Puro Instinct with Ariel Pink / all photos by David Greenwald
What you love is often the product of (very) personal history. Mom listening to Jobim during my childhood has made me forever twitterpated for major 7th chords, for instance. So I’m not sure why I’m so taken with Puro Instinct, who play abstract psych-pop that sounds like Christine McVie taking up downers and hiring Felt as her backing band. Acid tabs in my Fruit Loops? Dad sneaking listens to The Cure in between Fleetwood Mac sessions? I can’t explain it, but it’s there, that magnetic attraction to the band’s pillowy vocals — if lead singer Piper didn’t sway during their set, she could actually be asleep — and glistening guitar lines. Now a quintet, the band sounded an f-stop or two sharper than they did when I caught them at SXSW, but the L.A. group remains soft-focus. Go your own way, girls. (Ariel Pink, pictured with the hair, makes a fine Lindsey Buckingham, don’t you think?) More photos after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
Crazy, great lineup for the September 4 one-day festival, though I’ve already seen every band I like on it. Most of them this year! Worth paying the measly $25 for the Mountain Goats alone, though. See the whole thing after the jump. (Ariel Pink photo by David Greenwald) Read the rest of this entry »
The world needs more alt-country with doom on its shoulders. Athens, Georgia’s Futurebirds’ “Battle for Rome” is music for the apocalypse set in 1855, the gold rush drying to dust and fires on the horizon. “The sun ain’t gonna save my life,” Thomas Johnson intones with Buffalo Springfield-era Neil Young dread. Electric guitars tremble, pedal steel soars and the band smolders with the kind of desperation I wish Midlake had managed to capture on this year’s The Courage of Others. Fight the good fight.
Futurebirds – “Battle for Rome”:mp3 Futurebirds – “Johnny Utah”:mp3
“Cowards / we gotta unite,” Miles Kurosky sings to open “The World Won’t Last The Night.” The Desert of Shallow Effects is often a record cast in shadows, with the former Beulah frontman grappling with medical distress and existentialist panic — but one shouldn’t forget that Kurosky’s clever as hell, and the video for “The World Won’t Last The Night” lightens its very real darkness with Tron lasers and Carly Fiorina demon sheep. Two words: so awesome. Watch the Rawkblog world premiere above.
A magician never reveals his secrets. Magic Kids gave theirs away before they played a single note: “Did anyone bring a violin to the show?” they asked during their lengthy set-up, prolonged by technical difficulties and first major tour growing pains. It took the youngsters a few songs to get warmed up, but after playing blog hit and so-far discography stand-out “Summer,” the six-piece indie-pop act enchanted. Their sound was filled with bits of the Magnetic Fields, along with the defunct Pants Yell!’s wry edge and a touch of the also defunct (sad face!) Crystal Skulls’ jazz-chord athleticism. A brief but prodigious set — I’m looking forward to hearing the Kids grow up. More photos after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
Funny that two of 2010′s most notable female-fronted releases, Joanna Newsom’s Have One On Me and Best Coast’s Crazy For You, are all about guys. Newsom’s collection spends three discs and two hours on Serious Poetry and image-laden empowerment; Crazy For You is 30 minutes of BlackBerry-typed middle-school Tumblr posts. Newsom’s album is considered, nuanced, elegant; Best Coast’s is fast and loud.
But I have to give Crazy For You credit: the band was so sloppy and amateurish at SXSW that I skipped half the set and couldn’t be bothered to blog about them. The album is a different beast entirely. It sounds professional, even skillful, in the hands of producer Lewis Pesacov (Fool’s Gold, Foreign Born). It’s largely in the vein of the recent round-up of ’60s-via-’90s jangled-up girl-group revivalism, but when the choruses hit on tracks like “Boyfriend” or “I Want To,” the guitars bite with serious grunge-era teeth and the harmonies — a surreal blend of the Supremes and My Bloody Valentine — deserve an album of their own. Read the rest of this entry »
Los Angeles is full of irrepressible personalities: Manny being Manny, Miley just being Miley, Ariel Rosenberg being Ariel Pink. A taste of indie fame hasn’t changed the lo-fi mad scientist: he opened his set with a good 20 minutes of defiantly not-Before Today songs, and then, giving in and playing “Bright Lit Blue Skies” and “Round and Round,” responded to one fan’s “I love this song!” with a subtle sneer. “Is this the first time you’ve seen me play?” Pink questioned. “You should be ashamed.” I’m paraphrasing, but for what should’ve been an all-out hometown opening night party to kick off his national tour, Pink’s back catalog did deserve a little more attention. Whether he likes it or not, though, the singer’s new material is his most weirdly approachable and obsessively listenable; live, songs such as “Fright Night” were looser but no less charismatic. Even more awesome was Pink as metal-god-of-yore, romping around the stage and clutching the microphone like Ronnie James in his hey. Ariel being Ariel, Ariel being a rock star, Ariel having no shame — and no need for it. More photos after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
Wilco goes nova with the second most glorious song from Wilco (The Album) for La Blogotheque, a sequel to the “Country Disappeared” performance the site released in March. Nels Cline tears it up, although the camera man goes a lil’ overboard on his depth of field.
Crazy, great lineup for the September 4 one-day festival, though I’ve already seen every band I like on it. Most of them this year! Worth paying the measly $25 for the Mountain Goats alone, though. See the whole thing after the jump. (Ariel Pink photo by David Greenwald) 
The world needs more alt-country with doom on its shoulders. Athens, Georgia’s Futurebirds’ “Battle for Rome” is music for the apocalypse set in 1855, the gold rush drying to dust and fires on the horizon. “The sun ain’t gonna save my life,” Thomas Johnson intones with Buffalo Springfield-era Neil Young dread. Electric guitars tremble, pedal steel soars and the band smolders with the kind of desperation I wish Midlake had managed to capture on this year’s 
Funny that two of 2010′s most notable female-fronted releases, Joanna Newsom’s Have One On Me and Best Coast’s Crazy For You, are all about guys. Newsom’s collection spends three discs and two hours on Serious Poetry and image-laden empowerment; Crazy For You is 30 minutes of BlackBerry-typed middle-school Tumblr posts. Newsom’s album is considered, nuanced, elegant; Best Coast’s is fast and loud.
