‘Are you the DJ?’ He asked to Rostam Batmanglij after fooling around with some knobs and giving the band a few direct advices. ‘I don’t always understand the songs, to be honest’… ‘Let’s try to write a song that people can understand’
The whole show was in Spanish, a guy even introduced her in Spanish and the Latino audience was super enthusiastic,… err, NPR’s darling and alternative radio’s best secret? No way! She is super popular and she had attracted a large crowd of die-hard fans
they were very loud, filling the Echo with a monster sound of distortion pedals, raucous vocals, hard rocking riffs bathing in a psychedelic ambiance and a few roaring screams and whistle blows that had the most awesome retro effect
These smart people had let the masses roast under the hot sun and run after Daft Punk’s ghost, while having a cool beer and listening to one of the most influential bands of 90s alt-rock,… because we can we say this about Mudhoney, can we?
Not only The Silver Lake Jubilee is not happening in Silver Lake this year – it’s actually called the Jubilee Music and Arts Festival now and it is located downtown Los Angeles – but the organizers have just released the festival line-up with scrambled band names!
Of course money is always in the balance, this and ‘pleasing the fans’, but at least the Sex Pistols had the decency to admit it when they reunited in 1996, with John Lydon declaring, ‘we have found a common cause and its your money’.
Twitter is changing nevertheless, it is introducing a music feature and according to the NY Times this feature ‘will use the listening habits of users’ friends and contacts to recommend music for them to listen to’.
R Kelly just showed up, he does ‘Remix to Ignition’ and he is stealing the show, of course! And it was so unexpected… Wait, R Kelly knows about Phoenix??? And even better, Phoenix’s fans know about R Kelly?
Karen O can dress the way she wants, she will always have her own unique style,… whereas Lady Gaga’s style is all over the place, she has worn about everything that exists at the surface of the earth
You read the most abhorrent and choking sentences in rap songs, why was this more offensive than anything else going on in this world? How is this worst than Eminem saying in ‘As The World Turns’: ‘All I wanted to do was rape the bitch and snatch her purse..’
Half of Bieber’s followers are fake? Why doesn’t he get rid of them? May be because this would make him go from 37.3 million followers to only 17.8? What a fall indeed.
She calls her music ‘Junkyard Country’, and yes there was a little bit of everything, sometimes openly country, sometimes more folky, or bluesy, all genres connected by the same doomed Americana mood
If the collage of footage doesn’t totally make sense at the beginning and looks random, you’ll see they have been carefully chosen to reflect the lyrics
‘some grow, some struggle’,… ‘and they are no longer able to create that vision when there is too much exposure’,… ‘Don’t strangle artists, so they can continue to create!’… It had to be about Amy Whinehouse, right?
There’re no metaphors there, it’s all raw and bleeding all over the lines, with some mystery left in the last lines ‘Everything we now know, with a smile on our face/I, I can never forget’. It’s so personal and intimate you may feel uncomfortable.
Three songs is not a lot, I was just getting in the mood when they were already thanking people and saying goodbye! Nevertheless the duo’s performance was a sight to watch, with Leah’s sultry voice and stunning physique being the center of attraction, undulating over the jazzy arrangements
It’s true that, despite receiving the endorsement of Rohan Marley, Bob Marley’s son, despite promising he will soon record a reggae album and give back to Jamaica, Snoop Lion looks only like a cartoon character to me.
Over a syrupy country ballad, Paisley crooned for over five minutes, explaining how difficult it is to be a white man in the South who is wearing the confederate flag on his chest
“PLEASE DO NOT WATCH THE SHOW THROUGH A SCREEN ON YOUR SMART DEVICE/CAMERA. PUT THAT SHIT AWAY as a courtesy to the person behind you and to Nick, Karen and Brian. MUCH LOVE AND MANY THANKS! YEAH YEAH YEAHS.’
This loser-celebration culture is all over the music, and it’s a long tradition from Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen,… Why can’t society learn from this? ‘You will always be a loser and that’s okay’ shouts Titus Andronicus, and I applaud it.
I knew he wanted to come into the office to get a shot of Demerol, which he loved because he said it made him sleep better. He usually spoke like that after he had pain-killing jabs. These kinds of conversations had been happening for months.
‘I don’t have a problem with gay people. I got some gay homies. Yeah, for real. People who were gay used to get beat up. It was cool to beat up on gay people back then. But in the 90s and 2000s, gay is a way of life. Just regular people with jobs. Now they are accepted, not classified. They just went through the same things we went through as black.’
I remember seeing Aaron Embry at a 2002 Elliott Smith gig at the Echo, he played a few songs with him, but he even toured with him and recorded the song ‘Pretty (Ugly Before)’. Later in his career, he performed with Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, but he played and recorded with many artists, like Daniel Lanois, Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris. Last year, he released his own work a solo album entitled ‘Tiny Prayers’
the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ four-minute clip for their new song ‘Sacrilege’ is one of these mini-movies which almost distract us from the song itself. I guess bands are sometimes so focused at making the perfect video with a captivating story, that the song takes the second plan,… but isn’t the purpose of a video to promote the song and not vice-versa?
The horn-driven tune sounds like a classic big band rock anthem, a little bit like the soundtrack of a big budget epic movie before the real action starts. It’s not bad, but not the greatest thing ever, and it certainly does not feel druggy to me.
This is also a good deal for the city of Indio, which will get a little more per ticket, from $2.33 to $5.01 in 2014. Let’s see, there was about 80,726 people who attended the first weekend of Coachella last year, 77,661 the second weekend, whereas 55,772 attended Stagecoach; so roughly speaking, that would be about $1,000,000 in 2014
It’s her love declaration to Manhattan, the city which makes her strong, and nothing or nobody can top this.
I don’t always find the Funny or Die videos extremely entertaining but this one certainly is. Picture this, Huey Lewis, from Huey Lewis and the News, and Weird Al Yankovic reacting the famous scene of the book and movie, when Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) murders Paul Allen (Jared Leto) with an ax in his immaculate apartment. It’s hilarious as Huey Lewis gives the same lecture on ‘American Psycho’ than Bateman/Bale did
Bieber can do whatever he wants, smokes all the pot he wants, takes all the drugs he likes, he can have a career, damage his career, dump all his girlfriends but he can’t have a pet monkey! I hope PETA is going to jump at his throat for this one. This is the most irresponsible thing he has ever done.
it was a large crowd for a stadium-sized sound, as the quintet did sound big and confident on the small stage, with singer Nathan Willet’s powerhouse falsetto vocals leading the game during their eight-song set. They started with two new songs off their brand new ‘Dear Miss Lonelyhearts’, first, ‘Loner Phase’, which had an interesting combination of dance-y beats and sweeping-bombastic synth wrapped by a sort of Depeche-More-meets-the Killers sound
Another weirdness is the release of this video for ‘Ashes in the Air’, a song they did about a year ago with Bon Iver for their ‘The Flaming Lips And Heady Fwends’ all-star collaboration, whereas they are about to release another album on April 16th. But may be this is announcing the real Terror to come.
Over the years, they sure have built a loyal follow-up, and the Henry Fonda theater seemed quite packed on Saturday night, filled with fans eager to see a band which just played one-off reunion show in 2006, but had basically turned down other offers,… until 2013. A few months ago, they headlined two shows in New York and Chicago to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their label
About everyone was there, from Madonna to Marilyn Manson, from Brad Pitt to U2, REM, Oasis, Blur, the Beastie Boys, Eddie Vedder, Dave Matthews, even Courtney Love showed up apparently! In fact was there a non-celebrity in the crowd?
Their set was quite animated, there was a sort of Ariel-Pink-look going on with Alex Coxen’s bleached hair and shorts over tights, but he was producing some visceral open-throated vocals, and a nervous but triumphant feeling was coming from all that loud distortion, squalling and shredding. Dinosaur Jr.? Sure, but there was certainly more than this in their booming guitar solos
fans were seen giving Nazi salutes at their shows, the guitarist wears a tattoo of the logo of Death in June, a band really into hate speech and white nationalism, and their band logo bears a strange resemblance with the German symbol called algiz rune, which was widely used within the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany.
You will read a lot of Joy Division comparisons in critics, and it is understandable based on the pessimistic ambiance they installed during their short set, it would certainly be difficult to top it, but I don’t know if I totally buy the whole Hamlet in hell, I-am-the-new-Ian-Curtis nihilistic approach. May be they don’t want to be compared to the 70s English band
The song starts with guitars in full-assault, Josh Homme’s commanding and blasting vocals, and some terrific drumming by their new drummer Jon Theodore from The Mars Volta. It’s as badass and empowering as anything they have done before, with an interesting mood change toward the end of the song.
She was dressed all in white, with a tape across her mouth with the words ‘Silenced by fear’ written on it, and she strummed her guitar while seated on the ground, in front of a few sentences she had written on pieces of paper pinned to a wall. She had even sent a few tweets earlier, inviting people to pick up a sharpie and write on her
The track is a seductive piece of action, mixing Karen O’s unique sexy-animal vocals emerging from a tunnel of weird echoing synths and groovy bass. It’s a bit funky, dance-y, super catchy and intriguing at the same time. ‘No fun for a night on the town’, she meows while you see her walking around the stage with her long legs
It’s such an old and tacky institution, nobody I know is ever paying attention to it, but apparently it’s still going on after all these years, and this weirdo Estonian band is in competition this year. It would be really cool if Winny Puhh – that’s their name – would win, but you have to watch the video below to realize what these guys are up to,…
It’s quite unusual for him, he has consistently be releasing albums with 9-10 tracks for more than 45 years, but an EP? This is a first! May be he is following the music business new trend, albums are dead, people buy/stream single songs, so it’s not worth it to release full albums anymore?
The finger picking was getting more intricate on some songs, going from mellow parts to more country or bluegrass ones, and they were joking about the fact that people thought they were from the mid west because of the type of music they were playing. ‘We are from LA’, they said, ‘But we went to Michigan once and wrote this song about getting out of there!’… ‘Is there someone from Michigan?’
The song showcases everything I remember about his performances, meditative electronic soundscapes populated by his subtle harp and angelic falsetto voice, slowly sprawling, with glitches of electronics cascading and sparkling with a rare serenity, despite the heartbreaking line starting the song: ‘Even if I wanted to love you, would you love me?
There were a few photographs hanging around the stage, waiting between the sets, and I was among them, checking my phone, when I saw a hand in front of me and a voice saying ‘Hello I’m Harper’, I was so surprised I must have said something quite stupid like ‘I know’!
Does he suddenly feel too old? Sick? Probably not. The website just says ‘This show has been cancelled due to unavoidable complications’ and this is quite mysterious to me. If he was sick, they wouldn’t say this! May be he didn’t take the expression ‘Oldchella’ too well
The basic idea was that the band was built around camaraderie and friendship, for me at least. At some point the band felt like, as stupid as it sounds, “a band of brothers.” It felt like more than a band. So, when it became a band, it became less interesting
‘It felt like trying on new clothes when we first listened to it – it took a while to get comfortable with it, but now I like it a lot’ says José González’s to describe the song, and I feel quite the same way after my third listening. But don’t get fooled by the lightness of the melody
Stage presence is not always about how energetically the person moves on stage, in any case, it should be spontaneous, unpredictable, personal, mysterious and why not, weird, bizarre, disturbing. That’s why I would never consider these rehearsed-to-death stereotyped choreographies as good indicators of stage presence
We were DJing in one room and they were DJing in another room and they were just playing the worst music ever, and everyone was in our room just jamming out… And they had this totally dead room where they were just playing electronic music and kept giving us the stink-eye
On Friday night, Chris Owens had settled down for this 60s-inspired pretty and delicate music, embellished with ethereal flute, Toots-Thielemans-style harmonica and vibrant sax, and he didn’t even hesitate to cover big classics from Cat Stevens, Simon and Garfunkel, Donovan and Bob Dylan, going with the period.
