art and industry

Somewhere in the Northern Liberties hipsterhood of Philadelphia is a warehouse which bears the phrase "Art and Industry" in painted lettering, heavily faded by countless snowbound winters and scorching summers. It seems appropriate to me that it in this very same building that Dr. Dog does their recording. I can't explain why exactly, but maybe you understand. Their new album, Fate, comes out a week from today. It came into my possession today, and I was only able to listen to it three times through before I had to start writing about it here. Like their previous albums, most notably 2005's Easy Beat and 2007's We All Belong, Fate is a melting pot of genres and influences. Folk, country, and blues flavors accent Dr. Dog's achingly melodic indie-pop/rock gems, with the vocal duties being shared equally between Scott McMicken and Toby Leaman, backed as always by their 60's-pop-esque chorus. Pitchfork will probably give it a 6.3 or something. It will be another moment when you're reminded of why you don't care what they say. The album is great. If you don't believe me...

Dr. Dog - Old News (buy)
Dr. Dog - The Rabbit, The Bat & The Reindeer
Dr. Dog - The Ark Continue reading...

does anyone remember the roots picnic?

I do somewhat. Dayna and I went to that shit a week ago but kept it a big lazy secret until now.

I'll set the stage. It was a billion degrees and a couple thousand drunk and sweaty people were all crammed on a glorified parking lot called Festival Pier in Philly on the smelly ol' banks of the Delaware. We got there late, missing The Cool Kids, Deerhoof, and probably a few other hip acts that ?uestlove loves, but we got in free through my domestic connects so we weren't sweating the sweaty (mid-day) part of the schedule.

Santogold didn't play because of a "scheduling issue" so she and the Roots played a surprise show at the TLA the night before, but only after the Air Guitar Championship wrapped up. The performance we saw was outdoors and the sound was iffy but they put on a great show, as they always seem to do in Philly (notably better than their 45 minutes at Rock the Bells on Randall's Island in NYC last summer). They ran through their usual grab bag of old hits, one of their patented we-can-play-any-hit-from-any-genre-and-make-it-as-good-if-not-better-than-the-original medley, as well as a bunch of cuts off their new Rising Down LP (which we've decided is good but nowhere near a classic, due to its reliance on boring and repetitive refrains).

After the Roots we caught Diplo and his Mad Decent crew spinning and spitting in the air-conditioned blow-up tent while Gnarls Barkley set up. Being somewhat fascinated by Diplo, I much enjoyed his set and was disappointed when Cee-Lo, Danger Mouse, and company finally came on. In regards to the Round Mound of Sound (see video below), before the show we were somewhat perplexed by their headliner status, as we couldn't imagine anyone thinking of Gnarls Barkley as their favorite band. A good portion of the fans stayed after the Roots to see about them, but the crowd (including us) began to peter out after a few songs, as Gnarls wasn't doing much to prove our skepticism wrong.

It was time to eat a popsicle and go home, so there is not much more to tell. Except this one last piece of advice. Now, granted, I am completely biased. But, if you are making a bucket list of musical acts to witness before you end it all, I would humbly recommend these two events:

1. Bruce Springsteen in an indoor arena in either Philadelphia, New Jersey, or New York.

2. The Roots, indoors in Philadelphia.

Both of those happen at least once a year because Bruce and ?uesto cannot not be on tour. So get to it!

Continue reading...

thank you and you're welcome

Thoughts on KanYe's Glow In The Dark Tour, which Dayna and I witnessed last Thursday night in Mansfield, MA to a capacity crowd of approximately 19,900 (note: I can admit when I make horrible estimates):

We got there at 8pm (EIGHT!) and missed two of the four acts (Lupe and N.E.R.D.).

Rihanna suuucks.

We have a hunch that one stipulation for coming on the GITDT was you had to let Yeezy choose at least one of your outfits. Because Rihanna looked like the red Power Ranger for a few songs.

By the looks of the one-long-sleeve-one-short-sleeve-hoodie-with-a-completely-useless-bulletproof-shoulder-padish -thing-over-a-t-shirt-tied-90s-style-around-the-waist ensemble Yeezy was sporting, he's been watching a few too many Mad Max movies lately.

No one but Mr. West set foot on the smoke-covered surface of undulating Moonscape craters during his entire set. Even his band, which he introduced during the encore, was somewhere backstage and only shown on the video screen.

The Mansfield, Mass crowd would've made you laugh if you weren't already crying and throwing up a little bit.

Things we already knew about Ye: he's a pretty big nerd; he's by no means adept at the craft of acting; he has a big ego. Despite all this, the space-travel story line which runs through the duration of the show was palatable and at times funny and endearing. Between songs KanYe exchanges lines of clicheed Star Wars-esque dialogue with his almost-human spaceship computer system "Jane," which are often laughable in their stiltedness. She provides him with video of two gilded vixens to help him fight his loneliness after crash-landing on a deserted planet, a plot twist which coincides with his performance of "Gold Digger." And, once Jane reminds Yeezy that he can single-handedly power himself back home because he "is the brightest star in the universe," the first few bars of "Homecoming" begin.

Music-wise, it was everything you would expect from His Brightness. For well over an hour the man ran, danced, and bounced his way around the stage with a seemingly infinite energy supply, something which isn't easy to find these days buh dum chsh. Even with the acoustics being what they are at a venue like the Tweeter Center, Ye and the 7-piece band created an impressively full and pleasing sound, and relied only minimally on canned samples. Highlights were "Flashing Lights," "Gold Digger," and "The Good Life," during which KanYe forgot to replace every city name in the song with the tour's current city, singing, and I'm not making this up, "It feel' like Philly--Boston...(chuckles)..."

The Times summed it up pretty well with their headline: "Kanye West's Ego-Fueled Hip-Hop Sci-Fi Space Odyssey."

An amazing number of copies of KanYe's book of "advice," Thank You and You're Welcome, were given out on the way out of the show. It is a fun keepsake to own but not worth the $10 he's selling it for on his website.

Anyone else see the show? Continue reading...

not bad, p-fork, not bad at all

The high-court of all things indie just launched their newest venture, Pitchfork.tv. It is pretty sweet, I must say. It's got a nice big screen with impeccable picture quality (go full-screen!) and a lot of good concert footage and music videos, among other things.

Below is their Man Man "Daytripping" segment posted on Monday, apparently the first-ever Pitchfork.tv production, filmed in my home town of Illadelph, PA last spring (Sidebar: The Man Men bike down the street where I helped paint a gigantic mural in the Northern Liberties neighborhood last summer, but you can't see the mural so nvm). There is no shortage of facial hair or crazy bike-related antics, and we get a peak into one of the most creative approaches to music making out there. (Think broken beer bottles, fireworks, and a dog in a bathtub.) The new album, Rabbit Habits -- which front man Honus Honus describes as "laser beam, as opposed to tractor beam" -- was released yesterday on Anti- Records. And make sure to take note of those nice, big apartments you can afford in Philly, even when you're a poor, dirty hipster! Suck it, Brooklyn!



As a final note, the Pitchfork Casting Call thing is painfully unfunny until the forth and final "audition," which seems staged, especially since I'm pretty sure the applicant is Nick Diamonds/Nicholas Thorburn of Islands. Continue reading...

the place is called jerky's, we should've known better

If you're ever thinking about going to see Diplo spin at Jerky's bar in downtown Providence FORGET ABOUT IT HE'S NOT COMING.

Ten of us trekked through the snow, sleet, and slush at least an entire mile tonight just to be told that Diplo had canceled his gig at the retardedly/aptly titled Jerky's in the PVD. The cancellation was announced on the radio, we were told. Because that's what you do before you leave to go to a show. You check on the radio. For future reference, musicians/recording artists/djs of the world: if almost a dozen Brown students can get it together to make it down that effing hill on foot, you should be able to get it together to drive your automobile to Rhode Island from wherever you're coming from (like Philly if you're from there like Diplo is hollaaaaa).

I have a headache from all the MGMT I've had to listen to tonight so goodnight. Continue reading...

i love ugly little goats

On Friday night I went with my friend Lizzie and her friend Sam to see the second of two sold out Magnetic Fields shows at the Somerville Theater, on the outskirts of Boston. I’d seen them once before, at Penn University in Philadelphia just before their last album, I, came out, back in 2004. In the context of the younger generation of Magnetic Fields fans I was a relatively late bloomer, becoming only somewhat interested in them when my mom’s boyfriend Dan would occasionally play 69 Love Songs around the house just after the turn of the most recent century.

It was not until I came out of the closet to elope with Stephin Merritt that I realized their total fucking awesomeness. Being the professional music journalist that he is, Dan had received the 14-song alliteratively-themed, alphabetically-ordered godsend a few months before its official release, giving me enough time to memorize every last word of it before the show. It came as no surprise to me, then, that the audience at this early-2004 show found the punch line lyrics of the humorous I tracks, like “I Don’t Believe You” and “I Wish I Had an Evil Twin,” to be LOL funny. Lines like “I had a dream and you were in it/The blue of your eyes was infinite/You seemed to be/In love with me/Which isn’t very realistic” and “My evil twin would lie and steal/And he would stink of sex appeal/All men would writhe/Beneath his scythe/He’d send the pretty ones to me” brought down the HOUSE, and I didn’t bat an eye.

Friday night, however, it’s fair to say that one or two of my eyes got the shit batted out of them. Not only did the amusing cuts off of their new Distortion, like “The Nun’s Litany” and “Too Drunk To Dream,” totally kill, but the same damn lines from I and previous albums were greeted as if their comedic value was as fresh and unexpected as the combination of a sassy child and a well-executed surprise party. I don’t want to come across as some grumpy die-hard Magnetic Fields fan who looks down his nose at those who can’t recite both parts of “Yeah, Oh Yeah” whenever prompted. However the only explanations for this phenomenon I could come up with were a) that Magnetic Fields fans are just always ready to laugh and have a good time, b) many of them suffer from lyric memory loss, or c) they paid $30+ to go to a show by a band they’ve hardly listened to (insert joke about Magnetic Fields fans being so old they are senile here).

Aside from the occasionally confusing crowd behavior, the show was, oh, you know, fucking wonderful. Merritt, clad in his monkish spectrum of brown and affecting his usual endearingly feigned reluctance, led his quintet through two-dozen songs, old and new, released and un-, and all sounding clean as a whistle despite the reverb-dominated aesthetic of Distortion. A highlight of the night was a little ditty about a “very ugly, tiny goat” sung by Merritt’s right hand woman, Claudia Gonson, but unmistakably written by and about Merritt himself, chronicling the trials and tribulations of a little unlovable goat.

But as unappealing as Merritt may look, his appearance is all but forgotten when you watch him sing a song like “Papa Was A Rodeo” as beautifully as he does, and then immediately cringe and press his ear against his shoulder to prevent the adoring applause from reaching his hyper-sensitive eardrums. The tour, which is completely sold out, travels to NYC next for four nights at the Town Hall Theatre, followed by two in San Fran and LA, three in Seattle, and finishing with four in Chicago. Check out the set list below. From what I overheard at the show they have been changing it up quite a bit from night to night but I’m guessing the mix of album sources will be pretty consistent.

California Girls
I Don’t Believe You
All My Little Words
Come Back From San Francisco
Old Fools
Xavier Says
Gothic Archies - Walking My Gargoyle
Too Drunk To Dream
Till The Bitter End
The Night You Can’t Remember
Water Torture – singing training song
Lovers From The Moon
I Wish I Had An Evil Twin
The 6ths cover – Give Me Back My Dreams
Grand Canyon
Papa Was A Rodeo
Drive On, Driver
The Nun’s Litany (sung by Stephin)
The Tiny Goat?
Smoke And Mirrors
Zombie Boy

Encore:
Three-Way
Take Ecstasy With Me
The Book Of Love Continue reading...