Somewhere deep into his sold out 90 minute set at Denver's Ogden Theatre, Prince declared to his fans "Aint no party like a purple party 'cause the purple party don't stop!" This is a mantra Prince and his fans have always seemed to live by, and at this rare intimate theater show, they all definitely lived up to that mantra in full.
Machine Gun Kelly began his incredibly personal set with “Save Me” a hit off his Lace Up album. The performance seemed to rile the crowd to the point where a member of the audience climbed up on the rafters and was then promptly ejected by an overzealous security guard. Kelly continued with “What I Do,” featuring Dub-O and Bun B, and held the somber energy throughout the entire song. With lyrics like, “This shit’s too real for ya’ll cause almost everybody rapping isn’t real at all. Sometimes I forget I got a deal cause’ I’m busy thinking about when I couldn’t get a meal at all,” he depicted the struggle he faced before his “come up.”
A strobe light danced intermittently to a drum track over a bare stage. Clad in all black, the four members of pop band Lovelife took the Paradise stage. Keyboardist Ally Young laid down the introductory synthesizer track to “Brave Heart”. When drummer Frank Colucci kicked in, vocalist Lee Newell and guitarist Sam Jackson sang the double vocal harmonies. As the opening act the crowd was somewhat sparse but the band grabbed the audience’s attention.
he Slackers, a six-piece ska and rock-steady band from New York, premiered a handful of songs Saturday night for a crowd of 55 packed into a Manhattan loft. Dubbed a “secret show,” the sold-out performance paired the group’s in-the-works singles with covers and requests.
Currently touring in support of the recently released Bodyparts, Martina Sorbara and her band brought their talents to New York City on Wednesday night, taking Terminal 5 by storm and wasting no time at turning the venue into a dancehall.
e're here in part for the same reason you are: to get a little out of our skin."So said Craig Minowa, leader of Minneapolis based experimental indie (in the true sense of the word) rockers, Cloud Cult. Now 11 full-length albums into their career, the sound is as expansive and, in Minowa's own words, schizophrenic, as ever. Yet a 90 minute set, as the seven piece band offered up in Seattle in support of their latest release, Love, remained an entirely cohesive and, dare I say it, life-affirming affair.
Drummers were high-energy beat keepers all weekend: Mutemath’s Darren King with his duct-taped-on headphones, Cowboy Mouth’s Fred LeBlanc’s always animated hard-hitting antics, Patrick Carney whipping his sticks into a frenzy during the Black Keys’ Sunday set, the lanky legendary Mick Fleetwood, Stanton Moore of Galactic coming off his seat as the adrenalin pumps him up and Joey Peebles tearing the absolute skin off his drums during Trombone Shorty’s Fest closing performance.
Mofro’s appearance at Higher Ground was a reminder of what a rare pleasure well-performed live music can be. And it’s all the more so pleasurable when that performance takes place in front of an audience present for the music above all else. The larger of the two rooms at the South Burlington venue held roughly two hundred people by the time The Eric Krasno Band finished, but given the acclamation afforded the openers (who proffered a well-intentioned but decidedly work-in-progress set), they were all there for the music.
Curled over a keyboard for the majority of his set, Idaho native Trevor Powers, a.k.a Youth Lagoon, shared songs of his life thus far at the Crescent Ballroom. Singing in a childlike voice, Powers makes sense of what it means to be 22 and feel both young and old and every age in between.
This night was a showcase of Jim James, whose meandering musical aesthetic is matched only by his evolving stage persona. His head-banging, cape-wearing, throwback rock-star act has given way to a suit-and-tie soul presence augmented by sliding, shimmying, and close (sometimes physical) interaction with his audience. His hyperactive, Flying V guitar solos on songs like “God’s Love to Deliver” were balanced by soulful, competent saxophone parts that added depth to a performance marked by the careful, intense delivery of the album’s uplifting, zen-like lyrics.
