Very excited for tonight’s Friday Cheers. A big part of that has to do with getting to see Sleepwalkers do Sleepwalkers things. It’s been too long since I’ve seen them, though I’ve enjoyed following along on social media as they’ve melted faces all over the country with J. Roddy and others. When the Cheers schedule was announced, my eye jumped to this show because I love this venue for them. Their sound is big and can easily fill that beautiful Brown’s Island space. Their writing is versatile, meaning that olds, youngs, moms, non-moms, country mice, city mice, babies and barflies alike can enjoy. It’s a pre-summer highlight waiting to happen.
Month: May 2015
CD Monday
Happy Monda…
[checks calendar]
Oh. OK, in my defense, I’m just getting back from a 4-day weekend, so it’s Monday to me.
Sam Reed
I’ve been spending lots of time with Sam Reed’s new This Is Love album, and two general impressions have settled in. The first is that this is a very good album. The second is that the start of This Is Love goes hard.
CD Monday
More Anat Cohen! This time her Claroscuro album, which my mom sent me after hearing about Cohen on NPR. (I’d guess this was this story she heard.) My mom does this from time to time — she’ll hear about something on the radio and a few days later, without a word, a CD will be waiting on my doorstep. How cool is that?
Anat Cohen
Moses Sumney
Took this iPhone photo while Moses Sumney was opening for Sufjan Stevens at the Altria last Wednesday. It is and is not representative of what that experience was like.
CD Monday
This soundtrack, y’all. So much nostalgia. While there are songs I’m tempted to skip over (hard to abide by a lyric like “Like a fully clothed ho at the peep show”), there are some serious classics: “Dammit,” “It’s Tricky,” “Flashlight,” “Paradise City,” Missy, Busta… This movie hit at just the right time — the summer before I started high school — so the plot and characters seemed serious, way less cartoonish than they do now. I can’t tell you how influential the whole “Nice guys don’t always finish last” message was, both for good and ill. The plot line I should have been paying attention to was Seth Green’s — learning to be true to myself would have prevented some equally horrible fashion choices.
Jason Isbell
This has been one of the best live music weeks of my life. Sunday: Old Crow Medicine Show with Sturgill Simpson. Wednesday: Sufjan Stevens with Moses Sumney. Tonight: Jason Isbell with Horsehead. I feel a little like a dog whose owner opened up a brand new bag of food and dumped the whole thing on the floor. If one good thing about music is when it hits, you feel no pain, I’d say a second good thing is that when you gorge yourself on music, you don’t risk yakking it all back up. (Unless you count blogging about it, in which case I have a serious case of reflux.)
The Trillions
Been so anxious to share this: My interview with the brilliant and talented Trillions went up late last week over at Richmond Navigator. You can find it in print in River City Magazine — copies should be hitting newsstands this week.
One thing I have to add:
CD Monday
File this one under “Albums I liked but didn’t spend enough time with.” I do listen to “Colombia “frequently, but I’ve lost touch with the rest of Local Natives’ Hummingbird. Gonna fix that this week.
You Hear That 