink Mt'tops on Charity Comp
- Amon Tobin Meets Kronos Quartet in Foley Room
- Grizzly Bear Yellow House Film Sync Discovered!
- Chin Up Chin Up, Bobby Conn Play Robbins Benefit
- Walkmen Announce Australian, U.S. Tours
- Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks Launch Tour
- Trail of Dead Announce UK Tour
- Ponys, Flosstradamus, Bound Stems Rock Schubas Fest
- Crunk Hits Gets Vol. 3, Joined by Hyphy Hitz
- Jonny Greenwood Curates Trojan Records Reggae Comp
- MP3: Justice: "Phantom Part I"
- Love Is All, Long Blondes on Label Comp
- Enslaved Tour North America
- Justin K. Broadrick Talks New Jesu Album, Tour
Thu: 01-04-07
- The Shins Announce U.S. Tour
- Rock Plaza Central Horse Around on Tour
- Wilco Side Project Autumn Defense Prep New LP
- RJD2 Reveals Tracklist, Tour Dates, New Song
- Peter Bjorn and John Tap Victoria for U.S. Gigs
- Modest Mouse, Shellac, Books Join Fan-Curated ATP
- Fugazi's Lally Takes There to Here From Here to There
- Wu-Tang Plan New Album, Contribute to Compilations
- Sublime Frequencies Film Explores Moroccan Music
- The Curtains (Ex-Deerhoof) Launch U.S. Tour
- Pelican Reveal Details of Next Album
- MP3: DJ Jaguar Skills: "1979-2006: A Hip Hop Odyssey"
- Low Hit the Road
- Video: Hot Chip: "Arrest Yourself"
- MV/EE Hit the Bummer Road
Wed: 01-03-07
- Stream: Modest Mouse: "Dashboard"
- Stax Returns!
- The Knife Remixed by Dave Sitek, Booka Shade
- Sparklehorse Announce North American Tour
- Video: Jarvis: "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time"
- Clap Your Hands, Wrens Play NYC Benefit Shows
- Video: Kleerup [ft. Robyn]: "With Every Heartbeat"
- Blur Not Reuniting With Coxon
- Stooges, Interpol, Bloc Party, Lily Allen Play SXSW
- Video: Mastodon Tour Diary, Part Two
- Modest Mouse Confirm New Single
- Morrissey, Shins, Air, Les Savy Fav Say "Cheese"
- Sufjan, Björk, Prince Line Up for Joni Mitchell Tribute
- Nick Cave Live DVD, Grinderman LP Revealed
Tue: 01-02-07
- Under Byen Tour North America With Frida Hyvonen
- M. Ward Tours, Scores Film
- Thermals Tear Across North America
- Video: Girl Talk [New Year's Eve 2006-07, Chicago]
- MP3: Talib Kweli, Madlib Team for Free Album
- Sebadoh Reveal Reunion Tour Dates
- Video: Bonnie "Prince" Billy: "Ebb Tide"
- TV on the Radio Schedule North American Tour
- Moore, Ranaldo, Chatham Head Experimental Fest
- Shins Share Video, Digital LP; Rock "SNL"
- T.V. Eye: January 2-8, 2007
- While We Were Out
Squares, Inc.