Even though we were all doing that brand new dance called “The Loco-Motion” twenty-two years ago, the Australian bombshell responsible for the craze, Kylie Minogue, is only now having her first full-blown U.S. tour. Minogue exploded back onto the club scene with her 2001 hit “Can’t Get You Out of My Head,” which is as hard to shake as the title suggests. She has a huge and loyal fan-base outside of the U.S. which is sure to expand now that her “For You For Me Tour,” which will make stops in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Toronto, finally kicked off in Oakland last week. She will play three nights at the Hammerstein Ballroom starting this weekend. Today’s jam is not only, in my opinion, her best song, but this video is cool enough to watch again and again.
So I know that we’ve already posted a couple times about Das Racist, but it’s kind of inevitable given that homeboys are eeeerrywhere these days. New York magazine just wrote a story (in the print edition, even!) in which they describe the duo as “sawing the legs out from under hip-hop as they celebrate it.” And a couple of weeks earlier, the New York Timesran a review of their recent show at Union Pool, in Williamsburg, in which the central argument seemed to rebuke most of DR’s detractors by asserting that “their sloppiness is a mask for detailed, affectionate hip-hop parody, name-dropping KRS-One and Asher Roth as easily as W. E. B. Du Bois and the literary critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.” Hima and Victor seem to pretty much have NYC on lock at this point.
If you weren’t able to make it out to the Union Pool show, then you’ve got a shot tonight, as they will be headlining at the Bowery Ballroom along with supporting acts Gordon Voidwell (listen to “White Friends”), POPO, and Old Money.
Get ready for some madness! In the meantime, here’s a video to fuel the fire (but don’t worry, they aren’t only a “fast food rap” group.
So we WERE able to make it to All Points West on Sunday and it was a sweaty, music-filled, muddy time. But first we had to wait all morning/afternoon for the torrential downpours to end and let the powers-that-be decide that the weather would hold out long enough to open the doors. There were many conflicting twitter reports and the All Points website was very infrequently updated but finally we decided to brave the crowds and the mud. On the way in we heard the Silversun Pickups and We Are Scientists but the first band that we got to see up close was Elbow. They rocked it on the mellow tip (they sound amazingly clean and sharp live) and geared us up for a walk to the Bullet Stage for a rollicking Black Keys show.
Gloomy skies @ All Points West on Sunday
One thing that must be said about this whole All Points West festival experience: being forced to drink $7 beers in a “beer garden”/animal-pen-filled-with-mud is not a good or sustainable model. Get it together APW, this is rock and roll festival, idiots!
So for a little while I got caught up in looking for something to eat while Melissa explored the VIP area, and then Coldplay starting raining down some anthems, covering “Fight for your Right” along the way in a nice Beastie Boys tribute, which was a fitting bookend of sorts to Jay-Z’s cover of “No Sleep Til Brooklyn” on Friday evening.
Coldplay w/ crazy laser beams @ All Points West 2009
Just a little while later, we wandered over to check out MGMT, who was playing on the Bullet Stage across the way, and actually got a couple of decent videos of them performing.
MGMT – Pieces of What (live @ All Points West 2009):
MGMT – Weekend Wars (live @ All Points West 2009):
On the way home, some of us were covered with mud, but only on our shoes/pants/legs/hair/outside parts. Not in our hearts. God Bless America!
Tomorrow the 9th Annual Village Voice Siren Music Festival will take over Coney Island with a free concert that includes a lineup of about 15 bands, culminating in sets by Built to Spill and Spank Rock at the Main Stage (on W. 10th St. off Surf Ave.) and the Stillwell Stage (Stillwell Ave. off Surf Ave.), respectively. There’s a great group of bands playing this year, so grab some sunscreen, your friends, and a beachball (these were a must-have item whenever the above picture from beatcrave.com was taken, apparently) and kick it in Coney Island all day. And given that Budweiser is sponsoring the Official After Party, I’m sure there will be lots of boozing in addition to the dancing. Doesn’t sound like a drag at all.
Here at ev2bk we’re especially excited to see/party with one of our favorite bands, and longtime buddies, Bear Hands, who are playing on the Stillwell Stage at 2:30pm sharp. Even the New York Metro is psyched (thanks Betsy)!
Bear Hands was formed back in 2006 when Dylan Rau was living in Brooklyn and asked Ted Feldman, Val Loper, and TJ Orscher to play on some demos that he was recording. Dylan was going to school with Ted at Wesleyan at the time, and already knew TJ and Val from the CT music scene (Val and TJ had been in CT hardcore band In Pieces, and had – if I remember correctly – played some shows with Dylan’s old band Building a Factory, but in any case, they knew each other well enough to have at least shared a bowl or whatnot). The general band-mythology is that during the recording sessions, all four guys sort of realized “hmm, maybe this could be a pretty kick-ass band” and so now they’re “doing the best they can” (from their myspace page).
But just in case you think this implies some sort of lack of ambition or luster, it should be noted that already in 2009 alone the boys have toured Europe twice:
Bear Hands @ Cargo in London (2/23/09)
Recorded some live tracks with Daytrotter after playing a few shows at SXSW in Austin (here’s my favorite of those songs):
“Belongings”
Totally killed it at a show with Passion Pit at Bowery Ballroom back in June:
Bear Hands at Bowery Ballroom (6/19/09)
And for the rest of the summer are all set to play Hartford with Airbourne Toxic Event, Boston with We Are Scientists, and both the Leeds Festival and Reading Festival in the UK later this August. Oh and did I mention that they are currently in the studio recording their first full-length record? Last week when I spoke with Dylan he told me that it was sounding pretty great so far; I’ll post an update after I listen to some of the tracks with him tonight in the studio.
We love this band, and think you will too! Each and every member of the band is the sweetest of dudes and would probably love to get to know you. So come join us and get your dance on with Bear Hands and the rest of the bands tomorrow at the Siren Music Festival. Here’s a little preview of the remix of the hotness from Bear Hands. The song, “What a Drag,” can be purchased as a 7″ import from Rough Trade Shops and Too Pure Records.
Last Thursday, Brooklyn band, Hollands played a midnight show at Fontana’s. I got to sit down with the lead singer and guitarist, John-Paul Norpoth, before the show. Norpoth shared his ruminations on their first EP, Faces, now available on iTunes, and the band’s focus on the September release of their second EP, Mother.
Norpoth is the only current band member who contributed to Faces. He wrote it in ’03 and ’04 and recorded it from ’05 to ’07. It was originally a side project that he worked on while he was in the band Butane Variations. Although proud of the record, Norpoth seemed anxious to move away from it and eager to concentrate on the new direction that the band is taking with their sound. He described Faces as being “dated stylistically” in comparison to where their sound is now. Revtone Digital Music, an online distributor, was the driving force behind the release of Faces, though Norpoth was at times hesitant about the delayed release of his old material when the band is so focused on the new.
There are four core members of the band, John-Paul Norpoth on guitar and vocals, Jim Robertson on bass, Jannina Barefield on violin, and Kenny Grohowski on drums. Barefield was not in attendance at the performance, leaving it to the three boys to put on the show. Norpoth has a classical music background; he studied at the New School with all of his current bandmates. Norpoth and Barefield sometimes play smaller duo gigs minus the drum and bass. Additional jazz and string musicians frequently join the core band members, to create what Norpoth described as their desired “broad musical sound.” Norpoth explained, “In addition to our rhythm section, sometimes we play with an organist/pianist and three string players… The band can grow to be quite large. The songs work in all settings and I guess I like to fit the venue with whatever seems necessary.” For the intimate space at Fontana’s, the three-person band was just the right fit.
After performances by experimental ambient-rock band Venice is Sinking, and urban-Americana band And The Revelers Fell, the headliners of the evening, Hollands, took the stage just after midnight. They opened with an energetic drum-driven cover of Gillian Welch’s “Look at Miss Ohio.” “Over and Out,” from Faces, a rollicking rock jam, kept the energy high while Norpoth reassured the crowd, “It’s late but we’re going to keep you up.” Later in the set, they slowed things down with the sonic, rock-a-billy jam “Lungs of Steele,” showcasing Norpoths’ melancholy, wistful vocals, but kicked it back into high gear when Grohowski started “Strong Arm” with a rhythmic punch, and they really hit their stride. Despite a broken string and guitar switch before the more delicate “Coughing Boy,” they picked it up in the second half when Robertson’s memorable bass line came in and led into another standout track “Goldie Hawn.” They closed the show with the psychedelic, airy, “Air Conditioned Heart,” a perfect song to enjoy on a long summer night.
Check out a couple of the songs from Faces here:
Strong Arm:
Coughing Boy:
You can preview more of their upcoming stuff on their myspace page.
Hollands has a sound that is simultaneously nostalgic, current, and timeless. They span musical styles and decades with influences as varied as classical music, Wilco, the Flaming Lips, and Paul Simon. On “Air Conditioned Heart” Norpoth’s wronged, bluesy vocals are featured on a folk-rock track that sounds like the Grateful Dead and Arcade Fire joined forces. Hollands is a band to watch. We are looking forward to the September release of Mother, and, having heard just the trio, I’m anxious to check them out when they have a fuller band.
They are touring in upstate New York for the rest of the month before they return to perform at Pete’s Candy Store on August 21st.
East Village to Brooklyn 