Results tagged “930club”

             

A critical consensus has been reached: playing an entire album live is a bit of a bore. The once novel concept has quickly become an unimaginative experience that legitimizes bands trotting out reliable hits without looking desperate (perhaps not always such a bad thing). From an artist's perspective, the album-as-set-list can be a self-mythologizing ego boost reinforcing older work as classic. The fans, for their part, get the songs they want in the order they are accustomed. Old codgers of all stripes will tell you that the album used to 'mean' something that kids today just don't understand. These individuals, fans and artists alike, have been weaned on the hallowed AOR template, a place where deep album cuts and well-known singles are valued equally.

              

Typically I try not to describe a band's sound by listing every obvious influence and antecedent. But when it comes to Wolfmother, the exercise is almost impossible to avoid. Their sound is a skein of 70's rock tropes. Songs contain blatant borrowings from Steppenwolf, Led Zepplin, The Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath, etc. Everything from little riffs, to entire melodies, to more esoteric thematic robberies. It's not bad to borrow but there is certainly a big difference between what someone like Jack White has managed to do with his influences and what Wolfmother is doing with theirs.

Wow. Damn. And wow. It's hard to reconcile a concert like last night's exquisite set by Andrew Bird. As mentioned several times by the performers during the evening, Washington D.C. was witness to the final installment of Bird's tour with fellow genre-defier St. Vincent. The billing seems appropriate. Take one musically gifted, experimental, and odd male musician and combine with a female of the same description.

              

The 9:30 Club was absolutely packed Wednesday night for the D.C. debut of Them Crooked Vultures, a recently-formed hard-rock “supergroup” featuring Dave Grohl of Nirvana and Foo Fighters fame, Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme, and multi-instrumentalist John Paul Jones, who formerly played bass in a little band called Led Zeppelin. Joined by touring guitarist Alain Johannes, the high-profile trio treated the crowd to an impressive 90-minute set, more than justifying the hype that made this one of the most highly-anticipated shows of the year.

There aren't many examples of contemporary bluegrass bands crossing over into more widespread popularity. In fact, there might be only two: Allison Krauss and Union Station, and the Yonder Mountain String Band. But while AKUS tends to attract an older and more traditional crowd, Yonder Mountain has built a loyal following on college campuses, regularly plays mainstream venues, and was even on the bill at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, which took place in the band's birth state of Colorado.

              

In person, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ ferocious sound doesn’t differ enough from that of their three fine full-lengths and innumerable EPs to make a live album a necessity. But if they decided to cash in with one, I’d buy it just for frontwoman Karen O’s stage banter, which, through sparse, has the advantage of sounding like it’s being translated from Japanese.

              

The Walkmen provided some glimpses of the future on Tuesday night, playing a 17-song set to a pretty-full-but-not-sold-out 9:30 Club. However, if Tuesday's set served a as an indicator as to the band's songwriting direction, then they haven't quite made their mind up yet. The word "boozy" has been used to describe the band's sound in the past, but "boozy" only buys you a finite line of credit. The band's most recent work has showcased multiple divergent influences. 2006's A Hundred Miles Off brought in horns and a bit of punk rock, while 2008's You & Me brought a more soulful sound, making singer Hamilton Leithauser sound like an age-old indie-rock crooner.

            

It's hard to take your eyes off of Maja Ivarsson, lead singer of The Sounds, while she is performing, and not because of her blonde hair, leggy physique or hot pants and track jacket clothing ensemble. She's a cross between Debbie Harry and Mick Jagger, somewhat of an uncoordinated hot mess, strutting across the stage, all slinky and sinewy. She's no slouch when it comes to controlling a crowd either, as she had a rapturous audience eating out of her hand all night.

              

If they’d been born a generation earlier, Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley — the husband-and-wife core who founded Yo La Tengo in 1984 — might have worked in the Brill Building and earned a nice living writing hits for people who can actually sing. Fortunately, that didn’t happen, and instead they ended up composing their own great American songbook — a 14-album catalog (less compilations, EPs, etc.) that for all its stylistic wanderings has maintained a remarkable standard of quality control.

              

By DCist contributor Francis Chung

Bat For Lashes certainly know how to set a mood. If the wolf howling in front of a full moon draped behind them on the 9:30 Club stage Saturday night didn't give away their intentions to create a mystical night, the glitter, lights and feathers adorning the stage (and lead singer Natasha Khan) pushed the point home. And that was before Khan even opened her mouth. Her ethereal, chilling voice rung clear through the venue for opener "Glass," instantly ending chatter and leaving the audience wide-eyed.

              

Here's how the crowd breaks down for the annual Girls Rock! DC camp showcase at the 9:30 Club:

A lot has changed for Guy Garvey and Elbow since I spoke to him in April of last year, ahead of their gig at Sixth and I Historic Synagogue. Their album The Seldom Seen Kid has been an unqualified success, selling in large quantities and raising the band's profile to a new level. Awards soon followed: the group won the UK's prestigious 2008 Mercury Music Prize, Best British Group at the 2009 Brit Awards and picked up a few Ivor Novello Awards along the way. Oh, and let's not forget the opening slots for Coldplay and U2. The show at Sixth and I was one of the best I saw in 2008, so expectations (and ticket counts) were higher for last night's show at the 9:30 Club. I ran into a friend on the street on the way to the club and told him I hoped this show would be grittier and rock harder, since the band were playing a proper rock club this time around, but sadly this was not to be.

           

Friday night's two sold out Michael Jackson tribute shows at the 9:30 Club were eerily timed and enthusiastically attended. The band itself, Who's Bad, was... also enthusiastic! Okay, so some moments were unintentionally hilarious and others were just plain odd (the slideshow of pictures of Jackson throughout the years, interspersed with stock photos of orphans springs to mind), but for the most part they gave a crowd of people eager to remember the recently deceased legend exactly what they were looking for -- and that, of course, was the "Thriller" dance. A huge scene developed outside as people waited to get into the late show, and we were there to document a few of the best Michael-inspired get ups we saw on the scene.

              

Last night, indie rock darlings Metric performed at the 9:30 Club to a sold out crowd. Metric are no strangers to the venue and like clockwork every year, seem to amaze their D.C. fans.

Her music is a hodgepodge of styles (rap, ska, reggae, rock, electro, dub), and last night the 9:30 Club was treated to the whole Santogold smorgasbord. In addition to many of the cuts from her eponymous album, Santogold (aka Santi White) found time to cover The Cure and Spank Rock and sing the loop from "Shove It" over and over, which Jay-Z used for his track, "Brooklyn (We Go Hard)". Toss in a few guest appearances by the openers (the half-naked Amanda Blank and mumbler Trouble Andrew), stir in some android backup singers/dancers (who were awesome, by the way), gold-accented costumes, an audience member dance competition on stage and ... you get the idea. And, as if we weren't overwhelmed enough by all the visual and audio stimulation, we had to ponder her recent decision to change her name from Santogold to , a small, but essential distinction.

              

Two years ago, Travis Morrison tipped us off to the wonder that is the Dirty Projectors, telling us they saved his relationship with rock 'n' roll after he saw them play at the Black Cat. After last night, we know why. Frontman Dave Longstreth has assembled an unbelievably talented band, including three woman whose ability to harmonize a) with him, and b) with each other in peculiar keys is truly a work of fate. Or perhaps, the best Craigslist posting of all time. It's experimental music that's fueled by aerobatic vocals and precision from all parties involved. Taking influences from rock, pop, hip hop, world music and who knows where else, the Dirty Projectors are offering some of the most unique, inspiring and downright amazing music available right now. The band's lush, spastic, dense music can be polarizing -- people tend to either fall immediately, madly in love with what they hear, or take an immediate and aggressive dislike. Which makes us sad -- the same way we feel for the people that don't have the cilantro gene. We wish you could hear what we're hearing, because if you could you'd be so very, very satisfied.

         

At the end of 2007, one of the blogosphere’s more ubiquitous concertgoers named Grizzly Bear his number one show of the year. Initially, this announcement prompted me to kick myself for using that particular set as a bathroom/lunch break at that year's Pitchfork Festival. However, as time passed, I started to question his judgment. Grizzly Bear’s breakout 2006 release, Yellow House‘s combination of stunning harmonies and instrumentation and tedious meandering makes it a difficult album to complete in one listening, and this year’s highly lauded Veckatimest seems like it would make the perfect soundtrack to the poppies scene in The Wizard of Oz. There’s a sense of enchantment, ethereal choral harmonies and a sinister undertone, but it’s also highly conducive to putting the listener to sleep. As such, I kept waiting for the moment during Grizzly Bear’s set where the show would lose my interest.

In March, we started hearing passing recommendations about a band out of New York called Here We Go Magic. Once you get past the awkward syntax, those recommendations add up. The woozy dream pop that songwriter Luke Temple says to have recorded in a "two month period of stream-of-consciousness recording" is perfect for post-work mental detox and an unsurprising choice as openers for the ethereal, meandering indie rockers Grizzly Bear. Here We Go Magic's self-titled debut finds Temple eschewing the falsetto that he'd used in his former work (which at times sounded an awful lot like Sufjan Stevens) for a more somber tone. Appropriate, considering that the first track, "Only Pieces", asks more existential questions, repeating the line, "What's the use in dying, dying?" The Grizzly Bear/Here We Go Magic bill reaches the 9:30 Club tonight, so we asked Temple a few questions about the evolution of Here We Go Magic from "stream-of-consciousness-recording" to five-piece band.

      

The mood was quite different the last time I saw Animal Collective. It was the summer of 2004, and the band had just released their breakthrough LP, Sung Tongs. Of the 100 or so folks who showed up to see the band play in the basement of a university building that night, I would wager that most, if not all of them had heard Sung Tongs and were eager to see how the songs would be rendered live. The members of Animal Collective, however, had their own plans. In what has since become a hallmark of Animal Collective's live sets, the band decided to eschew album tracks in favor of a series of works in progress, most of which took the form of protracted, improvised drone experiments. This, of course, made the crowd anxious and the band, determined to stand their ground, reacted with contempt. The end result was a tense, confrontational vibe--it felt as if the band was playing against, rather than for the audience.

       

For a musician to find continued success on a solo level, as well as with a number of different accompanying bands, speaks volumes about the talent possessed by the individual. Ben Harper, despite rarely crossing into the mainstream with heavy radio play or a number of chart-topping hits, has done exactly that.

              

The 9:30 Club saw its fair share of rock 'n' roll last night, from bare bones rock to lush walls of sound. Magics Wands, The Horrors, and headliners, The Kills well um... killed it.

The ups and downs that Longwave have been through in their 10-year career would make a pretty good episode of Behind The Music. They received a huge amount of buzz after opening for The Strokes and The Vines in the early '00s, two of the biggest bands around at the time. Major label interest soon followed, and the band signed to RCA Records and recorded with producers like Dave Fridmann and John Leckie.

         

If I were a scientist - which I'm not, for the record - my life's work would be spent studying the direct correlation between energy and happiness radiating from any particular stage, and the audience's perception of the show taking place. I'd cite specific examples from venues both large and small, but one case in particular would surely land me a Nobel nomination (for which category, I'm not sure).

I'm pretty sure this show was detrimental to my health. Someone let Ratatat crank the 9:30 Club's sound system all the way up. The bass was throat-shaking. You could feel it in your lungs and knees. There were powerful strobes that lasted way too long. Some smoke. A green laser. And there was a massive screen backdrop, where Ratatat projected Rorschach-like images of creepy birds or some of their chopped up retro videos for songs like "Shempi" (a trippy old ABBA video) or "Mirando" (glitchy clips from ) or "Flynn" (a wavy version of "You Can Call Me Al").

DCist unfortunately didn't have a critic there, but by all accounts Secretary of Education Arne Duncan made an onstage appearance at last night's Neko Case concert at the 9:30 Club.

... Arne made a special appeal to the college-aged crowd to consider careers in teaching. "We have a chance to change the country," he said. "We want to make sure every child has a great, great teacher. So I want to encourage you….Those of you who love music, love art, love math….We need that next generation of teachers coming in."

              

Can't say I've paid much attention to Chris Cornell since I got sick of seeing the video for "Black Hole Sun" on never-ending repeat on MTV in the late '90s. Audioslave had a few good tunes, but not enough to make me stop and take notice. So I was basically a blank slate heading into the 9:30 Club last night for Cornell's solo show. Sure, I had heard the (mostly negative) buzz about his new Timbaland-produced solo album, Scream, but I hadn't heard note one of the music, so for the first time in a long time, I went to a rock concert without any sort of expectations or idea as to what the night would bring. Would he play his older material? Would he have backup singers doing synchronized dance moves?

            

D.C. has had an embarrassment of good shows in the last seven days. Bloc Party, White Lies/Friendly Fires, Glasvegas, Cut Copy...but Friday's Primal Scream show at the 9:30 Club was the best of the bunch.

              

Spring is here, but it sure felt like summer inside a hot and sweaty 9:30 Club last night. Bloc Party packed their arena worthy show inside the cozy confines of 815 V St NW and banged out a show to remember.

Another March, another run of sold-out Pogues shows at the 9:30 Club. Despite the propitious occasion of St. Patrick’s Day — the equinox 'round which the graying-but-still-preeminent purveyors of Emerald Isle folk-punk (funk?) book their East Coast tours in recent years — Tuesday night’s hootenanny was no more gleefully shitfaced than their 9:30 gig from last year on March 9. In fact, it was arguably less so: Frontman Shane MacGowan seemed more lucid than the last time he stumbled through town, and his snarled vocals more intelligible. And the other seven active-duty Pogues? Affable, enthusiastic professionals all -- especially Spider Stacy, the group's tin whistler and fill-in frontman who who bashed a metal tray against his head whenever additional percussion was required. The mid-show appearance of a two-man horn section gave a warm shading to several unabashedly sentimental tunes, but especially a late-in-the-game “Rainy Night in SoHo.”