Portland, Maine’s Brenda have had a pretty intense summer. They played the Nateva festival and they released Silver Tower, a energizing collection of songs influenced by late 90’s rock. Chock-full of delicious and emotional melodies, Silver Tower is a perfect road trip album. Some of the songs have a haunting aura to them while others are more fast-paced and dancy making a great contrast in over-all sound (think The Strokes). Brenda have a bunch of shows coming up around New England including the Wilco Solid Sound Festival at Mass MOCA.
Jul 30 2010 10:00P Bayside Bowl w/ the Rattlesnakes Portland, Maine
Aug 10 2010 7:00P hallowell waterfront Hallowell, Maine
Aug 14 2010 1:30P MASS MoCA, Solid Sound Festival North Adams, MA
Aug 27 2010 9:00P Empire w/ Metal Feathers and Doomstar! Portland, Maine
The Royalty play their last-ever shows this week – Sunday night, 7/25 at The House of Blues Restaurant, and Friday, July 30 at Providence’s AS220. Conveniently, Sunday’s House of Blues show is free. So take that extra cash to the bar and join the fun, as they may well be cruising towards a club ban. Just kidding. Probably.
If you haven’t seen them yet and you’re a fan of low-fi indie rock a la Pavement with a predilection for feedback (lots of it), incisive lyrics, sarcastic humor, heckling and cheap beer, then you owe it to yourself to make one if not both of these dates. They also have an EP you should probably ask them about, featuring a great cover of Pavement’s "Grounded."
Sunday 7/25
House of Blues Restaurant, Boston
Free, 8pm
with Quixote, Brontosaur
Are you a New England band or musician? Have you toured through Boston? Then I’m willing to wager that unless you were put on an existing bill elsewhere in Boston, you’ve played at All Asia Bar in Cambridge’s Central Square. Marc Shulman, the owner, is famous for letting just about anyone onto his club’s humble stage. He also gives the hosting band each night more freedom to do what they want with their time than many other club owners in Boston would be comfortable even considering.
So it is in true Marc fashion that he embarks on a new project, entertainment-minded for him and exposure-minded for the musicians he’s hosted: a playlist, indeed a mighty one, featuring every band and musician that has played there (and who have recorded music, of course). The playlist will then be played over the house speakers at both All Asia and Marc’s restaurant in Taiwan. That’s right – passive exposure both at home and overseas.
So, if you’ve played All Asia in the past and would like selections of your music to be involved, head over to this blog posting to find the link and password to a web drop box to which you can submit some or all of your music. Marc has also offered to dig through all music submitted to find his favorites, so if you don’t have the time to pick any "single(s)," Marc will do so for you. So here’s hoping you trust his taste.
Looking for a break from your usual haunts in and around Boston? Don’t forget to look West!
Head out to the Green at Newton Center (Newton Center T stop on the Green D line) on Thursday, 7/22, for Sun Down Sounds, a free concert series featuring some seriously fresh talent. The event will also feature locally-made art installations and picnics!
I’m a little late on reporting this one – this Thursday’s is the second of four installments in the series – but that’s fitting, as I’m also a little late in realizing what a hotbed for new, experimental and folky music Newton has turned out to be. Some of it has infiltrated the Boston airwaves and blogspace, but much has stayed aloof.
The Sun Down Sounds series is showcasing some of the best of that talent. Each evening seems to have some unifying musical theme or general sound; this Thursday features some down-tempo, relaxing acoustic folk music. The evenings start at 530 and run until around 9. There’s more information about this series on their Facebook page.
Good Kids Sprouting Horns is a genuine alt-folk band. The "genuine" part is worth noting because while many bands approach the folk genre with determination and, often, some degree of kitsch, Good Kids Sprouting Horns seem to belong there. Despite their humble format (guitar, drums, and a small fleet of retro keyboards), they push folk to its boundaries, with quiet, reflective passages, momentous climaxes, engaging licks and harmonies, and song structures that lean on anything from pop to post-rock as much as folk.
If you haven’t caught them live yet, here’s your chance – the band embarks on a summer mini-tour on July 23rd. You can see them off tonight at the SPACE Gallery or on the 23rd at Slainte, both in Portland, before they hit the road. (Good luck with North Carolina in August, guys! I’m sweating at the thought.)
7.23 Portland, ME – Slainte 7.24 Winooski, VT – The Monkey House 7.26 Somewhere in NY – House Show 7.27 Rochester, NY – Boulder Coffee Co 7.29 Pittsburgh, PA – Howler’s Coyote Cafe 7.30 Richmond, VA – The Triple 8.1 Durham, NC – The Pinhook 8.2 New York, NY – Pianos
Vermont’s The Day’s Weight recently released a new EP which has been mixed by Paul Kolderie and Mastered by Jeff Lipton, both Boston legends who have worked with The Pixies and Radiohead to name a few. The Day’s Weight will be touring around the East Coast through July. Tonight they are at Arlene’s Grocery in Manhattan.
Thursday July 22nd – Garwood, New Jersey – The Crossroads
Friday July 23rd – Bethesda, Maryland – The Barking Dog
Friday July 30th – Situate, Massachusetts – The River Club
The Deli is throwing a Burlington-based showcase tomorrow at the Monkey House in Winooski, VT with a pretty diverse lineup of native Burlington acts. The Day’s Weight is into indie rock meets western vibes. Neon Magus is a heavy psychedelic tribal squadron. Nuda Veritas creates beauitful sonic textures with loops and her gorgeous voice. Busted Brix mixes ska horn play with tight indie rock rhythms. They will all be leveling the stage with an upbeat night of sounds starting tomorrow at 8:30pm. (Note: Unfortunately, The Feverbreakers will not be playing.)
We might be in a new golden age of underground electronic music, call it what genre you will. Glo-fi, chillwave, psychrock: sexy names that never quite do justice to the music they’re meant to describe. You’d think an entire generation of American youth was mainlining Robotussin while nodding off over a Moog in a sepia-tinted bedroom. But if all these kids were really huffing computer cleaner, you’d hardly get the choice selection of well-crafted, just-enough-polished electronica that we have today. Acts like Blackbird Blackbird, Pollination, Toro Y Moi, Truman Peyote and Boston’s PPALMM are putting out impossibly ready-to-play music that peels off into experimental directions while still maintaining a pop sensibility. Not all of these acts are touring, or even gigging; many remain bedroom wunderkinds. But it’s a sign of overall fertility that these acts are flowering in the absence of extensive club support. If the music is good, everything else follows. PPALMM’s Cal-Aesthetics is the latest crown of laurels on the brow of this burgeoning scene that’s going to outlive its half-snarky glo-fi label.
The tracks from Cal-Aesthetics hew more to the techno end of the spectrum, away from the warped tape warblings of a Neon Indian. In fact, the overall sound is pretty clean, though dense and detailed. There’s no magnetized tape stressing here to produce that half-step hurky-jurky fade-in/fade-out rhythm that’s so popular these days. PPALMM sneaks in rhythm the “old fashioned” way, with artfully constructed samples and beats. Tracks ‘New Nostalgia’ and ‘Revel’ bring to mind middle period Aphex Twin. The latter especially invokes the heavier, dirrrtier house sounds of Richard D. James in his UK club mode. The medium tempo ‘_outherewithme_’ and ‘elec_TR_olling’ have a leisurely pace and subtlety reminiscent of Endtroducing-era DJ Shadow. All great tracks, but the heart and soul of Cal-Aesthetics is probably ‘Acid Cops’, a techno-thriller that harkens back to the straightup house grinders of the early 90s while infusing the sampling vocabulary with digital treats those pre-Macbook luddites could hardly have fathomed.
PPALMM is probably one of those underground acts that trends more towards the bedroom wunderkind at this point. Though the man behind the music Paul Morse (Paul M. = PPALMM- get it?) has gigged regular in the Boston area, and been on some great bills with Toro Y Moi, Das Racist, Truman Peyote and Class Actress, you get the feeling that outside of New England PPALMM is an unknown quantity. Cal-Aesthetics should change this and hopefully open a few doors. It’s a good thing to hear music from this special scene that doesn’t lean hard on the warbled tape, tremolo-ed “chill thump” to grab the listener’s attention. The “chill thump” could become the new disco beat- played out, lamed out- if people don’t watch out. But if it does, PPALMM will be high and dry with an album that visits Chillville, yet, thankfully, doesn’t live there.
Alchemilla is releasing their first full-length album this Saturday. Chasing Ghosts is an intense collection of hard alt-rock influenced by Led Zeppelin and 90’s alt like Sonic Youth and Pearl Jam. Kat Burke’s vocals are powerful and lovely (so is she) at the same time. They make the rock beautiful. The band has been together for a decade and has probably played more venues than you have been to. The bill for the release show is insane:Alchemilla will be joined by The Force, Planetoid, Captain Cutthroat and The Few. Get tickets HERE
Alliston, Mass band, 28 Degrees Taurus is swinging through Burlington tomorrow for the late night shift to baptize the place with their dreamy classic psych take on the My Bloody Valentine sounds. Also joining them are a couple of heads from Burlington’s Aether Everywhere/Mars Pyramid camp, the le duo and VIKOMT, to add the noisy improvs and the synthy drones to the mix. Should be a pretty submerged space echo type of show. Things kick of at 11pm at the Radio Bean.
The Rex Complex will be returning to Boston, for a show (not permently, sadly) at the Lizard Lounge Friday the 9th. The Rex Complex is a power-house duo who got their start in Boston and Camberville playing a much loved weekly residency at Precinct. Self-described as roots-ruckus, The Rex Complex is one of the highest energy bands to come out of the city. They use a world of instruments from all over the world, from the gyil to the accordion. They will be supported by special guests Railbird and The Slowest Runner in all the World.
Lizard Lounge 1667 Mass Ave Cambridge – 7/9 21+ 10 bux at the door.
The Doctors Fox performance at the Lizard Lounge on June 19th showcased the band’s extraordinary talent as they played tracks from their debut album, Plural Non-Possessive, their as-yet-titled sophomore album and a sampling of soul covers with guest vocalist and Soul City alum Dave Hanft. From the opener “Dunga of my Dreams,” a playful back and forth between Americana and jazz, the band fluidly shifted from one influence to another without losing their hallmark feel. David Ladon’s playful vocals weave with melodic guitars and violin, soulful bass and gritty drums.
Ladon has a solid vocal range and excellent control. His lyrics, while socio-politically bent, never lose their sense of fun, from “Beached Whale” which features Ladon singing in the persona of said mammal to “Don Juan,” a song about a player who gets played that tackles the subject with playful Schadenfreude rather than heavy-handed morality and caution. Ryan Aylward’s violin lends an unexpected layer to the music, sometimes melding with Daniel Harris’s and Jon Dashkoff’s dynamic guitars and sometimes playing complimentary tones against guitars or bass, as in the ska and jazz-inspired “Olympic Sculpture Park.” Josh Kiggans’ drumming is near flawless, striking an expert balance between percussive grit and sharp, clean accentuation in every song.
Dave Hanft’s guest vocals with the band showcased the fusion of two talented musical forces. His voice on Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke” and Sam & Dave’s “Hold On” was strong, emotional and raw without being affected or sloppy. Likewise, the cover songs allowed the Doctors Fox to show their skills, with Harris, Dashkoff and Aylward filling in horn sections with creative arrangements of guitars and violin while Ladon’s bass and Kiggans’ drums drove the infectious grooves that bound the musical camps. Catch their next local show at Church on July 23rd. –Meghan Guidry
The Deli is throwing a Burlington-based showcase tomorrow at the Monkey House in Winooski, VT with a pretty diverse lineup of native Burlington acts. 
Alliston, Mass band, 
