On Nov 16 two rising stars on the indie music scene, Glasser and Twin Shadow, played a sold-out show at the Black Cat Backstage. The disparate yet equally charismatic acts captivated the audience and threatened to burst the small venue at its seams. Read More »
What is it about the jackal that is so inspiring? I wouldn’t have expected a medium-sized, dog-like predator to be an especially muse-worthy animal, but Ronny Jordan & Dana Bryant’s epic song “The Jackal” and Bruce Willis and Richard Gere’s less epic movie The Jackal provide evidence to the contrary. Irish singer / songwriter Conor O’Brien, under the moniker of Villagers, continued this trend last spring, releasing his debut album Becoming a Jackal.
Before heading to the Rock & Roll Hotel for their concert with Vetiver and Peter Wolf Crier, L.A. indie rock quartet Dawes drove to 37th and O St, SE ready to play some guitar and sing some songs. When they looked around at the abandoned cul-de-sac in Anacostia and discovered that Georgetown University is located at 37th and O NW (a mistake every Georgetown student’s parents have undoubtedly made at least once), they hopped in their tour van and drove back across town. Read More »
On October 12th, Scottish indie pop band Belle and Sebastian granted my wish and released their first album in over four years, Write about Love. It’s good. It’s really good. Buy it now.
While Belle and Sebastian were on hiatus, I was been busy getting married to their previous albums If You’re Feeling Sinister, The Boy with the Arab Strap, and Dear Catastrophe Waitress. Despite our relationship, I was a little upset with my first listen of Write about Love. It sounded like the Belle and Sebastian that I know and love, but I didn’t feel that same nostalgia that I get when I listen to “Like Dylan in the Movies” or “If She Wants Me.” It took a couple listens to distance myself from the Belle and Sebastian of the soundtrack to my life and appreciate Write about Love in its own right.
There’s something about fall. Corduroys and acorns are in the air, flannel and candy corn abound, you’ve finally broken in your back-to-school kicks, and it’s Apple Week at Leo’s. Look outside at the leaves. Just look at them. Does it get better than this? It’s enough to make you want—nay, need!—to curl up on a big red velveteen sofa and sip hot apple cider. Let me help you out and provide the soundtrack for this perfectly, eternally autumnal weather.
If The Strokes, The Cure, The Smiths, and the Beach Boys all got together had a baby (science is close!), they would name it The Drums. Well, actually, first they’d name it Goat Explosion, and then change their minds to Elkland, before finally settling on The Drums. Despite their apparent indecision in the name department, the band now known as The Drums consciously borrowed elements from several new-wave indie pop giants and beach bums of yore to spawn a band that looks and sounds like a little bit of all of them.
Fol Chen really wants to be weird. In 2009, the Los Angeles based indie sextet shrouded the release of their first album in secrecy, concealing the group members’ names and identities and issuing a press release in which they described themselves as sounding like “that mysterious black object that the creepy family is staring at on the cover of Led Zeppelin’s Presence album.” I mean, come on. Even after listening to their sophomore album, Part II: The New December—which admittedly does sound like that mysterious object (think enigmatic, wonky, a little bizarre)—I think that giving yourself description is a little on the pretentious side.
HEALTH:Disco::Get Color:Disco2. Anyone familiar with pre-2002 SAT analogy jargon can easily decipher that colon-enjambed phrase as “HEALTH’s self-titled debut album HEALTH is to Disco, the remix of said album, as Get Color, the same group’s second album is to Disco 2, the band’s second remix.” Duh.
