Pages tagged “live review”

[Above: NOBUNNY plays the second night of the Atlanta Mess-Around.] 

[Above: Baby Shakes play the first night of the Atlanta Mess-Around.]

[Above: AIDS Wolf's Chloe Lum]

[Above: Jared Swilley of the Black Lips plays in Halloween-appropriate band The Spooks.]

“The last time we played these songs, I couldn’t grow facial hair,” bassist Jared Swilley joked as PBR cans flew over the heads of the packed house at the Earl, where he and his Black Lips bandmates reconvened as The Renegades for a somewhat-secret show last Thursday night.

[Above: Manchester Orchestra's Andy Hull]

Onstage, Manchester Orchestra mixes the captivating vocals and compelling arrangements of its records with hardcore guitar and screaming, as lead singer Andy Hull abandons his sweet, high tenor for larynx-wrenching wails. I could listen to his on-record singing voice for hours and be happier for it, but last night all I could think was what a shame it was.

[Above: The Swimming Pool Q's, shown here playing in downtown Atlanta in the early '80s, performed at the Masquerade Saturday night.]

Full disclosure: I am not the city’s leading expert in the ways of punk. I discovered punk as a seventh grader in the early 1980s, first through new wave bands like Blondie and Devo, then later through a local Macon band called Vex. As high schoolers, my friends and I moved on to shows by local Atlanta and Athens bands, and then to records by more established national bands: Black Flag, Social Distortion, The Ramones, Dead Kennedys. And though punk was, and remains, only a tile in my mosaic of musical experience, I have the greatest memories of coming up to Atlanta to play with the big punk boys.

Gift Of Screws is Lindsey Buckingham's second solo album in two years following a nearly 15-year gap, and he didn't shy away from showcasing the new material at the House Of Blues on Thursday night, even if most of the attendees were likely expecting his Fleetwood Mac hits (and even if many minds were perhaps preoccupied by the concurrent Cubs playoff game and VP debates, no doubt to blame for the less-than-capacity crowd).  

"We are Motörhead, boys and girls. And we play rock 'n' roll." With this simple statement of fact, fabled frontman Lemmy Kilmister opened the legendary British rock band's set at the Roseland Ballroom, launching into a high-speed rendition of "Dr. Rock" that kicked off a night of fist-pumping, pretension-free thrash.

In their 45+ minute set, the British heavy metal band ran through almost all of the fan favorites including "Metropolis," "Killed By Death" and "Overkill," as well as the obligatory rendition of "Ace of Spades." They even dusted off their acoustic guitars for an encore performance of "Whorehouse Blues." And though Lemmy and the band seemed a little older and a little more sedate than their Overkill years, the night's message was clear: No frills, no bullshit.

The Stills neither look nor play like they sound. Saturated onstage in an electronic bonfire glow, vocalists Dave Hamelin and Tim Fletcher didn't resemble the sensitive, love-lorn Canadian art school graduates they portray so well on their three studio albums. Every note they struck accompanied a natural rock god pose or back-flowing hair sweep, and despite the fragile undertones of their albums, the theatrics didn't feel insincere in the least.

A prominent figure in her Scandinavian music scene or a number of years, the folk singer/songwriter, guitarist and charango player (and new mother to an 8-month-old son) Ólöf Arnalds took the stage on Tuesday evening at Greenpoint's Lutheran Church of the Messiah with openers Sam Amidon and Kría Brekkan to a crowd of wide-eyed Brooklyn fans.

There is an inherent, if not unspoken, risk in electronic-tinged outfits performing live. On one hand, they could turn out to be soulless programming presentations; on the other, studio wizardry can fail to produce any real electricity in concert halls, and could even fail to translate at all. Thankfully, such was not the case on the second evening of Hot Chip's two-night stand at the Metro, where the band took the stage to a comfortably full room of attendees in rapt attention.

Each night, Nick Cave aims to knock you on your ass, wait for you to get up, and then knock you down again. For decades now, his trademark intensity has served him well, but it's only been in recent years that he's allowed his subtle sense of humor to sneak out from under all the fire and brimstone of his live oeuvre. Backed by the ever-reliable Bad Seeds (the untamed outback equivalent of the E Street Band), Cave relished the over-the-topness of his Old Testament rants and poetic excursions at Chicago's Riviera Theatre, the first of two sold out nights that saw the 51-year old operating at an impressive peak.

The last thing I want is to turn into some sort of Atlanta music TMZ affiliate, so I'll try to keep the gossip to a minimum: One Hand Loves The Other was a four-piece Atlanta band that fused electronic compositions with classical instrumentation and pop sensibilities and began getting serious notice last year. What pushed them over the edge and set indie hearts all aflutter, in addition to their blending of past and of-the-moment music into something forward-reaching, was dreamboat front man Lou Rodriguez's soaring, R&B-inflected vocals. Basically, OHLTO was the perfect combination of music's future and past, shined, honed and well-produced. They played shows. Earned acclaim. Released a self-titled debut. Earned more acclaim. Released a remix album. And then they imploded.

It's a tough assignment to play a gig on a Monday night all the way over on 10th Avenue, but if any band has the energy to make a crowd forget the weekly slog, it's Scotland's Sons and Daughters. "What day is it, Sunday?" lead singer Adele Bethel asked the somewhat spare audience at Highline Ballroom before launching into another song. "Monday? Ugh." Cue the beat.

One song into Ben Folds Five's first show in eight years, the regrets were already pooling up. "If I'd known about this gig, I'd have sequenced the album differently," Folds heaved, grabbing for a water bottle as the last notes of "Narcolepsy" were swallowed by the crowd's applause. Fair enough: The song works beautifully as the opener of The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, the band's last album, which they played in its entirety last night at UNC Chapel Hill's Memorial Hall at the behest of MySpace and for the benefit of Operation Smile. But in terms of ideal set-list artistry, it would probably be slotted towards the end of the night, allowing its performers to ease in to its crashing highs and lows with some less manic fare. For a band that hadn't performed together in upwards of eight years, minus the rehearsals they surely held in preparation for last night, it was an ambitious public re-debut.

“Lights And Music” were on everyone’s mind on Wednesday night as Australian electropop darlings Cut Copy played their hit single and many more from In Ghost Colours to an adrenaline-fueled, capacity crowd at the Metro.

Fire, death, the soul, drugged-up bliss: Jason Pierce, the force behind Spiritualized, navigated his favorite heavy topics at Metro on Monday, but even during the deepest of lyrical explorations Pierce remained composed, hidden behind sunglasses, standing in profile to the crowd.

[Above: The Redcoats]

A typical Saturday night opening act at The Earl often functions as a backdrop for crowd members to consume their first rounds of PBR tallboys and greet friends, but on this night The Redcoats captured the audience in a way that many openers fail to do.

Liam Finn's an extraordinarily talented man, with skills honed in an unlikely place: New Zealand. Better known for its sheep and Lord of the Rings set tours, the Pacific island nation also produced his father (Neil Finn of Crowded House) while its larger neighbor to the south, Australia, is responsible for the younger Finn's bandmate, Eliza-Jane Barnes. And with one album, I'll Be Lightning, under his belt and some formidable critical praise to his name-- including a spot among Paste's Best of What's Next-- Finn's live performance more than lives up to the buzz.

[Above: Bird and his flock in a video projection onstage at Pritzker.]

Don’t be fooled by the violin: The mild-mannered Andrew Bird is actually a badass superhero, capable of launching NASA missions from his loop pedal. Looking like Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther and sounding like his namesake avian counterparts, the diminutive multi-instrumentalist captivated a rapt crowd at Chicago’s Jay Pritzker Pavilion on Sept. 3.

Mike Geier and his Kingsized Orchestra, along with the Dames Aflame burlesque dancers and El Vez (the Mexican Elvis), put on a show that kept the audience laughing and dancing at every minute-- a fitting tribute to the King on the thirty-first anniversary of his death.

"Where's the Lil Wayne iPod?" Bradford Cox demanded. After a botched attempt at micing someone's iPhone, an MP3 player was ferried in and "A Milli" blasted from the amplifiers. "I don't write shit, cause I ain't got time," Cox growled over Weezy's trademark flow before launching into "Calvary Scars," a track from Deerhunter's upcoming LP, Microcastle.

The Deerhunter before us, wedged in a kitschy little DIY gallery in Virginia Highlands, was a different beast than the one manifested on its first two albums. If this (free) live performance was any indication, Microcastle is also a departure from the status quo, gravitating heavily towards the melodic post-punk of Cryptograms.

For all the buzz surrounding Atlanta’s rock scene in the wake of the Black Lips and Deerhunter, out-of-town bands on ATLien labels have garnered comparatively little attention. So it was sans fanfare that San Francisco's Apache and New York City's Electric Shadows rocked The Earl on Saturday night in support of The Hiss.

[Photos: Can Can's singer and guitarist in front of their floodlights.]

On the way to the Earl on the night of the 31st, the creepy musical swells provided by Album 88's ambient show eerily coincided with the branching lightning bolts shooting, forking across the clouds above East Atlanta. Inside the venue, the pre-show scene was similar: The low lighting in the Earl's back room revealed a glowing red on the walls and a muffled flurry of browns and grays everywhere else. People traversed the wide floor, ambling back and forth like so many slowed down flashes of electricity in the sky outside.

I should've known something was up when people started driving the wrong way in the emergency lanes up GA-400 South. When I finally saw the truly epic traffic jam that awaited me and thousands of my fellow Saturday night revelers on the Connector, I assumed I was having an unlucky night. I was both right and wrong.

An hour and a half later (on a drive that usually takes 15 minutes), I reached Lenny's Bar to attend an edition of Judi Chicago and Noot d' Noot's summertime monthly collaboration they're calling Worming the Starhole (whatever that means). After fretting for an hour about getting there too late, I arrived just before Atlanta's favorite half-British electro dance pop duo started their set. I hadn't missed anything. Maybe my luck was changing.

After folk opener Freakwater, as a celebrity-induced tension fell over the unnaturally hushed Variety Playhouse crowd waiting for M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel to take the stage, my skepticism abounded. I wondered whether all these people were excited about the music they were about to hear, or were they just waiting to see a movie star? I wondered if the music would hold up to "vanity project" scrutiny. (I enjoyed She & Him's recent debut, Volume One, but wasn't floored by it.) I wondered if She & Him performances were as awkward as they'd been rumored to be. I wondered what kind of contrast there would be between the veteran M. Ward's musicianship and newcomer Deschanel's.