Bumbershoot is returning to Seattle this year from August 31 to September 2 at Seattle Center. This year's lineup was just announced, and it includes Death Cab for Cutie performing Transatlanticism (in case The Postal Service reuniting wasn't enough Ben Gibbard nostalgia for you), Kendrick Lamar, MGMT, The Breeders, The Zombies, Alt-J, Deerhunter, Baroness, Crystal Castles, Gary Numan, Joey Bada$$, Eric Burdon, Bob Mould, David Bazan, Charli XCX, Redd Kross, The Men and more.

Tickets (3-day passes, 2-day passes, and single day tickets) for the festival are on sale now.

Full lineup below...

Continue reading "Bumbershoot 2013 lineup & tix (Death Cab for Cutie, MGMT, Kendrick Lamar, Breeders, Zombies, Alt-J, Deerhunter & more)"

One of the most eclectic lineups in the US, Hopscotch Festival in Raleigh, NC, will be back for 2013 on September 5 -7. Pulling from all genres, this year's line-up includes names like Big Boi (who plays NYC tonight), Spiritualized, Sleep, Wolf Eyes (who have a new video), The Breeders (performing Last Splash), John Cale, Kurt Vile & the Violators, Gorguts, Inter Arma (who play NYC on Saturday), Double Negative (who played NYC this past weekend), Swearin' (them too), Pissed Jeans, Dan Friel, Waxahatchee and many many others. Three-day wristbands are on sale now with individual day tickets going on sale in June. Full lineup is below.

Continue reading "Hopscotch announces 2013 lineup (Big Boi, Sleep, Spiritualized, Kurt Vile, Wolf Eyes, John Cale, more)"

Outside Lands Fest 2012 (more byAmoreena Lucero)

The 2013 edition of San Francisco's Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival with happen at Golden Gate Park on August 9 - 11. This year's line-up includes Paul McCartney, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nine Inch Nails, Phoenix, Vampire Weekend, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, D'Angelo, Willie Nelson, Grizzly Bear, Band of Horses, Hall & Oates, Foals, A-Track, Jurassic 5, Kurt Vile and many more. Tickets go on sale Thursday (4/18) at noon PDT.

This is the sixth edition of Outside Lands, and the full announced line-up is below.

Continue reading "Outside Lands Fest 2013 line-up: Paul McCartney, Nine Inch Nails, Phoenix, Vampire Weekend, Yeah Yeah Yeahs ++ more)"

Firefly Music Festival 2012 (more by Dana (distortion) Yavin)

Dover, DE festival Firefly Music Festival had a great first year in July of 2012, and afterwards immediately announced it'd return in 2013. The 2013 festival happens from June 21 - 23 at the Dover International Speedway, and the lineup was just announced. It includes Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Passion Pit, Kendrick Lamar, MGMT, Grizzly Bear, Japandroids, The Walkmen, Django Django, Public Enemy, CHVRCHES, Amanda Palmer, Foxygen, Alabama Shakes, Toro y Moi, Dan Deacon, Action Bronson, The Avett Brothers, and more; and the headliners are Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Vampire Weekend, and Foster the People. The full lineup is below and you can watch the announcement video at their website. TIckets go on general sale Thursday (2/21).

Firefly happens a couple weeks after NYC festival Governors Ball, which has some lineup similarities (Kendrick Lamar, Grizzly Bear, Japandroids, Avett Brothers, etc). That one goes down on Randall's Island from June 7 - 9 and tickets are still available.

Firefly lineup below...

Continue reading "Firefly Music Festival announces 2013 lineup (Vampire Weekend, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Passion Pit, Kendrick Lamar, MGMT, Grizzly Bear, Japandroids, Tom Petty, RHCP & more)"

SXSW is no doubt a great way to see a lot of bands in a short amount of time and can be a lot of fun. But it can also be a little much for some. If you'd like to see many of the same bands but in a more genteel setting, you might be interested in The Savannah Stopover which happens the weekend before SXSW (March 7 - 9) in at various clubs in Savannah, Georgia. Over 100 bands will play, including Of Montreal, Merchandise, Mac DeMarco, Chelsea Light Moving, Hunters, Braids, Delicate Steve, Turbo Fruits, Ducktails and loads more.

Tickets ($30 per day or $75 for three-day pass) are on sale now and more info is at Savannah Stopover's website. The full announced lineup is below.

Continue reading "of Montreal, Chelsea Light Moving, Merchandise, Mac DeMarco, & more playing Savannah Stopover before SXSW"

After teasing us with lineup addictions day by day over the past few days, the full lineup of Austin City Limits 2012 is finally here. Check it out below....

Continue reading "Austin City Limits Festival -- 2012 lineup "

Lollapalooza (more by Grant MacAllister)

Chicago Sun Times reports:

Lollapalooza has revealed its official 2012 list of performers -- a typically wide-ranging smorgasbord of genres and styles topped by nearly a dozen mainstage headliners: the Red Hot Chili Peppers, freshly reunited bands Black Sabbath and At the Drive-In, the Black Keys, Jack White, Florence + The Machine, the Shins and Passion Pit, plus spotlighted electronic music including Swedish house titan Avicii, French dance duo Justice and DJ-producer Bassnectar.

The annual music festival is scheduled for Aug. 3-5 in Chicago's Grant Park.

Rumored lineups have circulated widely, as they usually do, and Lollapalooza itself stoked the speculation in recent weeks via a series of CTA and online advertisements that seemed to hint at who would be playing.

The ads featured lyrics from such acts as Sigur Ros, Santigold, Jack White, Kimbra, Twin Shadow, the Weeknd, Bloc Party and more -- all bands that wound up on the bill.

Continue reading "Lollapalooza 2012 lineup (Jack White, At The Drive-In, Sigur Ros, Black Keys, RHCP, Afghan Whigs, M83, Weeknd, SBTRKT, Black Sabbath & more)"

Amon Tobin

today in NYC
* Dan Bern @ Joe's Pub
* David Liebe Hart @ Mishka
* Slavic Soul Party @ Barbes
* J. Cole @ Best Buy Theater
* Diego Garcia @ City Winery
* Ljova and Kontraband @ Barbes
* Jimmy Heath, Bill Cosby @ Blue Note
* The Field, Forma @ Le Poisson Rouge
* tribute to George Clinton @ the Apollo
* Yelawolf, Craze, Rittz @ Irving Plaza
* Ben Lear's Lillian @ Le Poisson Rouge
* Insane Clown Posse @ Hammerstein Ballroom
* Josephine Foster, Metal Mountains @ Union Pool
* Ace Frehley, The Biters @ B.B. King Blues Club
* Duran Duran, Neon Trees @ Madison Square Garden
* Kopecky Family Band, A Silent Comedy @ Maxwell's
* Glass Ghost, Fred Nicolaus, Little Women @ Zebulon
* Moby (acoustic and ambient show) @ Angel Orensanz Foundation
* Oval, Oneohtrix Point Never, Burning Star Core @ Public Assembly
* None More Black, Polygon, TheCore, Dig It Up @ Knitting Factory
* A-Trak, DJ Premier, DJ Stretch Armstrong, X-Ecutioners @ Brooklyn Bowl
* Amon Tobin, Emika(ISAM Live Audio/Visual Show) @ Brooklyn Masonic Temple
* Butch Walker & The Black Widows, Shovels and Rope @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
* CANT (Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear), Luke Temple, Blood Orange @ Bowery Ballroom
* Dam-Funk & Master Blazter, Metro Area, DJ Spinna, Matthewdavid, Sean Rowlands @ Highline Ballroom
* Chris North, Con Tex, The Debate, Fey Rey, Guerilla Toss, Hurricanes of Love, Invisible Circle, Many Mansions, MC^2 (of Prince Rama), The Needy Visions, Peace, Loving, Turtle Ambulance, Welcome Home @ Death By Audio

The Kopecky Family Band, a highlight of Rachel's CMJ, plays one more area show tonight, at Maxwell's, before heading out on tour. Check out an NPR Tiny Desk Concert with them below...

What else?

Continue reading "What's going on Tuesday?"

words by Rachel Kowal, photos by Amanda Hatfield

Casiokids @ Public Assembly

Well, another CMJ week has come and gone. How did you fare?

Though Northside summoned a number of my favorite artists to town, the CMJ line-up was rather thin by comparison, so I made it my goal to catch as many new acts as possible this year. With help from BV's tightly scheduled day parties, I managed to squeeze in 46 bands. While it's all still fresh in my mind (ie, before I spend the next week hibernating), here's a recap of my week, complete with my favorite finds...

I kicked things off with trance-inducing, one-man knob twittler Sun Glitters. Figuring out how to bring life to headphone-friendly, sample-heavy music in a live audience setting can be a challenge, but the few I saw this week (Million Young, Chad Valley and Luxembourg's Sun Glitters included) were decent.

If last year was the age of the one-man laptop act, 2011 was rife with lo-fi, synth/guitar-heavy (mostly) male groups cloaked in reverb. Each band had its strengths: Sunglasses (great energy on stage), Gauntlet Hair, Guards (perfectly summed up the sound of the moment), 1,2,3, Balkans (nice balance of in-your-face guitars and sunnily-swaggering vox), Tiny Victories. But after a while, I confess they all started to blend together--especially since a good chunk of these bands came early in the week for me.

What did stand out for me in this category was San Diego's garage-psych outfit Tropical Popsicle. Instead of falling flat, the deadpan vocal delivery of Tim Hines pulled me in and kept my attention, making me forget about my plans to leave midset. Another pleasant surprise for me was Dive, the side project of Beach Fossils guitarist Zachary Cole Smith.

But after a rather slow start to the week when schedule issues and cancellations made me abandon my original plans, things definitely picked up midweek. I spent Wednesday evening shuffling around in the rain to some seven venues. From the synth-driven pop music of Norway's Casiokids (whom I managed to sneak in on my lunch hour) to the decent public radio-friendly folk-pop of The Lighthouse and The Whaler and Lissy Trullie's alluringly husky vocals, the day was full of pleasant surprises--not the least of which was John Maus, easily one of the highlights of my week.

As I walked through the door at 285 Kent, I immediately felt as if I had gone back in time. Thick music pumped from the DIY graffiti-covered space, through clouds of cigarette smoke. On stage, Maus shook with intensity as he addressed the mass of dancing, sweaty revelers. Beneath the shambling chaos of the quick synth riffs and simple drum lines is an unhinged but triumphant quality that is intoxicating. I had heard whispered stories of Maus shows before, but I never really understood the fervor until I saw it for myself.

Thursday was also packed with a number of good finds. I somehow found myself in the 7th floor of a swanky hotel for an "acoustic" (as in not electric; not unplugged) Dum Dum Girls set (though only 2/4 band members were present). Other highlights included the seriously talented and take-your-breath-away-beautiful dreamy folk-pop of Gem Club (who just released their debut album on Hardly Art), and Brooklyn's own, Headless Horseman who make fun, glitchy, hook-laden music with inventive beats (Their song "Wavlngth" was seriously one of my favorites all week.)

Friday, my band-count escalated rapidly, thanks to the BV day showcase at Public Assembly, which essentially had two bands playing each hour. I knocked out a few of the hyped bands in this fashion, including Chelsea Wolfe and Gauntlet Hair. (I also stepped over to Cameo briefly to catch a few adrenaline-packed songs from the Brooklyn duo Hunters.) With her beautifully haunting (but not annoying operatic) vocals Chelsea Wolfe was certainly one of the more memorable acts of the week. Would she be getting as much buzz if she didn't dress like "a medival [sic] reinactment [sic] person from Medival [sic] Times" (to quote an anonymous BV commenter)? Hard to say, but I have to give the woman credit--I couldn't take my eyes off her, and she was one of the few artists I caught twice. But my surprise favorite of the day show was Young Magic. Hip-hop and dark electro-pop may be unlikely bedfellows, but they sure make for quite an interesting pair. These guys are a force.

Other highlights of the day included the eye-catching electro-pop duo Purity Ring (love the name) and one of my favorite SXSW finds from earlier this year, Sea of Bees. At Webster Hall, Purity Ring's bass was so powerful at times that I almost forgot to breathe. Though the band relies on a lot of samples to craft their sound, they are far more interesting to watch due to their onstage chemistry and mysterious gold-piped instrument. Though nothing alike, my other favorite artist of the evening was Sea of Bees. Singer/songwriter Julie Baeziger's genuinely sweet demeanor and earnest acoustic performance are always a pleasant change of pace from the more aloof, laptop-driven artists that seem to sprout with the speed and frequency of mushrooms.

The week concluded not with a bang (I was turned away at the door of Brooklyn Bowl for Unknown Mortal Orchestra, whom I had hoped to end on), but with more of a slow fade-out. Forced to change my schedule at the last minute, I caught a few acts nearby, including Delicate Steve (how those five people were working from the same set list was a mystery at times given the haphazard nature of their sound, but it was fun to watch them put it all together), Races (pleasant and charming), Bleached, and about four minutes of the Kopecky Family Band (fun!) before hopping on the L and calling it a week.

So how does this year's CMJ stack up? Most people I spoke with seemed unimpressed. No doubt, the growth of SXSW--especially over the past few years--seems to have sucked some of the life out of CMJ. (It's hard to compete with free tacos, 76-degree days, and the compact nature of downtown Austin.) But like a hipster chick desperately scouring the racks at Beacon's Closet, I like the challenge of the frenzied search. There's good stuff in there hiding among the dross. You just have to look a bit harder.

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Pictures in this post are from day parties at Pianos (We Listen for You) and Public Assembly (Under the Radar) on Wednesday. More of them below...

Continue reading "Rachel's CMJ recap +++ pics from 2 Wednesday day parties"