Nina
EMMA
Filed under: Nina | Tags: beantown jazz festival, boston, broken social scene, concerts, cups, japanther, kath bloom, manners, mighty tiny, phantogram, points north, prince rama, sleigh bells, wavves
image credit: D.L. Polonsky
Hey there, Boston! I’d like to apologize for the delay in posts – late-August American adventures, moving back to Boston, accumulating and moving furniture, choosing and re-choosing classes, and generally getting things together has made the past couple of weeks more than a bit frantic. But rest assured, the Restless Legs are alive and kicking, getting down in Allston-town and ready for more musical goodness.
We’re hoping to get some sort of nifty calendar up before long, but until then, here’s a good old-fashioned list of great shows in Boston that are on our radar for the rest of this month. (For all you newly settled college kids, get out your Crackberry/meticulously organized planner/enormous stack of Post-Its and take notes – these are worth scheduling your study circles and keg stands around.)
9/14 – Prince Rama opens for Deakin (of Animal Collective) @ Middle East Downstairs
Brooklyn/Boston- based deep psych tribal freakout trio Prince Rama puts on an awesome show that just might double as a religious experience. Heavy with chanting and the chimes, moshing and auditory hallucinations, this show promises to blow minds and speakers alike. (Plus, that one guy from Animal Collective, so that’s cool.)
9/15 – Manners, The Points North, The Cups @ Gay Gardens
So, you didn’t hear it from us, but Manners and the Points North just might be coming to a house show near you. Both are Massachusetts natives and both play lovely, heartfelt folk music. Come out to support local artists and enjoy an intimate show that’ll warm even the most frazzled souls. (Hyperactive fun by The Cups also included.)
9/17 – Broken Social Scene @ House of Blues
Bombastic Canadian powerhouse ensemble comes to Boston! Forgiveness Rock Record was awesome, and will be ten times more awesome live! This is pretty exciting!
9/18 & 9/19 – Sleigh Bells & Wavves at Brandeis University
Snaps to WBRS for booking two sweet shows back to back. Noise pop thrashfest Sleigh Bells are this year’s answer to the Crystal Castles and have caught the attention of heavyweights MIA and LCD Soundsystem alike. Self-proclaimed King of the Beach, Wavves is like a one-man fuzzy 2010 take on the easygoing pop-punk sound of the 90s and besides that one notorious Primavera Fest meltdown he’s been doing pretty well for himself. Unfortunately for the masses, Brandeis ID is required for entry, but for Deis kids and outsiders crafty enough to finagle their way in, this is going to be one hell of a weekend.
9/22 – Phantogram @ Paradise Rock Club
Haunting vocals swirl over synths and danceable beats to make beautiful, captivating, trippy pop that’s reminiscent of Portishead and School of Seven Bells. Their debut album, Eyelid Movies is aptly named, but if you’re willing to put those closed-eye visuals on hold for a night, these guys should be worth seeing.
9/23 – Mighty Tiny opens for Electric Six @ Middle East Downstairs
We caught Boston-based circus-rock ensemble Mighty Tiny at Great Scott this Thursday and their deft mixture of blues, punk, accordion, sweet Venetian masks, and enthusiastic cabaret-esque showmanship gets the full RLS endorsement. These guys are one of the more original bands to come out of Boston as of late and their live show is a party and a half not to be missed. (Electric Six are those guys that did “Danger! High Voltage!” and “Gay Bar” – both severely WTF-inducing, and hilarious.)
9/25 - Beantown Jazz Festival
Berklee’s annual jazz festival will be bringing impressive jazz heavyweights (such as Kurt Rosenwinkel, The Bad Plus, that lady who sang “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone” and the Dawson’s Creek theme song…) to Boston all week, but the jazz-illiterate and/or seriously broke among us should look to the 25th for a free all-day festival. If the weather’s cooperative, there are few better ways to spend a Saturday than by enjoying good music and quality people-watching while lounging around on grass and eating an unhealthy amount of fried festival food.
9/ 25 – Japanther @ The Temple
There’s also no better way to follow up a classy day of jazz than with a sweaty night dancing and throwing fists and beer cans at a punk rock show! (Note: RLS does not endorse violence but we do endorse dancing and mosh pits and sometimes things just happen.) Japanther are a Brooklyn-based punk-tastic funfest whose shows get the crowd bouncing off the wall with more hyperactive energy than your caffeine-addicted roommate mid-finals week after she just got a new prescription for Adderall. Seriously. Awesome.
9/26 – Kath Bloom @ Whitehaus
Remember this? Nuff said.
9/30 – Menomena & Suckers @ Royale
Menomena is the ultimate sleeper band. For all their dense structures and instrumental intricacies, their subtle songs rarely grab you on the first listen, but after a couple of spins their brilliance creeps up on you and is suddenly irresistible. Suckers, on the other hand, make incredibly catchy songs that get in your head and stay there for days and weeks and months. That dynamic plus the obvious talent and odd charisma of both bands make this a show not to be missed.
There you go, those are about all the extracurricular activities you need. Go play. We’ll see you there.
Filed under: Albums, Emma, New Music | Tags: broken social scene, canadian indie pop, cloak and cipher, land of talk, montreal, pitchfork, tt the bear's, upcoming concerts in boston
out on Saddle Creek Records
Montreal trio Land of Talk‘s new album, Cloak and Cipher, will be released on the 24th. I’ve been waiting all summer to write about this, having only learned of the band back in June. As a friend slowly fed me their inventory through Skype messages, beginning with their ridiculously addicting EP Applause Cheer Boo Hiss, I quickly fell in love singer Elizabeth Powell’s husky vocals and the band’s riff heavy style. I was sad to find out they had JUST been in Boston a week before my ears started an intense summer love affair with them, thanks in large part to the track “Summer Special.” Alas, they will be back on November 3, and at TT the Bear’s no less: I now suspect the summer lovin’ will last way past fall.
I had the pleasure of hearing Cloak and Cipher at my internship back in July and felt it was a pretty big step forward for the band, whose first full length album Some Are Lakes lost a little steam after their EP (though there are a few excellent tracks on that release as well). Anyway, today Pitchfork published their review of Cloak and Cipher and gave it a 6.9 rating on their despised decimal system… which isn’t particularly bad, considering how harsh they can be. The review was also pretty positive, but call me crazy, I was expecting a higher grade especially as Some Are Lakes also received a 6.9. God, I hate decimals.
Land of Talk toured North America with Montreal’s super group to end all super groups, Broken Social Scene, a few years back. Their new release picks up a bit of that good ol’ Canadian indie pop sound, often reminiscent of BSS’s older stuff, but I really can’t say that’s a bad thing. In the Pitchfork review, writer Zach Kelly mentions a particular similarity between LoT’s “Swift Coin” and the epic “7/4 (Shoreline),” which I suppose I can hear now that it’s been pointed out, but in the guitars alone. Otherwise, Land of Talk have their own unique sound.
Cloak and Cipher opens with the title track, a thumping ballad that starts out with Powell’s singing sounding far away until the first chorus comes around and everything kicks in at once. The “distanced” singing comes in and out throughout the song creating a push and pull feel, which allows the percussion to really stand out. “Quarry Hymns” is beautiful and haunting, even though I can’t get the image of the song being played on what looks like a Casio keyboard under a highway overpass, thanks to the video of LaBlogoteque’s take-away performance (which you can find right here).
Other stand out tracks include “Color Me Badd,” in which Powell’s vocal range and talent are really showcased, “Playita,” and “Blangee Blee.” “The Hate I Won’t Commit” is interesting, to say the least, as it interrupts the rest of Cloak and Cipher‘s pretty consistently poppy, controlled and accessible sound with a noisy interlude that almost reminds me of Sleater-Kinney or something equally hardcore. It takes a little time to like, but eventually I decided it was pretty awesome too.
LoT got by with a little help from their Montreal friends, Stars and (all together now), Arcade Fire, and a cast list of many others, although these cameos are not really pronounced on any of the tracks. One thing that could be worked on? These songs have great lyrics, but you’d never know it without looking them up. While Powell’s voice is strong, you can really only hear her words when she is belting out choruses. Some more audible wording throughout the songs would be nice.
Huzzah! Finally raving about that album feels like the sweet relief of fall’s coming at the end of a hot summer. Check out the album, come see them live when they return to TT’s on a chilly November evening or wherever they’re playing near you… it’ll be a good time, I’m sure.
* As the album isn’t quite out yet, it’s a bit difficult to find streaming links. Will put them in once they’re up and out there on the big bad interwebs.
Filed under: New Music, Nina | Tags: beck, broken social scene, james murphy, michael cera, scott pilgrim, soundtracks, summer of the midlife crisis, the national, the suburbs, video games, win butler, youth
At times, this feels like the summer of the midlife crisis. LCD Soundsystem, The National, and The Arcade Fire have put out excellent albums that I’ve been listening and relistening to, and like all good albums they’ve made their way under my skin. This means several times a day I find myself pining for suburbs I didn’t grow up in, wondering if I can raise a family that I don’t have, or deal with the fame I haven’t yet achieved…something is clearly wrong with this picture. Sometime after Union Pool reminded me that I’m still somewhat shy of the American drinking age, I realized that despite my fondness for melancholy white guys in their 40s, I’m still one of those “kids” Win Butler keeps singing about on The Suburbs…so what are these “kids” up to these days (besides getting off James Murphy’s lawn)?
The answer, with a resounding BOOM BANG POW, comes in the gloriously carefree Scott Pilgrim franchise – Bruce Lee O’Malley’s giddy graphic novel series about twentysomethings in Toronto. Besides being a really fun read, the series puts a brilliant spin on the usual tales of navel-gazing postgrads (working menial coffeeshop jobs, having relationships, playing in mediocre bands) by throwing in a barrage of video game tropes that haunt our ADHD-addled, raised-by-SNES minds. The result is something like Slackers set in a world where you can see your cash bar depleting above your head, find a save point before a perilous situation, and get experience points for getting hired. Awesome.
Of course this is being turned into a movie, starring the omnipresent and probably miscast Michael Cera, featuring the underrated Kieran Culkin and Mark Webber (anyone remember Designated Dave?) and being accompanied by a sweet soundtrack.
Standouts include the restless need-a-change-of-scenery song “It’s Getting Boring by the Sea” by Blood Red Shoes, the deliciously un-PC jump-around jam “O Katrina!” by the Black Lips, and the sleeper “Sleazy Bed Track” by the Bluetones. Metric adds a solid youth-in-revolt type track that wins points with lyrics like “our common goal was waiting for the world to end,” and the soundtrack curators win major points by adding Broken Social Scene’s hauntingly beautiful “Anthem for a 17-Year Old Girl,” which more than lives up to its title. Not stopping there, Broken Social Scene adds their two cents (or two loonies, in Canadian) by writing the film’s score and the music for fictional band Crash and the Boys (though you’d be hard-pressed to recognize them since Crash songs rarely make it to the one-minute mark). Scott Pilgrim’s own band, Sex Bob-omb, is done by Beck, who sounds like he’s having a great time garage-rocking out as a fictional twentysomething, and also adds two songs under his own name. The video game theme makes it to the soundtrack in the form of a chiptunes song. But even though this soundtrack is fittingly young and alive, no one can accuse it of ignoring its elders. Tracks by the Rolling Stones, T Rex, and Frank Black all make well-placed appearances.
The full album is available for streaming courtesy of the good folks at Spinner.
Pay close attention! If you listen carefully and press Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A at the right moment, you just might unlock a bonus level where you get to fight Michael Cera for a chance to win the key to unlimited nachos anywhere in Toronto! (No promises.)
