Music festival hip-check
With the sun quietly resting its head behind an adjacent chapel, Beirut's wunderkind Zach Condon graciously remarked over his gentle strumming, ""This might be the biggest crowd this ukulele has ever played for.""
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With the sun quietly resting its head behind an adjacent chapel, Beirut's wunderkind Zach Condon graciously remarked over his gentle strumming, ""This might be the biggest crowd this ukulele has ever played for.""
With the sun quietly resting its head behind an adjacent chapel, Beirut's wunderkind Zach Condon graciously remarked over his gentle strumming, This might be the biggest crowd this ukulele has ever played for.""
Hockey, the newest buzz band from Portland, Ore., make a compelling case that technology has made music an oversaturated medium. Although their name is far from Google-friendly, they seem to be relishing the Internet's ability to swarm them with new influences. As a result, their debut LP, Mind Chaos, is a muddled hodgepodge of styles that occasionally approaches brilliance but rarely achieves coherence.
With all due respect to the Boss, the Hold Steady are the new Bruce Springsteen. By masterfully depicting and living the dreams of millions of music lovers, they've managed to craft their own brand and become the new spokesband for the middle class. They write sing-along anthems tailored to amp up the enthusiasm of a crowd whose drink of choice is a double whiskey, Coke, no ice,"" which is an undeniably vast reservoir of listeners.
The Scottish are coming. Primarily fueled by the discoveries of Fat Cat Records, anthemic Scottish pop-rock is establishing itself as a legitimate genre, if not a full-blown movement. The newest rave, Edinburgh's We Were Promised Jetpacks, continue to climb the mountain of pounding percussion and throbbing guitars with their debut, These Four Walls.
It's mainly unfounded speculation, but I think the best way to describe White Rabbits' show at the High Noon Saloon Tuesday night is growing pains. If snobs like Vampire Weekend and their Ivy League brethren would have grown up in Brooklyn and opted to attend a liberal arts school, they would have followed a path very similar to that of White Rabbits. However, the fact that White Rabbits don't have closets full of cardigans or a collection of sailboats made following the surprise success of their 2007 debut, Fort Nightly, much more of a challenge. Without a sense of entitlement, they seem genuinely unsure about what we want from them.
Japandroids just might be the saviors of garage rock. Selfless and bursting with energy, they play music for all the right reasons. Heck, they streamed their entire discography for free on their Facebook page, including Post-Nothing, their newest release, months before its actual release. Self-described as ""2 sweethearts still naïve enough to think they'll never sell out,"" Japandroids are just like the band your two friends had in high school, only they're way, way better.
It was Portland Night at the High Noon Saloon Tuesday as Madison played host to three of Portland, Oregon's rising stars of the indie rock scene.
Art Brut seemed destined to be a one-album wonder. 2005's Bang Bang Rock & Roll synthesized caffeinated guitar hooks with concise sentiments, but the delicate balance between their forceful sound and their comprehensive tongue-in-cheekness was surely too tenuous to hold. Four years after their debut, though, Art Brut continue to defy the odds with their third LP. Art Brut vs. Satan picks up right where the others left off, adding yet another success to an already overachieving catalog.
Silversun Pickups received a lot of critical acclaim after releasing their debut, Carnavas, in 2006 for the mere fact that they were trying to revitalize the old Smashing Pumpkins sound. However, Carnavas was a success in theory more than in practice, and the hype surrounding the group was more focused on their potential than their achievements. On their follow-up, this year's Swoon, Silversun Pickups falls short of delivering on their promise by failing to capture the spirit of Smashing Pumpkins again, instead producing a sound unique only for its mundanity.
The Thermals' criminally underappreciated concept album, The Body, The Blood, The Machine, stole directly from George Orwell's ""1984,"" tweaking things just enough to make it a clear response to the Bush administration. Three years and a president later, Now We Can See is a refreshing return to form.
It's scientifically impossible to break an egg by squeezing it in one hand. Yet, there it is on the cover of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' new album It's Blitz!: Karen O's hand reaches in from the right and smashes that thing up, exhibiting a symbol of intimidating power and strength that YYY's have done their best to embody in their seven years on the scene. Both the assertive title and the cover art are a little misleading, though. It's Blitz! marks a distinct shift in sound from one of indie rock's most heralded groups.
Cursive's breakout album, 2003's The Ugly Organ, marked a stark change in approach from their debut, 1997's Such Blinding Stars for Starving Eyes. The manic instrumentation beneath frantic wails of old became a more controlled chaos, focused on thematic elements and presentation as much as angst and rebellion. Their new release, Mama, I'm Swollen, marks the farthest point from their beginning yet. At times droning, Mama misses the mark Cursive had established for themselves as the darlings of literate post-hardcore.
The album artwork for Neko Case's latest release, Middle Cyclone, depicts her crouching on the hood of a car brandishing a spear, a clear indication she is ready to joust. Whereas her previous artwork echoed the music's depiction of a melancholy (or barely conscious) songwriter, Middle Cyclone is Case's most poppy, if not most commercially ambitious, album to date. But do not let that scare you off.
Christopher Priest's novel ""The Prestige"" demonstrates the importance of showmanship in entertainment. Although Le Professeur de Magie created a magic trick to trump all magic tricks, he lacked the presentation to garner the appropriate level of acclaim. Meanwhile, The Great Danton could not perform the magic trick, but he could enrapture a theater with his performance. Le Professeur de Magie failed to garner the mass praise his illusion deserved because most magic fans were preoccupied with the display put on by The Great Danton. This distinction is often overlooked in music, yet it is hardly more obvious than on J.J. Cale's Roll On.
Nobody embraces entropy like Black Lips. Atlanta's most notorious rag-tag group of psych-punk rockers rifle through venues (and, more recently, countries) with rabid exuberance and an utter lack of regard for their own well-being, leaving an indelible mark on anyone fortunate enough to be on the receiving end of their physical tirades. Their 2007 opus and first studio LP released on Vice, Good Bad Not Evil, provided a more polished depiction of their signature hooks, each too voracious to approach three minutes. But on 200 Million Thousand, Black Lips sound more comfortable with themselves, allowing cohesiveness to displace their trust in tempo, and embellishing hooks beyond what an earlier Black Lips record might have permitted.
Beirut's March of the Zapotec and Realpeople Holland EP is a prime example of music best conveyed through vinyl. Their Eastern European-influenced brass orchestration sounds like it should be coming from a phonograph playing to each layer's rustic overtone; but more sharply, Zapotec/Holland is made for vinyl because of its stark dichotomy profiling two different cultures of people and music.
With the Black Keys, Dan Auerbach brought blues to the mainstream. On his solo project, Auerbach brings the mainstream to blues. That does not suggest that the Black Keys were the first blues band to have an impact on the mainstream, nor does it suggest that Keep it Hid is the beacon of blues folk. Rather, it signifies a new focus.
Nowadays the term buzz band"" has become something of a taboo. A well-received EP can carry a band farther than ever due to the heightened accessibility of the Internet, but too frequently it also spells an LP of unrealized hype for many bands coming up in this fashion. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart's 2007 self-titled EP didn't exactly burn up the charts, but it certainly grabbed the attention of those who heard it. Instead of taking this praise as an opportunity to rush out an LP of underdeveloped, overproduced songs, POBPAH took their time and crafted a masterpiece of early '90s indie pop in their eponymous debut LP.
It's fascinating to look back at the members of the Strokes now because of how every post-Strokes venture so perfectly encapsulates each member's role in the group. Albert Hammond Jr., the guitar-hook savant, Fabrizio Moretti, the champ of smooth rhythms, Nick Valensi, the musician by default and Julian Casablancas, the pure swagger. Unfortunately, with the debut of his side project, Nickel Eye, and first LP, The Time of the Assassins, Nikolai Fraiture has further affirmed himself as the boring guy in back.