Lost MP3 of the Week: Fleetwood Mac, “Silver Springs”
When I was in middle school, I had a lot of ideas for music videos. Generally these ideas were boring and tame – mostly because at the time, I was listening to a lot of really sappy, sad music (I changed from a private school to a public school between seventh and eighth grade and...
Destroyer @ Bowery Ballroom, Wednesday, April 23rd
Image courtesy flickr user forklift The New Pornographers put on one of the worst concerts of recent memory at the Bowery Ballroom last August. It was so unbearable that writing a review would have been like rubbing alcohol on an open wound. A.C. Newman was acting like a real prick in-between songs, talking for longer...
Mountain Goats @ Webster Hall, Tuesday, March 18th
Much like John Darnielle himself, the Mountain Goats’ audience at Webster Hall on Tuesday night had a tendency to flaunt its wit. Every time someone called out a song request – which was frequently, because in this cultish fan base, everyone has a favorite – someone else had a witty thing to yell in retort....
Enablers @ Knitting Factory, Sunday, March 9th
San Francisco’s Enablers are more an amalgam of music and poetry than the average band. This distinction is forged primarily through the use of speech only loosely set in pattern with the music instead of sing-song verse. In a live setting – in this case New York City’s Knitting Factory, at the Tap Bar –...
Joanna Newsom @ BAM, Thursday, Jan. 31st
A Joanna Newsom album has never sounded as good as she did when she played at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last Thursday. Even the most middling of fans, the most ardent of critics, could not possibly have walked away unswayed by the remarkable skill and charm she emanated throughout the evening. Accompanied by the...
Papertrigger @ Southpaw, Thursday, Dec. 13
Like a talent sandwich of sorts, Papertrigger was the filling center of an otherwise “meh” line-up consisting of the Diggs (unremarkable standard indie pop fare with stalkeresquely creepy lyrics) and Most Serene Republic (who started off strong but blended into repetition far too quickly). The relatively young Philly band (both in terms of the band’s...
The Dirty Projectors @ Bowery Ballroom, Tuesday, Dec. 4th
Dirty Projectors are the kind of band that music writers drool over. Describing a band like the Dirty Projectors is a kind of challenge we’re all too eager to accept, encouraged by the unique quality of the music and our own egos, itching to be the one who “wrote it best.” It brings out hyperbolic...
Band of Horses or Band of Hypocrites?
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=s6vohX4HV10[/youtube] It’s awfully hypocritical that after Ben Bridwell’s insufferable ranting about being famous for only “the Funeral,” — or, more specifically, people at certain shows only interested in “the Funeral,” same ballpark — Band of Horses allowed it to be used in a 2008 Ford Edge commercial. Remember this? Here’s the key excerpt: But then...
Sufjan Stevens @ BAM, Thursday, Nov. 1
It was difficult to walk into the world-premiere of Sufjan Stevens’ “symphonic and cinematic exploration” of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway without feeling the foreboding sense that something musically important was going to happen. Lofty expectations would be the death of nearly any other modern indie performer, but Stevens – who’s previously announced such infamous knee-buckling goals...
Quick Impressions: The Rocktober Concerts Edition
October gets nick-named “Rocktober” for reason – ’tis the season for concerts. I attended at least two a week, making it hard to find time to write about all them as soon as I would have liked to. Here are quick rundowns of the latest happenings. Fog, Torche & Jesu @ Blender Theater, Saturday, Oct....
Bruce Springsteen @ Madison Square Garden, October 17th
A couple years ago, I made a list of the top three old-school rock acts that I wanted to see while they were still around and touring – The Eagles, The Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen. This was before the Eagles had a new album, before The Rolling Stones had A Bigger Bang, so I...
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