^^ Bunky ^^
North By North Park is a strange and maddening beast. Boasting over a hundred musical acts spread across fourteen different venues in just over five hours, it is a bold attempt to showcase local music, but it sags and ultimately collapses under the weight of its own bloated excess.
As the event’s name implies, most of the bars and cafes that take part in the festivities are in North Park, though venues in other neighborhoods like South Park, Normal Heights, and Kensington are also included. To help concertgoers move between venues without tempting the DUI gods, shuttle service is included in the price of admission, but exactly where or how often these shuttles can be expected to show up is apparently closely guarded information.
Continue reading ‘Review: North By North Park; Lanterns, The Glossines, & Bunky; August 2, 2008′
It was Sunday night at Canes and indie rock heroes Wolf Parade were about to perform, yet the crowd didn’t seem excited at all. The stripped down guitar and tribal trashcan percussion of opening duo Listening Party had been received with polite but moderate enthusiasm by an audience where those wearing backwards hats and polo shirts vastly outnumbered the people with the tight jeans and flat-ironed hair. As the crowd quietly milled about the venue between sets, it seemed as though Wolf Parade could expect a similarly tepid reaction. But when the Montreal quintet finally took the stage and the first notes rang out from the amps, they were met with a fanatical and frenzied reception that was anything but lukewarm.
Beginning their set with “You Are A Runner And I Am My Father’s Son” and “Soldier’s Grin”, the opening tracks off 2005’s Apologies To The Queen Mary and 2008’s At Mount Zoomer, respectively, Wolf Parade were a well-oiled machine, nimbly maneuvering their songs’ wild mood swings and ever-changing time signatures without missing a beat.
Continue reading ‘Review: Wolf Parade; July 20, 2008 at Canes; San Diego’
Saturday’s “Hipsters Revisited” at Bar Pink Elephant was a ‘60s themed event that promised music of the garage, psychedelic, and freakbeat varieties, all while making assurances that there would be “no weird shit or flutes”. They made good on these promises with some trippy mood-lighting and an assortment of DJs spinning appropriately obscure tracks from the period, but the real draw was a live performance by local retro-rock band The Loons.
Long blond hair hanging in his face, Loons lead singer Mike Stax commanded the stage with all the raw power of an anachronistic Iggy Pop as the band blazed through a set that recalled garage acts Love, The Sonics, and The Thirteenth Floor Elevators. After grabbing everyone’s attention with “Red Dissolving Rays”, Stax joked that, in honor of Gay Pride week, he was dedicating the song “My Time” to Texas, “the gayest state of all”.
Continue reading ‘Review: The Loons; July 19, 2008 at Bar Pink; San Diego’
2008, Columbia Records
The trumpets heralding the release of Black Kids’ debut began blowing a year ago, when the Jacksonville band made their demo EP, Wizard Of Ahhhs, available for free download.
The EP was a rollicking good time - the perfect soundtrack to every out-of-hand house party or ill-advised hookup you’re looking forward to regretting - and they instantly became one of indie rock’s greatest Internet success stories, but it remained to be seen whether Black Kids could maintain their danceable intensity for more than four songs at a time. How well the band’s scrappy energy would be conveyed in a professional recording was also unknown, so it is under no shortage of pressure that Partie Traumatic arrives, the rare case of a debut album trying to avoid the dreaded sophomore slump.
Continue reading ‘Black Kids - Partie Traumatic’
“I’m like a fucking race horse.”
–Tom Waits, Jacksonville
Tom Waits’ tours are fairly infrequent, so when I heard he was headed to Jacksonville two hours away from my house, I splurged. Jacksonville? Why Jacksonville? It’s not really the red dirt, bluesy part of the south Waits wanted to see. Jacksonville is South Beach’s conservative opposite, militarized vanilla beach Florida, which tolerates the small, local counterculture because it’s essentially irrelevant. Jacksonville is by some definitions lovely, but it’s not, well, cool. When, early in the concert, Waits mused about why he’d never been to this attractive city beside a sparkling river and the Atlantic Ocean, he said his friends had always told him, “You’re not old enough.” I don’t know whether he’s finally old enough now or if the prospect of hauling the tour bus and three semis ten hours south and back north was too much for his pocketbook or his carbon footprint, but he arrived with a copious supply of merchandise–including vinyls, a chapbook in which he interviews himself, and t-shirts with pictures of oil stains he thought were cool–as well as a sweet stage set that could evoke alley-cat twilight austerity, late-night honkytonk, or red-devil cartoon hell.
Continue reading ‘Review: Tom Waits; July 1, 2008; Jacksonville, FL’
The Hideout is a great place to see a show. I arrived about 7:30, just as a major storm was moving into the Chicago. Luckily, the Hideout is in an industrial part of the city and there were some good spaces right outside, which I found to be a good sign of things to come.
Continue reading ‘Review: Red Red Meat; July 10, 2008; Hideout, Chicago’
2008, Exit Stencil
Cleveland’s The Dreadful Yawns are back.
Take Shape, The Dreadful Yawns’ second album, has been described as more psychedelic than their first release; this might be a worry if the Dreadful Yawns hadn’t awed us last time.
They’ve always have a retro sound, and it’s sometimes more prevalent this time ’round, but it’s largely a relaxing affair. The album’s first track, “Like Song,” starts out as a stripped and countrified Jim O’Rourke rhyme and ends with full-on Loose Fur loveliness–the kind of thing that the Yawns do best. The next song, “The Queen and the Jokester” is a Kinks-style stomp.
Continue reading ‘The Dreadful Yawns - Take Shape’
2008, Thrill Jockey
Terrible Two by Thank You grabs the listener—but not gently: by the shirt collar.
At five songs and a cumulative 35 minutes, Terrible Two is a mishmash of noise, intense drumming, strange interludes, and howling vocals. It’s a prickly kind of record that is at times almost religious (title track) but rarely harmonious (any given track).
Continue reading ‘Thank You - Terrible Two’
2008, Red Ink
Apparently left restless by the extended vacation taken by his regular band, Strokes rhythm guitarist Albert Hammond decided to go solo. His debut, last year’s Yours To Keep, was a refreshing and superb collection of breezy, perfect pop, free of all the self-consciousness that had plagued the Strokes’ last two albums.
Hammond has never seemed bothered that the spotlight is usually fixed on bandmate Julian Casablancas, and his decision to become a solo artist has never felt like an attention-grab. The songs on Yours To Keep were casual and unpretentious, as if written by accident: the Strokes re-imagined as West Coast beach bums instead of East Coast bohemians. Little more than a year has passed since that record was released, but Hammond is already back with ¿Cómo Te Llama?, an album that attempts to perform the balancing act of increasing the depth of emotion without losing the laid-back vibe.
Continue reading ‘Albert Hammond Jr. - ¿Cómo Te Llama?’
One of the things one does not expect to hear when putting on a Dead Heart Bloom album is Built To Spill. Yet this is exactly what happens in the opening moments of Fall In, the new EP that finds the band throwing everything they can at the wall and seeing what sticks.
This shotgun-approach to style is almost always a recipe for disaster (I’m looking at you, My Morning Jacket), and it’s all the more egregious when the band in question has already settled into a winning formula. Dead Heart Bloom’s previous release, Chelsea Diaries [All of their albums are available for free on their site —Ed], was an intimate, string-heavy collection of acoustic songs that showcased Boris Skalsky’s beautiful vocals, all while tugging gently at the heartstrings.
Continue reading ‘Dead Heart Bloom - Fall In’
Frightened Rabbit is one of the best bands out there that you can still see in a small club. They’re comprised of two brothers and two multi-instrumentalists: singer/songwriter/guitarist/whisky sipper Scott Hutchison, his brother Grant (who destroys drumsticks and provides vocal harmonies), and Billy Kennedy and Andy “Medusa” Monaghan who both alternate on keys, guitar, and bass.
Legend has it that as a kid, Scott was compared to a Frightened Rabbit for his lack of social skills, but you wouldn’t know it from this show. Hutchison’s between-song banter was often hilarious and he showed no shortage of the fabled Scottish charm; he even exuded silliness as he discussed a “plectrum” (pick) that someone had given him.
Continue reading ‘Review: Frightened Rabbit; June 23, 2008; Casbah, San Diego’
2008, Singleton Records
For a band whose live performances are marked by their theatricality and infectious intensity, The Silent Comedy’s recordings can be surprisingly intimate affairs. Their debut full-length, Sunset Stables, emphasized narrative and restraint over whiskey-drinking and foot-stomping, and now, on their self-titled EP, they pick up where that record left off.
From the opening moments of maudlin country ballad “Daisy”, The Silent Comedy draws you into a rich world of broken bottles and shattered hearts. The song nimbly swells, retreats, and swells again, a ribcage barely containing the heart within. J. John’s vocals intertwine in a tender duet with I. Forbes’ gorgeous violin, and when he begs, “Break me, Daisy”, it’s hard to believe that she hasn’t done so already.
Continue reading ‘The Silent Comedy – The Silent Comedy’
2008, Self-Released
In the first 60 seconds of The Going and the Gone, listeners might think they’ve put on Built to Spill, or maybe the Wallflowers, or maybe early Wilco.
Continue reading ‘The Rationales - The Going and the Gone’
A fever descended upon the sold-out Casbah as the Kills took the stage, seducing the crowd with their unique blend of blues, punk, and sex. The band drew mainly from their new album Midnight Boom, tearing into renditions of “U.R.A. Fever,” “Tape Song,” and “Sour Cherry,” but still touched upon old favorites like “Fried My Little Brains,” “Wait,” and “Love Is A Deserter.”
Backed only by a drum machine, Alison “VV” Mosshart and Jamie “Hotel” Hince shared vocal duties, with Hotel playing the lion’s share of guitar. The songs dripped with danger and excitement, such as on “No Wow,” where the pair used their palpable on-stage chemistry to carry the song from its ominous, simmering beginning to an explosive conclusion that was equal parts sexual tension and musical release.
Continue reading ‘Review: The Kills; May 19, 2008 at The Casbah; San Diego’
