IN THE PINES: Brett Sparks of Handsome Family, World Cafe Live, Last Night BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER If Edgar Allan Poe had an alt-country band, it would sound a lot like the Handsome Family: Stark, forlorn, and plumbing the tawdry depths of the dark night of the soul with a verbal acuity far beyond most mortal men. Nevermind that the lyrics are written by Rennie Sparks, Handsome Family bassist/banjoist and wife of Handsome Family singer/guitarist Brett Sparks, who lends Rennie’s darkside narratives a Mount Rushmore gravitas with his deep, resonant baritone. Uncommonly good lyrics is what separates Handsome […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
[Photo by CARLOS FERNANDEZ] ALL THE YOUNG DUDES: Girl Talk + Friends, Starlight Ballroom, September 17 EVA SAYS: Monday night at the Starlight Ballroom was all about heavy-petting and robot dancing. And I do mean heavy, baby. DJ Gregg Gillis, AKA Girl Talk, brought together a sold out crowd of hyper, manic, oddly-dressed, or even not-dressed-at-all hipsters who bum-rushed the stage within seconds of Gillis firing up the Mac Pro that makes it all possible. It didn’t matter that Girl Talk’s hooded figure or scruffy face couldn’t be seen even from the lip of the stage — chances are he […]
THE EARLY WORD: Chico And The Man
BY DAN BUSKIRK JAZZ CRITIC If you could slip through into anybody’s skin, Chico Hamilton‘s life would definitely be an “A” ticket. He was the L.A.’s hottest drummer in L.A. in the 1940s and ’50s, playing with the Big Acts in the Big Rooms, with people like Ellington, Lena Horne, Sammy Davis Jr., Tony Bennett and Billie Holiday. He was there playing behind Chet Baker when the women were just starting to swoon and his own band gave birth to major players like Eric Dolphy, Charles Lloyd, Gabor Szabo and Larry Coryell. He wrote and performed the scores for cinema […]
HEAR YE: Starvation Under The Orange Trees
NOW PLAYING ON PHAWKER RADIO: RAY’S VAST BASEMENT BY DAN BUSKIRK I am willing to wager double nickels on the dime that you have never even heard of what is quite simply the Best Album of 2007: Ray’s Vast Basement‘s Starvation Under The Orange Trees. Well, now you have. Starvation is the San Francisco band’s third release and it’s their most fully-realized disc to date. Their name stems from their highly theatrical past: The band’s early shows were mixtures of staged scenes and musical performance, conjuring the fictionalized history of a tiny corner of the rocky coast of Northern California […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY: Feist, Tower Theater, Last Night
HAMMER OF THE GODS: Zep To Get Led Out, Again
LONDON — One of the most eagerly awaited concerts of the decade will celebrate the life and work of Ahmet Ertegun, founder of Atlantic Records and much missed mentor to some of the greatest names in music. The incomparable Led Zeppelin will headline the tribute to the man who founded Atlantic Records in 1947. Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones will be joined by Jason Bonham, the son of their late drummer John Bonham.
THE BREAKDOWN: Kanye West The Graduate
NOW PLAYING ON PHAWKER RADIO BY M. EMANUEL The Breakdown hates to say it told you so, but in the spirit of the oft-outspoken Mr. Kanye West, we’re going to boast a bit. Go ahead and raise your champagne flutes, because we called it. West’s third release, Graduation, in stores today, is all that we said it would be — a Breakdown-certified instant classic that will hopefully infuse some much-needed jolt of reality and innovation into the stale monotony of the current rap game. Gone are the skits and many of the blatant attempts at humor that messed with the […]
HEAR YE: Animal Collective Strawberry Jam
NOW PLAYING ON PHAWKER RADIO * PET SOUNDZ: Animal Collective Waves The Freak Flag BY JONATHAN VALANIA Back in college — which was longer ago than I care to admit, so let’s just say some time after the Earth cooled but before the Internet — I lived in an old Victorian house that the college owned and subdivided into separate apartments. It was a gathering house for all the freaks and geeks who didn’t quite blend in with the frat-boy-cheerleader-chug-a-lug-date-rape ethos of the main campus. Across the hall my neighbors had set up a de facto commune of 24/7 hacky-sack […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
PLEASE DON’T FEED: Panda Bear, First Unitarian Church, June 25th BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER The great advantage of our shiny white iPod-abetted Information Age, where the far-flung chaos of recorded music has been organized and arranged into the orderly feng sui of alphabetized and easily-accessed mp3s, is that innovative music-makers like Panda Bear can connect the dots and create unexpected and stunning constellations of sound that cross the once un-breach-able barriers or time, space and genre. I can think of no better explanation, barring something being in the water, for the way that Panda Bear’s Person Pitch combines […]
REHAB: Open Letter To Amy Winehouse
DEAR AMY Amazing performance at the Mercury Prize show this past week, girl. You looked great — junky-skinny, but beautiful in your way, and hey, NOT covered in blood and scratches for a change. And yo, it was nice to see you in something other than those nizzasty jeans and ballet slippers. Your voice had me sobbing (or maybe it’s that song), and you looked genuinely happy to be doing something positive after the rough few weeks you’ve had. Congratulations. You proved it’s possible to be a functioning addict. Now go to rehab, and think about how much more amazing […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
YOU’RE LIVING ALL OVER ME: Dinosaur Jr., Trocadero, Last Night [SLIDESHOW] BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER Perhaps the first sign you are ‘getting on’ is the startling realization that, despite your heretofore vehement protestations to the contrary, you are quite simply not immune to nostalgia. While the nostalgia of preceding generations may have been sepia-toned, Rockwellian tableaus or the Brylcreem’d cheeseburgers in paradise of American Graffiti, these days nostalgia looks like a long-haired dude in a ski cap and a droopy metal tee worn semi-ironically, a la Seattle 1991. Such is the vibe of Dinosaur Jr.’s comeback album and […]
FINAL CURTAIN: Pavarotti Dead At 71
SO SET ‘EM UP, JOE: “Sinatra & Pavarotti” By Al Hirschfield NEW YORK TIMES: Luciano Pavarotti, the Italian singer whose ringing, pristine sound set a standard for operatic tenors of the postwar era, died early this morning at his home in Modena, in northern Italy. He was 71. “The Maestro fought a long, tough battle against the pancreatic cancer which eventually took his life,” said an e-mail statement that his manager sent to The Associated Press. MORE