-
The Dandy Warhols - performing Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia with special guests The Shivas
Tuesday, May 28 - 8:00pm
Mr. Smalls Theatre - Tickets on sale now!
"Twenty-thirteen marks the thirteenth anniversary of what we 'round these parts like to call The Last Great Classic Rock Album, one slab of plastic and ink labeled Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia. You guys know that one, right?
To celebrate the occasion, and in anticipation of the forthcoming reissue on cd, vinyl and ltd edition vinyl boxset, The Dandy Warhols have a few somethings special up their sleeves, up to and including what warrants my breathless words to you this very day: performance of Thirteen Tales LIVE in its perfect entirety right in front of your face. Yeah, pretty hot, huh?"
"Twenty-thirteen marks the thirteenth anniversary of what we 'round these parts like to call The Last Great Classic Rock Album, one slab of plastic and ink labeled Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia. You guys know that one, right?
To celebrate the occasion, and in anticipation of the forthcoming reissue on cd, vinyl and ltd edition vinyl boxset, The Dandy Warhols have a few somethings…
Read More
-
Metric
Wednesday, June 05 - 8:00pm
Mr. Smalls Theatre - Tickets on sale now!
METRIC is Emily Haines, Jimmy Shaw, Joshua Winstead and Joules Scott-Key. An independent rock and roll band empowered by their innovative approach to the music business, METRIC self-released their last album FANTASIES on five continents without the benefit of a label and earned themselves multiple radio hits around the world with songs such as "Gimme Sympathy," "Gold Guns Girls," and "Help I'm Alive." They went on to sell over a million singles and 500,000 albums worldwide.
FANTASIES earned METRIC "Album of the Year" and "Band of the Year" at the Canadian Juno Awards, and the band finished 2010 with their music featured in two major Hollywood films including Scott Pilgrim vs The World and the Twilight Saga: Eclipse. The Twilight soundtrack was nominated for a Grammy Award and landed METRIC on the Academy Award nomination short list in 2011 for the theme song they co-wrote with composer Howard Shore. They have since partnered up with Howard Shore on another project: The score to David Cronenberg's latest film Cosmopolis, composed by Shore and performed by METRIC, due out this year.
Their fifth full-length studio album SYNTHETICA is currently available. Sonically futuristic yet organic, this album sounds like the culmination of all the music the band has made in their 10 years together. First single "Youth Without Youth" examines the fraying social state with a bristling energy and a driving beat. "Breathing Underwater" and "Speed the Collapse" both deliver on the classic METRIC chorus of soaring melancholy, while the lyrics for "Lost Kitten" and "Clone" call out some bad behavior and the consequences. Hard rocking title track "Synthetica" offers an epic conclusion to suspenseful album opener "Artificial Noctune."
METRIC is Emily Haines, Jimmy Shaw, Joshua Winstead and Joules Scott-Key. An independent rock and roll band empowered by their innovative approach to the music business, METRIC self-released their last album FANTASIES on five continents without the benefit of a label and earned themselves multiple radio hits around the world with songs such as "Gimme Sympathy," "Gold Guns Girls," and "Help…
Read More
-
SOLD OUT - Fall Out Boy with special guests NK
Tuesday, May 21 - 7:00pm
Stage AE Outdoors - Tickets For The Outdoor Show Are Now Sold Out - Thank you!!
Fall Out Boy is back.
Ending a three-year hiatus that commenced following a 2009 greatest-hits set, the popular emo-rock band announced Monday that it would release a new album and launch a North American tour in May.
"This isn't a reunion, because we never broke up," the group said in a statement. "We needed to plug back in and make some music that matters to us."
Fall Out Boy -- singer-guitarist Patrick Stump, bassist Pete Wentz, guitarist Joe Trohman and drummer Andy Hurley -- is scheduled to release "Save Rock and Roll" on May 7; it will be the band's first studio disc since "Folie a Deux" in 2008. The album's lead single, "My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light Em Up)," was released to iTunes on Monday and is available to stream via YouTube below.
On May 14, the group -- which after forming in 2001 went on to platinum sales and a nomination for the new artist Grammy Award -- is to begin a six-week tour in Milwaukee. First, though, it'll return to the stage this week with three small-scale club gigs: Monday night in Fall Out Boy's hometown of Chicago, Tuesday in New York and Thursday at L.A.'s Roxy. (Tickets for the Roxy show appeared to be sold out early Monday afternoon.) The band is set to return to L.A. for a concert at the Wiltern on June 13.
During their time apart, Fall Out Boy's members pursued a variety of side projects. Wentz led the electronic outfit Black Cards, while Trohman and Hurley played with the Damned Things, a heavy-metal supergroup also featuring members of Anthrax and Every Time I Die. Most promisingly, Stump released an excellent solo album, 2011's "Soul Punk," that nonetheless sank without a trace.
- by Mikael Wood, Los Angeles Times - http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-fall-out-boy-single-album-tour-20130204,0,1074610.story
Fall Out Boy is back.
Ending a three-year hiatus that commenced following a 2009 greatest-hits set, the popular emo-rock band announced Monday that it would release a new album and launch a North American tour in May.
"This isn't a reunion, because we never broke up," the group said in a statement. "We needed to plug back in and make some music that matters to us."
…
Read More
-
JEFF The Brotherhood with special guests Hunters, Chrome Moses
Friday, May 24 - 10:00pm
Brillobox - Tickets On Sale Now!
The best rock 'n' roll, the kind that gets under your skin and makes all your senses heighten, is simple and comprised of hard work and unrelenting passion-all of which JEFF The Brotherhood embody and exemplify on their Warner Bros. Records debut LP, Hypnotic Nights. Brothers Jake and Jamin Orrall have been playing together since they were little kids and formed the group when they were in high school. The boys grew up with a voracious appetite for any music they could get their hands on.
The band incorporates a DIY ethos in everything they do, including their raucous live shows. JEFF have been touring tirelessly for the past 10 years, playing any and all conceivable venues-from basements and backyard sheds to Bonnaroo and The Bowery Ballroom. The duo clocked in over 400 shows in the past two years alone and have shared bills with Best Coast, Fucked Up, Pentagram, The Kills, The Greenhornes and more.
When it comes to creating their desired sound, JEFF believes that less is more. This idea is reflected in Jake's decision to play a guitar with only three strings. Jake explains, "When we started the band, I didn't know how to play guitar," he remembers, "I thought, in order to teach myself, it would be easier to play if I simplified it. I started with two strings, but you can't really play any chords that way, so I added a third string [which added] this interesting limitation that forced me to create my own style and approach to the instrument."
These musical intricacies all come together on Hypnotic Nights, which was co-produced by Jake, Jamin and musician/producer Dan Auerbach (Dr. John, The Ettes). The album was recorded in Nashville at Dan's Easy Eye Sound Studio in early 2012. JEFF entered the studio focused and prepared with a clear vision for the album they wanted to make, completing Hypnotic Nights in only one week. For any other band, completing an album in seven days would seem like a challenging feat, but for JEFF those seven days felt like a luxury when compared to the amount of time spent on making 2009's Heavy Days and 2011's We are The Champions, which were released on the band's own label Infinity Cat Recordings. Each took only three days to make.
"We've never worked with a producer before, so this was the first time we'd ever had any outside input," says Jamin. "It was Dan's first co-production, too, and it really worked. He just hung out, let us do our thing and helped when we needed it." Adds Jake, "We write songs without anyone else in mind, so Dan brought in this idea of, 'Well, you guys do what you do and I'll present it so everyone else will understand.'"
The result is Hypnotic Nights, an album that uniquely blends elements of indie, punk, garage, and psychedelic rock. The first single, "Sixpack," is a fuzzed-out rocker driven by reverb-heavy riffs and propulsive drumbeats. Songs like "Leave Me Out" and "Dark Energy" venture into new musical territory for JEFF, but the band isn't afraid of experimentation. After all, it's this imagination and ingenuity that makes Dan Auerbach plainly say, "JEFF The Brotherhood are the next big name in showbiz."
In the end, Jake and Jamin just want to write great songs, play great shows and inspire fans to rock along with them. For JEFF The Brotherhood, blood is thicker than water-and music runs through the band's veins.
The best rock 'n' roll, the kind that gets under your skin and makes all your senses heighten, is simple and comprised of hard work and unrelenting passion-all of which JEFF The Brotherhood embody and exemplify on their Warner Bros. Records debut LP, Hypnotic Nights. Brothers Jake and Jamin Orrall have been playing together since they were little kids and formed the group when they were…
Read More
-
Opus One & Obvious present The Bloody Beetroots Live with special guests Valentino Khan, Tenova
Saturday, May 25 - 9:00pm
Mr. Smalls Theatre - Tickets on sale now!
Bloody Beetroots: From Electro-punk to Evolving Contemporary Music
Bloody Beetroots is Sir Bob Cornelius Rifo, the Italian producer/DJ born the same year as punk rock, a fact made clear by the"1977" tattooed across his chest. In fact, that tattoo is the most identifying public feature of Rifo, whose preference for wearing masks (like other cultural provocateurs from techno militants Underground Resistance to "V is for Vendetta") defers the spotlight to the various music projects and manifestoes that emanate from his Bloody Beetroots production epicenter. There's Bloody Beetroots Deathcrew 77, or BLOODY BEETROOTS LIVE, his "electro-punk" band, whose live shows are as much political empowerment rallies as concerts. Then there's 2011's Church of Noise, Rifo's "cultural-musical movement" side project with Dennis Lyxzén of Swedish hardcore punk-pioneers Refused and The (International) Noise Conspiracy, with its siren-call of strings, bass and lyrical manifesto: "...It only takes a sound to change the beaten path/It only takes love and courage to take it all back"...
This past year, however, has seen the global ascendance of Bloody Beetroots DJ set on the global festival circuit, with Rifo becoming a contrarian crowd-pleaser mixing up electro, techno and house music with rockabilly, punk and classical. In his DJ guise, Rifo toured his native Italy with Tommy Tea, played Australia's Stereosonic Festival and headlined NYE '11 at LA's Together as One, as well as WMC's Ultra Music Festival in Miami, Solidays Festival in Paris, MELT! Festival Berlin, Extrema in Eindhoven, as well as Tomorrowland, HARD Fest LA, and Electric Zoo in NYC. "The DJ sets became a DJ show," Rifo says. "For the first time I focused on being more of an entertainer, trying to create a bond between me and the public building emotions with different musical styles without losing the fun of dance."
That "building emotions with different styles without losing the fun of dance" has been central to the Bloody Beetroots narrative, and Rifo's penchant for redlining frequencies, eloquent politics and composerly arrangements make BBR a consistent anomaly amidst the cocooned trends and coddled pedigrees of dance music. After fits and starts in Italian garage-punk bands, Rifo launched Bloody Beetroots in 2007. He soon won the support of electro house heavyweights Etienne de Crecy and Alex Gopher in Europe, and Dim Mak's Steve Aoki stateside, with each production and remix more elaborate and ambitious than the last.
Bloody Beetroots discography culminated with 2009's full-length Romborama, which evidenced Rifo's uncanny knack for synergizing sonics and sensibilities from The Damned and Debussy to create a platform for larger socio-political historiography and cultural histrionics. There was the homage to Italian Futurism of "Rombo," the cinematic soundtrack to Nazi resistance of "Domino," even the sci-fi fantasy anarchism of writer Michael Moorcock in "Cornelius" and the Trekkie techie nerd joy of smearing sounds that is simply, cerebellum-meltingly "Warp 1.9."
But after the pendulum swing from 2011's anarchism-fueled Church of Noise project through the pop life of 2012's triumphant DJ shows, Bloody Beetroots' current trajectory is to embrace contemporary music to the point of throttling it.
"My challenge this time is to give values and colors to contemporary music," Rifo says. "The music 'business' now more than ever has lowered the quality of listening erasing the true meaning of music. 'EDM'? Let's call it 'electronic contemporary music.' EDM is about dance, Bloody Beetroots is about electronic contemporary music."
To that end, summer 2012 saw the release of "Rocksteady," a redlining, rod-throwing rush of BPMs with a video to match. But it's the new single and video, "Chronicles of a Fallen Love," with vocals from Greta Svabo Bech, the Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter also featured on deadmau5's "Raise Your Weapon," that is possibly Rifo's most subersive and succinct commentary yet:
"I remember the way you used to dance/Then I remember that you will never dance again," Bech sings. It's as much an elegy as anthem. And that's precisely the point.
"It reflects the decadence of our time," Rifo says. "But Greta expresses this with an elegance with the word 'love.' It's a study and interpretation of the contemporary world." With, of course, a typically vertigo-inducing drop.
"I'm in a process for the conquest of my musical freedom," Rifo says explaining "Chronicles of a Fallen Love"expanded sonic palette. "Prog-rock, house, progressive, post-punk and classical are part of my color palette, and you hear that," Rifo explains. "My intent is to collect cultural elements to fill what I see as a hole in the current generation's sensibilities. Music is becoming plastic because we have lost the value of waiting. Nowadays, everything is offered immediately; we can't fully enjoy music it because society wants us to be more economical with our time, to spend, to consume and collect the useless. But history teaches us that the waiting and expectation are two allies to forge emotions and frustrations - for both the listener and for the composer."
The end result, he promises, is not only songs as beautiful, brutal, and poignant as "Chronicles," but a BBR sound as grounded in the creative richness of music history as it is committed to no less than moving humanity forward, one momentous track at a time.
"We have no real revolutions, no real speakers and the masses are brainwashed by a lazy and fat system. To be contemporary, music needs to study and understand the past to create a better future. We need commitment, perseverance and strength. Dance music or whatever the fuck you want to call it is the new means of mass communication," Rifo says. "I don't have a marketing strategy, I have an evolutionary strategy. I put music out to analyze my own communication to improve it to get to the point. It's how we evolve." The listener and the composer.
Bloody Beetroots: From Electro-punk to Evolving Contemporary Music
Bloody Beetroots is Sir Bob Cornelius Rifo, the Italian producer/DJ born the same year as punk rock, a fact made clear by the"1977" tattooed across his chest. In fact, that tattoo is the most identifying public feature of Rifo, whose preference for wearing masks (like other cultural provocateurs from techno militants…
Read More
-
Marina And The Diamonds with special guest Charli XCX (Moved from Mr. Smalls - all tickets honored)
Tuesday, May 28 - 7:00pm
Stage AE - Tickets on sale now!
Marina and the Diamonds, really just Marina Diamandis, was born in Wales to Welsh and Greek parents in 1986, although she has often claimed to be from Ancient Greece. After dropping out of four different music courses at four different universities, Marina decided to make her own way in music, and began writing her own unique brand of left-field pop songs under her new stage name. Early on, she claimed that her inspirations were Britney Spears and Gwen Stefani -- who she often covered at live gigs -- but her songs have a soulful edge pointing to a deeper source of influence.
Her piano/keyboard-driven songs vary from melancholic ballads to out-and-out glam-pop, but her unique voice and melodic style are omnipresent in her music. Essentially a solo artist, Marina wrote the bulk of her early material alone, arranging it for a band to ensure her live shows carried the full energy of her studio recordings. Quick to distance herself from comparisons to the rest of the female solo artists who broke through in 2009, Marina was also open about voicing her opinions on more established musical peers including Lily Allen and Kate Nash. In interviews she often showed a dislike of being grouped together with other emerging artists, especially when she had nothing in common with them except gender. The variety in her music made it hard to classify or pigeonhole, and comparisons were made with artists as diverse as Regina Spektor and Elvis Costello. The startling "cuckoo!" refrain of "Mowgli's Road" and the introspective balladry of "Obsessions" could not be more different, but it was the ever-present charm in Marina's music that brought her cult success in the early part of her career.
Her first single, "Obsessions/Mowgli's Road" was issued by indie label Neon Gold in the U.S., also home to electro-indie Americans Passion Pit, and was followed later in 2009 by The Crown Jewels EP, which contained three new songs, including an electronic remix of fan favorite "I Am Not a Robot." After playing the exhausting British festival circuit in the summer of 2009, Marina briefly retired to the studio to polish off her debut album, 2010's The Family Jewels, before quickly hitting the road again. The group's second, full-length studio outing, Electra Heart, was preceded by the singles " Primadonna" and "Radioactive", the latter of which appeared only on the deluxe version of the album.
Marina and the Diamonds, really just Marina Diamandis, was born in Wales to Welsh and Greek parents in 1986, although she has often claimed to be from Ancient Greece. After dropping out of four different music courses at four different universities, Marina decided to make her own way in music, and began writing her own unique brand of left-field pop songs under her new stage name. Early…
Read More
-
Peter Case with special guest The Damaged Pies (solo)
Thursday, May 30 - 8:00pm
Club Cafe - Tickets On Sale Now!
Singer/songwriter, 3 time Grammy nominee, Producer, Author, leader of the Plimsouls, member of the Nerves.
Peter Case's work sets the bar for authenticity, passion and imagination and spans a number of genres, including folk, blues, and rock. Raised in Buffalo, NY, Case came to the Bay area in 1973 and worked as a street musician and played in the seminal power pop group The Nerves, before moving to Los Angeles to form the Plimsouls, landing a deal with Geffen Records.
The Plimsouls achieved success with the single, "A Million Miles Away," but broke up shortly after. Case's 1986 solo Geffen record revealed deep roots in folk and blues, and earned him his first Grammy nomination for the song "Old Blue Car" as well as the Number 1 spot on the NY Time's 1986 Best CDs list. Six CDs later, Case earned another nomination for Let Us Now Praise Sleepy John, a remarkable collection of songs that features Case's voice and a single guitar. It's clear that Case is a major talent on the Americana troubadour landscape.
Case's 2010 CD, Wig emphasized the rock and blues side of Case's repertoire, while 2007's Let Us Now Praise Sleepy John demonstrates what Case can do with just his voice and a guitar. With or without a backing band, Case delivers his songs with both intense passion and introspective nuance.
Singer/songwriter, 3 time Grammy nominee, Producer, Author, leader of the Plimsouls, member of the Nerves.
Peter Case's work sets the bar for authenticity, passion and imagination and spans a number of genres, including folk, blues, and rock. Raised in Buffalo, NY, Case came to the Bay area in 1973 and worked as a street musician and played in the seminal power pop group The Nerves,…
Read More
-
Club Cafe Sunday Brunch - Please Note - No Sunday Brunch on May 26, Closed for Memorial Day
Sunday, June 02 - 10:30am-2:00pm
Club Cafe
Please return Wed May 31 For Our Next Week's Specials!
Check out the complete Sunday Brunch food & cocktail menus: http://clubcafelive.com/img/banners/brunchmenu.pdf
Club Café, a landmark of Pittsburgh's South Side, is now hosting Sunday Brunch with an international twist. With the curtains drawn up, soft daylight pours into the recently remodeled music venue, bringing a new feel to the room so familiar to its concert patrons. The concept of the European Café comes to Pittsburgh here, combining imported ingredients with fresh, locally sourced items to keep prices reasonable for comfortable dining with subtle refinement. Head Chef Monique Achaia Ruvolo and craft cocktail wizard Abigail Smith have joined forces to create a menu that fills the soul and excites the palate. Open every Sunday from 10:30am with last seating at 2:00pm.
Please return Wed May 31 For Our Next Week's Specials!
Check out the complete Sunday Brunch food & cocktail menus: http://clubcafelive.com/img/banners/brunchmenu.pdf
Club Café, a landmark of Pittsburgh's South Side, is now hosting Sunday Brunch with an international twist. With the curtains drawn up,…
Read More
-
Passion Pit with special guests Cults
Thursday, June 06 - 7:00pm
Stage AE - Tickets on sale now!
Getting to Where We Belong: The Making of Passion Pit's Gossamer
"Hideaway"
Hundreds of hipsters, college kids and music biz schmoozers gather under a massive white tent to see Passion Pit. It is an afternoon shindig hosted by the blog Brooklyn Vegan, at the 2009 South by Southwest festival. The sun is setting and it is a classic make-it-or-break-it moment for Passion Pit, who is headlining despite having just released a lone EP, Chunk of Change. The crowd is giddy on both free Izze fruit soda and the Boston band's bubbly pop. Between songs, frontman Michael Angelakos runs his fingers and sweat through his thick, curly, Greek hair. He starts to rant-about a shirt he bought for his new girlfriend, about veganism, about inane blog comments. After a few awkward minutes, the music kicks back in. By the end of the performance, Michael is rolling on a red Persian rug amongst many, many keyboard and effects pedal cables, clutching his microphone, wailing in his signature helium falsetto. The audience cheers, the Tweeters tweet, the bloggers blog ecstatically.
Michael leaves the stage and begins crying. He has made it, and he has broken.
When the festival ends, the rest of the Passion Pit guys van back to Massachusetts. Michael stays behind in Texas. He calls a friend for support and begs her to come be with him. In a panic, he buys her a plane ticket. It is for the wrong year, 2010. He calls his parents in Buffalo, New York. "I'm going to a hospital," he tells them.
Michael is standing with his father outside a hospital in Houston, looking at mock-ups of album artwork on his cellphone. Passion Pit has just signed to Columbia Records, and a debut album, Manners, is due in a couple months. The record cover is green and messy and murky. Michael is not crazy about it, but there is no time, as the hospital is about to take his phone away from him. "It looks fine, Michael," his dad says. "Just go."
In the hospital, Michael is not allowed to talk about work. "Up there, onstage, you're alone, darling, " a nurse tells him. "And if your life evolves into ruin, everyone will watch what you're doing." Michael thinks these would make good lyrics. His friends smuggle in positive reviews of Manners. When one magazine blesses the record with an 8 out of ten, he almost cries again.
-------------------
"I'll Be Alright"
This first sentence was not always the first. Originally, I was going to start with a simile: Michael Angelakos' brain is like a shaken can of spray paint with no nozzle. Millions of particles of bright ideas bounce around in there. When inspiration punctures his head, art sprays out. Often, someone else must puncture the can, or smash it. Only, if you hold Michael's bursting skull up to a canvas, you would not get a cloudy splatter of dripping bits. The paint would land perfectly in a detailed map of the knotty Tokyo subway system.
You can hear this "I'll Be Alright," the second song on Gossamer, in which a sudden seizure of skittering programmed drums swarms over diced synths. "My brain is racing and I feel like I'll explode!" Michael sings amidst the orchestral glitch. He compares it to the sensation you feel after an orgasm.
Writing about creativity is like architecturing about dance. When I sat down to describe Michael's thought process, a can of paint formed in my mind for whatever reason. After that, I thought no nozzle, because I like the alliteration. Then I tacked on a subject and verb. I start with a phrase, an image or a rhythm of words and construct around it. I'm not a beginning-to-end sentence builder. Michael asked me to write this piece because he intuited, correctly, that my writing is akin to his song crafting.
A spark of a Passion Pit song might be found in the fuzz of a guitar pedal. It might be a stumbled-upon drum loop, the tintinnabulation of layered chimes or some gibberish harmony he's humming. It might be one of the 200 scratch melodies Michael has stored on his iPhone. Later, Michael might sit at a keyboard and work out a melody. "I do things backwards," he admits, "and I'm a maximalist." Indeed. The songs on Gossamer carry anywhere from 60 to 200 instrumental tracks, according to Michael. If you ask Alex Aldi, Michael's engineer, they number 80 to 120. (The maximum output on their version of ProTools is 120 tracks.) Whatever, it's a fuckton. But it's important to talk to Alex.
-------------------
"Constant Conversations"
When Alex and Michael set forth to record Gossamer in January of 2011, the two first rented a studio near the Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn's DUMBO neighborhood. Well, it was technically an office space. The new Passion Pit headquarters shared the building with digital media start-ups, dot.coms, that sort of thing, which were not appreciative of gut-rumbling bass bumps rattling the uninsulated walls.
"We'd blast these huge R. Kelly-like booms," Michael says. "There would be fists pounding the walls," Alex remembers.
The duo began working from 6PM to 6AM, partly to avoid pissing off the neighbors, partly because Michael is "really OCD about who's hearing me" In the wee hours, Michael would toil at his array of keyboards, sequencers and computers.
The fruit of this first stage is the stunning slow jam "Constant Conversations." It's the kind of stank-faced, flesh-slapping R&B groove that makes a name like "Passion Pit" sound positively filthy. That is, until you pay attention to the lyrics. They are not nocturnal; they are dark. "I'm drunker than before / They told me drinking doesn't make me nice," Michael sings. "Well, you're standing in the kitchen and you're pouring out my drink."
It's important to pay attention to the lyrics.
-------------------
"Slip-ups in this town are like a sentence to life." -"Mirrored Sea"
What makes Southern California's orange sherbet sunsets so gorgeous? It's the life-strangling smog. Toxic clouds can sometimes lead to beauty.
In June of 2011, Michael headed to L.A. to continue work on Gossamer with a variety of big name producers. One producer would bring in pretty girls to sit on a couch in the studio. He would play back tracks at top volume. If the girls got up and danced, it was a hit.
Michael slept in another studio beneath the control room, where he could hear some dude fucking people's brains out all night. The walls were marble.
Michael slept where Fiona Apple once slept. Michael recorded in a fancy house outside of which photographers snapped models in lingerie. Michael worked with a prominent hip-hop producer. They tinkered with "Hideaway," an upbeat tune set to a speech a nurse once gave him. Michael played the hip-hop producer his demo. "You don't need anyone to produce you," the producer humbly admitted. Michael flew back to Brooklyn, ending what he now calls his "June gloom."
"Everyone let's me make these mistakes," Michael says.
-------------------
"Carried Away"
"He plays music so loud in his headphones, I can hear everything he's doing. When he's working, he won't get up to use the bathroom or to take a sip of water. Watching him is watching someone in their element, someone doing what they were born to do. But it can be a waiting game for him to get an idea. Then, bam, ninety minutes later there's this amazing finished song. He does stuff on the fly. Michael thrives on that, the immediate pressure. Everyone else game-plans. The game-plan is in Michael's head and he's twenty steps ahead. Conveying that is difficult. It's information overload.'" - engineer Alex Aldi
-------------------
"It's Not My Fault, I'm Happy"
Aside from the sarcastic "Love Is Greed," all the songs on Gossamer are one-hundred-percent true. I know this because I've compared the lyric sheet to a 3,672 word life story Michael emailed me. It begins, "A main talking point seems to be about the fact that there is a dichotomy in my music." It ends with, "The next day I quit drinking." I read it one evening while listening to "It's Not My Fault I'm Happy" repeatedly as tears welled in my eyes.
Unlike some songwriters, Michael does not write in character. He compares the album to a collection of John Cheever stories. "It's non-fiction, but dramatized. It's euphoric pain," he tells me.
The record is more intimate than that. Listening and reading along, I feel as if I am reading his chart. I am eavesdropping. I am putting him inside one of the TSA's full-body millimeter wave scanners.
Ah, I think, "Take A Walk" must be about his father and his father's father, his Papou, who sold old roses and owned a candy kitchen, using his savings to bring his village to America.
Hearing the celestas and xylophones skittering about the opening of "Love Is Greed," I envision bolts of blue electricity flashing across Michael's grey matter. The systolic, panicked pulse of "Mirrored Sea" is awash in adrenaline and amphetamine salts. The pomp and silver twinkle of "On My Way" is confetti for a forthcoming wedding.
"Are you sure you want to be this open," Alex asked when he first heard the lyrics.
"This music is so on point with myself, I don't know that I could do it any other way," Michael replied.
Yes, Michael's music juxtaposes dark subject matter and ebullient pop. It is at once escape and reality. It is also consciously androgynous. In the past, this was suitably captured with Michael's falsetto. Now the unisexuality is enhanced by Erato, a female Swedish a cappella trio, two brunettes and one blonde, who went viral with a performance of Robyn's "Call Your Girlfriend" on empty yogurt cups. Michael likes the idea of us not being able to discern if he or they are singing in certain parts. This is not duality or dichotomy. This is depth and honesty. Human beings are emotional, messy and murky creatures.
-------------------
"On My Way"
It is a misconception that Manners was written for a girl. It was a record about Michael. Gossamer was written for a couple. "It's an album about making an album that's straining the relationship that's helping you make that album. But say it better than that," he tells me.
Kristy is an editor for a prominent food website. Her face appears throughout the Gossamer artwork. The back cover is a letter Michael wrote to her. He proposes to her in the chorus of "On My Way." Originally the tune was called "Ballerina."
"Just believe in me Kristina," he sings. "All these demons, I can beat 'em."
-------------------
"Where We Belong"
Upon returning to Brooklyn from California, Michael reconnected with producer Chris Zane, who helmed Manners. Here is a sporting analogy, hockey specifically, according to Michael:
"Chris is the general manager and Alex is the coach. Without Chris I wouldn't have been able to do this record. Without Alex I wouldn't have been able to do anything."
Alex is ten years Michael's senior, Chris a little older. Michaels refers to them as his older brother and his older, older brother. The trio hunkered down in Gigantic Studios and started over on Gossamer as a mild winter fell upon New York. Michael admits he will often redo songs "like thirteen times. It's one of my worst habits."
Manners was largely built on three keyboards. There was a conscious effort this time to avoid the same process, to use more organic ingredients. Composer Nico Muhly dropped in, dueling pianos with Michael on "Love Is Greed" and arranging strings. That being said, there were still dozens of keyboards, walls of keyboards, "some Herbie Hancock shit." Yamahas, Moogs, Arps, MS-20s, SH-101s, Junos, Prophets, a Japanese piano. They flipped over a couch in the control room to stuff in even more keyboards. Ask Michael to explain the differences between these many keyboards and he synesthetically describes it by texture: "One is felt, one is 100% cotton, one is tweed..." Alex would watch and listen in a busted La-Z-Boy recliner permanently stuck in the recumbent position.
"I did a calculation of the time I spent on this record. It was 4% of my life," Alex tells me. He has recently heard the finished record. We chat about the sequence of the songs and debate the decision to cut a string section that originally opened the album. "It dawned on me this morning" he says. "After having a best friend for thirteen months, Michael is gone. I'm like, what the fuck do I do now?"
When I hang up, I must immediately play Gossamer again.
Written by, Brent DiCrescenzo
Getting to Where We Belong: The Making of Passion Pit's Gossamer
"Hideaway"
Hundreds of hipsters, college kids and music biz schmoozers gather under a massive white tent to see Passion Pit. It is an afternoon shindig hosted by the blog Brooklyn Vegan, at the 2009 South by Southwest festival. The sun is setting and it is a classic make-it-or-break-it moment for Passion Pit,…
Read More
-
FLAG |||| Original members Keith Morris, Chuck Dukowski, Bill Stevenson, and Dez Cadena with Stephen Egerton performing the music of Black Flag with special guests Killer Of Sheep, Code Orange Kids, Hounds Of Hate
Friday, June 07 - 7:00pm
Stage AE - Tickets On Sale Now!
On January 27, 1979, at a Moose Lodge in Redondo Beach, California, Black Flag took the stage for the first time. Whipping up as much meat energy as possible, they didn't so much play songs as create rapid-fire, rhythmic drives.
Everything was short. Stripped-down. A wall of distortion, built on a relentless series of riffs. And vocalist Keith Morris ran around the stage like an escaped lunatic, eventually wrapping himself in one of the venue's American flags like it was a straitjacket. It was hardcore punk-rock before anyone ever started calling it that. It was great. You could ask anyone who was there.
Although Black Flag's line-up -- Morris, bassist Chuck Dukowski, guitarist Greg Ginn, and drummer Robo -- would splinter within a year, the band's ever-shifting membership released a half-dozen LPs (including the now-classic Damaged, My War, and Slip It In), two live albums, two compilations (Everything Went Black and The First Four Years), and several EPs that incorporated heavy metal, free jazz, and break-beats into the mix before they finally imploded in 1986.
Along the way, Black Flag wrote dozens of enduring songs, ranging from the sarcastic ("TV Party" and the Morris co-write "Wasted") to the anthemic
("Rise Above" and the Dukowski-authored "My War") to "Gimme Gimme Gimme" and "Nervous Breakdown."
Black Flag also headlined sold-out shows at L.A.'s Olympic Auditorium, the Hollywood Palladium, and the Santa Monica Civic, and saw an early live performance immortalized in the ground-breaking 1979 punk-rock documentary, The Decline Of Western Civilization.
Meanwhile, Dukowski served as co-owner and booking agent at the band's own SST Records label, which became one of America's most influential independent labels, issuing more than 100 records from such future stars as the Minutemen, Sonic Youth, Soundgarden, Husker Du, Bad Brains, and the Meat Puppets, for
openers. More importantly, Black Flag and SST's acts hit the road, building a nationwide touring circuit for indie recording artists that continues to this day.
This D.I.Y. ethos, along with the band's anti-rock-star attitude and refusal to follow any fashion dictates, would be their greatest legacy.
At least until Morris, Dukowski, drummer Bill Stevenson (who played in Black Flag from 1981 to 1985), and guitarist Stephen Egerton (who's been a member of the Stevenson-founded Descendents and ALL since 1985) reunited for a surprise performance at L.A. promoter Goldenvoice's 30th anniversary concert
in December 2011.
Inspired by the crowd's enthusiastic reaction, Morris (whose post-Black Flag career includes fronting the Circle Jerks and, most recently, hardcore revivalists OFF!), Dukowski (who, after exiting Black Flag in 1983, founded SWA, Wurm, United Gang Members, October Faction, and, his current outfit, the Chuck Dukowski Sextet), Stevenson, and Egerton joined forces with Dez Cadena (who sang lead, then played guitar in Black Flag from 1980 to 1983, before fronting DC3 and joining the Misfits in 2001) decided to extend the legacy, working up a repertoire of 30 classic Black Flag songs with an eye toward future live performances.
Taking their cue from the black flag of anarchy, they're calling themselves FLAG. Long may they wave.
On January 27, 1979, at a Moose Lodge in Redondo Beach, California, Black Flag took the stage for the first time. Whipping up as much meat energy as possible, they didn't so much play songs as create rapid-fire, rhythmic drives.
Everything was short. Stripped-down. A wall of distortion, built on a relentless series of riffs. And vocalist Keith Morris ran around the stage like an…
Read More
-
An Evening with the California Guitar Trio
Early Show - Friday, June 07 - 7:00pm
Club Cafe - Tickets On Sale Now!
California Guitar Trio's stunning virtuosity and sly sense of humor have earned them a rabid following and wide notoriety, with significant crossover in the progressive, acoustic and classical music scenes. If there was a Most Valuable Player award in the bass world, Tony Levin would be a top contender. Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd, Paul Simon, and John Lennon are just a few of the legends who rely on Levin for his highly versatile and melodic approach. Levin is best-known as a member of avant-rockers King Crimson.
California Guitar Trio's stunning virtuosity and sly sense of humor have earned them a rabid following and wide notoriety, with significant crossover in the progressive, acoustic and classical music scenes. If there was a Most Valuable Player award in the bass world, Tony Levin would be a top contender. Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd, Paul Simon, and John Lennon are just a few of the legends…
Read More
-
Cold War Kids
Saturday, June 08 - 7:00pm
Stage AE - Tickets On Sale Now!
Cold War Kids means International Blues. We began in August '04 with friends, jangly guitar, hand claps, and a Harmony amp in a storage room atop Mulberry Street restaurant in downtown Fullerton, CA. For the first practices, having instruments was secondary to stomping and chanting; Clanging on heat pipes, thumping on plywood walls. Hollering into tape recorders. Slipping and swaying into alleyways and juke joints of yesteryear. Tapping in to the American dustbowl and British maritime. On the restaurants roof the sound and feeling was cultivated and burned, built and hallowed out, painted and stripped to the primer.
Almost three years have passed and we haven't let up since the starting gun fired. The album "Robbers & Cowards" was released in the US in October '06 on Downtown and the rest of the world in February '07 on V2. 'Why even have apartments?' We often ask ourselves as we have toured with the vim of a family reunion brawl across the US, UK, Europe, Australia and Japan.
Cold War Kids strive to make honest songs about human experience in orchards and hotel rooms, laundromats and churches, sea ports and school halls. We love the songs of Dylan, Nina Simone, and the Velvet Underground and make our own, which we like to think, are pretty original.
Cold War Kids means International Blues. We began in August '04 with friends, jangly guitar, hand claps, and a Harmony amp in a storage room atop Mulberry Street restaurant in downtown Fullerton, CA. For the first practices, having instruments was secondary to stomping and chanting; Clanging on heat pipes, thumping on plywood walls. Hollering into tape recorders. Slipping and swaying into…
Read More
-
Silversun Pickups with guests Surfer Blood, Blondfire
Sunday, June 09 - 7:00pm
Stage AE - Tickets On Sale Now!
Neck of the Woods sees Silversun Pickups lighting out for the territories, stretching the boundaries of their exhilarating psychedelia with confidence, invention, and undeniable ambition. Having long made their bones as masters of widescreen power, the Los Angeles-based band's third Dangerbird Records album takes their filmic vision to another level entirely - this is full-on IMAX rock 'n' roll, in stereoscopic 3D and Sensurround. From the low-frequency thrust and motorik pulsebeat that drives "Mean Spirits" to the mesmerizing first single, "Bloody Mary (Nerve Endings)," the album fairly detonates with high definition creativity. Roomier rhythms and judiciously applied electronic shadings form a blissed out base camp for the band's electrifying aural adventures, the elegiac landscapes of Neck of the Woods revealing an unbridled expansion of the already impressive SSPU sound.
"There's a playfulness," says singer/guitarist/songwriter Brian Aubert, "a certain kind of freethinking experimentation that we were fooling around with. We wanted to just let it all fly."
Silversun Pickups - that is, Aubert, bassist Nikki Monninger, keyboardist Joe Lester, and drummer Christopher Guanlao - emerged with 2005's Pikul EP and soon caught the attention of the wider world with the following year's Carnavas. That collection (featuring the breakthrough single, "Lazy Eye") only barely prepared the way for the band's blockbuster second album, 2009's Swoon. Tracks such as "Panic Switch" and "The Royal We" established Silversun Pickups as a potent force in 21st Century Rock, further confirmed by an 18-month tour that included innumerable headline dates, festival sets, and a 2009 Grammy Award nod for "Best New Artist."
The new album's genesis began as Aubert visited cities and hamlets from Italy to Iceland while on a brief hiatus from the non-stop touring that followed Swoon. Aubert's European impressions fueled a ream of new songs and late night home demos, quietly recorded as his wife slept in the room next door.
"I got this feedback loop going on in my head," he says, "thinking that these are just towns people are from. It might look kind of magical to me, but I'm definitely an outsider looking in. This is just normal for them, and in a lot of ways, it's very much the same as where I grew up."
While undeniably proud of Swoon and its world conquering success, Silversun Pickups also knew that the album had only touched upon their music's infinite possibilities. When the band eventually reconvened in their Silverlake rehearsal space, all involved were determined to take a more open attitude towards their songs, giving their imagination full, unbridled rein.
"We immediately said, no matter how these songs come out, let's try to catch up with them and not try to squeeze them down," Aubert says. "Let's see how and why they are the way they are. Instead of pushing them in unnatural directions, let's let them breathe. Even if we find them strange, let's try and figure them out."
To fuel the project with a fresh energy, the band decided to collaborate with a new producer. The goal, Aubert says, was "to throw something into the mix that might make us feel odd, in the same way the demos and the music we were thinking about were making us feel odd." They met with a number of top studio hands before realizing that they had already found the right man for the job in Jacknife Lee, whom they had previously encountered while contributing guest vocals to their pals Snow Patrol's most recent collection. Lee brought both infectious energy and an atypical recording model to the table, offering the band legroom to improvise and invent without constraint.
"Jacknife said, 'Let's get in there, set up everybody's stuff, and just attack this record from the ground up,'" Aubert says. "That's exactly what we wanted to do. We weren't really interested in making a record where we rehearsed everything over and over again, then came in and laid it down. We wanted to be able to screw with things."
In October 2011, Silversun Pickups embarked on ten weeks of sessions at Lee's studio in Topanga - which, as kismet would have it, was Aubert's childhood hometown, providing flashbulb memories that offered ironic counterpoint to his already dislocated lyricism. The recording pushed the band to the brink, imbuing them with both aesthetic intensity and increased unity.
"It kept everybody involved the entire time," Aubert says. "Christopher said to me, 'This is the most involved I've been on any of our albums,' because his drums were set up all ten weeks. Usually the drummer is there for the first seven days and then he's gone. This time, we never knew when he'd have to add something all of a sudden."
SSPU pulled apart their swelling songcraft, rending their trademark reverb and distortion to reveal a grander, more dreamlike sound. The oblique duality of Aubert's songs is matched by a similar sonic tack, simultaneously glacial and volcanic, intimate and overwhelming. The skyscraping scope promised by their previous albums is amplified on such tracks as the closing "Out of Breath," its multi-layered volatility daubed with unconcealed angst and ill-tempered aggression.
"We wanted to play with negative space," Aubert says. "We're always trying to achieve dynamic, but sometimes it gets lost in the shuffle. This time we just pulled things in different directions and made things crisper and more angular. We wanted the louder stuff to sound cranky."
Epic though they may be, songs like "Here We Are (Chancer)" retain the "nakedness" of Aubert's home demos, even so far as incorporating many of his original drum machine tracks. Even as they developed synthetic textures and electronic components, the band were resolved that the album would retain what Aubert calls "the human sound in the machine." That elemental humanity informs Neck of the Woods to its very core as Aubert unpacks evocative imagery that reverberates with the recognition of his transitory place in the universe and the realization that he is least at home in his own hometown.
"These songs started forming in places that were completely foreign to me," Aubert says, "and then ended in the place that I grew up, an environment that could not be more familiar. I went through my whole childhood and teenage years in the weeks we were there making the record."
Beginning with the unnervingly hypnotic "Skin Graph," Neck of the Woods boasts a wintry, suspenseful quality that Aubert links to such cinematic manifestations of dread as The Shining and Let The Right One In. Songs like "Make Believe" and "The Pit" - with its bluer than "Blue Monday" beats - are desultory and somewhat adrift, haunted by memory and the inability to escape one's past no matter what heights you ascend to in adulthood.
"There are certain things about growing up that are horrific," Aubert says, "things that are inside you, that make you up - those are the things that intrigue me the most."
Silversun Pickups are now preparing to take this powerfully personal work on the road, marking yet another manifestation of the multiple contradictions of being in a band.
"This is the moment where the introverted side is gone," he says. "Everything is going to be big from here on in. You've got to get out of your head, because for this part of it, that's the last place you want to be."
From inception to fruition, a series of happy accidents led Silversun Pickups to the transcendent Neck of the Woods. Every step on the journey was marked by true synchronicity in action - the stars aligned, clouds parted, the cosmos smiling down upon the band. For their part, Silversun Pickups take a more pragmatic view.
"Some people believe in The Force," Aubert says, "but I'm more like Han Solo - I think it's just dumb luck! We definitely prepared for if the luck came, but that doesn't mean that anything we did necessarily had that much to do with how well things went. I don't know what we did to deserve it, but we're thankful."
Neck of the Woods sees Silversun Pickups lighting out for the territories, stretching the boundaries of their exhilarating psychedelia with confidence, invention, and undeniable ambition. Having long made their bones as masters of widescreen power, the Los Angeles-based band's third Dangerbird Records album takes their filmic vision to another level entirely - this is full-on IMAX rock 'n'…
Read More
-
The National with special guests Dirty Projectors
Tuesday, June 11 - 7:00pm
Stage AE Outdoors - Tickets On Sale Now!
The National's fifth album, High Violet, was released on 4AD on May 11th, 2010. It was the first to be recorded at the band's own studio in the Ditmas Park section of Brooklyn, with mixing by long time associate Peter Katis at his Tarquin Studios in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Pulses and impulses pull against each other creating a balance of tension. Let's call it musical tensegrity: engineered to stand up in unlikely ways, the album is a triumph of sonic architecture; adorned with unexpected, alchemical, and happenstance details, it is an ornamental wonder. Cathartic, raw and reflective, the record reveals ever deeper musical and lyrical wonders with each listen.
Formed in 1999, the Ohio-raised, Brooklyn-based band consists of vocalist Matt Berninger fronting two pairs of brothers: Aaron (guitar, bass, piano) and Bryce Dessner (guitar), and Scott (bass, guitar) and Bryan Devendorf (drums). Their first full-lengths, The National and Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers, and a crucial mini-album, Cherry Tree, preceded their signing to Beggars Banquet in 2004. Alligator (2005), included underground anthem "Mr. November," and raised their profile as the National grew into an incendiary live band. Boxer (2007), featuring songs like "Fake Empire", "Mistaken For Strangers" and "Start A War," sold over three times as many copies as its predecessor and saw them transformed from underground stars into an indie rock institution: they began the album cycle opening for the Arcade Fire and with guest appearance on major television shows such as the Late Show with David Letterman. By the time their busy season in support of Boxer came to a close they had become a headline attraction in their own right - REM picked them as a crucial part of a US arena tour; and the Barack Obama campaign turned "Fake Empire" into an unstated anthem for his presidential run, using it in the soundtrack to the promotional video Signs Of Hope And Change, and as background music during his victory rally in Chicago's Grant Park.
As the first decade of the 21st century came to a close both Boxer and Alligator made countless "album of the decade" lists and their members began to occupy a still larger cultural footprint. In the period between Boxer and High Violet, Aaron and Bryce produced 2009's Dark Was The Night, a 31-track album to benefit the Red Hot Organization. Featuring contributions from Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, Grizzly Bear, Yeasayer, and many others, the record has raised close to $1,000,000 for numerous AIDS-related charities, including an emergency grant of $150,000 to Haiti's Partners In Health after that country's calamitous earthquake. A related Radio City Music Hall concert quickly sold out and found The National performing alongside David Byrne, Dirty Projectors, Feist, and Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings. Next the Brooklyn Academy Of Music commissioned the brothers to write and perform a 70-minute through-composed song cycle at the Howard Gilman Opera House, accompanying a film by visual artist Matthew Ritchie. The piece - titled The Long Count - was performed by a bespoke orchestra and sung by Matt Berninger, Kim and Kelley Deal (Breeders, Pixies) and Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond). More recently, in March 2010, Bryce's Music Now event, a boutique festival in the band's hometown, Cincinnati, Ohio celebrated its fifth anniversary, and he co-curated the second annual Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee. Anticipation for The National's next move has grown to a fever pitch.
"The music for High Violet was made in a parallel time frame to The Long Count so there was some back and forth between the two," says Aaron. "We were writing and sending stuff to Matt over a period of time."
"I was stockpiling," singer Matt Berninger explains. "After all the touring for Boxer, nobody wanted to dive back in to being in a band right away. It took a while to get my brain cooking. Aaron and Bryce always have creative outlets, but my wife and I had a baby girl at the beginning of 2009, so I unplugged from music and focused on family a little. Then gradually I'd walk around writing cornerstones of lyrics for all the sketches they'd sent me. It was a drip-by-drip, trickle-through process."
What made possible this newly relaxed working method was the construction of the band's new studio behind Aaron's old Victorian house. In the summer of 2008, the band decided to invest in improving a garage in his backyard, a long-decaying structure built in the 1920s. "The studio meant things could be done at any pace we wanted," says Matt. "That the [Dessner] guys had so much on their plate meant less anxiety and more space. There was a different vibe."
"For the first time, we had access to a really great home studio so we were now creating the shape of the sound-world ourselves," says Aaron. "We could capture the spontaneity of first takes and preserve the roughness of that but we could also re-do things endlessly if we wanted. The record has texture -- a thick, layered, shifting feel that we discovered through that kind of experimentation. The rawness of the garage recordings also gives the whole thing an important sense of humility." While many of the songs went through successive generations of evolution, a few are based on Aaron's original demos, when certain "accidents" couldn't be recaptured. The striking opening track, "Terrible Love," was based on an "accidental" guitar sound.
When Matt began sifting through these experiments to pick songs for finishing, he was drawn in different directions than the band had been in the past, both sonically and thematically. "I was attracted to more ugly tones and rhythms, not the usual sweet spots the band has liked," he says. In giving feedback on the initial tracks, he expressed a desire to hear music that sounded more like "hot tar" or "loose wool."
A personal, confessional element is intrinsic to Matt's lyricism, but High Violet's vocals take a more communal perspective this time out. He explains: "There's more of an 'us' than an 'I.' The perspective is less singular. "Maybe that has to do with having a baby and family." This is most evident on "Afraid Of Everyone", a chilling response to America's polarized political & civic cultures. The album's collective aspect extends to the guest appearances from Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Sufjan Stevens, Richard Reed Parry (Arcade Fire), Padma Newsome (Clogs), Nico Muhly, and Thomas Bartlett (Doveman) - many of whom contribute to the high-voiced chorus that pops up here and again throughout the record. Some of these contributions were coincidental - the outgrowth of social visits to the neighborhood while the recording took place.
"We started out trying to make a light and happy record, but it just didn't happen," says Matt. "This album is catchier and more fun than our other records, and bleaker in its ideas and themes." The first single, "Bloodbuzz Ohio," is a rip-roaring rock song and an elegy to things the realization that you'll never be a teenager again. "Conversation 16" hovers on the brink of frustration and doom, "Runaway" is the subtlest of love songs, and "Lemonworld" hails the value of hope, fun and fantasy. "I prefer misquotes to the actual lyrics," says Matt. "It gives the songs more dimensions when people hear something else..."
"We always agonize over what we're doing," says Aaron trying to summarize his thoughts about this music. "It's not hi-fi and orchestral but at the same time it's not garage rock, even though ideas from both of those worlds are important elements of what we do. Somehow we create our own little world, and it works, even though sometimes it shouldn't. The process can be difficult, but eventually something beautiful and cohesive will emerge. Making something heartfelt is our only concern."
The National's fifth album, High Violet, was released on 4AD on May 11th, 2010. It was the first to be recorded at the band's own studio in the Ditmas Park section of Brooklyn, with mixing by long time associate Peter Katis at his Tarquin Studios in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Pulses and impulses pull against each other creating a balance of tension. Let's call it musical tensegrity: engineered…
Read More
-
SOLD OUT - Of Monsters And Men with special guests Half Moon Run
Wednesday, June 12 - 7:00pm
Stage AE Outdoors - Tickets are 100% Sold Out - Thank You All!
Of Monsters and Men is an amiable group of five day dreamers who craft folkie pop songs. But last year, the normally mild-mannered six pack transformed into total rock stars after stomping out their competition during Musiktilraunir, a yearly battle of the bands in their native Iceland.
"We just kind of...won," recalls co-singer/guitarist Nanna Bryndis Hilmarsdottir. "We weren't expecting it at all. So I said, 'Everybody come to my place!'" Beer-swilling friends spilled out of her flat. "I was like, 'Oh fuck, my neighbors aren't liking me right now.'"
Those neighbors won't be making noise complaints anymore. With the group's bright, trumpeting single "Little Talks" winning over one blog at a time, Nanna and her bandmates (co-singer/guitarist Ragnar "Raggi" Porhallsson, guitarist Brynjar Leifsson, drummer Arnar Rosenkranz Hilmarsson, and bassist Kristjan Pall Kristjansson) are well on their way to becoming citizens of the world.
Their rapid rise transpired in just one year. Nanna, who began as the acoustic act Songbird, recruited extra hands to bolster her sound for a solo show. She liked how her vocals commingled with Raggi's, so they started writing songs together and in 2010 morphed into Of Monsters and Men. As victors of 2010's Musiktilraunir, the new group earned a slot on the influential Iceland Airwaves festival later that year, followed by Seattle's radio station KEXP posting "Little Talks" from a Living Room Session filmed there, setting the telltale ripple effect in motion.
By the summer of 2011 "Little Talks" hit No. 1 in the band's native country, and "people around the world seemed to be listening to us," marvels Raggi. The band was asked to perform again at Iceland Airwaves 2011, where KEXP then anointed the group as "easily the most buzzed about band." Though their reach is growing broader, the group's appeal has remained distinct: Their music is as fantastical as it is pretty. For inspiration, they often reference random stories they've read. The chanting, tribal "Six Weeks" was inspired by the true tale of American frontiersman Hugh Glass, seemingly left for dead after 86ing a bear that attacked him. Explains Nanna, giggling: "I was reading a post about the six most badass guys in history." As for the swelling, epic "From Finner"? "It's about a whale that has a house on its back" says Raggi "on which people travel across the ocean, exploring different places and having adventures." They also dig deeper, past legends of grizzly men and whale riders. "Little Talks," for instance, explores loneliness and insanity, while "Love Love Love" ruefully ruminates on heartbreak. "If you listen to the lyrics, they're not as uplifting," he says. "But our music is meant to be fun to sing along to."
In September 2011, Of Monsters and Men threw another party-a more thoughtful gathering to celebrate their full-length debut, My Head Is an Animal. (The album, which was released in Iceland and hit No 1 there soon after, was released worldwide in April 2012.) For both occasions, they cut out animal masks for the attendees to wear, making them makeshift monster-men/women. "Iceland can be a very isolated country and that translates to the music," Nanna says, adding,"We get stuck in our little world".
Of Monsters and Men is an amiable group of five day dreamers who craft folkie pop songs. But last year, the normally mild-mannered six pack transformed into total rock stars after stomping out their competition during Musiktilraunir, a yearly battle of the bands in their native Iceland.
"We just kind of...won," recalls co-singer/guitarist Nanna Bryndis Hilmarsdottir. "We weren't…
Read More
-
Say Anything: Rarities and More Tour 2013 with special guest Eisley, HRVRD, I The Mighty
Tuesday, June 25 - 6:00pm
Stage AE - Tickets On Sale Now!
Say Anything has been making odd, unclassifiable indie rock music since they were 14 or 15 years old, playing strangely literate and loud rock, characterized by what one might imagine if Larry David fronted a Fugazi cover band with the members of Queen. Not that that's a stretch or anything.
Having been birthed from the indie/punk boom of the early twenty-first century, Say Anything rose to prominence with their (oddly) popular record ...Is a Real Boy and somehow broke the "pretty boy punk" mold by establishing a career that thrived somewhere between music your pretentious college student of an older brother would like and the loud crap that your little brother uses to annoy him with. Say Anything followed that record up with the equally eclectic and lengthy, In Defense of the Genre and their exceedingly bratty (hopefully in a good way) self-titled LP. Say Anything will release their highly anticipated fourth studio album, Anarchy, My Dear in March 2012
through Equal Vision Records.
All together, those records sold almost half a million copies and were illegally downloaded by even more people, who were too broke to pay for them but still really dug the band. Those listeners did however, care enough to go see Say Anything play, which allowed for them to contribute to a reliably chaotic, cathartic live experience. Say Anything has toured heavily with other weird bands such as Thrice, Manchester Orchestra, mewithoutYou, Saves the Day, Biffy Clyro and Eisley, among many others, and has established themselves as one of the few bands nowadays who end up as sweaty, busted up and bruised after a show as the people who are actually watching them.
After ending a long relationship with the large corporation who put out their records for many years, Say Anything has signed with the aforementioned amazing and independent label, Equal Vision Records - who actually want the band to play whatever they want to play and have it be as neurotic and strange as they want it to be. Say Anything recorded Anarchy, My Dear in August 2011 with Tim O'Heir (the eccentric and brilliant gentleman who produced their first record) and has committed to playing music in this band until they finally, once again, are forced to wear diapers.
Say Anything has been making odd, unclassifiable indie rock music since they were 14 or 15 years old, playing strangely literate and loud rock, characterized by what one might imagine if Larry David fronted a Fugazi cover band with the members of Queen. Not that that's a stretch or anything.
Having been birthed from the indie/punk boom of the early twenty-first century, Say Anything…
Read More
-
The Warhol Sound Series presents Belle And Sebastian with special guests Yo La Tengo
Saturday, July 13 - 7:00pm
Stage AE Outdoors - Tickets On Sale Now!
Belle And Sebastian, Summer 2013.
Stuart Murdoch - vocals, guitars, keyboards
Stevie Jackson - vocals, guitars
Chris Geddes - keyboards
Richard Colburn - drums
Sarah Martin - keyboards, violin, flute, vocals
Mick Cooke - bass guitar, trumpet
Bobby Kildea - guitars, bass guitar
Since being launched on the River Clyde in Glasgow in 1996 the good ship Belle And Sebastian has sailed far and wide on the oceans of international indie-pop, stockpiling a treasure trove of gold
and silver records, a loyal legion of fans and critical kudos by the barrel-load.
The current line-up has been in place for more than 10 years, selling over 3 million albums, releasing a dozen singles and playing countless sold-out concerts around the world. During this
period the band also moved from their original label for the UK and Europe, Jeepster - through which they released five studio albums - to Rough Trade.
Moving to Rough Trade cleared the way for the band to collaborate with producer Trevor Horn in 2003 on Dear Catastrophe Waitress, their fourth gold-selling record after debut Tigermilk (1996) If
You're Feeling Sinister (1996) and The Boy With The Arab Strap (1998). All three singles from the album reached the UK top 20.
Three years later, the band decamped to California to record The Life Pursuit with Beck producer Tony Hoffer, a record that took B&S into the UK album top 10 for the first time and went on to sell
more than a half a million copies globally. A key highlight of the touring for the group's seventh long player was a sold-out show with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, where they
played to an audience of 18,000.
B&S repeated the formula of The Life Pursuit in 2010 with Belle And Sebastian Write About Love, recording in California with Hoffer. Notable guests on the album include Norah Jones and actress
Carey Mulligan, a long-time B&S fan. In the UK, Write About Love equalled its predecessor's album chart position of number 8.
The latest instalment in the illustrious recording career of Belle And Sebastian comes with the release of The Third Eye Centre in June 2013, a gathering of rarities and B-sides from the past
decade. Then, after touring festivals this summer, the band intend to get straight back into the studio. Look out for more from Scotland's greatest export in 2014.
Belle And Sebastian, Summer 2013.
Stuart Murdoch - vocals, guitars, keyboards
Stevie Jackson - vocals, guitars
Chris Geddes - keyboards
Richard Colburn - drums
Sarah Martin - keyboards, violin, flute, vocals
Mick Cooke - bass guitar, trumpet
Bobby Kildea - guitars, bass guitar
Since being launched on the River Clyde in Glasgow in 1996 the good ship Belle…
Read More
-
The Flaming Lips with special guests Spiritualized
Tuesday, July 16 - 6:30pm
Stage AE - Tickets On Sale Now!
The Flaming Lips are an American rock band formed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1983. Instrumentally, their sound contains lush, multi-layered, psychedelic rock arrangements, but lyrically their compositions show elements of space rock, including unusual song and album titles-such as "What Is the Light? (An Untested Hypothesis Suggesting That the Chemical [In Our Brains] by Which We Are Able to Experience the Sensation of Being in Love Is the Same Chemical That Caused the "Big Bang" That Was the Birth of the Accelerating Universe)". They are also acclaimed for their elaborate live shows, which feature costumes, balloons, puppets, video projections, complex stage light configurations, giant hands, large amounts of confetti, and frontman Wayne Coyne's signature man-sized plastic bubble, in which he traverses the audience. In 2002, Q magazine named The Flaming Lips one of the "50 Bands to See Before You Die."
The band is best known for its associations with 1960s and 1970s psychedelic subculture, with elements of this culture permeating the group's instrumentation, effects, and composition. Coyne's lyrics, in particular, both reference and embody the fascination with the science fiction and space opera genres of fiction that were popular during the golden age of psychedelic subculture. His lyrical style tends to use the imagery and plot conventions of space opera to frame more abstract themes about the unfolding cycles of romantic love, highlighting its vulnerability while delving into its metaphysical implications.
The group recorded several albums and EPs on an indie label, Restless, in the 1980s and early 1990s. After signing to Warner Brothers, they scored a hit in 1993 with "She Don't Use Jelly". Although it has been their only hit single in the U.S., the band has maintained critical respect and, to a lesser extent, commercial viability through albums such as 1999's The Soft Bulletin (which was NME magazine's Album of the Year) and 2002's Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. They have had more hit singles in the UK and Europe than in the U.S. In February 2007, they were nominated for a 2007 BRIT Award in the "Best International Act" category. By 2007, the group garnered three Grammy Awards, including two for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. -Wikipedia
The Flaming Lips are an American rock band formed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1983. Instrumentally, their sound contains lush, multi-layered, psychedelic rock arrangements, but lyrically their compositions show elements of space rock, including unusual song and album titles-such as "What Is the Light? (An Untested Hypothesis Suggesting That the Chemical [In Our Brains] by Which We Are…
Read More
-
SOLD OUT - fun. with guests Tegan And Sara
Thursday, July 18 - 7:00pm
Stage AE Outdoors - All Tickets are Sold Out - Thank You!!!
It may be tough to imagine an outdoor show under the stars when it's 30 degrees out, but summer is just around the corner and fun. will be embarking on their Most Nights summer tour on July 6th in Toronto, ON. It's a fitting kickoff city because fun.'s Canadian friends, Tegan and Sara, will be opening almost every show on the tour...
Tegan and Sara have been one of my favorite bands for a very long time. I remember when I discovered them - we were in LA recording Aim and Ignite and at that point everything I was listening to had been made before 1980. I was having a real "everything modern sucks" kind of chip on my shoulder moment. Discovering The Con not only changed my life the way a brilliant album does, it also renewed my faith in modern music. Tegan and Sara greatly impacted the way I think about writing and recording music at the moment that fun. was forming and for me, that makes it extra special that we get to tour together this summer.
Beyond my personal experience, their new album Heartthrob is absolutely incredible and the three of us are so thrilled to hear it live every night this summer!!!! - Jack
This may be the last North American tour of the Some Nights album cycle so the band is looking forward to seeing all of you.
-------------------------------------
Following the Format's breakup in 2008, frontman Nate Ruess took his songwriting skills to Steel Train's Jack Antonoff and Anathallo's Andrew Dost, both of whom shared a similar affinity for vintage pop music and quirky, melodic hooks. The trio began a series of collaborations in Antonoff's parents' living room and soon enlisted the help of producer Steven McDonald, who recorded their work and handled bass duties. After enlisting the help of former Jellyfish keyboardist Robert Joseph Manning, Jr., who arranged several tracks, the bandmates completed work on their first record. Dubbing themselves Fun., the group introduced their Queen and ELO-influenced big pop sound in 2009 with the debut album Aim and Ignite. In 2012, Fun. returned with its sophomore effort, Some Nights. The album was produced by Jeff Bhasker, who worked on Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. The album drew much inspiration from hip-hop, and West in particular, while staying true to their roots and blowing their sound up to impressively large proportions. The record's first single, "We Are Young," featured vocals by Janelle Monae and reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100.
It may be tough to imagine an outdoor show under the stars when it's 30 degrees out, but summer is just around the corner and fun. will be embarking on their Most Nights summer tour on July 6th in Toronto, ON. It's a fitting kickoff city because fun.'s Canadian friends, Tegan and Sara, will be opening almost every show on the tour...
Tegan and Sara have been one of my favorite bands…
Read More
-
Gogol Bordello
Sunday, July 28 - 7:00pm
Stage AE - Tickets On Sale Now!
Internationally renowned gypsy punk rock group Gogol Bordello return with their sixth full-length album Pura Vida Conspiracy via ATO Records on July 23. Produced by Andrew Scheps, the new album was recorded in El Paso, Texas at Sonic Ranch Studios and is a powerful collection of 12 surging new songs. In celebration of May Day, an ancient public holiday known for raucous celebrations, Gogol Bordello offer up a stream of their rebellious new song "Malandrino" to get the party started.
The album's title is derived from a Spanish slang phrase for "pure life," which is a theme that resonates throughout the new material. The disc's opener, "We Rise Again," introduces the album's limitless, all-embracing themes instantly, centered on a chorus of "Borders are scars on face of the planet." The new songs are infused with ideas rooted in Eastern philosophy but also search for a means of joining fragmented parts and persons, and of creating a worldwide consciousness.
"For me music is a way to explore human potential," Hutz says. "And that's my main interest in life - human potential. Everyone knows there's something inside of us that we're not using. How do we get it? How do we reach it? Every single person knows that there's something and nobody knows what it is. So at one point I said to myself, I'm gonna get down and get it."
Gogol Bordello has spent the last decade getting down with that energy through their meteoric live shows and has earned a solid reputation as "the hottest global touring act to come out of New York (Billboard)" and "the world's most riotous live band (Rolling Stone)." Their wildly energetic live shows are celebrated by fans worldwide and have brought them to nearly every corner of the globe and to the main stage of festivals like Coachella, Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, Roskilde, Rock am Ring, Reading and Leeds to name just a few. In addition, Gogol Bordello's recordings have earned them critical acclaim worldwide and have attracted some of the most respected collaborators and producers including 2005's Gypsy Punks: Underdog World Strike, produced by indie legend Steve Albini, 2007's SUPER TARANTA! (produced by Victor Van Vugt) and declared by music critic Robert Christgau as "the best rock album of the decade. Period." and 2010's Trans-Continental Hustle produced by Rick Rubin.
Internationally renowned gypsy punk rock group Gogol Bordello return with their sixth full-length album Pura Vida Conspiracy via ATO Records on July 23. Produced by Andrew Scheps, the new album was recorded in El Paso, Texas at Sonic Ranch Studios and is a powerful collection of 12 surging new songs. In celebration of May Day, an ancient public holiday known for raucous celebrations, Gogol…
Read More
-
The Black Crowes / Tedeschi Trucks Band w/ The London Souls
Wednesday, August 07 - 5:30pm
Stage AE Outdoors - Tickets On Sale Now!
THE BLACK CROWES and TEDESCHI TRUCKS BAND have announced a co-headlining tour, with special guests The London Souls, running July 19 in Nashville, TN through August 15 in Rochester Hills, MI. Tickets go on sale Friday, April 12 at 10:00AM local (except for Nashville, which goes on sale Friday, April 26).
THE BLACK CROWES have sold over 35 million albums and are known as one of rock's best live acts. They're currently touring the U.S. on their "Lay Down With Number 13" tour, their first tour since recently ending a two-year hiatus. The in-progress tour launched with five sold-out U.K. shows and began this week in the U.S. and continues through June 2. After that, the group will return to Europe for a leg of dates June 18 to July 6, including headlining shows, festivals and two stadium concerts with Bruce Springsteen. The iconic and influential band-Chris Robinson (lead vocals, guitar), Rich Robinson (guitar, vocals), Steve Gorman (drums), Sven Pipien (bass), Adam MacDougall (keyboards) and new member Jackie Greene (guitar, vocals)-are reaching deep inside their songbook and extensive catalog, performing greatly varied set lists.
The band recently released WISER FOR THE TIME, which features a mammoth eight sides on four vinyl albums containing 26 songs-15 acoustic and 11 electric-from THE BLACK CROWES' five-night, sold-out NYC performances in the fall of 2010. These never-released-before versions are also available as a double album digital download. The WISER FOR THE TIME track listing can be found on www.blackcrowes.com
TEDESCHI TRUCKS BAND, the 11-piece ensemble led by husband-wife team Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi, have proven themselves one of the most uplifting acts on the road today. Formed in 2010, TEDESCHI TRUCKS BAND delivers a hearty roots-rich musical mix fronted by Trucks' signature slide guitar sound and Tedeschi's pliant, honey-to-husk voice. The band kicked off 2013 in the studio where they recorded their second studio album before hitting the road again. They recently wrapped up five shows in Australia and are back on tour in the U.S. this spring before launching the summer tour.
TEDESCHI TRUCKS BAND'S debut album, Revelator-praised as a "4-star masterpiece" by Rolling Stone-won a Grammy for Best Blues Album in 2012 while Trucks himself was also honored with a lifetime Grammy for his longstanding membership in the Allman Brothers Band. With the band firing on all cylinders, they released their first live album in May of 2012-Everybody's Talkin-a double CD set of originals and vibrant covers that showcases the band's dynamic energy on stage. On the heels of the album's release they toured the U.S. and Canada including a run of dates with B.B. King and a headlining spot at Newport Jazz Festival. The band's new album is slated for release summer of 2013.
THE BLACK CROWES and TEDESCHI TRUCKS BAND have announced a co-headlining tour, with special guests The London Souls, running July 19 in Nashville, TN through August 15 in Rochester Hills, MI. Tickets go on sale Friday, April 12 at 10:00AM local (except for Nashville, which goes on sale Friday, April 26).
THE BLACK CROWES have sold over 35 million albums and are known as one of rock's…
Read More
-
DATE CHANGE - The Adam Ant & The Good, The Mad & The Lovely Posse Tour [from 8/24 to 8/23 - all 8/24 tix honored]
Friday, August 23 - 7:00pm
Stage AE - Tickets On Sale Now!
One of the seminal figures of new wave, Adam Ant (born Stuart Leslie Goddard) had several distinct phases to his career. Initially, he explored a jagged, guitar-oriented post-punk with his group Adam and the Ants before giving way to a more pop-oriented, glam-tinged musical direction that brought him to the top of the charts. After that had run its course, he refashioned himself as a mainstream singer, which enabled him to stretch his career out for a couple of years. Once it seemed that his musical career had evaporated, he made an unexpected comeback in the early '90s as an adult alternative artist. During all this time, he recorded several great pop singles and had a surprisingly large impact on alternative rock.
Adam Ant formed Adam and the Ants with guitarist Lester Square, bassist Andy Warren, and drummer Paul Flanagan in London in 1977. The group's approach was more theatrical than most punk groups, incorporating sadomasochistic imagery into their concerts. During this time, the group's lineup was fairly unstable, with Square being replaced by Mark Gaumont. The band released their debut, Dirk Wears White Sox, on the independent label Do It in 1979. Dirk was an ambitious and somewhat dark album, filled with jerky rhythms and angular guitar riffs, and elements of glam rock crept into Adam's vocals; Adam re-acquired the rights to the record in 1983, reissuing it in a resequenced and remixed form, with the tracks "Catholic Day" and "Day I Met God" replaced by "Zerox" and "Kick," as well as including a new version of "Cartrouble."
At the time of its release, Dirk Wears White Sox wasn't a critical or commercial success, and the band felt the need to rework their image. Ant hired Malcolm McLaren, the manager of the Sex Pistols, to help redefine them. McLaren dressed the band in pirate outfits and suggested a more accessible and pop-oriented, rhythmic variation on punk. Adam and the Ants followed his advice, preparing material for a new album. However, McLaren persuaded all of the Ants to leave Adam, using them as the core members of Bow Wow Wow. Adam Ant immediately formed a new version of the Ants, adding guitarist Marco Pirroni, bassist Kevin Mooney, and drummers Terry Lee Miall and Merrick (born Chris Hughes). Pirroni, in particular, became very important in the band's musical direction, co-writing the majority of the songs with Adam, thus beginning a collaboration between the duo that would continue into the '90s.
Driven by a relentless, driving beat and chanting melodies, the new band's first album, 1980's Kings of the Wild Frontier, became an enormous hit in the U.K., launching three Top Ten hit singles, including the number two "Ant Music." The band's success was helped by a series of visually enticing videos, prominently featuring the skinny, handsome Adam Ant decked out in pirate gear. Prince Charming, released the following year, retained the same formula as Kings of the Wild Frontier, spawning two number one singles, "Stand and Deliver" and "Prince Charming." Even though the album was a commercial success, the formula was beginning to wear thin.
After Prince Charming, Adam Ant ditched the Ants for a solo career, retaining Marco Pirroni as a songwriting collaborator and a supporting musician. Adam's first solo album, Friend or Foe, was released in 1982 and featured the number one single "Goody Two Shoes" and the Top Ten title track. Although his next album, 1983's Strip, had some highlights and hit singles, it marked the end of his reign as one of Britain's top pop stars.
Released in 1985, the Tony Visconti-produced Vive le Rock had some fun moments, but the performance was too studied and the record didn't earn any hit singles, so Adam Ant pursued a surprisingly successful career in acting. In 1990, Ant made a comeback with the catchy hit single "Room at the Top" from the Manners & Physique record, but the album failed to produce another hit single. For the next five years, Ant concentrated on acting.
By the time Adam Ant returned to recording in 1995, echoes of his music could be heard in the spiky singles of Elastica, the neo-goth industrial rock of Nine Inch Nails, and the pseudo-glam of Suede. Instead of capitalizing on the burgeoning new wave revival, Adam Ant's 1995 comeback, Wonderful, had little to do with the stylish, intensely rhythmic music he made in the early '80s. Instead, the album repositioned him as a more mature pop-rocker, with crafted songs that featured acoustic guitars as prominently as electrics. The album was a moderate hit in the U.S. and the U.K., as was the single "Wonderful."
Following the promo push for Wonderful, Adam Ant and Pirroni attempted to write a new clutch of songs but no finished album came of it, nor did anything surface from various sessions over the next few years. Instead, the rarities-studded retrospective Antbox appeared in 2000. Ant continued his attempts to launch new projects -- including a collaboration with Morrissey guitarist Boz Boorer, who did appear on Wonderful -- but he also suffered from erratic behavior, resulting in several arrests between 2002 and 2003, leading to a period of hospitalization for mental health (he was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder). A further round of reissues arrived in the mid-2000s, this time expanded double-discs of his first six albums, all containing a second disc with rarities, B-sides, and unreleased material. At the conclusion of this campaign came Stand & Deliver, Ant's autobiography, which he promoted with his first live performance in 11 years. Soon, Adam Ant began to mount a proper comeback, beginning a new label called Blueblack Hussar Ltd in 2010, then starting to perform with regularity, touring the U.K., Europe, U.S., and Australia as he began to work out new material. This new material finally surfaced in January 2013 as the messy, ambitious pseudo-concept album Adam Ant Is the BlueBlack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner's Daughter.
One of the seminal figures of new wave, Adam Ant (born Stuart Leslie Goddard) had several distinct phases to his career. Initially, he explored a jagged, guitar-oriented post-punk with his group Adam and the Ants before giving way to a more pop-oriented, glam-tinged musical direction that brought him to the top of the charts. After that had run its course, he refashioned himself as a mainstream…
Read More
-
91.3fm WYEP presents The xx
Saturday, September 21 - 7:00pm
Stage AE - Tickets On Sale Now!
The xx exist in a time and space of their own making. In 2009 the south London trio's debut album 'xx', quietly made at night over the course of two years, bled steadily into the public consciousness to become shorthand for newly refined ideas of teenage desire and anxiety. Articulated with a maturity beyond their years, its hallmarks were restraint and ambiguity. In the age of the over-share, 'xx' was pop with its privacy settings on max.
Three years on, Romy Madley Croft, Oliver Sim and Jamie Smith are back with a new album, 'Coexist', and a new perspective. Where 'xx' lent in close to whisper in your ear, 'Coexist' gazes warmly in your eyes. Much has happened to lead to this point: most pertinently, they've grown up.
Following the release of 'xx', the trio spent the lion's share of 2010 far from home, taking their gentle shaping of a new London sound to ears and hearts in America, Japan, Australia and mainland Europe. Critical acclaim was matched by commercial success around the world, before The xx won the UK's prestigious Mercury Music Prize. With all the successes and new experiences of that intense year and a half, a period away from the stage and studio was inevitable. In late October 2010 The xx returned from tour for some time apart, and normality.
"All of our friends had been to university and left home," says Romy. "We really wanted to do that natural thing that you do when you go to uni or grow up." All three moved out of their family homes within two weeks of being back. They made up for lost time with friends, hung out and embraced a summer of festivals and shows that Jamie was booked to DJ. "We were his groupies," laughs Romy.
Previously cast as the quietest of the three, Jamie became the public face of The xx in 2011. In-between DJ gigs, he focused on growing his production skills, developing a distinct sound and presence. His remix of Adele's Rolling In The Deep, re-imagining of Gil Scott-Heron's final album on 'We're New Here' with its defining single I'll Take Care Of U, and his debut solo single Far Nearer set him apart as a highly regarded producer in his own right. That position was cemented when Drake asked Jamie to produce the title track of his album 'Take Care', inspired by I'll Take Care Of U.
Behind the scenes, there was evolution too. Romy and Oliver's writing process on 'xx' had been to exchange lyrics over the internet and only sing what they each had written. Having begun to write again quite soon after returning from tour - "Much sooner than I expected," says Romy - they discovered that their initial reticence to bare so much of themselves in person had faded.
"The newest thing that we've done on this record is that me and Romy wrote in a room together," explains Oliver. "We went into a room with nothing and talked through early ideas together, which was fun but bizarre because we've never done that before. I also sang one of Romy's lyrics for the first time, which felt really nice."
Where dreams and expectation had largely coloured Oliver's lyrics on 'xx', on 'Coexist' he draws on his own experiences: "Which I'm surprised I've done because I knew people were going to hear them; I'm surprised I was able to put it out there confidently." Conversely, Romy wrote quite openly from experience on their debut: "It felt very much like a direct diary - although obviously we've always written quite cryptically. I think my lyrics have become more from observation and expectation, which is a complete swap."
That realignment extends to Jamie's role. When he originally joined the band they'd been writing and gigging for a year. This time around it was the three of them working together from the start. Following a short spell in a Dalston practice room, Jamie found a space in Angel that would become their studio. Essentially a couple of rooms in an ordinary office block, they turned the once mundane space into a nocturnal hub of creativity among the nine-to-five surroundings, hanging black velvet on the walls as soundproofing and fitting it out with a set-up that now included piano, drums and steel pan. Back together again, separate from both their label in west London and east London's music scene, Romy, Oliver and Jamie wrote 'Coexist'.
"We just ended up playing new stuff to each other to try and write which was a fun way to do it," explains Jamie. It wasn't always plain sailing: "The idea I had at the beginning when we started wasn't the right idea because I'd been in a place where I was making music for Drake and other people, and myself, and I'd kind of forgotten about working with these two, which is very different because we're so close." Jamie continues: "Learning to work together as grownups was the biggest thing - it's the thing that influenced the album the most. We just needed to find a balance."
Understanding that balance became the heart and soul of 'Coexist'. "Jamie has done his solo stuff and Oliver and I have done separate things but The xx is only when we're together. That's when it's really us," explains Romy. "I was reading up on oil on water - when you see a puddle on the floor and it's a rainbow. Oil and water don't mix, they agree to peacefully coexist. I really liked that - these two simple things, oil and water, that together make something beautiful."
"To coexist doesn't paint the rosiest picture but I think it represents the realness," continues Romy. "Learning to live together, learning to work together again, learning to live with the person you're with, or your ex. It's all connected." Through that learning process, the anxious night time of 'xx' has made way for sunrise on 'Coexist'.
While the fingerprints of R&B remain, 'Coexist's dawn realisations flicker into life under house music's gaze, most resonant on Reunion, Sunset and Swept Away. It also echoes in Romy's guitar riffs and Oliver's bass lines, which circle and build like loops. "That's something I love about dance music, how something insignificant can somehow become profound after the fifth repetition," says Oliver.
Above all, though, 'Coexist' is an album of confident adult reflection. Angels, sung by Romy, is a perfectly distilled love song. Its counter is Fiction led by Oliver, a bittersweet ballad that's strength lies in naming its fear. What has changed for The xx? Nothing, and everything. Older and wiser, surer yet still so tender, 'Coexist' finds itself on the other side of heartbreak, when the light returns.
The xx exist in a time and space of their own making. In 2009 the south London trio's debut album 'xx', quietly made at night over the course of two years, bled steadily into the public consciousness to become shorthand for newly refined ideas of teenage desire and anxiety. Articulated with a maturity beyond their years, its hallmarks were restraint and ambiguity. In the age of the over-share,…
Read More
-
91.3fm WYEP presents City and Colour
Tuesday, November 05 - 7:00pm
Stage AE - Tickets On Sale Now!
The voice is unmistakable - immediately identifiable by those that know it and intensely intriguing to those that don't. It belongs to Dallas Green, perhaps better known as the man who writes, records, and performs under the moniker of City and Colour.
Already renowned across Canada thanks to the success of his previous two full length albums - 2005's Sometimes and 2008's Bring Me Your Love - and a live CD/DVD combo released between the two, Green is set to propel his profile to a new plateau with the June 2011 release of his third album, Little Hell.
The effort shares its title with one of its tracks - a song that explores the little heavens and little hells that comprise a relationship and, as Green explains, "the things you do to get through them both." It's a theme explored throughout the album - the balance of both the blissful and harrowing experiences that come with relationships and life as a whole. Says Green: "You have to go through those little hells to get to the really great parts of love and life."
The collection was recorded at Catherine North Studios in Hamilton, Ontario - a converted church with wide-open architecture - with producer Alex Newport (Death Cab For Cutie, At The Drive-In) at the helm. The return to the studio where BMYL was documented was in-part due to the honest aural atmosphere it imparted on these 11 songs (not a single isolation booth was employed, but rather entirely tracked in the live room), but also in-part as a tribute to late studio owner, BMYL co-producer/engineer, and dear friend Dan Achen, who passed away suddenly in early 2010.
Adding to Little Hell's signature sound is the fact that the release was recorded and mixed on tape - an at-first foreign and subsequently frustrating endeavor for Green, who struggled to stick with the decision. The songs are all the more special because of it, though, capturing the very essence of Green as a writer and performer in the purest sense. "It's just a beautiful place to make music," says Green, looking back on the effort's birthplace, "and Alex really brought out the best in these songs. We were very much in-tune throughout the process."
Aiding in the album's assembly are some of Green's frequent collaborators, most prominently including his close friend and creative counterpart Daniel Romano, whom Green cites as invaluable to his creativity. City and Colour's live rhythm section, Dylan Green on drums and Scott Remila on bass and beautifully harmonized backing vocals, also took part in musical masonry.
Tracks like opener "We Found Each Other In The Dark" or the gorgeously sung ballad "Northern Wind" find Green capturing some of sweet, succulent slivers of life and love, his stirring vocals and eloquent lyrics heightening their appeal.
Conversely, songs like "O'Sister," with its haunting but moving melody, or the album's first single, "Fragile Bird," find Green relaying more arduous experiences. The former examines the struggles faced by the singer's own sister through some tumultuous times while the latter was inspired by his wife's frequent night terrors. Says the singer about his subjects: "I view writing as a very cathartic experience. It's my way of coping with or processing things happening, whether they're positive or not, and I think people can often identify with how they're interpreted."
Though Little Hell's hooky, heartfelt numbers boast familiarity for City and Colour fans, the album also delves deeper into the folk, blues, and even soul influences that surfaced on its predecessor thanks to the gorgeously-executed instrumentation and honest essence of Green's voice, though the two aren't mutually exclusive: "With this record," explains Green, "I tried to use every facet of my voice - low, high, quiet, and loud - so it's almost like another instrument."
When he's not playing in post-hardcore Canadian band, Alexisonfire, Green can be found touring as City and Colour, selling out thousand-seat venues across his native North America and respectably-sized European shows weeks in advance, including an April 2011 performance at the UK's treasured Royal Albert Hall which sold out in mere hours.
Considering his already impressive album sales, his latest album's potential impact is enormous. Sophomore Platinum-seller BMYL debuted at #2 on the Top 200 Soundscan chart (Canada), #5 on Billboard's Alternative New Artist chart, # 11 on its Heatseekers chart, never losing momentum through to the present. Though such things aren't what drives the artist to continue refining his craft.
"I'm just always aiming to become a better player and better songwriter, and this is the culmination of that at this point in time," says the man with the heavenly voice about Little Hell. "I'm very proud of it, and that's what's most important to me."
The voice is unmistakable - immediately identifiable by those that know it and intensely intriguing to those that don't. It belongs to Dallas Green, perhaps better known as the man who writes, records, and performs under the moniker of City and Colour.
Already renowned across Canada thanks to the success of his previous two full length albums - 2005's Sometimes and 2008's Bring…
Read More