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No BS! Brass Band/Black Girls

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No BS! Brass Band VS Black Girls

No BS! Brass Band VS Black Girls

The Artists: No BS! Brass Band and Black Girls. The Album: No BS! Brass Band VS Black Girls. The Store: The Interweb. The Price: $6.

I have my friends Josh and Caitlin to thank for No BS! Brass Band. They’d seen No BS! perform a number of times, and it was clear when they talked about the group that something special was going on. Seeing that type of enthusiasm in friends is always a sign of good things to come, and when I finally got to see No BS! at the Camel this past winter, I had an incredible time. Their sound is big and inviting, and in between their powerful and intricately arranged original songs, they covered “Thriller” and “Take On Me,” both of which were ridiculously fun. Every time I’ve seen them since, I’ve felt that same sense of fun, so I was bummed that I couldn’t make it to either night of the two-part Balliceaux release party for the new split 7″ record they just released with fellow Richmond band Black Girls. When I found out about this limited-pressing record, entitled No BS! Brass Band VS Black Girls, I got really excited and bought a copy off the label’s website, thinking they might run out quickly, MAYBE EVEN DURING THE RELEASE PARTY (I do the same thing with movies I’m jazzed up about — I always think they’re going to be totally crowded, so I rush through the popcorn buying process to make sure I get connecting seats). My copy came in the mail this weekend, and I’d never heard Black Girls’ music, but their song “Broadway” gave an outstanding first impression, sounding sophisticated and full — the word “jaunty” also comes to mind, but do people really use that word? — with No BS! providing backup firepower. On the other side, No BS! contributes a fantastic new version of “Ain’t Even Gonna Call Ya,” one of my favorites to see live. Check out a live version of the song below, and if you’re vinyl-inclined, order your copy of the split 7” here.

Lianne La Havas

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Life Cycle Week, Stage 1: Lianne La Havas

Over the weekend, I was thinking about how rewarding it is to follow musicians (and not just on Twitter … although that can be rewarding too, especially if you want to hear the lead singer of Weezer say things like, “Any other guys out there uncomfortable eating whole bananas?”). Watching talented people move through the life cycle of a career in music is fascinating, and I thought it would be fun this week to take a look at a few artists who are in different stages of this cycle, starting with a singer who is just embarking on what looks to be a very promising career. I stopped by the Black Cab Sessions website recently and came across London-based vocalist Lianne La Havas. With her guitar in hand and a charming smile on her face, she gracefully glides through a catchy song about dating an older man. The site doesn’t list the song’s name, and a search for key words came up dry (if anyone knows what it is, I’m dying to know! [UPDATE: The song is called “Age.” It was right in front of my face the whole time.]), but the ambivalent lyrics flow seamlessly, like an intimate conversation with a trusted friend, and Lianne’s impressive vocal control and effortless vibrato serve the song perfectly. I love the feeling of discovery that comes with hearing someone who seems to be fairly new, but who is so clearly bound for success. It’s like taking a different route to work or finding out you actually do like scallops (I thought I didn’t like the consistency) — the world feels new, if only for a short time. Immediately after watching, I went digging around YouTube, SoundCloud and iTunes for more, scarcity acting as both an obstacle and a thrill, finding a few videos on her website and an outstanding cover of the Everything Everything song “Final Form.” Check it out below, and her Black Cab Session above, and I dare you not to fall in love with her. Go on, try.

Animal Collective

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Fall Be Kind EP

Special Two-Part Coverage of the Most Hipster Thing I’ll Do All Summer
Part 2: There Will Be Merch

I’ve been writing this blog for three and a half months now, and (sigh) it’s time. It’s time I shared with you that… here goes… I have a merch addiction. A raging one. Show me a merch table, and I’ll show you all the cash I have in my wallet. My triggers include concerts, NASCAR races, baseball games, basketball games, political campaigns, SXSW was a t-shirt collecting shit show… it’s bad, OK? So when I walked into Saturday’s Animal Collective concert at Merriweather Post Pavilion, my love for merch and my vinyl habit teamed up, and things got a little out of hand. I snagged a t-shirt, a copy of Animal Collective’s Fall Be Kind EP on vinyl, a 7″ single of Panda Bear’s “Last Night at the Jetty,” and a lime green Merriweather Post Pavilion bag (What? Sometimes a guy needs to tote some stuff around for a few hours). Did I feel a little guilty? Sure. Did that stop me from tweeting about it once I saw that the venue’s giant screens were set to scroll through posts related to the night’s concert? Nope! I informed the entire Merriweather Post Pavilion lawn that I was “All merched up,” and gleefully watched the post scroll by a handful of times. The other tweets were far more entertaining, though. Post after post of hipsters making fun of other hipsters. It was a sight to behold — through thick-rimmed glasses, of course. While I can’t condone my merch-first-ask-questions-later approach to money management, I can wholeheartedly endorse the music I picked up. Panda Bear’s single is fantastic (as is the rest of the album) and Fall Be Kind is one of the best EPs I’ve ever heard. Check out “What Would I Want? Sky,” which is historic, in that it features the first licensed sample of a Grateful Dead song, and grab the album here.

Animal Collective

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Merriweather Post Pavilion

Special Two-Part Coverage of the Most Hipster Thing I’ll Do All Summer
Part 1: Expectations and Ogres

Hipsters love irony. Defying expectations is central to this most sub- of sub-cultures, so it’s no surprise (or is it?) that before I even made it to Animal Collective’s show at Merriweather Post Pavilion, I was already immersed in a complicated web of dashed preconception. Let’s do some untangling. The members of Animal Collective all have roots in the Baltimore area, yet they’d never played at Merriweather Post Pavilion, even though it’s the venue that inspired the name of the band’s most recent (and most successful) album, an album that, according to an interview with band member Dave Portner, we wouldn’t be hearing much of, since Portner foretold that they’d be playing twelve songs, 70% of which would be new (not a round number), the newness of the songs being old news, since it’s fairly well known that Animal Collective prefers testing new and evolving material on the road over the traditional practice of playing mainly tunes from previous albums. Whew. And I thought ogres had layers. All of this knowing so much and so little at the same time had me over-the-moon excited about the concert, and all hipster jokes aside, it was an incredible experience. There I was at a concert where the whole audience is participating in an exercise of shared discovery. Since most of the songs are works in progress, not even the most stalkery, show-taping, YouTube-searching superfan knows for sure what will happen. It brings to mind that moment you see in Victorian period pieces, when the foppish audience either dispassionately claps or roars in approval after the premiere of a composer’s latest symphony. I felt sublimely lucky to be there, watching one of the greatest bands in the world make beautiful music that’s creative in every sense of the word. Check out one of the songs the band did play off Merriweather Post Pavilion, called “Brother Sport,” and download the album here.

Hoax Hunters

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Yesterday, I wrote about a few of the many reasons to see live music. There’s one example I left out because I had today’s post in mind, and in the age of the interweb, it’s an extremely rare one: music that’s exclusively available in live form. In late May, Hoax Hunters performed their first set as a band under the name the Blood Vowels. I couldn’t make this inaugural show, but this past Friday (YES, the same night as the Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings show — Mrs. You Hear That?!? is a trouper!), which was just a few days after the name change was made Twitter-official but before any of their music had made its way online, the Richmond-based band performed their second show at Strange Matter. It was such a gift to walk into the venue completely free of preconceptions, filled with the excitement of knowing I was about to hear music that, at the time, wasn’t within Google’s beneficently creepy purview. Hoax Hunters rewarded me with six explosive and exhilarating rock songs that resonated right away, leaving an uncommonly gripping first impression. Three of the tunes from Friday’s show have been posted on the band’s ReverbNation page, including my favorite of the night, “Mantooth.” The track highlights how well-crafted their songs are, mixing power and subtlety in a way that shows real care and creativity. Check it out here, and be sure to check the band out at their next show, on August 4 at Sprout with White Laces, Fossil Eyes and Grandfather.

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings

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I Learned the Hard Way

There are a zillion reasons to go to a concert. Maybe your favorite band is coming to town and you can’t stand the thought of missing it, or maybe you’re curious how a group’s sample-driven electro-pop sounds live. Or maybe your friend grabbed an extra ticket because “Dude no one else wants to go and you still owe me for the time I was wingman and that girl’s friend puked couscous all over my Ed Hardy T! LEBANESE AND FERRIS WHEELS DON’T MIX BRO!!” Whether it’s about the people we go with or the music we experience once we’re there, I think concert goers are all looking for a the same thing — a connection — and good lord did I ever find one this past Friday when I saw Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. My friends Tex and Clay raved about her when they saw her last, and since they were out of town and couldn’t make it, I spent half the show thanking them via text for recommending her. She was dazzling. She wore a sparkling black and white dress and danced non-stop, in spite of the 90-plus-degree heat, but what stood out most wasn’t her bottomless energy or her spectacular voice, it was how she made it feel like she was singing directly to you. She pulled people on stage, sang happy birthday to a lucky fan and every once in a while, looked out and blinked her eyes flirtatiously, knocking us off our feet and drawing us closer simultaneously. She pulled us in even further by sharing the story behind each of the group’s soul songs, complete with a moral to apply to everyday life. My favorite was “Window Shopping,” which is about only having eyes for one person [insert sexy blinking here]. Preview it below, and grab their album I Learned the Hard Way here. And if you ever have the chance to see Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, don’t forget your dancing shoes! I’m serious — she might pull you on stage, and you’re gonna need them to keep up.

Bon Iver

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I tend to get excited about stuff. This is going to sound ridiculous, but sometimes I get so excited for an album, I can’t tell if I like it or not when I finally hear it, and Bon Iver’s eponymous sophomore album is a great example. His debut, For Emma, Forever Ago, was a critically acclaimed success story with one of the most touching origin stories in recent memory, setting the stage for a highly anticipated follow up. So when NPR posted their First Listen preview on June 9, guess who listened to the album three times, backtobacktoback? (I’ll give you a hint: it’s the same guy who spent last evening tweeting at Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr about the Detroit Pistons’ draft picks…) Right away, I could tell the album was both beautiful and complicated, but I couldn’t tell if I was enjoying the album, appreciating it or just excited to be finally hearing it. Instead of picking it apart, I tried something different. I put it down, walked away and came back a week and a half later, when the album was released. The moment I returned, I knew that I loved it. You know the few microseconds when a song first comes on, before you consciously recognize which song it is, when your brain reflexively says either “Oh, I like this!” or “Oh, I’ve heard this! It sucks!”? Every single one of the songs on Bon Iver passed the reflex test — my unconscious mind greeted each one like an old friend. If you haven’t heard the album yet, you’re in for a treat. It’s a complex web of styles, emotions and images that add up to an incredible listening experience. Check out the official video for “Calgary” above, and click here to buy the album from iTunes.

The Cool Kids

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Who cares if they drive on the wrong side of the road and call sweaters “jumpers” … the Brits know their music. In fact, London is home to the world’s greatest car stereo, and I’m not talking about your cousin’s ’94 LeBaron with the subs in the trunk. I’m talking about the Black Cab Sessions! These videos feature famous bands crammed into the back of London’s trademark black cabs, performing for an audience of two: a cameraman and a disoriented cab driver, who has only a few moments beforehand agreed to host the mini concert. It’s a different driver each time, but one thing doesn’t change – they’re always filmed in one take, so you get a truly unvarnished view of the performers. That’s one reason I love The Cool Kids’ Black Cab Session so much. During their 5-minute ride, you get to hear the crazy talented, Chicago-based hip-hop duo of Antoine “Sir Michael Rocks” Reed and Evan “Chuck Inglish” Ingersoll trade off rapping and drumming a beat on the side of the cab, only to have the session fall to pieces when Mickey spits what might be the greatest freestyle lyric of all time: “My imprint is worth more than 9 gold infants.” Love it. Just … love it. Check out their Session above, and poke around the Black Cab Sessions’ website, because tons of great artists have recorded one. And keep an eye out for the Cool Kids’ album When Fish Ride Bicycles, coming out July 12. To whet your appetite, I’ve arranged a bonus test drive below of “A Little Bit Cooler” from their outstanding record, The Bake Sale.

Phish

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Drive-By Truckers and Phish in one weekend? You’re all like, “No Way!” and I’m all, “WAY!” Yessir/ma’am, after seeing Drive-By Truckers for the first time on Friday, I headed up to Merriweather Post Pavilion (noooo, not the Animal Collective album, the concert venue … yes, that was a very good album … why yes, I do have tickets to see them there on July 9! We should carpool, you know, to save gas and stuff … wait … what were we talking about?) to see Phish on Sunday night. It was a very good show, and it reminded me of one of the things I love most about seeing live music. Like the Grateful Dead before them, Phish is known for phaithful phans (see what I did there?) who phollow the band on tour (ok, I’m stopping now) and know their music inside and out. I have seen Phish a number of times, but Sunday’s show featured more unfamiliar songs than any other time I’d seen them. Some were covers, some were tunes the band just doesn’t perform often, but all of them gave me the gift of musical homework. I love musical homework. I love finding a setlist when I get home, so I can learn about the songs I didn’t know – songs that may have never known had I not heard them live. My favorite from Sunday is the Talking Heads’ “Crosseyed and Painless,” not just because it’s a great song, but because it gives me an entry point to explore the rest of the Talking Heads catalog. One of Sunday’s cover songs that I did recognize was the Rolling Stones’ classic, “Loving Cup.” Check out the video above, and the original version below for some historical perspective.

Drive-By Truckers

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“Do you believe in rock & roll?”

This famous line from Don McLean’s “American Pie” has always seemed meaningful to me, even though its meaning must be very different for me than for someone who was alive on February 3, in 1959. Having been born in 1983, I missed the advent of rock & roll, and never had to fight for its legitimacy. I never had to hide a Buddy Holly record from my parents, nor has anyone told me, with a straight face, that anything I listen to is “the devil’s music.” But to me, believing in rock & roll is not passive at all. It means learning about the bands that made the genre a cultural mainstay, and looking for echoes of those bands in today’s music. It means not taking music for granted. It means screaming like a crazy person when you’re at a Wilco show and Jeff Tweedy wonders aloud if you “still love rock & roll.” With that spirit in mind, I headed to Brown’s Island in Richmond this past Friday to see Drive-By Truckers for the very first time. It was the band’s 15th anniversary show, marking 15 years to the day since they recorded their first demo, and what struck me was how the band personifies their genre so completely. Confident, powerful and captivating, the Truckers put on a two-plus hour demonstration of what three guitars, bass, keys and drums can do when applied correctly. Surrounded by fans who knew every lyric, I had the good fortune of recording “Let There Be Rock,” a song that states directly a truth that the band itself embodies: rock & roll has the power to lift us up, as long as we keep believing in it. Check out the video of “Let There Be Rock” above, and a studio recording of the song below, which can be found on their Southern Rock Opera album.