2008, Single Screen Records
The debut record from power-pop band The Powerchords has been a long time coming.
The band released their demo back in 2005, a seven song EP of finely crafted songs that immediately brought them to the forefront of San Diego’s music scene. But despite a rabid following and a reputation for excellent, charming live performances, the subsequent years saw only one Powerchords release—the Unattached Strings/Dream Girl 7-inch. Now, at long last, we have …Think I’m Gonna, a proper fourteen song collection of propellant punk and pop that will satisfy old fans and recruit new ones.
Continue reading ‘The Powerchords - …Think I’m Gonna’
For a second, Hella drummer Zach Hill’s album Astrological Straits almost sounds like Pink Floyd.
Continue reading ‘Zach Hill - Astrological Straits’
Don’t be too quick to judge Fear Falls Burning (or their album Frenzy of the Absolute).
Continue reading ‘Fear Falls Burning - Frenzy of the Absolute’
On one hand, Baltimore-based songstress Elise Major’s self-titled release may feel a little derivative; on the other hand, it’s hard to imagine her live show leaving anyone disappointed.
Continue reading ‘Elise Major - Elise Major’
Nothing Real Nothing Absent, Transitional’s latest release on Conspiracy Records, is comprised of the kind of dark instrumentals that grew out of punk and hardcore.
Continue reading ‘Transitional - Nothing Real Nothing Absent’
If The Gleam II is an attempt to reinforce The Avett Brothers’ cred as their popularity grows, it should do the trick.
Continue reading ‘The Avett Brothers - The Gleam II’
^^ 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’
Note: This review may or may not contain spoilers, depending on how you look at it.
The Dark Knight is 150 minutes of intensity–a well-done action film that, unlike Batman Begins, focuses less on character and more on the ca-razee Joker (played by a nearly scenery-chewing Heath Ledger) and Batman’s quest to stop him.
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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’
