avett brothers

The Avett Brothers: Live, Volume 3

Four years after “Live, Vol 2” was recorded in 2005, the Avett Brothers this month release Live Volume 3, , and it’s interesting to compare the two releases to see what the Brothers have been up to over the past four  years.

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Bloggy Goodness: Brooklyn Bowl The App

We’ve already professed our love and admiration for Brooklyn Bowl when we named it as our favorite New York City music venue. The gastropub-bowling alley-concert venue is again proving that

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Bloggy Goodness: The Avetts Go Live

The Avett Brothers have been on a seemingly non-stop tour ever since releasing the critically acclaimed  I And Love And You last September. So it really should come as no

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Recap: Newport Folk Festival

With a seemingly rotating door on music festivals over the last handful of years it’s assuring to know that you can continually count on the Newport Folk Festival to be there year in and year out, offering up a high quality and diverse lineup in one of the most serene settings imaginable. Returning once again to the historic Fort Adams State Park, the fest delivered an amazing swath of artists from folk to funk and everything in between.


Much like how there are those musicians that are referred to as a “singer-songwriter’s singer-songwriter,” well now after having attended Newport Folk the label of a “music fan’s music fest” might be the best way to describe it. With three stages and 30-plus acts to choose from, it seemed relatively easy to plant yourself in front of one stage for the day – like many did – and take in all the action. For the ambitious music lovers though, the close proximity of the Fort, Harbor and Quad stages made it a breeze to catch an impressive amount of music over the two-day span.

Saturday kicked off with one of the fest’s biggest success stories – The Low Anthem – who just three years prior were picking up trash as on-site volunteers and now found themselves with a main stage slot. The Providence-based band showcased their gorgeous folk music, which features an odd menagerie of instruments – crotales, harmonium and clarinet – along with the obvious guitar, bass and drums. Taking in just a handful of songs, which was highlighted by a sublime take on Apothecary, and their interpretation of Rev. Gary Davis’ Sally Where’d You Get The Liquor From?, I had to pulled myself away from really the one lone conflict of the weekend to see a full set from A.A. Bondy.

READ ON for more of Jeff’s recap of Newport Folk…

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Pullin’ ‘Tubes: Mums The Word

Last week in our CPR edition of Friday Mix Tape, Ryan via my recommendation dropped a tune from the Mumford & Sons – whom I described as “the UK’s answer

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Bonnaroo Lineup Revealed Today

Over the last couple of weeks, there has been a lot of news swirling in regards to the lineup for the ninth annual Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival. All the

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Bloggy Goodness: Fire On The Mountain

In our never ending quest to keep you up to date on the latest and greatest festival news comes the announcement of the initial lineup for Warren Haynes’ Mountain Jam.

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HT 25 Best Albums of 2009: Numbers 1-5

This year at Hidden Track, we concocted a little experiment for our year-end Best Albums of 2009 list. Instead of picking the old fashioned way – subjectively – we opted for something a little different: a collaborative, collective list that incorporates the opinions of everybody here at HT.

To begin, we devised an all-encompassing list of around 100 nominees and populated it in a Google spreadsheet – essentially anything that anybody who writes for Hidden Track liked at all, made the list. Then we invited our crew of writers to independently vote on the whole list (omitting anything unfamiliar) on a scale of 1 to 20 (20 = five stars). We ended up with 33 voters with varying degrees of familiarity with the nominees; some folks voted on just about everything, while some just a few. From there, we eliminated anything that did not receive at least three votes, calculated the average scores, and sorted it. We took the top 25 scores and presto: the Hidden Track 25 Best Albums of 2009. No bullshit, no big opinions; just the results.

We’ve come to the end of our week long countdown, let’s check out our Top Five…

5) The Flaming LipsEmbryonic

Key Tracks: Evil, Gemini Syringes, Watching the Planets, Powerless

Sounds Like: Trent Reznor, Mars Volta

the-flaming-lips-embryonic

Skinny: Beware Yoshimi fans, there’s a lot less beautiful stuff this time around. Alternatively, what the Flaming Lips forgo in placating, they more than make up for with dark themes, mayhem and a heavy storyline. While at times Embryonic gets weighed down by knobs and buttons (see Aquarius Sabotage), with some fatty basslines, a heavy dousing of effects and a deeply cynical overarching theme, the Lips provide more to think about and less with which to sing along. If there’s a credit to Wayne Coyne and crew, it’s an ability to push way beyond the conventional, while somehow getting through to the conventional.

READ ON to see the final four albums of our Top 25…

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Noise Report: The Low Anthem

Words: Jonathan ” Kos” Kosakow

Video & Photos: Curtis Stiles

In August of 2007, a blue station wagon pulled up to the Rockwood Music Hall on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. After checking to make sure they were legally parked, Jeff Prystowsky and Ben Knox Miller unloaded their own gear and carted it to the small stage. Rockwood, though comfortable and with pristine sound, only holds a handful of people, so it’s not spacious enough to host any large band – or even a small one with a large following. On that night, the room was hardly at capacity, but the two members who comprised The Low Anthem were able to grab hold the ears of every listener in the small, dimly lit brick room. And, based on the post-show conversation, I was not the only one who felt they had a music-making future ahead of them.

band2

I saw them again two years later at The Bell House in Brooklyn, in August of 2009, opening for Surprise Me Mr. Davis featuring Marco Benevento (a welcome addition to the bill). As Miller told me, Surprise Me Mr. Davis was the first band to ask The Low Anthem to tour with them, so it was a comfortable match-up for both (and it made for a nice encore as they joined forces on a couple of tunes). The video below is a gospel standard the trio played that night, Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around…

Though I had seen the Anthem multiple times between these two shows, it was interesting and inspiring to watch the group, now a trio including Jocie Adams, gain popularity while also growing musically.

READ ON for more from the Noise Report…

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