Posts by Shawn Donohue

Welcome to Bob Dylan’s Modern Times, which sounds about as “modern” as a Model T Ford. The legend's new album has become his first #1 record since 1976’s Desire, to which Modern Times is a kindred spirit; both follow career defining albums which critics hailed as “The Re-birth of Dylan.”

Any night is a good night to dig into Dinosaur Jr. but the Warsaw show may have been a really special one, because it turns out the group got a bunch of their equipment stolen after the show. Here’s hoping though that they get it back and their signature sound returns with them for many more bingo hall concerts to come.

It is amazing that a band playing together since 1981 can still manage to play with such grace and fire, fresh songs alongside classics, with everything working out so seamlessly. Hopefully the Yeah Yeah Yeahs can reach that point someday. But if they needed any guidance, all they had to do was open their ears to one of the best bands of the last quarter century playing beside them.

Mad props need to be given to the good people at JellyNYC for providing free Sunday concerts in a quintessentially Brooklyn atmosphere, an old abandoned swimming pool.

Isolation is the central theme here, from the band’s name to the sound found on Fear Is On Our Side; it seeps through the casket cracks like rain water. A remote gasping vocal delivery of lines like “Reaching/For the end/Never make a sound.” place you squarely back in 1986 at a Cure/Depeche Mode double bill, while the music behind those lines manages to raise the stakes.

These Alaskan country-fried players sure have some depressing Ten Day Benders; they also have enough good ‘ole boy in them to pump a shotgun and pick a fiddle simultaneously.

Less than two weeks after Kobayashi downed 53 and 3/4 hotdogs on the boardwalk of Coney Island, crowds once again crammed the shore ready to check out the sights and sounds of the 2006 Village Voice Siren Fest.

Under the blazing sun, Phil Lesh and Friends (Larry Campbell guitar, Barry Sless pedal steel, Joan Osborne vocals, John Molo drums, Greg Osby sax, and Rob Barraco keys) began stretching it out from the first note, with a patient jam that eventually fell into “Truckin’.”

Well-Matched showcases classic numbers such as the Phillips/ Parker rumbling “Mystery Train,” Dylan’s piercing "Positively 4th Street” and Jimmy Cliff’s reggae gem “The Harder They Come,” in a fashion that any music lover can get behind.

For the two Northeast shows on back-to-back nights, there was certainly a focus on the new album as well as a look-back to the beginning of the band