Rocky Votolato shouldn’t be written off when if comes to earnest
folk music, but most of the album is banal with not enough distinction
between the songs. He is a fine songwriter and musician, but his music
doesn’t burst to life like some of his more refined predecessors.
Side projects have become a hit or miss avenue. For every novel Postal Service, there is an over-hyped Velvet Revolver with the whole
The Hidden Land drops in advance of a major year of touring for our beloved Flecktones, who didn’t perform together in 2005 but certainly found ways to occupy themselves, with all four members mounting successful side project jaunts. Hidden isn’t so much a comeback, as some observers have oddly termed it, but rather just picking up where they left off, possibly with a renewed sense of purpose and a sensibility that seems a bit more earthbound.
Compared to tracks like “The Day We Left Town,” from his first album, Johansen is capable of much more dark drama than is present on Tourniquet. The dreamlike quality here conjures up nothing more foreboding than visions of scarves billowing in slow motion.
With “Goodnight and Go,” you get a bubblegum teen romp with silly lyrics and a chorus that sounds so immature, it might make Britney puke when she hears it.
Always hesitant of a band with an exclamation point in their name, I wasn’t sure what I was getting into last week when I decided to roll on over to North Six in Brooklyn to check out The Go!Team. Shortly after 10:30, the three boys and three girls of the Go!Team, stormed the stage clad with wristbands and donning their own personal style, they immediately started bouncing around and playing their hearts out like a pep rally gone rock and roll.
I never once thought that the kings of Irish punk/folk would regroup and play America, let alone in a place and time when I could see them. The last time I caught the whiskey bottle of a singer known as Shane MacGowan live, he was a bloody mess from falling down and being dragged off stage only 3 songs into his set with the Popes.
Photos by Jake Krolick of Ratdog at the Electric Factory in Philly on 3.24.06
If you’re looking to find endless footage of the Rolling Thunder tours, one of Dylan
This will be the album that will have longtime fans of the Devics bragging to newcomers that they liked them before they got popular, and have the Johnny-come-latelys scrambling to find their entire back catalog.
