photos by Jessica Amaya

Beady Eye @ Webster Hall

"...in the Fall of 2009 the Oasis brothers, Noel and Liam Gallagher, get into a heated argument, which may or may not have involved the destruction of one or more musical instruments, Noel quits the band, Liam and the other band members decide to carry on. Fast forward to the spring of 2011 when what essentially boils down to Oasis minus Noel Gallagher drop their debut album, Different Gear, Still Speeding, under the new moniker Beady Eye." [Live4Ever]

Beady Eye, who are sort of Oasis without Noel, played their first public NYC show at Webster Hall on Thursday (6/23). I say "public" because one day earlier they also played a full set at the Ed Sullivan Theater as part of the "Live from Leterman" series which you can watch in its entirety below.

The Webster show was opened by New York locals The Dig and is pictured in this post. Beady Eye played their entire debut Different Gear, Still Speeding, including the iTunes bonus track "Man of Misery." They also covered the World of Twist song "Sons of the Stage" in the encore.

Full Webster setlist, more pictures from the show and the Letterman video, below...

Continue reading "Beady Eye played Webster Hall & 'Live on Letterman' (pics, video & setlist)"

DOWNLOAD: Young Galaxy -Peripheral Visionaries (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Young Galaxy - Cover Your Tracks (MP3)

Chief @ Governors Island over the summer (more by David Andrako)

The Domino-signed band Chief are on tour and headlining Bowery Ballroom this evening, 12/7. Tickets are still on sale, and I have a few pairs you can win. Details, all dates and Chief's new video for "The Minute I Saw it", are below.

Opening the Bowery Ballroom show are The Dig and Oxford, Mississippi's Young Buffalo. If you know one thing about Oxford, it might be that the city is home to Fat Possum Records, and if you know anything about Fat Possum, then you know that since the label recently signed the young Oxford-local band, Young Buffalo must be at least worth a listen (self-titled LP due out in early 2011). You can listen below. Their tour dates are down there too.

Young Man @ MHOW for CMJ (more by Ryan Barkan)

Speaking of young bands, Young Man has a new single out today for "Strangers". And with that single came a new video for "Up So Fast" which you can watch below.

Canada's Young Galaxy will release their third LP, Shapeshifting, via Paperbag Records on February 8th. Grab two songs off that new album, above for free and now.

Young Prisms recently toured and played some NYC shows, and one in Boston that they were late to, partially because their tourmates Weekend had some car trouble, and partially because they were taping an Into The Woods session. Watch that below. Young Prisms are going back on tour in January. They don't list another NYC show yet, but they are playing Philly on 1/31. All dates are down there too.

Continue reading "Chief, Young Buffalo, Young Man, Young Galaxy, Young Prisms (dates, a contest, MP3s, videos & more) "

Brian Jonestown Massacre @ T5 in 2008 (more by Lori Baily)

tonight in NYC
* The Rub @ Southpaw
* Martin Sexton @ Nokia Theatre
* Nellie McKay @ Feinstein's
* Galactic @ Brooklyn Bowl
* Andy Kindler & Eugene Mirman @ Comix
* Athlete, Carney @ The Bell House
* Stars, Dead Child Star @ (Le) Poisson Rouge
* Jay Farrar Richard Buckner @ Bowery Ballroom\
* Broken Bells, The Morning Benders @ Irving Plaza
* Bing & Ruth, Twi The Humble Feather @ Littlefield
* Rooftop Films w/ Dinosaur Feathers @ Open Road Rooftop
* The Futureheads, The Like, The Static Jacks @ Maxwell's
* Kings of Convenience, Franklin For Short @ Webster Hall
* The Babies, Behavior, Phonetag, La Big Vic @ Party Expo
* The Dig, The Grates, Casey Shea, Red Lions @ Mercury Lounge
* The Hollows, Pastel Group, The Red Rogue @ Pete's Candy Store
* Web Dating, The Semaphore, Quilty, Golden Girls @ Silent Barn
* Monolith, Voyager, Seraphim, Altered State (early) @ Cake Shop
* Yeasayer, Keepaway, Delicate Steve @ The Beach at Governors Island
* Delorean, Restless People, MillionYoung, Sam Buck Rosen @ Glasslands
* New York Night Train Presents: Soul Clap & Dance-Off (late) @ Glasslands
* Iron Chic, The Homewreckers, Cudzoo and The Faggettes (late) @ Cake Shop
* Fixed/DJ Kicks tour w/ Juan Maclean (DJ), JDH & Dave P (DJ) @ Public Assembly
* Shapes, The Twees, Your Kid Sister, Waking Lights, Little Big @ Cameo Gallery
* Brian Jonestown Massacre, Sparrow and the Workshop @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
* Tamboula and Julio Jean Haitian American Dance: A Tribute to Haiti @ Von King Park
* Circuits Des Yeux, Brian's Dirty Business, Pink Reason, Pop. 1280 @ Death By Audio
* Living Colour, Ebony Bones, Pillow Theory, CX Kidtronik @ Central Park Summerstage
* The Jaguar Club, Quiet Loudly, Coyote Eyes, Pet Ghost Project, more @ Fort Useless
* Greg Attonito, Kevin Seconds, Shanti Wintergate, Kepi Ghoulie, Jonny Corndawg @ Pianos
* Hub City Stompers, The Rudie Crew, The Moon Invaders, The Caroloregians, Royal City Riot @ Knitting Factory
* W.H.I.T.E., Orphans, Human Resources, Say No! to Architecture, Dard Modnoc, Graffiti Monsters @ Shea Stadium

How is the singer of Bouncing Souls playing with the singer of 7 Seconds playing with the singer of Groovie Ghoulies in a small room like Pianos not sold out?

This weekend is the Renegade Craft Fair in McCarren Park.

The Dig celebrate the release of their album tonight at Mercury Lounge with support from the Grates.

Juan Maclean is touring as a DJ in support of his new DJ Kicks album. That tour hits Public Assembly in Brooklyn tonight.

Brian Jonestown Massacre play their first of two NYC shows this weekend.

Yeasayer for free on Governors Island tonight.

Catch Living Colour, Ebony Bones!, Pillow Theory and CX KiDTRONiK at Central Park Summerstage for free this afternoon (show at 3pm).

Doug E Fresh played a Summerstage show in Herbert Von King Park on June 3rd. Video from that sexy party, below...

What else?

Continue reading "What's going on Saturday?"

photos by Chris La Putt

Sunday's edition of Kidrockers at The Living Room in NYC featured performances by The Dig and The Grates. More pictures and a video from that show,. below...

Continue reading "The Grates & the Dig rocked for kids (pics & video) "

DOWNLOAD: Portugal. The Man - The Dead Dog (MP3)

Wasilla, Alaska, exports Portugal. The Man are releasing a new record, American Ghetto, March 2nd on Equal Vision. The band will tour with Port O'Brien and NY's The Dig in support of that this February and March. The tour kicked off last night (2/24) in Fargo, ND, and visits NYC's Highline Ballroom on March 19th. Tickets are still on sale.

"The Dead Dog," the first song off the record, is posted above (that's also the cover art above).

"The Dead Dog" was the second song that Anthony Saffery, Adam Taylor and I began working on for the American Ghetto project. We started tracking this on my second day back in Boston... it may have been the first, I am not quite sure. This track began with a break beat and a loose set of chords that I had put together in the morning before tracking. Lyrically, this was the first album where I really went out and referenced the streets and places around where I grew up. "The Dead Dog" was a bar out towards Big Lake off Pittman Road where, no offense Pittman ralliers, some pretty shady folks spent their time. I don't know what it was about that area that drew me in but it did, for whatever reason. As with all the songs on American Ghetto there is a focus on our teenage lives and the things we did and the paths we chose. Some of the moments are sadder than others but "The Dead Dog" was written more about the setting than with a specific person in mind. [Portugal. The Man]

You can hear the band's progression (they say "slightly more electronic, beats, samplers, etc.") by comparing it with a video for a song off 2009's The Satanic Satanist, which is posted with all tour dates, below...

Continue reading "Portugal. The Man - new album (MP3, video), 2010 tour dates "

photos by Dominick Mastrangelo

Antlers / Editors

"People don't mean any harm,'' the Antlers singer said from Brooklyn in a recent phone interview. "But they'll ask, 'Is the song 'Bear' about abortion?' before they even say hello. Whoa, what? It's like going up to a stranger and asking how their mom died. I don't know how I feel about it.''

But you can't blame fans for feeling close enough to the heartbroken narrator of the band's breakout record, "Hospice,'' to ask for details. The lo-fi concept album, centered on a terminally ill patient and her caregiver, is intimate and haunting. The 10 tracks deal with loss, death, guilt, and even Sylvia Plath ("Sylvia, get your head out of the oven / Go back to screaming and cursing, remind me again how everyone betrayed you.'') The stuff of nightmares, really.

"Hospice,'' self-released by Silberman last March, garnered serious buzz and ended up on several best-of-2009 lists. Venerable indie label Frenchkiss Records re-released the album in August. The Antlers headlined a sold-out show at the Bowery Ballroom in December and are on a tour with Editors.... [Boston Globe]

That tour brought the two bands to Terminal 5 on Friday night (2/19). Pictures and setlists from that show are in this post. Editors were supporting their new album, out now in the U.S. on the Fader label. The tour ended last night (2/21) at 9:30 Club in DC. The tour started right after The Antlers played BAM with Ra Ra Riot which wasn't long after the Antlers played a Haiti benefit at City Winery with Patti Smith.

Coming up for The Antlers: a tour of Europe, a headlining tour with Phantogram, an opening slot on The National's upcoming dates (including Radio City Music Hall, but not Prospect Park), and... the BrooklynVegan day show at Club DeVille in Austin on Friday, March 19th with Lucero and more bands TBA. They then play the Frenchkiss & Mom+Pop official SXSW showcase at Galaxy Room (formerly Radio Room & Borboun Rocks) that same night (with Freelance Whales, Local Natives, An Horse, Suckers, and Les Savy Fav).

All dates and more pictures below...

Continue reading "The Antlers played Terminal 5 w/ Editors (pics, setlist), playing BV SXSW, touring w/ Phantogram, National (dates) "

What was once an inconceivable notion - that Mission of Burma, one of Boston's most influential if short-lived punk bands, would someday return to the stage for a celebrated second act - has, amazingly, become a regular, if not exactly routine, occurrence.

Since reuniting in 2002 (with Bob Weston replacing sound effects/tape loop guru Martin Swope), Burma has been back longer than its original '79-'83 slash-and-burn across the sky lasted. The band has released three albums during this span - two more than the old Burma managed before flaming out after guitarist Roger Miller developed tinnitus due to the outfit's fearsomely loud shows. [Boston.com]

Mission of Burma released a new album in October which wasn't long before I last saw the band play live. They played Fun Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin on November 8th. Never-before posted pics from that great show are in this post.

My next chance to see Mission of Burma is at Bowery Ballroom tonight/Friday (with Freshkills), and then again at the same venue on Saturday (with The Dig). Both NYC shows are still on sale.

The two NYC shows were preceeded by two in Boston, one of which is reviewed at the Boston Globe link above. Their next scheduled shows are scattered through February, April and May. Those dates along with the video for their new song "1, 2, 3, Partyy", a video interview they gave to Dirty Laundry, and more pictures from FFF Fest, below...

Continue reading "Mission of Burma are here - 2010 tour dates & FFF Fest pics"

photos by Tim Griffin, words by Andrew Frisicano

King Khan & BBQ Show headlined two NYC shows on their brief tour with Dum Dum Girls. Those shows happened Friday, Oct. 30th at Bowery Ballroom, and Halloween night at the Bell House. (Dum Dum Girls also played Saturday, Oct. 24th for CMJ, and Monday, Oct. 26th at Bruar Falls.)

The King Khan & BBQ Show - the two-man-band of King Khan and singer/drummer/rhythm guitarist Mark Sultan - were also in town to play their parts in Almighty Defenders, who performed at the Root Studio on Saturday, October 24th. Even though they were joined on stage by the energetic Black Lips at that show, the Bowery show with the duo alone was the grimier, rawer affair. That's where the pictures in this post were taken.

At the Bowery, King Khan, in a turquoise, fringed dress, and Mark Sultan, in a turban and cloak, swarmed the stage to the opening riff of "Johnny B Goode." People danced (got kicked out), cups flew out of the crowd, King Khan did his rounds and then settled into a sitar-position at the foot of the stage, and Mark Sultan laid out rhythm guitar, kick drum and dulcet tones.

A homespun aesthetic was central to the set - the pair played through tiny Vox Pathfinder amps more suited to a bedroom practice session, and sported an attractively handcrafted backdrop. They exchanged cues with telepathic charm and made a whole lot of noise playing from records old and new (including their newest LP, Invisible Girl). There was even some overlap with the Almighty Defenders set; the song "Too Much in Love", for one, done in shambolic, backyard fashion. The band paused on a serious note to give a dedication to musician and one-time Black Lip Bobby Ubangi, who passed earlier this year.

Earlier in the show, opener Lover (not to be confused with Lovvers) kicked things off with melodic garage punk that worked best played fast and harmonized. In the same vein, Dum Dum Girls (they played right before King Khan and BBQ) benefited from the emphatic desperation of songs like their closer, "Jail La La." Its pitiful cry of "Someone took my baby" put an emotional angle on their detached, vintage-reverb sound.

Dum Dum Girls' cover of GG Allin's "Don't Talk to Me" and another song from their Bruar Falls show are posted below.

The King Khan & BBQ Show have North American shows scheduled into December. Those dates and more pictures are below too...

Continue reading "King Khan & BBQ Show, Dum Dum Girls & Lover played Bowery Ballroom & The Bell House (pics)"

by Bill Pearis

DOWNLOAD: The Rakes - 1989 (click to stream)

London's The Rakes are back in New York this week (Monday 4/6 at Bowery Ballroom; 4/7 at Union Hall) for their first shows in almost two years. The band took a break after their second album, Ten New Messages (which didn't get a U.S. release), but reconvened last year in Berlin to record their new album, Klang!, which was just released in the UK. It's been two years since The Rakes last played NYC. Klang! was recorded in Berlin with producer Chris Zane (Les Savvy Fav, The Walkmen). Why Berlin? Singer Alan Donohoe told Drowned in Sound:

The London music scene is so dull right now - it's like wading through a swamp of shit. We just wanted to be somewhere more inspiring...The album is raw, playful, exciting, complex and schizophrenic - much like the personality of Berlin itself. It couldn't be more of a fitting place to record it. Chris has found this raw but massive sound, it's sharp like razors; like pouring boiling bleach on our peers.

While you couldn't call Klang! a big departure from their two previous albums (tales of urban ennui set to spiky guitars and nervous rhythms), it's another solid record from one of Britain's more underrated bands. Check out the album's first single, "1989," at the top of this post. (Its video is below.) And of the UK Class of 2004/2005, the Rakes have always been one of the best live bands, playing even faster than on record, and are as tight as they are tightly-wound. But for me it's singer Donohoe's awesomely spazzy dance moves that really make The Rakes so much fun to watch, some of which can be seen in a live video at the bottom of this post. below. Tickets are still available for both the Bowery (The Dig and Sean Bones open) and Union Hall (Radical Dads open) shows.

Videos and tour dates below...

Continue reading "The Rakes are here - new album & 2009 Tour Dates"

photos by Kyle Dean Reinford

"Mystery Jets caused a riot in Mexico when playing their first-ever gigs in the country last week.

The London-based band said they were unaware they had such a devoted fan base in the Latin American country until they arrived there.

"We didn't know what to expect because none of us had ever been there," frontman Blaine Harrison told NME.COM. "But we had a really good turn out for our shows. We also played a live radio station gig in Mexico City that turned into a bit of a riot," he said, explaining that fans who had bought tickets for previous cancelled shows turned en masse up to see them perform.

"People had scanned our photos from the internet and put them on their T-shirts," Harrison said. "They're quite obsessive down there.""

From Mexico the Mystery Jets moved north until they reached NYC where they played Bowery Ballroom last night (2/24). There were no riots, but Kyle said it was fun and that he really liked opening band The Dig. More pictures and the MJ setlist below...

Continue reading "Mystery Jets @ Bowery Ballroom, NYC - pics & setlist"