Wednesday night’s gig showcased the vast majority of their sensational new LP, Barbara, alongside a bevy of classic tracks from their earlier releases. Highly enjoyable from start to finish. Official TMS Rating: 9/10. Be sure to watch ‘Nice Guys’ here. In May, We Are Scientists dropped by TMS TV.
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Britt Lundborg attended last night’s gig and offers an extensive report! Last night, South London foursome Athlete played the Bowery Ballroom. You probably know their one big hit (“Wires”) since its epic melancholy was inescapable in 2005. I’ll give you a second to Google it. Ear-worms in? Good. Athlete’s a funny outfit – sure handed when piecing together melodies and highly competent live, but perhaps a touch out of step? I mean, they look like indie rockers: the drummer is festooned with ugly eyeglasses and a silly beard, lead singer Joel Pott tones down his super good looks with boring clothes and work boots, the bassist even has a face piercing. Swimming in all these alt signifiers, you’d think it would take, but their sound is Top 40 Radio. Proudly, unabashedly, straight for the middle. Their first LP was nominated for a Mercury Prize and they’ve picked up a highly-coveted Ivor Novello song-writing accolade. So, what’s the problem? Well, backlash for one thing. As typical with music fame in the UK, as soon as the Brits skyrocket your LP up the charts, they loathe you. See: Coldplay. Like Athlete, Coldplay started as a rinky-dink piano/kee-tar group held together with little more Chris Martin’s tears. They made perfectly accessible, square music and got hugely famous. Coldplay occupy Athlete’s space in the charts. Their built-in earnestness is a crucial part of both these bands’ appeal. When you want to soar or when you want to weep, this is the kind of easy-listening music that acts as a low-grade beta-blocker. It calms you down. But don’t get me wrong – the audience last night was rapt, singing along, loving every carefully-constructed moment. Does love flow in when irony’s gone? There were moments – the choral breakdown on “Wild Wolves”, Pott’s strange jaunty dance on the edge of the stage – but the night’s hatches felt fully battened.
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Incredible (Yet Again)! TMS Rating: 10/10. The Wrong Car is out soon.
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Post Rock Brilliance! Official TMS Rating: 9/10. Visit Mono on MySpace.
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Britt Lundborg attended Saturday night’s gig and offers an extensive report! “You’re makin’ love to the past…” Free Energy’s frontman, Paul Sprangers, crooned to the audience of Bowery Ballroom last Saturday night. I couldn’t help but think, “Hmm, pot, kettle, black”? The Philadelphia quintet proudly sex the 70s like Kama Sutra masters. Their riffs and sing-along choruses so blatantly reference classic rock they could be dropped right into radio rotation between Thin Lizzy and T Rex. Except these guys look like they use a fake ID to pick up a sixer. But! A band so baby-faced could only pull such a deliberate nostalgia stunt if the talent was present. Scott Wells, lead guitarist, squeals and slides through riff after riff, blowing sunshine open wide. As he plays, a pheasant feather stuck in his guitar’s strings flitters and dances, like a flag screaming, “Attention: HERE”. Dude, you’ve got my attention purely from the magic you’re able to pull from your guitar. Model-skinny lead-singer Sprangers lithely jumps around the stage, like a goofier Jagger. Even if my authenticity alarm was going off, Free Energy won me over. But what do I matter – bullshit sensitive Pitchfork deemed “Dream City”, a track off their James Murphy-produced Stuck On Nothing, Best New Track and gave the album an 8.1. One can’t but help wonder if the ‘Fork’s love of the LCD frontman had anything to do with giving these Philly boys a nicely warmed hand-job. I do have to admit that there’s something about listening to yesteryear’s music live and not have it be played by men who have a host of grandchildren. Rock does belong to the young.
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Brilliant! Again! Official TMS Rating: 9/10. Watch ‘Mouthful…’ here.
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Britt Lundborg attended yesterday’s gig and offers an extensive report! Last night, Local Natives and Suckers played to a sold-out house at Bowery Ballroom. French Kiss Records is smart to pair these guys together for a road-tour, since the bands complement one another without treading toes. Brooklyn-based foursome Suckers play melodic, yet shouty campfire anthems and LA-bred Local Natives make guitar-plinking sing-alongs.
Neither band is hard to look at either, which always helps.
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Backed by a sign that read ‘Justin Bieber Live!’, Adam Green’s eighty minute set was charming, hilarious and deliciously entertaining. Saturday evening’s performance even included an impromptu cover of Green Day’s ‘Basket Case’ during the bridge of ‘Jessica’. Official TMS Rating: 9/10. Minor Love is available now. Watch my extensive interview with Adam Green here.
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Our brilliant guest blogger, Britt Lundborg, attended yesterday’s gig and offers a full report! Nerd-rock septet The Apples In Stereo played Bowery Ballroom last night. They’re touring with Generationals, a sunny New Orleans foursome, to promote their seventh (!!) studio release. Front man, Robert Schneider, explained to the audience that their new album (Travellers In Space And Time) was the ostensible reason for the band’s silver space suits. I found them very becoming even without the excuse of a ‘contiguous brand identity’. [My marketing-nerd words, not his.] The crowd was populated by older folks (AKA over 35), guys in extravagant eyewear, and an unfortunate element who attempted multiple times to get a mosh pit going. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the enthusiasm! Being thrust back to my 1995 ‘Fun Trick Noisemaker’ loving self left me giddy too. Perhaps Schneider wasn’t too far off with the time-traveling capabilities of the suits. I will not lie. When they unleashed the high-bounce pop perfection of ‘Energy’, I too wanted to pogo. Their new stuff sounds shiny and tight – big golden 70-esque hooks melded with future forward electro blips. Someone seems to have found his Disco Stick at the back of the closet. And absolutely no grave faces here, The Apples smiled the entire time. Schneider wore an enormous pair of yellow wrap-around sunnies the entire set. He said we’d probably recognize them from their ‘Dance Floor’ video, but his keyboardist said they looked like something World Wide Wrestling Federation superstar Randy Savage would wear. And even though the vocoder is last year’s lame trick, I couldn’t help but love the keyboardist’s monster-robot voice slipping strange out of this world tremors into Apples’ upbeat tunes. Come early to hear the opener, Generationals, who also craft high-flying pop that sounds more naïve than it is. Their song, ‘When They Fight They Fight’, is just the sort of tune that a savvy music supervisor would use to anchor the opening sequence of a battle-of-the-sexes romantic comedy. See them before they’re licensed beyond all recognition & you only associate them with Katherine Heigl’s shit-eating grin.
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Alexis Maindrault captured some fab shots from Friday night’s gig.
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