Mother Falcon At The Echoplex, Thursday September 4th 2014
the place looked and sounded like a beehive, and I could hardly count how many instruments there were , sax, cello, trumpet, violin, keyboard, accordion, upright bass, guitars, drums…
True Groove Continue Their Residency This Thursday, September 11th At Milk River
This Thursday, September 11, Milk River in association with True Groove Global SOUL presents The True Groove All-Stars Global Soul Celebration of the release of “Funky World” a Club/Dub/Dance Compilation. Join us for an evening of blues, funk, afro-beat and rock-n-roll
Sneak Peaks: Upcoming Album Releases Week Of September 8th, 2014
I’ve heard Justin so guess what I’m anticipating? Meanwhile, this is some week, from Tricky’s best since Blowback to Karen O’s acquired taste solo album, through Robert Plant, Michelle Williams (!) to local boys Interpol, and finally Ryan Adams, it should be a week to remember!!
10 Songs: Sunday, September 7th, 2014
Spoken word goes punk from way way way back, and this is one of JCC’s masterpieces before he jumped off the deep end, an ode to capital punishment and the inevitable end result: “swinging Britain don’t put me on, they’re gonna bring back the rope for everyone” – A
Bleachers At Webster Hall, Thursday, September 4th, 2014, Reviewed
This isn’t feckless rock writing, nothing on fun. Is either, this is what Antonoff called songs you can dance to and cry to. On stage , Jack is both working his way towards and also has reached where he needs to go as a front man. With a limited set of songs he gave a fine performance, a little slow start but once he got where he wanted to get he maintained the highest of quality through to the end.
Members Of Pussy Riot Launch Media Zone, An Independent News Service
‘There is hardly any political issues left in Russia outside of courtrooms’, confirmed Maria Alekhina, ‘and there is a great need for transparency and media coverage of things that are happening down there, so we hope that Mediazona will help close that gap and change the face of independent Russian media.’
The Rock Critic As Accountant
What has happened through the years is I have tried harder and harder to organize the music I listen to so I don’t miss stuff, forget stuff, as I reach the end of the year. It is like tending a garden, or maybe being an accountant, reviewing becomes about being access information and organize it as simply as you can.
Bauhaus' David J To Publish His Memoir, 'Who Killed Mister Moonlight? Bauhaus, Black Magick and Benediction’
His style is simply amazing and totally engaging, and this is obviously a must-read for Bauhaus’ fans and post-punk scene lovers. I know that David J will do a book reading and signing at Book Soup in Los Angeles on October 31st which will be followed by many others in Seattle, Portland and New York….
1200 Plus Genre's Of Popular Music
I stole the idea for this post off the Guardian who stole it off a website run by Glen McDonald, which lists every genre known to popular (and, er, less popular) music off Every Noise At Once. Now, ever since country mated with the blues and made rock and roll, popular music has been a heavy heavy mongrel breed. Still, this is insane. Still God Save Glen McDonald for doing the lord’s work here.
Direct Currents Upcoming Releases This Autumn 2014
After kicking it in the head a coupla weeks ago, Direct Current decided hey, maybe retirement isn’t all its cut out to be. It isn’t easy to walk away, it digs too deep. So their gain and ours, so here is their list of upcomign releases and obviously 1989 is the one we are moost excited for but also: both alt j tracks are really good. Jerry Lee, Haerts, Annie Lennox, Jackson Browne, Prince, Gerard Way and Abba at Wembley in 1974!!
George Harrison Tribute In L.A.
The thought of Brandon Flowers singing anything at all fills me with a wearying dream as though nothing I do is worth the effort and perhaps the best thing I can do is embrace the not beware of the darkness. Because really, it is all futile any way, none of it helps and none of it matters.
10 Songs: Saturday, September 6th, 2014
Pitchfork review: “Somewhere beneath the spazzing cymbals, the maze of key changes, and the sphincter-tightening virtuosity of the synth lines, a quizzical piano motif repeats itself, softly—a grounding idea among the song’s avant-jazz madness.” Sphincter-tightening? – B+
What Took So Long? DeadMau5 Versus Disney
‘The deadmau5 front facing mau5head is a registered trademark in 30 countries worldwide. In June of last year, deadmau5 applied to register the front facing mau5head with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Disney is now opposing the U.S. filing. ‘
Arms' "Backwards Record" EP Reviewed
Some eleven months later and Arms have released a covers EP, Backwards Record, on Spotify only and I like it a lot though I am a little baffled by these lo-fi slowed down almost operatic versions of songs which, for the most part, weren’t that popular in the first place
Half Japanese's "Overjoyed" Reviewed
These are off tune tracks which are not quite good songs, and you can’t quite imagine somebody actually covering them,, maybe I mean they are innocent songs of intense and extreme love. Jad is jumping for joy on track after track and you just think if he had collaborated with someone, these songs would be too much: they are so heartfelt you are stuck wondering what to do now
Listen To Julian Casablancas + The Voidz's 'Human Sadness'
This is quite a song, or rather this is beyond a song, more like an experimental 11-minute track deploying so many layers and detours it will certainly make your brain explode. It is a challenge to even talk about this thing
With The Buzzcocks Playing Saturday, An Annotated SetList (And Spotified!)
If Howard Devoto set the tone as a sorta quasi arty wanker, Shelley was a good kid fifth former. But as rock fans, they glommed onto the Sex Pistols immediately and soon formed the Buzzcocks, releasing the Martin Hannett produced Spiral Scratch and their current setlist starts with their biggest song on the EP…
Our Thanks To Dead Rock Stars
You know that old song “Love is all around”? Well, the truth is what’s always is all around is death and it intrudes on your life and knocks on the door and is in permanent residence. You can ignore or or you can embrace it but you won’t see it coming and have no doubt it is coming for you.
Taylor Swift Writes To Bullied Teen: Forever on Your Side
“Every time someone picks on me, I’ll think of you in the hopes that every time someone picks on you, you’ll think of me… and how we have this thread that connects us. Let them keep living in the darkness and we’ll keep walking in the sunlight. Forever on your side, Taylor.”
10 Songs: Friday, September 5th, 2014
For better or worse, this and not “Crazy” or “For All The Girls I Loved Before” is his signature song; it is the definition of a song sung blue, every knows it and the melody is so strong and the words so simple everybody can sing it. The definitive road song – A
How Did Jennifer Chiba Meet Elliott Smith: Did We Get The Truth?
We briefly met at Rockfest festival, but later, when he had moved to Los Angeles, I asked my friend Steve [Hanft] to introduce me to him. We were both shy and were smiling while looking at our feet. He offered me a drink and we talked about Russian literature
Ooh La la
I wrote this story maybe eight years before “Fly”, but it is another story about a subject that was interesting me: a girl I’d loved had left the city in maybe 1990, and I was fascinated by what her absence meant in a purely physical sense: how she wasn’t there, how somebody who spent so much time in the same place I was was now no longer in the same place I was.
Two Songs Off The Bob Dylan Tribute Album "The New Basement Tapes" Reviewed
Costello sounding much like he did with the Roots nevertheless comes up with a nice bluesy low key very rhythmic take that works for me, Rihannon Giddens, of Carolina Chocolate Drops,sings back up. And it took me back to “Nothing to It”and it is better than I thought it was.
CeeLo Green Is Officially A Dumb Asshole
There’s nothing funny and sweet about him anymore, after pleading no contest to felony drug charges for having slipped ecstasy into a woman’s drink (without her consent) in 2012, he tweeted a few things that didn’t really look good on his resume
US Top 10 Singles 9-13-14
If you are a pop music fan circa 2014 there should be no second guessing this list, half of the songs are in my best of 2014 list already and another three might slip their way in. This feels like a golden age of pop music, and while I know my peers will laugh themselves sick at the prospect, still you show me a playlist with Tay, Sam, Minaj and Jessie J and I will show you some very strong state of the pop art stuff.
US Top 10 Albums 9-13-14
Paisley is growing on me though I don’t expert that will last. Kem deserves the position though a ton more sales, and Wiz gives pot a bad name. He is Cheech and Chong without the sense of humor. So, yeah, this isn’t a thrilla and sales are bottoming out.
10 Songs: Thursday, September 4th, 2014
Clear – Christopher Willits – Wall of synths like your stuck in hotel room while the sound of the ocean created on protools is piped in and you can’t figure whether to complain or request they up the dolphin singing a touch – B
Adele's Two New Songs 2014 Reviewed (And Stream Them Here)
It is a triumph of meh and let me state here that my problem with Adele (though it has sometimes been her phrasing) has never been her singing. My problem has been her material, which is such moldy heavy emoting it drives me up the wall. The proof is these two songs, where this great singer is only ever as good as her songs.
Stuart Murdoch Signing At Origami Vinyl, Monday September 1st 2014
I had to force my way in the opening to get to see Mr. Murdoch. He looked and acted like the nicest guy in the world, making sure to talk to everyone, looking at the line to check on people. He welcomed us with a ‘Hi guys, thank you for coming’ and didn’t stop smiling the whole time
Justin Townes Earle "Single Mothers" Reviewed
If I wanted to start a fight I might claim it isn’t so ambitious, it is just what it is and no more. But my heart wouldn’t be in it, not when what Singles Mothers is is one perfect song after another. Justin is a musical genius, one of our greatest living songwriters and this is a great achievement.
The A+ List: 9-03-14
A song about a song about being in love, the melody written in 1927 by Hoagy Carmichael, the lyric by the sublime Tin Pan Alley lyricist Michael Parrish, Hoagy was 28 at the time! Covered and covered and covered, this is the version to find with Armstrong half mumbling, half emoting the sweet dream of a dream of a memory lyric “Sometimes I wonder why I spend the lonely nights dreaming of a song, the melody haunts my reverie and I am once again with you.”
The EDM Scene Is Now Worth More Than $6 Billion
There will be a downside at one point, but for now they sit on billions and declare like Tiesto‘I think my perspective on money is everything above $10 million, you’re so rich it doesn’t really matter. What are you going to buy? A golden car? I don’t care if I’m number one or number 10 on that list. I’d rather have a Grammy instead.’
Album Sales Less Than 4M A Year
In a nation of 317 Million people less than 4 million buy a record album on average, Around 1% of the population, according to Billboard. what does this mean? It means the album is no longer functioning as the music currency of choice.
rock nyc Top 10 Songs week Of 9-1-14
River Bank” is much better than I thought it was, it isn’t “The Word” but it is pretty clever and catchy, most of the rest of this isn’t real songs: YOB and Lily Taylor specifically but also, how about Half Japanese? With Fair’s sing speak voice?It is not quite songs, is it?
10 Songs: Wedneday, September 3rd, 2014
Happy Idiot – TV On The Radio – If I hadn’t seen the band in June at Governors Ball, and if I hadn’t streamed a couple of tracks during the mid-summer, this would constitute a major bummer, a less than thrilling piece of electronic rock – B+
Be Here Now: First Takes On New Album Releases 9-2-14
Forget I Brought It Up – Grey Gordon – If your thing is pop-punk I may well have the album of the year for you. This Fort Wayne, Indiana native has pulled off a melodic hard rocking fuzz from time to time, on the money always. The first song, “Barstools And Haricuts”sets the tone, nice back beat for a song you are whistling before it’s over -ALBUM OF THE WEEK – B+
'Silverlake Meltdown' At Los Globos, Saturday August 30th 2014
When about 35,000 Angelinos were roasting under the sun at Made in America festival, listening to its array of mainstream music that Jay Z calls diversity, I was in Silverlake attending the first annual end of summer party, the ‘Silverlake Meltdown’ organized by Sick City Records at Los Globos.
Best Concerts Through August 31st, 2014
Caroline Kole – The Bitter End – August 13th, 2014 – An almost perfect hour of modern country pop by the finest young singer to mine the much ignored genre since, well, since Taylor Swift. who she resembles in attitude and who she could could replace for a certain section of the audience, her peers and a little younger, who Taylor is slowly leaving behind or never quite had.
rock nyc Top 29 Songs (In Order And Spotified) Through August 31st, 2014
Nobody handles his age with the intelligence that Leonard does in this song, because as terrible as the world is, and it is pretty horrifying stuff, but it is nowhere as blue as his own mortality and mine of course, nothing smarter this year that’s for sure.
That Was The Week Of August 25th, 2014, That Was
if I was in London I’d have been checking out art rocker turned hofstra Kate Bush, a singer I like much more in theory than in practice. Still, who first gig in more than decades was a theatrical event alright. Kate’s problem is the same as it ever was, she isn’t as good as I think she is.
10 Songs: Tuesday, September 2nd, 2014
Carousel Ride – Rubblebucket – This indie band have been around for years waiting for their dance pop to hit, and this track off the new one is a smart addictive roundabout of a track and it just might do the job; Annakalmia Traver has the voice for the job – B+
In A Classic Overreaction Electric Zoo Cancel Today's Last Day Of The Festival 2014
It wasn’t that extreme and nobody says it was. Two hours of flash flooding is not enough to excuse cancelling the entire proceedings and, I might add, two deaths wasn’t enough to cancel last year. if two people die in an accident on the highway, can no one use it for two days? If you knew them, it is a tragedy, if you didn’t it’s an incident.
Dan Whitley's Eagerly Awaited "Angels N Devils" Completed
The playing is clean, immaculate, perfect, very controlled, very at service to the song and where Dan gets his hands dirty is on the vocal tour de force, amazing blues singing that barrels down on song after song and reaches its, and Angels n Devils, zenith with “Wade County Jail”
Watching Iggy Azalea At Made In America Festival
Her performance at Made in America let me totally uninterested though, she did everything you can expect from a rapper in this surrounding, she almost kissed Rita Ora on stage – but hasn’t this be done a million times before?
Nightmom Louis Family Restaurant Providence, RI Saturday Aug 30, 2014 Reviewed
The show at Louis Family Restaurant was the culmination of Nightmom’s first national tour. On the road for 30 days, the band traveled some 9000 miles to promote Glider Heaven, their second full-length, the photo for the cover of which Travis found in an old copy of National Geographic. Long live Glider Love.
David Lynch Had No Good Idea For Kanye West
This is what happens when it is a slow-news day, we write about things that could have but didn’t really happen. Famous director and unique character David Lynch said to the Daily Beast that he almost made a video for Kanye West’
Best Albums Through August 31st, 2014
Tahliah Debrett Barnett aka Formerly Known As twigs, is the most exciting thing to happen to UK soundscape soul pop since Lana del Rey and like Lana she doesn’t sound like anything else: a deeply arranged indie soul hybrid. Imagine if Massive Attack had been so big 1D and a girl in Gloucestershire, England, became completely obsessed with them…something like that.
Best Songs Through August 31st, 2014
Two songs, released the same day, Taylor’s “Shake It Off” and and Leonard Cohen’s “Almost Like The Blues”, a third, around for awhile but finally hitting home FKA twigs brilliant “Lights On”, and a fourth, rock ny’s band Je’June’d excellent “picotement” ran away with the month.
UK Top 10 Singles 9-6-14
“Rariworkout” is awesome, Grime meets EDM, the raps are very English, very Brixton or wormwood scrubs but the beats are international and very dance steadying, very House, not dub at all, nothing deep more like a chattering mail biter. Excellent song, hope it hits the US charts.
UK Top 10 Albums 9-6-14
A not untypical UK chart, made whole by the two Kate Bush albums, an obvious relection of her return to performing after a 35 year absence. The reviews were overwhelmingly positive but what on earth does that prove, right? Otherwise, Royal Blood are like a lively Black keys or a Jack white not tripping over his ego, But not as good as that sounds.