There were many good songs, I would say 20 our of 32 were fine but while it is good enough for a good evening, it isn’t enough for a great evening., and I just think, right person, wrong song.
All his songs were a rare beauty, seductive and meandrous, taking some sophisticated and surprising detours, embracing a sort of lost Americana with big skies in the desert and a romantic flair going almost south-of-the-border, without embracing any obvious genre.
(Yeah, as I get ready for tonight’s Radio City Music Hall Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga gig, I hope and pray it is a substantial improvement on this one at New Jersey’s Prudential Center in April 2011. One thing I know for sure, we won’t be waiting till 1015pm for her to hit the stage
It was a professional without being charming performance, their rapport with the audience on a musical level was fine, and the sound grew more powerful while remaining just about constant, but they don’t really talk to the audience; there is no sense of the moment in time.
We are all misfits and Jonathan is our leader.
With their blend of retro and modern punk, they managed to open for Sleater-Kinney during their last tour, which is probably not an easy task to accomplish. An all-girl band opening for an all girl-band, just imagine the competition! But Pins doesn’t even want to look or sound like the cool trio from Olympia, they want to have fun, delivering harmonies over pop melodies, speeding up at time without going overboard, bringing head banging with a real noise punk inspiration, while letting the power chords have the best part.
Sure, Gorrillaz have performed here (I saw em, not as impressed as the rest of the world), and solo (I saw him, nowhere near as impressed as the rest of the world) but Blur have always been a great live band, the proof is in the performance, and if he cared about cracking the States he might tour the States, but Blur don’t care at all, so they leave the middle of America to wallow in their own bad taste.
Wolf Alice are slightly missing the name you think they’d have by now in New York, you know, the selling out MHOW, nearly selling out Bowery ballroom and finally playing Rough Trade on the Sunday tour, instead they haven’t sold out Le Poisson Rouge for Thursday nights gig, so here is the opportunity for a quick spin up close before the rest of new York catches.
Paul Weller is playing the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto today, Monday, June 15th and Yahoo will be live streaming the full concert. Watch LIVE at 9pm EST / 6pm PST exclusively on yahoo.com/live. The stream will be available to view for 24 hrs.
In a spirited and energetic 90 minutes with Graham dancing and jiving, and giving the spotlight to Martin for a sliver of a solo and Schwartz for a coupla bars before stealing it back again, a cranked up Hammond Organ by Bob Andrews all over the damn place, and a standard of song selection that has you spoiling for a favorite
Perhaps, the best pure rock ‘n’ roll experience I have ever witnessed in my life. In 2015, The Sonics may look like a group of insurance agents that should have already collected their gold watches, but they rock with an intensity that few bands could ever match
This Monday is a night as big as any Governors Ball, CMA or CBGB Fest you care to mention, The Metropolitan Opera Summer Recital Series featuring Janai Brugger, Nathan Gunn, Isabel Leonard, and pianist Dan Saunders is not just for Opera fans, not even especially for Opera fans, it is for fans of singers and it has never been less than magnificent in the five years I’ve covered it. And it is free at Summerstage. Unmissable, I can’t recommend it highly enough.
“I first saw the Stones in 1981 and I’ve seen them maybe fifteen times since then. From Bruce Springsteen to Elton John to Billy Joel, I’ve grown disenchanted with the all time rockers, but the Stones still put on a great show. They know what we want and they know how to deliver it. People travelled from around the States and the world to be there on Tuesday night.”
Their sound is pop explosive, bouncy and hard hitting, yes all these drums are not just there to look pretty, but at the end, everyone will only look at frontgirl Liz Nistico who sings with these sweet child-like vocals while doing her restless sexy dance. Dressed in black and glittering gold, which seem to be the official Holychild colors, she was undulating her body, jumping in the crowd, interacting with people with a large smile, looking like a new Katy Perry bouncing on joyous electro-pop or rather like an optimistic Lykke Li on ecstasy.
Before the halfway mark I was wondering if maybe Belle And Sebastian were the musical equivalent of a girl you broke up with years and years ago, and still obsessed about, then you run into her in the streets and realize, you know, you really weren’t that crazy about to start with.
That’s the same price as this year’s presale but they get to hold your money for a year. If they had any sense they’d do it in monthly installments of $100 If they did that many people would sign up, and they’d still have their bucks six months before Governors Ball 2016 begins
So why am I so excited to hear that Stephen Malkmus And The Jicks are joining Super Furry Animals, oh and also the greatest guitar rock band in the world today, Screaming Females, at the Village Voice’s 4 Knots gig on Saturday, July 11, at Pier 48, Hudson River park? To put it simply, that is three great acts in a row, plus? Mikal Cronin, and for just the $25 admission ($50 for VIP).
We wanted to move to LA for inspiration and influence more than anything. It helped us to experiment and find our own sound. If you look at a lot of the alternative electronica and dance music coming out of LA, it definitely has a feel – we love the weirdness and sunshine. It has been a strong influence on many of our favorite records from the ’60s-’80s’
I have never travelled too deeply into the Mountain Goats catalogue, but that wasn’t necessary to understand and appreciate what this show was really about. Fundamentally, it was about John Darnielle’s love of performing and an audience that loved him for his unique artistic vision. It was a young crowd filled with hipsters and nerds and perhaps people that fall comfortably into both categories
He is certainly pre Beatles, and pre everything that would fit his age – he is not even 30 – but he makes you swing in his well-oiled time travelling machine as if it was 1964.
I would rank the 2015 Governors Ball below 2014 but above 2013 and 2012, when you read about the rioting at Summer Jam Sunday night, if nothing else you have to admire their security. I saw no fights, hell I didn’t see a disagreement, there was a lot of security but it wasn’t the obstructive sort.
Yeah, they were really hard to pigeonhole, and they get all sort of comparisons, but they probably don’t want to be pigeonhole as Summers is famous for saying he draws his influences from all over the place, and quite unintentionally, since he was raised in a strict Christian household and was forbidden to listen to any secular music until his late teens!
Definitely the biggest difference was the lousiness of EDM on Sunday, it ruled on Friday and Saturday. And the real mistake, like my biggest mistake, was missing most of Chronixx. After an iffy show last year, I was pleasantly surprised at his performance.
Krell’s vocals are so eerie, so high falsetto and so emotional and violent at the same time, that he seems to bring all his guts in action.
Live is where he comes into his own as a no nonsense UK rocker who has a better feel for harmolodics then you might imagine, everything here is about arranging a sound where nothing sticks out and nothing goes under, it is like a mountain that is all peak. Liam will always be missed but not half as much as Liam misses Noel
Their performance was very dreamy, very slow at first, installing a very ethereal and aching ambiance, sometimes going to more beats, but staying on the dark side of an electronic dance.
Their joyous pop was a bit hirsute and I am not especially talking about the ZZ Top look of the banjo player, but it was a total success among the crowd. There were vocal harmonies, a lot of this classical violin, operatic croon and a desire to go bombastic at each second.
Flying Lotus may well be the best DJ out there, he gives the world beats so fresh they are almost impenetrable, so obtuse you know where he is ever heading, But to perform behind a screen for your set? That’s kinda pushing it right?
A terrific and immensely pleasurable time especially since his last album was a # 1 hit. The best shouts for the terrific “White And Nerdy” but he could have gotten away with playing polkas on his accordion all night.
If I lost interest 20 minutes in, the rest of the audience is huge, even against A-Traak and attentive as the acid test, “This can’t be a better end to our fucking tour” before unleashing a weird and glorious stomper.
As blue eyed soul guys Mayer Hawthorne has a lot going for him, my boss came back from a private gig at VH1 raving about the guy. But guess what? He never mentioned Mayer again. Why? Because Mayer can write them and he can sing them but he can’t write a memorable hook to save his life.
So what’s the difference between Americana and country? When it comes to Sturgill Simpson not a damn thing, leading
I caught this masterful Rastaman last year at Summerstage, today he has his pop side on… All high octane rubadub son of Marley and as impressive as ever, maybe more so.
Here in Randall’s Island they went from an awesome “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” to less awesome more mathematically inclined beats off their upcoming album…
LA pop band Echosmith are a new wave fun machine with echoes of Katrina And The Waves without the jangle
It is difficult to say anything about a show which ends with “Hyperballad” but a show that deconstructs “Army Of One” is easier and more, it is telling the best songs were Vulnicura songs, the two songs that opened the album opened the 7om 75 minute set and the were the most stunning of them all.
The trick with Governors Ball is, if you like rock and indie, move between the Honda and Big Apple stages, and if you love dance and hip hop, the Gotham tent and GovBall Stage… more or less. Noel is at the GovBall stage today at 7pm so there are exceptions.Net year they may want to reconsider where they want to put EDM, the Gotham tent overflowed constantly. Kiesza’s set was a madhouse
Look, face it, the new Belle And Sebastian is a dog with fleas, now move on with your life and check the Los Campesinos of pop folk (please, not the Pet Shop Boys) at Radio City on Wednesday: with Real Estate and Diarrhea Planet opening, it should for one of the treats of the pop year.
Their awesome vintage sound had enough of this 60’s surf-y-bluesy guitars, and frontman Vincent Davies was doing enough of that Chuck Berry walk, to make them instantaneously loveable.
The action seemed to be more in the guitars themselves than directly on stage, but they had charisma and gorgeous harmonies, plus this bipolar-bimodal style could make them totally unique, because who wants to listen to another straightforward blues band?
Rustie is a DJ from Glasgow – one of the worlds’s great cities though a little rough round the edges, not unlike this amazing guy who drops the bass sure but then heads off into aural heaven.
Opening with “Real Love” and including the blondie (I know, no internet access) adds a oboe and someone else on a sax and the sound is a terrific mindfuck. VIP is still quiet but GA stretches and stretches as the band plays mainstream electronic dance pop.
The beats are so heavy I can feel em in my feet. Not to mention my eardrums,rushing like the devil was on my tail, I made it in time for half an hour.
Yes, it rained at the start but it stopped but that wasn’t the big news, the big news was they finally tiled the Gotham Tent so the VIP section wasn’t a horrible swamp. Oh, and the other news is the autograph pavilion! Structurally, it was a good first day, it is hardly the promoters fault if the performers had their ups and down!
I caught the first six songs, and Jim James vocal on “Evil Urges” was ridiculous, a Curtis Mayfield inspired complete triumph but the night (or what I saw of it) belonged to lead guitarist Carl Broemel, who was beyond awesome on “Circuital. How a band who have been at it so long can be so clueless as to how to record themselves is beyond.
Florence Welch has a big voice and a great attitude, arms open wide she lets everybody in with a dreamy, exciting, banging attitude and a full band and a full voice. “There’s a big sign here that says “STEPS” she told us, to remind Florence, who broke her foot earlier this year at Coachella, not to jump. She jumped any way.
In a first, the Canadian master had a sign language interpreter on stage with him as he made a dash through the heart of the set, “Worst Behavior: through “Hell Ya Fucking Right” with “Tuesday” on one end and “Started From The Bottom” on the other and right in the middle his masterpiece “Hold On, We’re Coming On” and right here Governors Ball came into its own
Kesis dedicates a song to his five year old son and it is a great moment in a show with plenty of them, the unflagging energy and excellence has the audience -by the way, later last night Drake claimed it was the best audience he ever had, and while I don’t know about that, in set after set the audience were the fifth Beatle.
On stage she is a dynamic if minor player for now, moving well, singing very well, and keeping the audience interested with her soul inflected vices and pixieish good looks and good humor. “Lean On” got the biggest roar of her afternoon I’m guessing
At this moment, I am sure everybody was thinking at unison, ‘I wish he was still with Girls’? This will probably be always in the back of our minds, but with his blonde hair hiding his face, fragile vocals and his vulnerable appearance, Chris Owens looks so frail at time, you just wonder if he can put on a show, but after a few minutes, you are convinced he certainly can!
