Posts Tagged ‘music’
Click Track, George Mason University, Muse, music, Patriot Center, The Washington Post, U2
In The Washington Post, music, shameless self-promotion on March 2, 2010 at 16:48
It’s almost impossible to imagine England’s glam-bastic future-shock trio Muse peddling their warp-speed, Dark Matter riffs and florid piano interludes anywhere smaller than the Patriot Center, the coziest basketball arena on the itinerary of their U.S. tour. Wembley-packing popular in Europe, they traversed American football stadiums last fall supporting U2, a gig they may have cinched for their ability to make the headliners appear restrained and subtle by comparison.
Subtlety was irrelevant at last-night’s retina-singeing ode to space operatic excess. For the 105-minute pageant to express the band’s apocalypse-is-coming, so-shall-we-rock quintessence any more perfectly would have required giant harvester-like robots to wander into the audience and atomize us with their laser rays. A stage comprised of three telescoping video-cube platforms yawned open to reveal the three band members, lightsabering their way through “Uprising,” the pulsing, ominous opener of their latest album, The Resistance. (This is one band where the titles tell you exactly what you’re in for.) Lyrics “They will not control us! We will be victorious!” flashed as the crowd chanted along, implicitly telling Them exactly where They can cram their . . . well, whatever. Read the rest of this entry »
music, songwriting, Stephin Merritt, The Magnetic Fields, The Washington Examiner
In music on February 4, 2010 at 02:37
The Magnetic Fields have roughly the cultural and commercial footprint of an arthouse cinema hit. But a few weeks ago, Stephin Merritt — the group’s songwriter and chief creative officer —found himself staring straight into the ruddy, swollen face of his blockbuster competition.
“I was sitting in a bar, listening to thumping disco music, trying to write songs,” says Merritt from his home in Los Angeles, 10 days before the start of his band’s tour, which opens tonight at Lisner Auditorium. (Drinking in a loud bar is his customary songwriting environment, yes.) “Suddenly there was this television show with the sound on — usually it’s off. And the music, even when they were praising it, was so terrible it was like watching a car accident from different angles.”
Confirmed, then: The Magnetic Fields Guy? Not a fan of American Idol.
What is he a fan of? Irving Berlin. Judy Collins. And of swatting down the stubbornly pervasive idea that songs are primarily the product of something more mysterious than talent and work.
“There’s this book called Songwriters on Songwriting. I think the interviewer must have been asking leading questions, because maybe two-thirds of the people in the book say they feel their songs are basically written by God,” he says. “I just literally cannot believe that they really think this. I tend to write songs while I’m tipsy-to-drunk. But I still don’t feel like they’re written by some supernatural entity.” Read the rest of this entry »
9:30 Club, Click Track, Julian Casablancas, music, pop music, The Strokes, The Washington Post
In 9:30 Club, The Washington Post, music, shameless self-promotion on January 13, 2010 at 15:48
The New York City that birthed The Strokes, fully formed and never better than on their 2001 debut Is This It?, was as bright and prosperous as the NYC of 23 years earlier — when Strokes singer/songwriter Julian Casablancas was born there — was broke, decadent, and dangerous. Their first album managed, improbably, to conjure both Blondie-era risk and pre-9/11 ennui. It’s lately resurfaced on just about everyone’s list of the aughties’ top ten. Read the rest of this entry »
9:30 Club, David Malitz, flackery, Julian Casablancas, music, pop music, pull quotes, The Strokes, The Washington Post
In 9:30 Club, The Washington Post, music, navel-gazing on January 12, 2010 at 13:19
One of the things I lament about the steep drop-off in newspaper movie ads — aside from the obvious, which is that it’s hurt newspapers I’d like to see survive — is that we’re not seeing as many ads wherein studio publicists dig deep to find reliably nearsighted pseudo-critics whose endorsements of shit like Old Dogs or the punctuation-offending Law Abiding Citizen they can quote. I always wondered if the people putting these ads together actually believed that anyone inclined to plan their weekend around a screening of Leap Year cares what film critics have to say.
I like it even better when publicists take real critics’ words completely out of context. I’ve been pull-quoted myself once or twice, but wouldn’t you know it, my meaning has always been preserved intact.
Publicists practice context-ignoring pull-quotery all the time, I know. But to me, at least, it never fails to amuse. Read the rest of this entry »
CD reviews, cinema, comics, music, pop music, theater
In music, navel-gazing on January 4, 2010 at 11:25
I’m not much of a list guy. Because it’s universally agreed we’ve just closed out a year, and somewhat more controversially posited that we have in fact, cut the lights and bolted the door on an an entire decade, critics both pro and semi- have been gunking up the interwebs with their lists of the year and decade’s best movies, albums, songs, whatever.
I get it. People read these. Moreover, unless one takes the list-making enterprise to an absurd extreme, lists are the easiest things in the world to write. The biggest problem of writing — structure — is already solved for you.
I tend to react more strongly, to movies, plays, albums, and concerts than most people I know. (Yes, I read, but I seldom get around to books in the year they’re published). But to the list-making, I am resistant. Maybe if I’d made a few more lists I’d have got myself somewhere in life by now. But that’s all spilled milk under the bridge. Read the rest of this entry »
9:30 Club, Click Track, Late Night, music, pop music, The Roots, The Washington Post, Wale
In The Washington Post, music, shameless self-promotion on December 30, 2009 at 15:17
If NBC ever releases a compilation of The Roots’ performances as house band for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, the DVD commentary track might make your player explode. The veteran Philly hip-hop band won’t finish a tune without referencing pieces of nine others. Their hyperlinked performance style is reliably thrilling, though you do sometimes want to yell at song-surfing bandleader/drummer/Twitter addict Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson, “Hey, I was digging that!”
Last night, at the first of two 9:30 club dates, The Roots offered a sweaty, channel-flipping blitz, packing about eight hours of mercilessly funky rap, rock, go-go, jazz, and soul into 140 breathless minutes. Though they’ve continued to tour since they got their gig upstaging SNL alum Fallon, their return to the 9:30 still had a celebratory, school’s-out vibe. Read the rest of this entry »
country, Holly Golightly, IOTA, music, Post Rock, The Washington Post
In The Washington Post, music, shameless self-promotion on December 15, 2009 at 16:54
Just how retro is the strain of handmade country-blues peddled by Holly Golightly and the Brokeoffs? During their ramshackle hour-long set at IOTA last night, the guitarist/percussionist/singer Lawyer Dave introduced two different tunes as “a song about domestic abuse,” and in neither case did he follow-up with a Chris Brown joke.
Violence between lovers has always been one of the major themes of this music, of course. No one goes to counseling in the blues! Read the rest of this entry »
classic albums in sequence, DAR Consitution Hall, music, The Pixies
In music, shameless self-promotion on December 4, 2009 at 11:22
Dave Lovering and Kim Deal of The Pixies. Photo by Kyle Gustafson.
I have a lot of thoughts about the play-a-classic album (or a new album) in sequence trend, and I got to discuss some of them in my Blurt! debut, a review of The Pixies’ Doolittle show here in DC. You can see more of Kyle Gustafson’s photos from the concert on his site.
Bob Dylan, music, pop music, setlists, The Washington Post
In Uncategorized on November 13, 2009 at 12:14
Even Bob Dylan can’t be Bob Dylan all the time.
The 68-year-old Boy from the North Country born Robert Allen Zimmerman has been trying to break his own myth since the mid-60s, when he alienated fans of his early folk albums by plugging in and rocking out. Since then, his muse has come and gone, but his contrarian streak – most recently indulged on the month-old Christmas in the Heart, whereupon the Jewish-born troubadour snarls his way through yuletide standards with psychotic zeal – has been a constant.
For the last 20 years, so has the road. Dylan tours endlessly, turning up at a half-full arena or a minor league ballpark near you again and again, as if to prove he’s no sage, just an itinerant song-and-dance-man. Though late-period albums like Time Out of Mind and Love & Theft have evinced a creative renewal, he’s often been erratic, even indifferent on stage. Still, there’s something noble in his doggedness, fighting those Workingman’s Blues. Paying the empty seats as little mind as the occupied ones. Singing on though thousands of shows have curdled his voice into a viscous, gutshot croak. On a good night, he can still remind you why people worshipped him in the first place. Read the rest of this entry »
9:30 Club, music, pop music, Post Rock, setlists, The Frames, The Swell Season, The Washington Post, Van Morrison, Willie Nelson
In Uncategorized on November 10, 2009 at 15:20
Tree People: Marketa Irglova and Glen Hansard
They broke up.
Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, for whom life imitated art imitating life when they fell in love playing lovers in the kinda-sorta-semi-autobiographical sleeper romance Once a few years back, are no longer an item. But on the evidence of “Strict Joy,” their first album together since they picked up an Oscar for Best Original Song last year, they remain creatively simpatico. Read the rest of this entry »
Black Cat, Kurt Vile, music, pop music, Post Rock, The Washington Post
In The Washington Post, music, shameless self-promotion on November 6, 2009 at 13:55
It’s perfectly reasonable to be suspicious of a musician with as mighty a moniker as Kurt Vile. If that was a stage name (it’s not*) the intimation would be of the most confrontational, petulant punk, but the Philadelphia-based Vile’s defiantly primitive, accident-prone songs are lazier and hazier than that, rarely straying from the long and droning road but hinting at melodic paths untaken. Imperfection is his ideology.
At the Black Cat Backstage last night, Vile ambled through the final date of a month of shows with his three-piece band, The Violators, for what he said was the largest crowd he’d played. Double digits, still — right-sized. He opened the 70-minute set with a solo take of “Peeping Tomboy,” which, like so much of the spectral folk side of his songbook, seemed to waft in from some phantom radio. Even when the combo joined him for the stouter stuff — like “Freak Train,” the self-explanatory centerpiece of his just-released Childish Prodigy album — the cacophony was more ethereal than kinetic. Read the rest of this entry »
DCist, Jammin' Java, music, pop music, Scotland, songwriting, Travis
In DCist, music, shameless self-promotion on November 4, 2009 at 15:21
More than ever on the concert circuit, nostalgia is the move. With everyone from Liz Phair to Public Enemy to The Pixies (and those are just the P’s) devoting gigs and sometimes entire tours to reviving their seminal albums in sequence, lots of long-lived performers — particularly those strugging to get even their cult to embrace their new music — have glommed to the trend.
Travis are in a reflective mood, too, but they’re taking a different route. Founded in Glasgow in the early 1990s, they were one of the better U.K. trad-rock outfits to arise in Oasis’s mid-90s wake. They’re hardly commercial rivals (or contemporaries) of classic-album-revivalists Bruce Springsteen or The Pixies, but they’ve more hummable, singalong-enabled tunes to their credit than you probably remember, if you remember them at all. Read the rest of this entry »
Bruce Springsteen, music, pop music, Post Rock, The Clash, The Gaslight Anthem, The Washington Post
In 9:30 Club, The Washington Post, music, shameless self-promotion on October 23, 2009 at 12:10
Look, Bruce Springsteen and Joe Strummer didn’t invent this stuff, either. The greased hair and the leathers and the overdriven takes of Mad Men-era rock standards already had a blanket of dust on them a generation thick by the time The Boss and The Clash got around to them.
Jersey pomade-punks The Gaslight Anthem are the most persuasive current exponents of this tradition, and they don’t hide it. Hell, they called their latest album The ’59 Sound. At a sold-out 9:30 Club last night, they ripped through that nostalgic long-player in its near-entirety, frontman Brian Fallon balling up his handsome face to yowl about Redemption and car crashes and good girls in trouble with archaic-sounding names like Gale and — of course! — Mary. Read the rest of this entry »
courage, DCist, music, Nick Lowe, oldies, songwriting
In music on October 19, 2009 at 10:24
The great Nick Lowe was in reprise mode at the Barns of Wolf Trap last night. You can hear an NPR podcast of his September 2007 set at the Birchmere here, which is pretty much the same show he performed at the Barns, with the small exceptions I noted in my DCist review. Good show by a great songwriter, but I’d have preferred more variety, and more songs.
About that: Lowe spent way too much time apologizing, to my mind, for slipping one new song into his 20-tune, 70-minute set. One! He asked us if, when we hear a performer say he’d like to introduce some new material, “Does your heart sink? Because mine does.”
Really? I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the dilemma of the artist with the large, beloved back catalog struggling to make his audience accept his new work. Read the rest of this entry »
9:30 Club, Dave Grohl, Foo Fighters, John Paul Jones, Josh Homme, Led Zeppelin, music, pop music, Post Rock, Queens of the Stone Age, The Washington Post
In The Washington Post, music, shameless self-promotion on October 15, 2009 at 14:11
As long as John Bonham and Kurt Cobain stay dead, there’s probably no more intriguing a musical home* for their former bandmates John Paul Jones and Dave Grohl, respectively, than Them Crooked Vultures, newest and superest of the supergroups.
At the 9:30 Club last night, rock’s own Justice League stuck to what’s been standard procedure since its debut two months ago, performing 85 minutes of unfamiliar, tempo-sliding, sternum-rattling rock, diamond-hard and osmium-heavy. Classics in waiting, possibly, but no covers. No encores. No compromises.
Read the rest of this entry »
Bluegrass, music, Post Rock, Steep Canyon Rangers, Steve Martin, The Washington Post
In The Washington Post, music, shameless self-promotion on October 13, 2009 at 18:00
We know what you’re thinking: Oh, great, another celebrity banjo album.
Actually, yes. The Crow, the collection of banjo tunes written (save for one) and performed by Steve Martin — uh-huh, that one — is truly wonderful. It says so right on the cover. And our opening joke is an, er, homage to one that a barely-legal Martin had in his stand-up routine in the mid-60s, way before Saturday Night Live or the movies or the New Yorker essays or the Kennedy Center honors.
“You’re thinking, ‘Oh, this is just another banjo-magic act’,” he’d quip. Back then, he banjo-ed out of desperation, lacking enough surefire jokes to fill out his contracted 25-minute set. Read the rest of this entry »
Alejandro Escovedo, Birchmere, Los Lonely Boys, music, Post Rock, The Washington Post
In The Washington Post, music, shameless self-promotion on October 6, 2009 at 12:46
There’s no single, foolproof test for diagnosing musical overconfidence, but hiring
Alejandro Escovedo as your opener is a definite risk factor. Escovedo is a songwriter’s songwriter, an alt-punk-country-etc. warrior who nearly had to die of Hepatitis C six years to begin to get his due. His albums since have been the most vital of his three-decade career.
Read the rest of this entry »
music, pop music, Post Rock, The Washington Post
In Uncategorized on October 1, 2009 at 12:49
“So that’s what you look like!” roared The Voice halfway through Regina Spektor’s set at Constitution Hall last night, when the Russian-by-birth, adorable-by-design songstress rose from her piano to play keyboards on “Dance Anthem of the 80s.”
Rude, yes, but also baffling. Spektor is a wellspring of quirk, and her Dadaesque lyrics offer metaphorical cover without limit. But the stripped-down show gave her no place to hide. Read the rest of this entry »
diva, music, Pink, pop music, Post Rock, spectacular spectaculars, The Washington Post
In Uncategorized on September 30, 2009 at 01:47
Never to break up with Pink! She’ll do an album about it (last year’s Funhouse), it’ll go platinum, and pretty soon she’ll be in the middle of 10,000 people at the Patriot Center, just like she was for two lusty hours last night, telling God and everyone how much she doesn’t miss you. Read the rest of this entry »
FedEx Field, music, rock and roll, The Washington Examiner, U2
In music, shameless self-promotion on September 28, 2009 at 15:51
It’s true! If U2’s uninspiring performance of “Moment of Surrender” on Saturday Night Live scared you off, perhaps my Examiner preview, offering a bit of historical context for the 360 Tour, can win you back. Because U2 really, really need the attention.
I’ll reviewing the show for DCist. Meanwhile, my sometime colleague Catherine Lewis digs into the curious phenomenon of a cappella groups covering U2 tunes. She’s a braver woman than I am.
Shut up. You know what I mean.
9:30 Club, DCist, music
In 9:30 Club, DCist, music, shameless self-promotion on September 28, 2009 at 12:59
Karen O at the 9:30 Club, 9.25.09
DCist has my review of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Friday-night 9:30 gig, but the real attraction is the phantasmagorical photography of The Artist Formely (?) Known as Information Leafblower, Mr. Kyle Gustafson, who shot the hell out of the show like he always does.
I wish the YYY’s were opening for U2 tomorrow night instead of Muse.
Discographically Speaking, music, Post Rock, The Washington Post, U2
In The Washington Post, music on September 25, 2009 at 08:45
Wherein on the occasion of U2’s latest ginormous roadshow descending upon our Nation’s Capital — well, Landover — your humble narrator attempts to quantify the relative merits of the U2 discography, minus live albums, compilations, EPs, soundtracks, side projects, mixtapes, or bootlegs.
Continuing from yesterday’s lesson RE: U2’s seventh through twelfth-best albums, we resume our countdown with No 6, after the jump.
Read the rest of this entry »
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Discographically Speaking, music, Post Rock, The Washington Post, U2
In The Washington Post, music on September 24, 2009 at 09:17
You might think that assessing the relative merits of every album by my favorite band since childhood would be no thang for a seasoned pro like me. That’s where you’d be wrong, Bono — er, boyo. Rating the U2 catalogue turned out to be as difficult and time-consuming as it is pointless.
Read the rest of this entry »
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
art, music, pop music, posters, The Washington Examiner
In music, shameless self-promotion on September 21, 2009 at 09:55
I chatted with artist and first-time documentary filmmaker Eileen Yaghoobian for a piece about this week’s DC premiere of Died Young, Stayed Pretty, her movie about gig poster artists. I’ve written about our local gig poster scene here in DC more than once, so it’s a subject close to my heart, and her flick is a lot of fun. It screens Thursday night at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Details here.
9:30 Club, Jay Farrar, music, Post Rock, Son Volt, The Washington Post, wilco
In 9:30 Club, The Washington Post, music on September 16, 2009 at 11:35
James Walbourne isn't pictured.
‘Scuse me, son, but I haven’t seen you hanging around with Chrissie Hynde lately?
Indeed. The pale, intense young fellow stage right at last night’s robust Son Volt gig at the 9:30 club was one James Walbourne, the British guitar prodigy whose serrated-edge leads make the current, boot-cut incarnation of The Pretenders so much fun. He’s even more valuable an addition to Son Volt, whose solid but often grayscale tunes — which aspire to be the iPhone era incarnation of Woody Guthrie’s dust-bowl ballads — tend to need the extra hooch more than Hynde’s do. Read the rest of this entry »
Dada, Merriweather Post Pavilion, music, surrealism, The Washington Post, Wayne Coyne
In The Washington Post, music, shameless self-promotion on August 31, 2009 at 09:10
Oklahoma’s Flaming Lips have subverted expectation of how a “rock” band should sound and behave for so long that the most radical performance they could give at this stage of their singular career would be merely to perform an hour-and-a-half of songs absent psychedelic videos, Yeti-costumed cheerleaders, or Mini Cooper-sized balloons full of confetti.
Still, no one was complaining at Merriweather Friday night when the Lips turned up with all their circus wagons full of Yippie ephemera in tow. Frontman Wayne Coyne was onstage 20 minutes before their performance began, helping to set up gear in full view of the tri-generational crowd. (He got a big cheer when he unpacked the plastic bubble he would soon inflate and enclose himself in for his customary walk-and-roll above the most pit.) Read the rest of this entry »
Jessica Hopper, music, The Washington Examiner, This American Life
In Uncategorized on August 24, 2009 at 09:15
I have a piece in today’s Examiner about Chicagoland music journalist and itinerant rocker / reformed publicist Jessica Hopper, who will be at Comet Ping Pong tonight at 1900 hours to read from her new book, The Girls Guide to Rocking. As its title implies, the tome tells all you aspiring Karen Os and Carrie Brownsteins everything you need to know. Jessica also wrote the influential essay “Emo: Where the Girls Aren’t” for Punk Planet a few years back. You can find her writing in the Chicago Reader, the Chicago Tribune, the L.A. Weekly and her blog.
Jessica also chooses the interstitial songs heard This American Life, which is, of course, one of my favorite things that has ever existed. See my April 2008 interview with creator and host Ira Glass and/or my review of his last speaking appearance in town. My interview with comic Mike Birbiglia, whose stories have been featured on TAL several times in the last year or so, will be up in a few weeks.
Read the rest of this entry »
Kim Deal, music, Post Rock, The Breeders, The Washington Post
In Uncategorized on August 24, 2009 at 09:11
If The Breeders were thought of as indie rock in 1993, when “Cannonball” was all over MTV and Last Splash was speedily going platinum, they’re really indie now. They self-released their latest offering, the four-song EP Fate to Fatal, even posting a video on their website of twin sister-singers Kim and Kelley Deal silk-screening the vinyl album sleeves by hand.
Their Friday night set at the Black Cat was a similarly homespun, unfussy affair, making no apologies for its wobbly pacing or slight duration: 65 minutes, with plenty of momentum-sapping interstitial fumbling. But the individual performances? Perfect in their imperfection, like so much about this band. The sisters’ elfin harmonies and the itchy maelstrom of Kelley’s guitar would home in on the same frequency for two-to-three-minute salvos of buzzing nirvana, collapsing again at the end of each tune.
Read the rest of this entry »
9:30 Club, M. Ward, music, Post Rock, The Washington Post
In Uncategorized on August 3, 2009 at 09:30
M. Ward at the Glastonbury Festival, 27 June 2009. Photo by Cavie78; used under Creative Commons license.
There’s an Old Navy’s worth of sartorial similes in which one could dress the songs of Portland retro-elegist M. Ward. But the one that fits best is to liken them to jeans or T-shirts “distressed” to look and feel older and more lived-in than they really are.
Ward’s ethereal, meant-to-sound-“found” alt-country-rock is soothing and undemanding; just soft-focus enough to hold his spot on the hipper-than-thou Merge Records label. It’s well-crafted. It’s listenable as the day is long. It just isn’t terribly exciting, particularly on a Friday night at an all-standing venue like the 9:30 club.
Read the rest of this entry »
Green Day, music, Post Rock, punk, The Washington Post, Verizon Center
In Uncategorized on July 30, 2009 at 16:45
Do-It-Yourself is forever cited as the governing mantra of punk, and sure enough, it inspired Green Day leader Billie Joe Armstrong to put his own band together 20-plus years ago. But on the evidence of the sturdy Bay Area trio’s combustible circus at the Verizon Center last night, Armstrong’s progression from Buzzcocks-style petulance to Townshendian hero rock had at least one side effect: He’s discovered the benefits of outsourcing.
In a stunt that felt more American Idol than American Idiot, the 37-year-old guyliner-wearing frontman summoned a half-dozen fans to share his stage. There were the two dudes he had up, separately, to sing competing versions of “Longview,” the 1994 megahit that brought punk’s DIY ethos into the bedroom. Later, he pulled up a sweaty young comer in white tube socks to play guitar on “Jesus of Suburbia.” The kid’s awkward appearance made it feel twice as triumphant when he nailed the song.
Read the rest of this entry »
bonus audio, Conversations, interviews, Jeff Tweedy, music, Washington Post, wilco
In Uncategorized on July 8, 2009 at 09:30
Jeff Tweedy maintains that Wilco is a collaborative enterprise, though he's the man who wears the hat.
I conducted this interview with Jeff Tweedy on June 17. It was excerpted for a “Conversations” box that appeared in the Paper of Record on Sunday, July 5. Here’s the interview in something close to its entirety, albeit lightly edited for clarity. It’s up on Post Rock, too. Wilco are at Wolf Trap tonight with Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band.
There are bands that have sold more records during the past decade than Wilco, but few have been the subject of more discussion among rock’s cognoscenti. Guided by the songs and voice of Jeff Tweedy, 41, every Wilco album since 1996’s Being There, (with the arguable exception of 2007’s Sky Blue Sky) has explored new subjects, textures, and song structures.
Read the rest of this entry »
Frank Sinatra, music, Post Rock, The Simpsons, The Washington Post, Tony Bennett, Wolf Trap
In Uncategorized on July 4, 2009 at 07:15
We’ll just get this out of the way, music lovers: Tony Bennett is, er, classic. As in: He was discovered by one Bob Hope. He’s got more years onstage than all the guys in Animal Collective put together. His guest appearance on The Simpsons was way back in Season Two.
So, yes. He is advanced. Eighty-two, in Earth years. But when he crooned “The Best Is Yet to Come” at Wolf Trap Thursday night, how could you not believe him? Read the rest of this entry »
Aung San Suu Kyi U2 360 Tour, Bono, megalomania, music, political activisim, U2
In Uncategorized on June 30, 2009 at 00:15
Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese agitator for Democracy, is now Aung San Suu Kyi, the Halloween mask.
U2’s big — stadiums-only big — tour opens in Barcelona tomorrow night. Read the rest of this entry »
Black Cat, bonus audio, Bruce Springsteen, Drive-By Truckers, Murdering Oscar, music, Patterson Hood, songwriting, The River
In Uncategorized on June 25, 2009 at 01:45
My preview of Drive-By Truckers frontman Patterson Hood’s gig with The Screwtopians at the Black Cat tonight is in today’s Examiner. It’s always a delight to talk to Patterson. We had an even longer, more freewheeling conversation two Sundays ago than when I interviewed him for DCist in May of 2008. Though the Examiner piece was focused on Murdering Oscar, his new-but-not-really “solo” album, we talked a lot about upcoming DBT projects, too. I hope I’ll be able to get that material out sometime soon.
Read the rest of this entry »
Bluegrass, country, Elvis Costello, Loretta Lynn, Lou Reed, Merle Haggard, music, Post Rock, roots, songwriting, The Washington Post, Wolf Trap
In Uncategorized on June 12, 2009 at 13:35
Elizabethan verbiage, Merriweather Post Pavillion, music, Post Rock, The Decemberists, The Washington Post
In Uncategorized on June 9, 2009 at 14:06
So, have you heard this new Decemberists record, The Hazards of Love? Dude. It’s an hour-long fantasy rock opera about a young squire who once suffered a vexing enchantment by a vengeful sprite of the wood, and whose lady faire — hey, where are you going? Come back! It’s good! Really!
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Brian Eno, dance, David Byrne, DCist, music, Wolf Trap
In Uncategorized on June 8, 2009 at 13:56
Every long-lived pop musician who achieves success as a young artist eventually confronts the legacy problem: How much of your back catalogue do you take with you when you hit the road to promote your new music?
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9:30 Club, bonus audio, John Doe, music, Post Rock, The Terminator, The Washington Post, X
In Uncategorized on June 7, 2009 at 15:47
The big, sad news out of Camp X last week — the great Los Angeles punkabilly band X, that is —was that singer Exene Cervenka, 53, has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. But there was neither sign nor mention of infirmity at the quartet’s typically rocket-powered gig at the 9:30 club Friday night, and not a lot of other chithat besides. The seminal foursome played just as they always have, and as every punk band should: Like they’ve got someplace else to be, five minutes ago.
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music, press releases, Rock Band, The Beatles, video games
In Uncategorized on June 1, 2009 at 18:15
I’ve never been much of a gamer. Well, not never, but not since I was about thirteen. Yes, I know that video games are the healthiest segment of the media business nowadays, and that some bands — Aerosmith is an oft-cited example — make more licensing their old hits and their likenesses to the makers of Rock Band than they do on their new music. (I also know that Little Steven loves it, or has at least said that he does in public.)
I’ve played Rock Band a handful of times, and I expected to dig it, but mostly it just makes me feel silly. Sillier than singing karaoke in a crowded bar does. Read the rest of this entry »
creative differences, Jay Bennett, Jeff Tweedy, music, wilco
In Uncategorized on May 26, 2009 at 11:45
Jay Bennett died on Saturday night. He was, I am increasingly convinced, the source of much of what I love about Wilco’s music, as the five albums made with his input — 1996’s Being There through 2001’s yankee hotel foxtrot — are the ones to which I always return. The records Wilco made on either side of the Jay Bennett era haven’t moved me nearly as much.
I attribute this more to Bennett’s pop sensibility and studio wizardry, which made a song like “Secret of the Sea” from Mermaid Ave. Vol. II what it was, than to his lead guitar work, which was, if more traditional than Jeff Tweedy’s, also a lot more fun to hear. Read the rest of this entry »
music, Post Rock, the 80s, The Bangles, The Washington Post
In Uncategorized on May 25, 2009 at 09:51
If your memory of The Bangles begins and ends with their two breakout hits, “Walk Like an Egyptian” and the Prince-penned “Manic Monday,” you could be forgiven for assuming the all-female band was primarily a studio creation like so many of their fellows in heavy rotation on MTV circa 1986. But you’d also be quite wrong. Read the rest of this entry »
Bruce Springsteen, concerts, faith, music, rock and roll, salvation
In Uncategorized on May 19, 2009 at 15:52
Bruce Sprinsteen at Verzion Center, Monday, May 18, 2009. Photo by Kyle Gustafson.
Better: Read this review on DCist, where you can enjoy the rest of the great Kyle “Information Leafblower” Gustafson’s fabulous concert photos.
Bruce Springsteen is still Working on a Theme.
Actually, it’s more or less the same theme he’s been working on at least since Darkness on the Edge of Town in 1978, when the theme morphed from, essentially:
This town is full of losers. Let’s you and me pull out of here to win!
Read the rest of this entry »
Bruce Springsteen, critcism, music, The Washington Post
In Uncategorized on May 18, 2009 at 03:34
. . . for which I will be departing directly, a porkpie-tip (though I’m more into Western shirts just now) to the Paper of Record’s ace pop critic Josh Fredom du Lac for posting all these old reviews of DC-area Springsteen concerts on the Post Rock blog. (Also for his interview with local boy and E Street Band guitarist Nils Lofgren, required reading for any E Street fan.) As someone who reads old rock journalism obsessively, I love this.
Read the rest of this entry »
blues, dvias, Etta James, music, Post Rock, Soul, The Washington Post
In Birchmere, The Washington Post, music on May 17, 2009 at 23:48
Sasha Fierce, keep your distance.
“Y’all know where Beyonce is?” demanded Etta James at the Birchmere Saturday night. The septugenarian sexpot is still cranky that the 27-year-old one-namer who portrayed her in the film “Cadillac Records” got to sing “At Last” for the President and the First Lady back in January.
Read the rest of this entry »
Leonard Cohen, Merriweather Post Pavilion, music, songwriting, The Washington Post
In The Washington Post, job insecurity, music, shameless self-promotion on May 12, 2009 at 12:25
Ladies and Gentlemen, opening for the serene and poetical Mr. Leonard Cohen this evening: the brilliant and genteel Mr. Leonard Cohen.
At Merriweather Monday night, under skies that might be called “Coheneque” — cold, rainy, despairing, but not without a solitary beauty — the spry 74-year-old* songwriter’s songwriter glided on-stage at 7:35, and sang for 65 minutes. Yes, sang. Save your jokes. He’s heard them all, and written some of the better ones himself.** Read the rest of this entry »
CD reviews, country, Emmylou Harris, music, The Washington Post
In The Washington Post, music, shameless self-promotion on June 19, 2008 at 22:17
Photo by Rocky Schenck.
My Weekend section debut is a review of Emmylou Harris’s fine new album, All I Intended to Be. I’m also covering her Wolf Trap show on Sunday; lucky me. And I actually interviewed her last week for a short profile, also out today.
Nice lady, she. Can sing a little, too.
Billy Joel, comment rage, Elton John, music, Nationals Park, The Washington Post
Sing Us a Song, You’re the Piano Repair Man
In Uncategorized on July 13, 2009 at 00:04The umpire calls it: Safe!
Safe as houses. Safe as milk. Safe as Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits. Hey, did Bruce Willis grow a goatee and take up the piano? Wait, that is Billy Joel!
For Nationals Park’s opener as a pop music venue, the reeling concert trade deployed two of its dwindling stock of big guns, Elton John and the “Uptown Girl” guy. The Rocket Man and the Piano Man began co-headlining their Face-numeral-two-to-Face tours in 1994, shortly after Joel stopped writing pop albums.
The lumbering double-header they brought to Washington Saturday night could have been staged in that year without any alteration to the 31-song setlist. Read the rest of this entry »