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Straight to Video
Rock Art Rock
The Decemberists
September 19, 2009
Terminal 5, New York, NY
By Amanda Hatfield "The Decemberists played a special one night 'lottery show,' where the songs played were picked at random by a master of ceremonies, played by John Wesley Harding..."
Ra Ra Riot
April 4, 2009
Webster Hall, New York City, NY
By Amanda Hatfield "This show was, at the time, the biggest one Ra Ra Riot had sold out as headliners, and it was clear to me after watching it that the band is destined for even bigger and better things..."
Florence and the Machine
October 28, 2009
Bowery Ballroom, New York City, NY
By Amanda Hatfield "Florence Welsh and her backing band delighted and mesmerized a sold-out crowd at Bowery in her first official NY headlining show..."
Dirty Projectors
July 19, 2009
Williamsburg Waterfront (Brooklyn, NY)
By Amanda Hatfield "I was skeptical about how well Dirty Projectors' gorgeous, complex vocal harmonies would carry over outdoors, standing under hot sunshine..."
See more in the Rock Art Rock gallery.
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Search results for: NOFX
NOFX
NOFX
Coaster
(Fat Wreck Chords, 2009)
2009. The number. Another summer. Sound of… well, in 1989, it was the funky drummer. In 1999, it was Y2K hype. Remember? Web URLs as album titles (www.thug.com is a favorite), Will Smith sampling the Clash for not-quite-a-smash “Will 2K” (on an album called Willennium no less). And in 2009, the decade-shedding skin du jour is, with the release of NOFX’s Coaster, mocking the end of the music industry. One of their meanest jokes yet, the band points out their own commodity’s uselessness by calling their new album a coaster before I can, and showing how well it complements a scotch on the cover, with the disc itself dressed like the titular drink holder. The vinyl one’s called Frisbee. And in the climactic song here, “One Million Coasters” (“One Million Frisbees” on vinyl I assume?), Fat Mike suggests they’d make great “guardrail reflectors” and “Christmas ornaments.” So long, labels.
And it’s easy to believe their humorous disdain, because they play like they couldn’t care less. They play punk-pop that went out of style three waves ago; Green Day’s trying to replicate the Who now, but everyone else is wearing eyeliner. Actually, Green Day are too. NOFX is still about beer, lesbians, speed; essentially Beavis and Butthead rock, without much of an angle this time. Having ousted Bush and the Republicans after a heavy few years of protest-rock and MoveOn.org benefit paraphernalia, mostly bored with ska (though they still indulge from time to time, not that that’s hip either), they settle for one jazz-inflected bouncer (“I Am an Alcoholic”) and scale back even the metal-ish shredding of last round’s Wolves in Wolves’ Clothing.
Your Handy Guide to the Month in Music
I don’t like February very much. Where I live, it’s still ridiculously cold, and as much as I like the winter and the weather that comes with it, I think the truth is that I only like it because I associate it with Christmas and my birthday, two occasions for which people buy me things. But come February, those two occasions are long gone, and all I have is seriously dry skin and fantasies about drinking beer outside in the sun, which can’t realistically happen with any kind of consistency for another two months. If nothing else, though, at least there are the Grammys to help get me through the dark times. And news about the Barenaked Ladies.
This Month’s Most Notable News Stories
Bonnaroo Lineup Announced
Well, it’s March now, which means you should be getting ready to spend the next five months of your life hearing people talk about summer music festivals. Who’s playing them, who went to them, who accidentally got dusted at them, and so on. It’s exhausting, but it’s a sad fact of my life, which I’m done trying to avoid. So, I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to play along.
Noise Pop Day 2: Stephen Malkmus, Sleepy Sun, Papercuts, and more
Stephen Malkmus
February 25th at Great American Music Hall
Anyone who’s heard Stephen Malkmus, whether fronting Pavement or the Jicks, knows he’s an adventurous songwriter, but he was particularly anything-goes at the Great American Music Hall on Wednesday night. Following a relatively mellow acoustic set by local popster Kelley Stoltz, Malkmus came to the bare stage with an iBook in hand in place of a set list. “Hello, hello, it’s only me,” he said with a grin, an earnest greeting considering what followed: He turned out to have brought a hell of a lot more of his back catalogue along than anyone could have expected. Eyes collectively widened when he started the set with “Harness Your Hopes”, a Brighten the Corners-era Pavement B-side signaling something was most definitely up. He’s never really played this stuff since they broke up in 1999, with the famous exception (among fans, anyway!) of a 2003 gig with the Jicks in Milwaukee. Was there more to come? Yes!
The solo format clearly freed him up a bit as far as his repertoire: Alongside a few of his solo/Jicks tunes, including “Us”, the autumnal “Freeze the Saints”, a bit of “Vanessa From Queens”, and a lovely “Real Emotional Trash” (cut short by a broken D-string), he played 12 Pavement tunes, and for the most part, they weren’t even the “hits” per se. Mindful that anyone who’d dish to see him play a solo set likely digs the deep cuts, he came prepared eager to please fans: Selections ranged from “Spit on a Stranger” off of Terror Twilight to two of the four tracks off the Watery, Domestic EP, “Lions (Linden)” and “Shoot the Singer (1 Sick Verse)”, and even a Silver Jews number whose recording he sang on, “Blue Arrangements.”
Noise Pop Day 1 at Mezzanine: Deerhunter
Deerhunter and Lilofee
February 24th at Mezzanine
The opening party of Noise Pop 2009 brought together a small city’s music elite, the movers and shakers, the promoters and organizers, the likeminded aficionados and scene-setting hipsters, the industry folks, music press, and among the most impassioned of San Francisco’s music loving community. Currently in its 17th year, Noise Pop has come to represent a tireless commitment to independently released music, as shared by not only San Franciscans, but people across the nation who make the trek to the City by the Bay to share in the experience. Since last night was the kick off party, the energy was high and the conversation drunk and flowing, all under the guise of one thing: To celebrate music and the community it breeds and supports.
The “community” aspect of the festival is most visible on the opening party, because it’s the first night of the bash and the schmoozing and socializing is relentless. This night is only for badge holders or people who were on the ball early enough to RSVP to the free event, and the VIP space upstairs was stacked with folks involved in the festival and beyond. Old friends embrace, new friends meet and greet, acquaintances all share in the excitement that the week has to offer. After Live 105’s DJ Aaron Axelson spun some tunes for the imbibing bunch, San Francisco’s own Lilofee took to the stage. Lilofee is an electro power-pop four-piece fronted by a sassy female singer, Kimi Recor, whose theatrics are just barely second to her voice as she strutted and sprawled all over the stage to pumping bass beats and danceable rhythms, at one point pulling her panty hose off and flinging them into the crowd. Things got a little abrasive there for a minute, but Lilofee probably found themselves at home on the Mezzanine’s strobe-light flanked stage before young, high-energy scenesters who wanted nothing but to dance along to get warmed up for the week ahead.
Andrew Bird: February 19th at the Fillmore
Andrew Bird is a classically trained violinist and a deft multi-instrumentalist. His lyrics are deeply literate, almost professorial at times. The Chicago-based singer-songwriter has spoken in the past about the painstaking detail with which he records his albums, having twice scrapped his second solo release, 2005’s The Mysterious Production of Eggs, in its entirety.
Who knew he was also a mad scientist? In a 90-minute set at the Fillmore in San Francisco, the 35-year-old Bird showed that a combination of dexterity and a quest for recorded perfection has yielded a comfort level on stage that propels him to turn much of his music on its ear, jostling tempos, shifting arrangements, and generally operating like a deeply committed jazz improviser.
This show was the first of two sold-out nights at the Fillmore, as Bird has ridden a surge in popularity since last month’s release of his newest album, Noble Beast. But Bird’s rise has been no overnight sensation: Since 1995, he has released seven albums on various labels, as well as several EPs, live recordings, and more than 50 guest appearances for the likes of Squirrel Nut Zippers, Neko Case, and My Morning Jacket.
Sparks, Delta Spirit, NOFX, and Mark Lanegan and Greg Dulli
Sparks
February 14th at Royce Hall, UCLA
Following a string of 21 shows in London last summer over which they performed their entire discography back-to-back, Sparks’ Valentine’s Day homecoming to Los Angeles—a gig at their alma mater, UCLA—proved once again that, even after 39 years of recording, brothers Ron and Russell Mael still make some of the smartest, most compellingly ebullient pop out there.
The program’s first part was a performance of last year’s Exotic Creatures of the Deep, the band’s newest record, performed in an elaborate stage show featuring backup dancers and a picture-frame screen, as well as frames surrounding the members of the backing band, which included Steve McDonald of Redd Kross and members of Mother Superior. Exotic Creatures is not immediately engrossing on record, but in the live setting, it truly clicked—the mustachioed, eternally stolid Ron Mael, the band’s principal songwriter, did an interpretive dance for the swaying verses and chorus of “I Can’t Believe You Would Fall for All the Crap in This Song”, most humorously shaking his head in quiet, smug laughter during the refrain of the song’s title. Meanwhile, for “Photoshop” (chorus: “Photoshop me out of your life!”), he attempted to play a continually tweaked JPEG of a piano on the screen. Throughout the set, Russell bounded about the stage with his characteristic operatic voice and a sparkly energy that belies his age.
Gang Gang Dance
Gang Gang Dance
Saint Dymphna
(The Social Registry, 2008)
There was a brief stint in my journey as a music fan where I listened to mostly wordless electronica almost exclusively. It came in waves before that, here and there, but this was a full-on embrace. It was, admittedly, a very weird time in my life (just out of college) and, thankfully, very short lived. I suspect all that techno listening came from spending so much of my week thinking about and working on technology for the first time ever; the music perfectly mimicked my job and also vibed with my life at the time, which was akin to a robot unconcerned with (ie. avoiding) serious self-examination. I was just another cog greasing the wheel of capitalism while some jerk from sales stared at my chest as I walked towards him in the hallway. It was a bitter pill to swallow, and the easy answer was to pour cheap wine and dance music on top of it on its way down, claws dug into fading youthful ideals.
I remember the moment I threw all the jungle and drum-n-bass out the proverbial window though: Driving in my car along the George Washington Parkway on the way home from that first soul-sucking job, I suddenly snapped out of it and wanted to sing aloud music that voiced my newfound frustration (coincidentally with Washington monuments as the backdrop), something like Screeching Weasel’s “My Right”, but for the life of me I couldn’t think of any words to any songs. Dylan, Fugazi, fucking NOFX… nothing came to me and there were no tapes (yes, I said tapes) in the car featuring anything but goddamn techno. For a person who wanted to base their entire life on the written word, this was a terrible feeling of self-hatred. I stopped that techno-listening habit immediately, vowing never to return.
That is, until now, a decade after the fact. Is it safe to lift the ban I instituted so long ago? Let’s consider what’s been creeping into my headphones. It started earlier this year with the excellent self-titled High Places record; a multi-instrumental duo that embraces their individual tastes and skills for music that infuses the experimentation of homemade beats with a punk rock ethos. It’s imaginative and sometimes it’s even Caribbean and it’s different from most everything I currently listen to and I like it very much. It’s not techno music per se, but there are certainly similar elements. And now Gang Gang Dance stands before me. A few years ago I don’t think you could’ve convinced me to knowingly listen to anything involving synths, but (surprise, surprise) I really am enjoying their latest release, Saint Dymphna, a record even more prone to danceable, inclusive tracks than the band’s previous efforts. I wouldn’t go so far as to call this techno either, but maybe classify it as “cool, weird new sounds” that fit nicely amongst the noisy art rock NYC has been known to produce.
The album features track after track of distorted and delayed vocals atop music that’s psychedelic and tribal in its use of electronics, and this has resonated with many fans of indie and punk rock alike. Tracks like album opener “Bebey”, “First Communion”, the club-inspired “Princes”, and “Desert Storm” leave all of what is characteristic about music as we know it in the dust for gratuitous, individual experimentation that begs for repeat listens to fully grasp each texture, each layer that bends the mind in ways it perhaps hasn’t been bent before.
If my cerebellum had feet, it’d be cutting a serious rug while listening to Saint Dymphna. I guess this might even be considered an experimental offshoot of IDM, which itself was an experimental offshoot of electronica itself. And that there’s the difference; the reason why I’m gonna support this personal renewed interest in a few bands embracing beat-oriented music: Not only is it for the kids that like to move it at a show if so inspired, but it’s one for the stay-at-home, thinking man as well. I’m not turning into a robot again after all. Hooray!
Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]
Read more articles like this:
NOFX
NOFX
They’ve Actually Gotten Worse Live!
(Fat Wreck Chords, 2007)
Fat Mike of NOFX was asked by his label’s publicist to write the band’s bio and here’s what it starts off like: Being in NOFX is easy. There’s nothing easier than being an alcoholic in a punk rock band. We didn’t start out being alcoholics, but we’re definitely gonna finish that way.
I always, always wonder about pop-punk bands as they grow up. Like, do they move beyond three-chord progressions and skate wounds? Do they shed their teen angst and stop singing about high school and their parents? Do they still understand the kids or what? And if the answer is no to any or all of these questions, do they just drink so much as to keep up youthful appearances? (I know I do.) My list of questions could go on and on and on, but I think you get the point. For a band that started in L.A. in 1983, the fiercely independent NOFX has achieved a lot for the So-Cal punk scene (the stuff that now litters MTV, and the mall, and probably your 12-year-old’s mp3 collection… all three could be worse off, mind you), but 25 years later Fat Mike and company still sound exactly the same, even though their record is called They’ve Actually Gotten Worse Live!
In January of this past year, NOFX played three nights at Slim’s in San Francisco for this live recording, and even though the band sounds exactly the same, that fact somehow doesn’t reflect poorly on them. It should be weird that they still come off like 19-year-old kids, but it’s actually surprisingly acceptable that they sound so youthfully snotty, easily updating fan favorites like “Murder the Government” (“I wanna see Dick Cheney have a heart attack / I wanna see Janet Barber go to Iraq / I wanna see our President do time…”). Even though harmonized pop-punk anthems are somewhat dated at this point, or mostly reserved for high schoolers, the content within is no less important now. When Fat Mike sings, “You better watch out, you better not cry / You better put out records DIY / ‘Cause it’s not what you’ve done, it’s what you’ve been / If you fuck up, well I’m telling Tim,” it’s pretty cool to think that sort of thing still matters, even if the song could also be viewed as an observation about the punk scene and it’s one-upmanship (I’m more punk rock than you).
And, it’s also pretty cool to be reminded that there exist bands that draw lines this distinctly in music. I mean, I certainly like to spend my time deciphering the impenetrable poetry of some musicians, but when NOFX has a song called “You’re Wrong” (which, for this show, they kick off by saying flatly, “If you do believe in God, you’re wrong”), it’s very refreshing hearing it said so plainly. Punk rock, whether of the pop or hardcore variety, has everything to do with politics, and what better place to say such stark statements than in a super catchy, two and half minute song: “You’re wrong if you support capital punishment / And you’re wrong if you don’t question your government / If you think her reproductive rights are inconsequent, you’re wrong.”
NOFX has released 10 studio full lengths, about six EPs, and a whole slew of seven-inches, so a live show recording, I imagine, is mostly for completists and super fans. But, truth be told, if you aren’t familiar with NOFX, you could buy this as an introduction, because there’s a variety of songs and they sound as good live as on a studio recording (plus you get the benefit of hilarious banter in between songs), which is probably the most refreshing thing of all here. I was skeptical about reviewing this live record, but it’s only brought unto me a bevy of things to look back on with nothing but good memories and enjoy, in earnest, in the now. And, maybe that’s what age brings to NOFX: the ability to perform songs practically flawlessly and with the same sort of urgency and fun they did 25 years ago, totally fucked up, which I unduly appreciate. Besides, who couldn’t use an excuse to hear “Scavenger Type” or “Lori Meyers” again?
Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]
The Who at the Super Bowl, and Other News Who
Peter Gabriel will be releasing a covers album this coming spring, doing renditions of songs by artists including Bon Iver, Regina Spektor, Elbow, and Lou Reed. Awesome. (CD Insight)
Oh, how we are starting to really loathe Ticketmaster. Much like what happened with those Springsteen ticket sales some months back (they were accused of holding out tickets for their secondary seller, TicketNow), the giant corporation is being confronted with allegations that a similar situation has arisen with Taylor Swift and Keith Urban tickets. (TicketNews)
The FCC may very well be relaxing media ownership rules come 2010, like by permitting a TV station and newspaper to be under the same ownership or allowing one entity to own multiple TV stations in the same market. This could be good news for struggling media outlets. (Forbes)
Andrew Bird has been quite busy of late. He’s doing a film score, working on an art installation, and doing a track for the Muppets tribute album Muppets Revisited. (Pitchfork)
Read more news after the jump.
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published: November 12, 2009 in column: What Goes On
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