Music critics and fans alike have long droned on about the inability of musical road warriors – concert-focused bands like Tea Leaf Green – to produce a decent studio listen. While that onus doesn't apply to every album in the cosmos, it definitely applies to Tea Leaf Green's Looking West.
The bio page on 30db.net refers to this collaboration between Brendan Bayliss (Umphrey’s McGee) and Jeff Austin (Yonder Mountain String Band) as “unexpected,” but fans of both bands have long recognized the musical and personal friendship between the pair. After hearing the debut album under the 30db moniker, One Man Show, even outsiders won’t miss the chemistry and similarities that Austin and Bayliss share.
After the dual spectacle of Wonder and Jay-Z Friday evening, I did a few slow laps around Centeroo, marveling that the last day of Bonnaroo 2010 had arrived – and that most people just didn't know it yet. Easing by each music tent, I circled, impaling my brain on a sort of late night "sensory spit." Dan Deacon's slapdash, noisy barrage of sounds is incredibly jarring in the live setting. The exploratory fascination of his last album, Bromst, was challenging, but not nearly as challenging as watching his band attempt an approximation of the sound live. It's the kind of music that can give you a skin condition after prolonged exposure.
A line from "Young Forever," one of Jay-Z’s biggest recent hits, nicely summed up Saturday at Bonnaroo 2010 – "Just a picture perfect day that lasts a whole lifetime." Just
Friday at Bonnaroo 2010 was one of those special days when you felt the collective electricity of bands and audience surge through your body as soon as your feet hit the ground on site. Just up the road waited a top-shelf open bar of music with enough spirits to create a limitless array of personalized audio-visual cocktails, and no two people concoct the same blend.
Carrboro, North Carolina’s Cat’s Cradle has always been a favorable spot for bands on the fringe of public consciousness. Caribou, for instance, would likely have a hell of a time drawing a few hundred people in Raleigh, Charlotte, or Asheville. But in Carrboro, the artist sometimes known as Daniel Snaith performed to a near-sellout crowd, and it wasn’t the first time he’s packed the house at the venue. However, last time he was in town the sound was better and the music infinitely more engaging.
If you’ve ever heard more than a few notes of Zappa Plays Zappa, you know that the band transcends the “tribute band” label. More akin to an orchestral performance of selected works than an imitation of the Frank Zappa sound and look, the band have carved out a comfortable space in the live music world, performing for Zappa-starved fanatics and curious newcomers all over the world.
Martin Sexton is one of the most unflappably earnest musicians on the planet, and he always manages to stand out in a genre that is unmercifully crowded. His latest release, Sugarcoating, brings listeners more of his positive, folk-tinged acoustic rock and stirring lyricism. Sexton’s music has frequently centered on themes of personal fulfillment and the tenuous existence of human happiness, and Sugarcoating does some of the same, simultaneously addressing materialism, success, and other trappings of the modern world.
About 800 of Porcupine Tree's darkly dressed advocates converged on Amos' Southend in Charlotte for the first ever "PT" show in North Carolina's largest city. An interesting mix of 40-somethings, dudes in Pink Floyd and Rush t-shirts, everyday hard rockers, the occasional punker or metalhead, and eager underage kids populated the venue, and the musical diversity represented by their conversations and apparel was right in line with the current sound of Porcupine Tree.
Widespread Panic have ruled the roost at Raleigh’s Walnut Creek Amphitheater for almost two decades, and the addition of Jimmy Herring’s guitar work has given the veteran band a much-needed shot of adrenaline for the last couple of years. But judging from the attendance at the band’s traditional late April shows in Raleigh, interest in WSP is on the wane. Whether the culprit is sluggish concert ticket sales as a whole or dwindling interest in the band, the reality of the situation was sobering. WSP isn’t quite the power it used to be.
