By bringing in new voices to add to their palette both on tour and on record, Ray and Saliers have fought obsolescence, and they’ve won.
The combination of Marling's haunting alto and searing lyrical vulnerability within the cathedral's awe-inspiring Gothic architecture created a space that was both communal and intensely personal.
In a note detailing Soulive and Karl Denson's upcoming CD release shows around their new EP SPARK! Denson most helpfully advises: SPARK! is really about the playing, less about the tunes. It's the four of us collectively getting back to more of a jazzier thing than we'd done in recent memory."
Southern crooner and lyric scrawler Matthew Mayfield is a gifted and prolific storyteller (he has released eight EPs and one full-length album in less than four years). Of course according to his Facebook page he is also a “two-faced son of a bitch,” so take that for what you will. Maybe he’s just a tortured artist or maybe he’s just yanking our chains; either way, the man knows how to write and his tales are evocative and picturesque.
Although the performance was billed as ”Gillian Welch,” it’s clearly a team effort here as David Rawlings is an essential part to their creative process, and a prominent musical partner on stage. By flat-picking his 1935 Epiphone Olympic guitar, Rawlings, with a cowboy hat tilted down to shadow most of his face, evokes an addictive flavor of dissonance that fuels tenderness and rawness. He also balances intensely visceral fervor with restraint, providing the songs with plenty of passion but without ever disrupting their delicacy.
There are a few times when the collaboration bears a sum much greater than its constituent parts, in which orchestra and singer weave a synaesthetic grandeur that is utterly enthralling. Natalie Merchant's show last week was one of those nights.
Any write-up of Swedish singer-songwriter Kristian Matsson, aka The Tallest Man on Earth, inevitably makes the Bob Dylan comparison. The parallels are there, what with the loose, acoustic fingerpicking, the scraggly voice, and the Greenwich Village vibe all present as hallmarks of Matsson’s sound. However, Dylan appraisals are pointless and derivative unless the songs are there and can stand on their own.
Dntel is Jimmy Tamborello, a musician who burst most strongly onto collective consciousness through his collaboration with Ben Gibbard, under the moniker The Postal Service. However, under the moniker Dntel Tamborello has been responsible for leading the charge on modern glitchy electronica, first coming to the notice of this reviewer with the fantastic 2003 Kompact compilation, Triple R Friends, to which Tamborello contributed his 2001 song, “This is the Dream,” as remixed by Superpitcher.
The Cult opened their concert at the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom, an ocean side club that has hosted some of the biggest names in rock history over the years, by roaring into the stuttering opening riff of their mid-80s classic “Lil’ Devil,” and never looked back. After three decades in the business of rock n roll, The Cult proved they can still tear up a stage.
In his integration, MC Yogi represents a generation with limitless influences and big dreams of changing the world. His ability to express a vividly detailed and utterly unique identity is the heartbeat of a new paradigm that calls upon the wisdom of ancient Eastern tradition but stays firmly planted in the creative language of postmodern culture. Through this dialectical pulse we remake ourselves on a Pilgrimage toward consciousness.
