Category

Review

• Live, Music, NYC, Review, Uncategorized

  Live: Frida Hyvönen; Church of Sweden, 11.12.08

  11.13.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  Attendance, the flyer said, would be capped at 90. I’d guess that the chapel in New York’s Church of Sweden — on 48th Street just off Fifth Avenue, unobtrusive among financial offices and gleaming glass hotels — seated 75 at most, and a few songs into her set, Frida Hyvönen suggested that those standing come [...]

• Books, Me, Music, Review, Reviews

  critical discourse for 10.31.08

  10.31.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  Two new pieces up:
  For the Portland Mercury, my take on the Spinto Band.
  For Lit Mob, my take on Joe Meno’s collection Demons in the Spring.

• CMJ2008, Live, Music, Review

  live: the sundelles, browns, the muslims; union pool, 10.26.08

  10.27.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  Sunday night — a couple of hours ago, actually — I stopped by Union Pool for a 1928 Recordings showcase. I’d heard solid things from a few friends about The Muslims, who were headlining and figured, hey, seemed like a fine idea. Spoiler alert — it was. Sunday nights post-CMJ are always interesting — though [...]

• CMJ2008, Live, Music, Review

  live: the dutchess and the duke, the end of the world, emmy the great; pianos, 10.25.08 / the end of the world; glasslands, 10.25.08

  10.27.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  Back upstairs at Pianos on Saturday afternoon, for a day party booked by Bowery Presents.
  I’ve now seen The Dutchess and the Duke five times in 2008, in spaces ranging from basements to mid-sized theaters, playing guitars electric and acoustic. The sound I found so bracing initially has only gotten tighter — there’s a force to [...]

• CMJ2008, Live, Music, Review

  live: pretty & nice, the coathangers; pianos, 10.24.08

  10.26.08 | Permalink | 1 Comment

  Upstairs at Piano’s, Friday night: the Hardly Art / Suicide Squeeze / Sub Pop showcase. The downstairs component is well-reviewed by Marc Hogan for Pitchfork, and includes a photo of Steve from Blood City joining Oxford Collapse onstage. (That’s two-thirds of a Coup Fourre reunion, fellas…)
  During said Oxford Collapse set, Adam commented that the [...]

• CMJ2008, Live, Music, Review

  live: adept, women; cakeshop, 10.22.08

  10.26.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  Belated CMJ blogging, you may ask? It begins here. Wednesday night found me briefly at Cakeshop, there to see Alberta’s Women, whose disc on Jagjaguwar has been gratifying my noisepop receptors a lot lately. The night was hosted by the Dutch magazine/collective Subbacultcha!, and I walked in partway through a set from their countrymen Adept. [...]

• Live, Music, NYC, Review

  live: becky stark, harper simon, human highway; cake shop, 09.15.08

  09.16.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  So hey, Cake Shop. Tropical wallpaper stretching for a dozen feet as you approach the stage, hanging red garlands and tiny white lights dangling amidst soundproofing foam. It’s become one of my favorite places to see shows in New York — actually, given that I once saw Daphne Brooks read from her book on Jeff [...]

• Live, Music, NYC, Review, Uncategorized

  live: pigeons, air bombay, pretty & nice; pianos; 09.05.08

  09.15.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  Pianos on a Friday night is a strange place to be. The bar portion, which one has to traverse in order to get to the venue in the back, was on this particular night full of well-dressed, well-off types making loud conversation. The actual performance space, which had added a bar since the last time [...]

• Me, Music, Review

  death, taxes, and me.

  09.12.08 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  In the new issue of Death+Taxes (the one with CSS on the cover), I have a pair of reviews, along with a piece on Oxford Collapse. Two more reviews (of Adem and Bound Stems) are now up on their site, where another two should be joining them one of these days.
  The Oxford Collapse piece will [...]

• Coffee, Live, Music, NYC, Review, brooklyn

  live: the dutchess and the duke, james jackson toth; union hall, 09.01.08

  09.02.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  Union Hall is around four blocks from Gorilla Coffee in Park Slope, and on nights when my supply of coffee is low and I find myself bound for the venue in question, I’ll generally make a stop beforehand for a freshly ground pack. And so on nights when I find myself standing in Union Hall’s [...]

• Me, Music, Review

  in which I write about the sound of guitars

  08.12.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  Two of the three reviews on Paper Thin Walls today are pieces I wrote: a review of Shaky Hands, and a review of, and brief interview with, Shannon McArdle.

• Live, Music, Review

  live: max and the marginalized; abc no rio, 08.02.08

  08.03.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  “The sing-a-long songs will be our scriptures,” Craig Finn sings on the title track of The Hold Steady’s new album Stay Positive. Having grown up on hardcore, that’s a sentiment I can appreciate — though growing up in central Jersey in the mid-90s, most of those sing-a-longs were political in nature. (You could probably make [...]

• Live, Music, Review

  live: joe and the flying spoons, diamond j and the rough, the end of the world; union hall, 07.26.08

  07.27.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  Up first at this Jinners-curated bill were Joe and the Flying Spoons, whose lineup brought together a fairly traditional guitars/bass/drums/keyboard setup with four backup singers, who lent harmony vocals to many of the songs. The group’s frontman (Joe, I’m guessing) made an offhand comment about the keyboard tone sounding churchlike, and those words may have [...]

• Live, Music, Review

  live: bound stems, mercury lounge, 07.24.08

  07.25.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  Venture to Bound Stems‘ Wikipedia entry, and you’ll find this relatively innocuous opening sentence: “Bound Stems is an indie rock band with math rock influences from Chicago, Illinois“. And that’s great and all, but I prefer to think of them as the band that caused the staff of BD Riley’s think that I was a [...]

• Live, Music, Review

  Live: Katie Eastburn, Ponytail, Joan of Arc, Knitting Factory, 7.22.08

  07.23.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  1.
  The last time I saw Joan of Arc may very well have been at a Voices in the Wilderness benefit at Tramps during the summer of 1999. If memory serves, they decided to play their set at as low a volume as was possible, which did a fine job of alienating the audience, some of [...]

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