photos by Julieta Cervantes, words by Andrew Frisicano

DOWNLOAD: The Long Count - Bull Run (feat. Kelley Deal) (MP3)

The Long Count premiered last night (10/28) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music while the Yankees were losing to the Phillies up in the Bronx. It's a risky piece - and not just because the pre-show epigraph was a radio broadcast of the last time the Yankees were swept in a World Series. The overarching "Creation" theme guides the piece's rise-collapse-rebuild structure, and its individual songs and their discrete musical worlds make each movement engaging and unexpected. Each part has its own center: At the beginning the band sounds like a chamber ensemble, with the two lead guitars playing in counterpoint. That transitions into a duet between twins Kim and Kelley Deal of the Breeders, whose smiles and lighthearted gait broke through any opening-night tension that might've been present. Their informality went against the general seated-show seriousness of the BAM Opera House. Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond), in contrast, was in total performance-art mode, bouncing around lithely in a series of choreographed gestures and rotating costumes. The Deals sang muffled, overdriven harmonies, in their classic style, before splitting to take their own numbers. Kim's song in particular , "Time to play" it might be called, crested into a bass-less din like a staticy AM radio that filled the hall. (Kelley's, "Bull Run," you can hear above.)

While the Dessners sat (and rose at moments) on stage, they trusted the weight of their composed music to the assembled band. For the complexity of the piece, and the precision to which it was arranged, the tightness of the well-rehearsed and conductor-less band was remarkable. The middle of the piece is a series of instrumental arrangements that progress from relative order to menacing crescendo. To transition certain segments, Colin Stetson (on bass clarinet and bari sax) explodes through the hall with freefrom circular breathing figures. For these moments he's wholly alone.

A massive symmetrical backdrop of flowing abstract landscapes looms over the musicians and audience. The final piece, a Morricone-tinged number sung by Kim Deal, plays before a breezy, sun-burnt plain.

The show happens again at BAM on Friday and Saturday. Tickets are still available. More pictures from Wednesday below...

Continue reading "The Long Count @ BAM in pics & review "

by Andrew Frisicano

DOWNLOAD: Aaron Dessner - We Were Born (from the Long Count) (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: The Long Count - Bull Run (feat. Kelley Deal) (MP3)

Twins! (the Dessners & the Deals)

The Long Count kicks off its three show engagement at BAM's Gilman Opera House tonight (10/28). Tickets are still available for the show, as well as for the Friday (10/30) and Saturday (10/31) performances.

The 70-minute music and multimedia piece, commissioned by BAM Next Wave Festival, is the work of Bryce and Aaron Dessner of the National and visual artist Matthew Ritchie. But they haven't been working alone. At every step of composing and arranging the Long Count over the past year, the brothers have tapped into their crew of skilled collaborators. The 12-piece orchestra that will be joining them on stage counts talents like NYC violist Nadia Sirota (who played last month's Archipelago series show), sax/bass clarinet player Colin Stetson, and Antony & the Johnsons' guitarist/violinist/conductor Rob Moose (who in particular assisted with some of the arranging duties).

As previously mentioned, the Breeders' Kim and Kelley Deal (twins) collaborated with the Dessners (also twins) on much of the music - they sing for nearly half of the show. Other vocal turns will be taken by the Nationals' Matt Berninger and My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden.

All four singers play roles in the narrative of the Long Count, which takes its story from the Mayan creation myth of Popol Vuh. In that, multiple sets of twins (in the story and on stage) experience repeated cycles of life and death until giving birth to the world as we know it. The original tale ties in strongly with a ballgame played by its main characters - an element which the Dessners have woven in with their love of baseball, particularly Cincinnati Reds and the Big Red Machine.

Musically, the Long Count sections posted above, both from the show's work-in-progress performance at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on September 11th, showcase the piece's diversity. The first, "We Were Born," highlights the minimalist pedigree of the show, while "Bull Run" layers those elements with fearsome orchestral lines and extremely creepy vocals by Kelley Deal.

Paired with the spooky nature of Mathew Ritchie's animation (which you can preview here) the show looks to be a good Halloween night warm-up as any. In fact, the early Saturday night show has the most tickets available, and it follows a pre-show Q&A (ticketed separately) led by Brandon Stosuy (who's curating the Mount Eerie + metal show at Market Hotel later in the night).

Bryce generously answered some of our questions over the phone while in the last week of rehearsal (and in the hectic center of CMJ week). More photos from the production, and that interview, where he reveals the existence of an unreleased Christmas album he made with Sufjan, details on the new National record and more, below...

Continue reading "an interview w/ Bryce Dessner of The National whose show, The Long Count, opens @ BAM tonight ++ 2 MP3's"

photos by Bao Nguyen

"Taking the stage were Kim and her sister Kelley along with the newer faces (including the drum and bass tandem of Jose Meledes and Mando Lopez, and guitarist Cheryl "from Florida" Lyndsey). They started off with the trippy "Hoverin'", an Amps song and went newer with Title TK, and then backward with cuts off of Last Splash and Pod. I personally wanted to see them play "Hellbound" and "Fortunately Gone", which tops my favorite Breeders songs, but they did play "I Decided" which I love. All the bigger songs got their turn, "Saints", "Cannonball", their cover of "Happiness is a Warm Gun", "Divine Hammer", "Safari". The sheer thrill of songs like "New Year" with an intense, buzzing guitar section really makes for a powerful set." [Kings County Bop]

So, as I was saying, The Breeders played two shows in NYC this week. The above review snippet is from Tuesday night's show at Bowery Ballroom. The pictures are from Wednesday. More of them below...

Continue reading "The Breeders & Whispertown 2000 @ Bowery Ballroom - pics "

by Andrew Frisicano

DOWNLOAD: Aaron Dessner - We Were Born (from the Long Count) (MP3)

The Long Count
Oct 28, 30 & 31 at 8pm

Bryce Dessner, Aaron Dessner, and Matthew Ritchie

In an inspired collision of creative worlds, three inexhaustibly original artists--brothers Bryce Dessner and Aaron Dessner of indie rock royalty The National and omnivorous visual art phenomenon Matthew Ritchie--combine talents to create a song-filled myth about the beginning of time. A feast of images, instrumentals, and songs thick with primordial mystery, The Long Count pairs Ritchie's protean forms with a twelve-piece orchestra and the Dessners' gothic mix of electric and orchestral sounds.

Guest vocalists Kim and Kelley Deal (The Breeders [who are at the Bowery August 18th & 19th]), Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond), and Matt Berninger (The National) round out the line-up in this visionary collaboration between music and art.

The MP3 above is the first musical glimpse at the above-described (and previously mentioned) Long Count project. The heavy minimalist influence on the track makes the role of those guest vocalists even more curious. Single tickets for the Long Count, and all the BAM Next Wave concerts, go on sale September 8th. A video trailer for the show, which falls on and around Halloween, is below. More Brooklyn Halloween show options HERE.

Shara Worden has been keeping super busy and impressing Decemberists audiences across the country when she sings her part in the Hazards of Love production (and when she's doing Bob Dylan). Upcoming Decemberists dates include September 21st in Montclair, NJ.

Kim Deal, in addition to the above-mentioned BAM and Bowery shows, will be in NYC (and around the country) with the Pixies in November. The shows at Hammerstein Ballroom are now on sale.

The National recently played a set at All Points West in Jersey City.

Worden/National collaborator Sufjan Stevens premiered his show "The BQE" as part of BAM's Next Wave Festival in 2007. That show is being released as a DVD and going on tour, as is Sufjan himself.

Also below is a video from "a 20-minute animated and musical collaboration developed by Bryce Dessner and Matthew Ritchie" that premiered at the Kitchen in March (Sufjan Stevens played the harmonium), and trailers and music (!) for the other BAM Next Wave commissions including Imaginary City (the So Percussion show), Terra Nova (the DJ Spooky/ICE collaboration) and Meredith Monk's Songs of Ascension...

Continue reading "an MP3 from the upcoming National-Breeders-Worden show @ BAM, Long Count ticket info, Next Wave video previews"

The Breeders @ McCarren Park Pool, July 13 2008 (more by Ryan Muir)

Pixies played their first high-profile UK gig in nearly four years tonight (June 14), performing before Neil Young at the Isle Of Wight Festival.

Opening their Main Stage set with 'U-Mass', the band treated fans to an 80-minute greatest hits set.

Early on in the set, bassist Kim Deal remarked that she found the island "very pretty", before giggling into the microphone. [NME]

The Pixies followed that show with an invite-only release party for their Minotaur boxset the next night in London. (That boxset includes each of the five Pixies studio albums cut onto LP/gold-plated CD/Blu-ray audio/DVD/etc.) Drowned in Sound was there and wrote...

Doubtless you know/saw enough of the last reunion tour to be well aware the Pixies are still very, very good at playing Pixies songs, and a full review would be kind of gratuitous: they were frickin' awesome.

Set lists for both shows are below.

There's no word on any additional Pixies dates yet, though Frank Black has announced some solo Black Francis shows, and is touring with his Grand Duchy project this summer. That group plays NYC's Siren Fest on July 18th, with a show the night before in Hoboken. Updated tour dates (FB and GD) are below.

The Pixies' Kim Deal has shows this summer too, with The Breeders. They'll be at Sled Island Fest in Calgary this weekend (June 26th). The band's also announced several August tour dates. Those include NYC shows on August 18th and 19th at the Bowery Ballroom. Tickets for both nights go on presale Wednesday, June 24th at noon. General sale starts Friday at 11am.

Kim and Kelley Deal of the Breeders will lso be performing as part of The Long Count, a BAM commissioned project by the National's Bryce and Aaron Dessner. That premieres in Brooklyn in October.

Pixies set lists, with all tour dates, below...

Continue reading "Breeders playing 2 NYC shows, Deals playing BAM, Pixies played 2 shows (setlist), Frank Black announced more dates"

BAM has announced the schedule for the Next Wave Festival 2009, a series of fourteen new music, theater and dance pieces that'll run from September 15th to December 19th.

The lineup includes a number of awesome-looking BAM commissions and premieres.

Bryce Dessner & Aaron Dessner of The National (and Dark Was the Night fame) and Matthew Ritchie have put together a piece called The Long Count, to feature Kim and Kelley Deal (The Breeders), Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond, Decemberists) and Matt Berninger (The National) on vocals (Oct 28th-31st).

Imaginary City, a new 70-minute work by So Percussion, will be accompanied by video and take inspiration from the Italo Calvino novel of the same name (Oct 14th--17th). Meredith Monk will compose and perform in Songs of Ascension alongside her vocal ensemble and the Todd Reynolds String Quartet (Oct 21st--25th). (As a side note -- Reynolds and Monk both appeared, separately, at the Bang on a Can benefits at LPR on June 3rd.)

The program features a concert staging of the Philip Glass opera Kepler (Nov 18th, 20th, 21st). And, maybe in time for the first snow (...) a performance by DJ Spooky and the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) of Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica, a piece "based around DJ Spooky's sound recordings in the Antarctic that explore the acoustic qualities of ice" (Dec 2, 4 & 5).

Most of the programs above will have an "Artist Talk" companion program, free to those with tickets to the event.

There's a couple ways to get tickets to the series. Friends of BAM will get the first stab at subscription packages, which let you pick a combo of shows to attend, on Monday, June 15th. Subscriptions for the general public go on sale Monday, June 22nd. Single ticket sales for Next Wave Festival starts Tuesday, September 8th (Aug 31st for Friends of BAM).

Full music lineup below...

Continue reading "BAM Next Wave Festival 2009 - members of The National, The Breeders, Shara Worden, So Percussion, DJ Spooky..."

photos by Bao Nguyen

June 10, 1961 is the day identical twin sisters Kim and Kelley Deal were born. June 10, 2008 is the day they played Webster Hall with their band The Breeders. - their first NYC show since arriving back on the scene and releasing a new album. Their next NYC show will be July 11th inside Other Music. Their next real NYC show will be a free one at McCarren Pool on July 13th - one day after their NJ show. They officially announced both of those NYC dates at the show last night.

As Webster Hall is known to be during heatwaves, it was hot in there. That didn't seem to stop anyone from having a good time though. The Breeders rocked, and the mixed-age crowed showed their enthusiasm from the beginning until the Happy-Birthday-sing-along end. More pictures, and the setlist, below....

Continue reading "The Breeders @ Webster Hall, NYC - pics & setlist"