San Diego Gets Smart
Photo credit: Lambfarm
If you find yourself complaining that they just don’t make music like they used to, you need The Smart Brothers in your life. Oscillating between high-energy roots romps and tender ballads of surprising depth, the San Diego duo create charming, old-timey folk just like grandpa used to make. With their finely crafted compositions and intricate, flawless harmonies, The Smart Brothers make music to fall in love with—and fall in love to. (more…)
Lilith Fair Coming to San Diego
Sarah McLachlan’s hugely successful Lilith Fair only ran from 1997 to 1999. This means that the festival has been gone for five times as long as it ever existed. Gone, but certainly not forgotten. (more…)
Lanterns Light the Way
San Diego’s Lanterns might have a luminescent name, but they have yet to enjoy the spotlight.
Despite high-profile gigs with bands like Matt and Kim, …And You Will Knows By the Trail of Dead, and These Arms Are Snakes, the four-piece has operated mostly under the local radar. But, thanks to a critically-acclaimed EP and two crucial shows on the horizon, all of that is set to change for the band. (more…)
Langhorne Slim to Play Casbah, M-Theory Instore Tonight (MP3s)
Kemado Records singer/songwriter Langhorne Slim has a bit of talent. (more…)
Thao with the Get Down Stay Down Get Sacked
The first thing Thao with the Get Down Stay Down ever saw in San Diego was a pair of dangling balls.
Last November, the band came to town to play a show and, upon entering the city’s limits, were treated to a memorable sight. The pair in question was hanging off the back of a pickup truck—I’m just going to go ahead and assume it was a Ford F150—and the image of the swinging Bumper Nuts™ quickly burned itself into the unsuspecting band’s retinas. San Diego may be known worldwide for its beaches and burritos, but it is our balls that Thao with the Get Down Stay Down will forever remember us for. (more…)
Polysics Invade San Diego
San Diego is a great place to see live music, but there isn’t always a synth-heavy, eccentric, Japanese spaz-punk band around when you need one. In a gracious effort to fill that void, Tokyo natives Polysics will be playing the Casbah on January 30th.
Citing Devo as a major influence, Polysics are truly a sight to behold. With their orange jumpsuits, science fiction glasses, and synchronized robotic movements, the hyperactive quartet put on one of the most bizarre and exciting shows around. The band’s self-described “technicolor pogo punk” is a thrilling spectacle, made all the more enthralling by front man Hiroyuki Hayashi’s boundless enthusiasm and slippery grasp of the English language. (more…)
Review: The Silent Comedy; January 17, 2010; Bar Pink, San Diego
Few bands in San Diego inspire the kind of rabid devotion that the Silent Comedy enjoy. From their Prohibition-era wardrobes and Old West mustaches to lead singer/bassist J. John’s manic ramblings, the band have struck upon a winning combination of musical chops and good-natured theatricality that has earned them a passionate following. Celebrating their return to San Diego at Bar Pink after a brief but hectic West Coast tour, the Silent Comedy were greeted by a characteristically packed house. And, from the raucous opening song “Poison” onward, the band had the crowd exactly where they wanted them. (more…)
Announcing Our 1,001st Post (and More)
We at Owl and Bear — your favorite combination San Diego-based music blog and live Wilco Archive — are happily celebrating our 1,000th anniversary. That’s right, you’ve loved us for that long.
It seems like only yesterday that we were merely Owlet and Cub, and a lot has happened since then. Writers, records, and redesigns have come and gone since our 2006 inception, but we’ve always moved forward — even when contributors moved on and bands-of-the-moment disappeared along with their silly names.
It goes without saying that we’ll keep up our efforts to entertain you well into the future. We’ll continue to follow the best bands and introduce new features as opportunities present themselves.
One such opportunity involves our new partnership as writers for a blog called SoundDiego. It just launched today, and it’s going to be great. No other blog in San Diego has brought so many great writers and contributors under one roof. If you’re from San Diego, you’ll soon find that SoundDiego is indispensable. Naturally, we’ll be cross-posting our entries here at Owl and Bear, along with special “director’s cut” content that you won’t find anywhere else.
And don’t forget, there are many ways to read O&B. You can follow us on Facebook and Twitter, subscribe to our RSS feed, or even (gasp) regularly visit our site.
Here’s to the next 1,000 posts!
Drew Andrews Celebrates His ‘Birthday’
Let it never be said that Drew Andrews can’t multitask. The multi-instruentalist’s best-known gig, San Diego flagship electronic act The Album Leaf, are set to release their fifth full-length album, A Chorus of Storytellers, on February 2nd through Sub Pop records. Andrews also plays in the side project Via Satellite with fellow Album Leaf member Tim Reece. He’s even written two novellas, The Shepherd’s Journals and Lella, both of which are available as free downloads from Feedbooks. But when Drew Andrews isn’t dividing his time between those worthy endeavors, he devotes his energies to his best project yet: Drew Andrews. (more…)
The Builders and the Butchers Return to San Diego
When The Builders And The Butchers come to San Diego, they show up to play. The band’s Casbah performance last February was a fever dream of apocalyptic backwoods folk voodoo that had even the most uptight hipsters in the crowd unfolding their arms and busting a move. As if to prove that lightning can indeed strike the same place twice, the group will be returning to the Casbah on Saturday, January 16th. (more…)
