Dylan and band seemed to be enjoying their only NYC appearance, making the crowd thankful they are still producing such exciting live versions of Dylan’s excellent catalog of music.
You made a big mistake, Seattle. Well – not all of you. There were 27 hearty folks, including this reviewer, who made the trip out to the beautifully remodeled Columbia City Theater to see Wintersleep last Thursday. It was a wonderful, if beguiling, treat for the lucky ones who got to see this band (2008 Juno Award winners,)play their hearts out after openers Elliott Brood.
As the Grammy-winning Deftones ("Best Metal Performance 2001") have illustrated over the past 20 years, there's plenty of room for progression in aggressive music. Whether you effuse admiration for the band or haven't really developed a taste for their art, there's no question that they bring a diverse crayon box to school, often coloring outside the lines of popular music theory. As a result, other bands have copied their homework but haven't been able to back it up with a proper oral report.
Monday night’s show at the Bowery Ballroom reinforced that while Tegan and Sara are dabbling in the genre of electronic/dance, they will never forget where they come from, and will continue writing inspired music accessible to all of their devoted fans. It’s an ongoing love affair, and it’s a whole lot of fun.
It was a quiet election day eve and Other Lives made their return to the Valley of the Sun. They've come to Phoenix before as the opener for Radiohead back in March and opening for rock royalty has definitely taken their public awareness to new heights. They returned this time as the headliner at Crescent Ballroom, a much more intimate venue than the giant Jobing.com arena they played last time.
Building his reputation playing guitar – he now plays alongside Axl Rose and Nikki Sixx in two of the most popular bands in rock & roll – Ashba is now making his name on the other side of plucking chords: as a businessman. I sat down this past weekend with Ashba during GNR’s current Vegas residency and talked to him about this part of his life … after I asked him about those crows that decorate his chest.
While this concert revealed the inconsistent quality of his recent solo work, and also exposed just how central Death Cab For Cutie’s instrumentation is to the power of their songs, Ben Gibbard put on a thoroughly enjoyable and downright exquisite performance.
It’s a safe bet that very few of the folks who attended the Jimmy Herring Band/Victor Wooten Band double bill at Durham’s beloved Carolina Theater thought they would leave the building with any other performer’s name on their lips. As much as everyone marveled at the blatant and inspiring display of musicianship put on by Herring, Wooten, and their bands, no one could seem to stop talking about vocalist Krystal Peterson.
Jack White closed out the festival with an enormously simple set of tantalizingly spirited music with minimal frills. At almost twenty songs, White, in pinstripe suit and fedora, smoldered and chased the rock & roll dragon, proving once and for all that he is one of the maestros for all others to emulate and aspire to.
With their widely-acclaimed fourth album, Violent Waves, self- released on August 28th, one might have expected silence from a crowd where, while half the crowd looked like they’d turn their noses up, “Ugh, I liked ‘em better in 2005,” and the other half looked like they were hardly old enough to drink, let alone vividly remember Green’s transition from Saosin to Circa Survive. Despite these differences, everyone seemed satisfied with the set list, which varied in a good range of the band’s discography.
