Saturday’s BSS lineup included, among others, Feist, Emily Haines, Kevin Drew, Jimmy Shaw, Brendan Canning, Jason Collett, and Amy Millan. Impressive seeing them all together on the same stage considering all the ridiculous success many of them have had either solo or with other bands (Metric and Stars).
Anyway, here’s the group with Emily Haines out front dropping the track “Anthem for a 17-year-old Girl” with Feist and Amy Millan looking on in awe.
There was some controversy concerning the show’s cancellation and subsequent move to the Harbourfront, but by all accounts (Youtube really) it looked like it was a concert for the ages. [more]
I’ve really been enjoying the direction Conor Oberst has been taking with The Mystic Valley Band. It’s slightly more playful, evidenced by this sweet rendition of “Spoiled.” [via]
Iceland’s Sigur Ros has put out of a bevy of difficult to pronounce but easy to listen to albums over the past tens years. There’s a fluid, ethereal, dream-like quality to their work. As if you’re aren’t really listening to their albums, so much as invented them in your head at night.
“Agaetis Byrjun’ is the one album I tell people to start with. If you like that album, then surely you’ll love their other records too. Hard to believe but the record just turned 10-years-old. To celebrate, they have released two exclusive live performances (download one of them here) from the original record launch concert at the Icelandic Opera House on the night of June 10, 1999 – back when few people outside Reykjavik hadn’t heard of them. What’s great is that neither of these songs appeared on the actual record.
‘Nyja Lagid’ (seen above) shows Jonsi and Co. when they really were still young, performing a song that disappeared from their set-list shortly after. It’s also one of the last tracks performed live by original drummer Gusti. Eventually, however, the audio of this live recording was featured on Sigur Ros’s, ‘Svefn-G-Englar’ EP.
I’ve been digging out a lot of old Supertramp records and though I kinda feel like they’re a properly rated band (a bunch of hits/a few essential albums/nothing mind blowing) I’m always amazed they aren’t more popular or get brought up in discussion more often.
Over the weekend about 150 family and friends of Blur were treated to what amounted to a greatest hits show, as the reunited four-piece (first time in almost a decade) get back into the groove of things.
The East Anglian Railway Museum also happened to be the site of their first public performance back in 1988 (ahhhh).
Push comes to shove, Blur is on my shortlist for my favorite band. Every album from Modern Life is Rubbish through Think Tank offers suprising pleasures and nuggets of various musical stylings.
“Coffee & TV”
“Parklife”
Luckily, the entire show was practically recorded for our viewing pleasure.
It’s great that Alex James and Dave Rowntree can still bring it, despite their day jobs as food writer for The Independent and Labour Party politician, respectively.
How good is Blur? For any fan the setlist will leave you drooling in jealousy that you aren’t one of their 150 family or friends, for others the following list of 26 ditties is an excellent primer to dive into Blur-fandom.
The setlist:
01 “She’s So High”
02 “Girls And Boys”
03 “Tracy Jacks”
04 “There’s No Other Way”
05 “Jubilee”
06 “Badhead”
07 “Beetlebum”
08 “Trimm Trabb”
09 “Coffee & TV”
10 “Tender”
11 “Country House”
12 “Charmless Man”
13 “Colin Zeal”
14 “Oily Water”
15 “Chemical World”
16 “Sunday Sunday”
17 “Parklife”
18 “End Of A Century”
19 “To The End”
20 “This Is A Low”
21 “Popscene”
22 “Advert”
23 “Song 2″
24 “Out Of Time”
25 “Battery In Your Leg”
26 “Essex Dogs”
27 “For Tomorrow”
28 “The Universal”
You would think with traveling back to Boston for my niece’s second birthday and a high school friend’s wedding and being in Boston when Phish played Fenway, that I would have made the effort to go. Unfortunately, I didn’t.
Regardless, by all accounts the band hit the show out of the park (ouch, sorry); so much so that it was even live blogged from the west coast using Twitter.
Besides the sticker shock of $8.25 beers, my buddy Seth said the best thing about the show wasn’t even the music (though that was obviously quite tasty). For him it was seeing all these people who hadn’t seen each other in four years, grown up with haircuts and real jobs, coming back to the one thing they loved more than anything else. The fleeting moment when you bumped into somone you only knew in the context of touring with Phish and seeing those old friends after four years.
It was a great crowd, Seth said. You could feel the sense of love and community and the band provided all those years.
You can check out tons of photos from the show here. And if you’re inclined to listen to the show, you can buy the whole shebang over at Livephish.com for a mere $10.
They’ve played dozens of covers, but mostly from a classic rock perspective. If they really wanted to stump The Boss, I’m sure someone could come up with a song he didn’t know. Anyway, this is a great idea and proves why Bruce Springsteen is one of the best ever. Something as tiny as this idea makes fans more invested and a part of the show then if they just paid their $70 bucks and called it a night.
Brooklyn’s White Rabbits were the breakout band in 2007 here at Oyster headquarters. And so when their newly-released album It’s Frightening dropped in May we were taken off guard.
Not because we weren’t expecting it, but because producer Britt Daniel (Spoon frontman) managed to capture the drumtastic-excellence of their live show. The thumping piano, so prevalent on the first album, has taken a backseat to the drums.
You see, White Rabbits bring the thunder to their live show with dueling drum kits, in fact the drums are so overwhelming and forceful that that’s all I remember from seeing them live. And nowhere on their debut album was the percussive attack so front and center.
All that’s changed on the new album, which is chaotic, unrelenting and leaps and bounds better than their first album (which is so good it’s still in heavy rotation two years later), evidenced by the first single “Percussion Gun,” which the band played for Letterman the other night.
I’m planning on catching them in Boston in early June and then again when they swing back to Portland later in the month. And so should you when they come to your city.
WHITE RABBITS TOUR DATES
5/21 – Bowery Ballroom – New York NY
5/30 – Grog Shop – Cleveland OH
5/31 – Do Division Fest – Chicago IL
6/01 – Summit – Columbus OH
6/02 – Rock N Roll Hotel – Washington DC
6/04 – Middle East – Boston MA
6/05 – Johnny Brendas – Philadelphia PA
6/06 – Brillobox – Pittsburgh PA
6/09 – Mojos – Columbia SC
6/10 – Firebird – St Louis MO
6/11 – Bonnaroo – Manchester TN
6/14 – Emo’s – Austin TX
6/16 – Club Congress – Tuscon AZ
6/17 – Casbah – San Diego CA
6/18 – Troubadour – Los Angeles CA
6/20 – Independent – San Francisco CA
6/22 – Crocodile Cafe – Seattle WA
6/23 – Doug Fir – Portland OR
6/24 – Neurolux – Boise ID
6/25 – Urban Lounge – Salt Lake UT
6/26 – Bluebird – Denver, CO
6/27 – Slowdown JR – Omaha NE
6/29 – 400 Bar – Minneapolis MN
6/30 – High Noon – Madison WI
7/1 – Empty Bottle Chicago IL
7/02 – Pike Room – Pontiac WI
8/1 – All Points West Festival – Liberty State Park NJ
I really thought I was going to hate The Decemberists Hazards of Love, but it’s grown on me both for it’s audacity and it’s impecable craft. Also? Colin Maloy and company really tried to turn up the rocking to 11. I don’t think they quite got there but still, got to hand it to them for trying.
It’s a bit unfortunate to hear the song out of context from the rest of the album.
Colin’s got his best Rod Blagojevich haircut going, which is so un-rock n’roll that it might be the most rock n’roll thing he’s ever done.
In case you were wondering, the female vocalist isn’t even in the band, she’s Shara Worden from My Brightest Diamond. Another band worth getting into, if you haven’t already.
Because it’s Portland and it feels like it’s been raining for a week straight, even though it hasn’t. Also? Six years later this is still the jam. And without seaming hyperbolic, are The Jayhawks the most underappreciated band of the last decade? I’m throwing that out there and music fans can throw out your own ideas or argue this. Prove me wrong.
No one really cares about them much now, but in my estimation they were one of the top bands of the 90’s. Constantly churning out great songs on both August and Everything After and Recovering the Satellites.
At 1:38, the guy is having the most important moment of his life.
This past weekend, I spent way too much time plowing through NPR’s 15-minute concert series aptly called Tiny Desk Concerts. They’re brief nuggets of intimate musical gold, with a musician playing at NPR’s music desk – often times nothing more an acoustic guitar and their voice.
The one you should watch is of Super XX Man, aka Scott Garred. The Portland songwriter is a megaphone of empathy – channeling the insecurities, doubts, hopes and swirling emotions of people into three-minutes of pure bliss. I know it’s preposterous to claim he’s the best songwriter working right now, that anyone can stake that claim since there are so many songwriters out there, but he’s at least in the conversation if we’re having it.
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