Franz Ferdinand played an amazing set at Roseland Ballroom - exactly what you'd expect from a band so deservedly huge and critically acclaimed. My apologies for this hasty recap - my photos aren't very good, but I wanted to post the set list before my final exams begin tomorrow morning. Opening for FF were Born Ruffians, a quartet of skinny Canadians who take heavy cues from world music. For a postpunk band, they did a surprising amount of yodeling. In perhaps the most exciting moment during their set, Paul from Franz Ferdinand scurried onstage to drum on the [...]
View the full photo set here . I first heard Brooklyn's White Rabbits last July, when they opened for Spoon in Prospect Park. My assessment at the time was centered around the question, Is this a decent way to pass 45 minutes while waiting for one of my favorite bands to go onstage? At the time, my answer was yes, and my reception of White Rabbits' first record, Fort Nightly , was warm but not terribly enthusiastic; I thought that they were a solid indie rock band of the traditional postpunk formulation. [...]
Here are few bright young bands I've been listening to lately: I gave Here We Go Magic a try because I read some high praise for HWGM's frontman/vocalist, Luke Temple , from none other than Sufjan Stevens himself. Well, Sufjan was entirely right about that fine voice. "More Than Muscle" and "Where is Away" are a couple of Luke Temple's excellent solo songs. His sound is not quite folk and not quite twee, but borrows on both genres. I prefer his solo work to HWGM, however, on the grounds that the sound of [...]
(View full photo set here .) Margot & the Nuclear So & So's and Cloud Cult played a sold-out Music Hall of Williamsburg on Thursday night. The night started with Ice Palace, a five-piece band from Minneapolis with a fondness for accentuating their songs with trumpet. They closed their set with "Thoughts/Facts," which is definitely worth listening to. (Stream it from their myspace .) Margot & the Nuclear So & So's' live performances have such incredible energy and so much action onstage. On Thursday [...]
(Full photoset here .) It's been a couple of months since I've gone to a rock show, and it's been too long. It's been a year and a half since I last went to a show at Webster Hall, and I can only hope that I don't go there for another year and a half at least 1 . Despite the venue, Ra Ra Riot put on a spectacular show - nonetheless, I didn't think it was possible to dislike a venue more than I dislike Terminal 5, but there you have it. [...]
I promise that some substantive recs are forthcoming, but I couldn't resist sharing these headlines from the music blogosphere: Head over to My Old Kentucky Blog to hear the Killers cover the Bright Eyes song "Four Winds." I really don't know how to respond to this, because like Keith Murray, I can't mention the Killers without cracking a joke about Brandon Flowers. The cover is weird. Really weird. Also, it's been two years since Conor Oberst was Bright Eyes instead of Conor Oberst & the Mystic Valley Band. (Additional W-T-F: According to Stereogum, this [...]
Now that we're nearly three months into 2009, let me share some of the bands that I've been listening to while winter has been sliding into spring: I heard of Chairlift through the blogosphere as a result of the band's somewhat recent iPod commercial, which I have not actually seen. The band's electropop songs are built around Caroline Polachek's ethereal voice, sometimes contrasted with that of guitarist Aaron Pfenning. The lyrics are sometimes here and sometimes there; sometimes they hint at metonymy and sometimes the rhymes seem a bit contrived. In any case, the songs are [...]
I've always associated Nada Surf with New York and New York with Nada Surf, so I was thrilled to see two of their shows nearly a year ago at my two favorite venues. They have one of the longest careers in indie music, and a '90's major record label horror story that rivals that of Spoon. That change, I think, was ultimately for the better, because Nada Surf have since released a number of fantastic records on Barsuk. They are an incredibly consistent pop-rock band, who can span the full spectrum from powerpunk to acoustic pop, and their sound has [...]
After enduring a two-month drought in my concertgoing, last night I went to the Guilt by Association release party, headlined by Robbers on High Street. I arrived at the MHOW just after Jukebox the Ghost had begun their set. (I missed Takka Takka and Lowry.) The room was nearly packed with dancing hipsters on the young side of the spectrum, and Jukebox's set had an infectious energy. It did help that they invited audience members to hop onto the stage and take up tambourine and maraca duties. I'd never heard them before, but I will be following up [...]
I'll spare you the protracted narrative regarding my travels to and from Hoboken. (Suffice it to say that I'm never going to Maxwell's again.) Ambulance LTD was worth all of the trouble that I went to that night in April, and I think that I first suspected that I ran into the danger of exhausting my vocabulary of superlatives when writing about Ambulance LTD's show last July. Maxwell's is one of the smaller, more low-key venues that I've been to in the New York area. The musicians are obliged to load and unload their instruments from the front [...]
Today marks the U.S. release of Franz Ferdinand's third studio album, Tonight: Franz Ferdinand , which was released yesterday in the UK. It's no secret that I'm a huge Franz Ferdinand fan, and the new Scottish gentry have never disappointed me. Tonight is a masterpiece of British postpunk, and marks another reinvention of FF's distinctive sound and signature danceable rock. A few brief comments, track-by-track: I'm actually a little surprised that "Ulysses" is the single and the centerpiece of the album - it's a strong song, but I would have selected "Lucid Dreams" [...]
Now that 2009 is upon us, it's time to take a look at some of the most promising upcoming new releases: Noble Beast by Andrew Bird (January 20, Fat Possum) Andrew Bird's music is always a lovely combination of whistling, violin and voice. The unmistakable influence of Chicago leaves a distinct impression on his music as much as it does on Wilco's or Sufjan Stevens' music (in different ways, of course). "Oh No," which you can hear on Andrew's Myspace , is superb. Pre-order it on [...]
Here are a dozen outtakes from my recap of 2008 , in no particular order. Some of the albums herein are promising debuts from new bands or lovely follow-ups from old ones, and others are disappointments from bands that I'm fond of. First Frost by the Lucksmiths (November 4, Matinee) The first Lucksmiths song that I ever heard was "From Macaulay Station," and it inspired me to write a short story (at this time I was a writer and not a mere music blogger). Just saying that kind of [...]
2008 was a very eventful year for indie rock. If you're reluctant to read through the archives of TRUST ME ON THIS, this year-end retrospective is a crash course in some of my favorite bands. I'll take you month by month through twelve stellar releases in 2008 by bands both new and old, along with some highlights from my concert photography adventures in the last year: janvier: Field Manual by Chris Walla (January 29, Barsuk) (download "Sing Again" ) [...]
Last April, when I still lived just above City Hall downtown, I took a late-night walk to the Bowery Ballroom for the Tokyo Police Club show. Some hours later, as I returned to my apartment, I found myself wondering why I was walking down the deserted Bowery alone in the dead of night - and here is the long answer. Back in 2006, I started hearing about an EP called A Lesson in Crime by a postpunk band named Tokyo Police Club. I don't remember ever hearing any stories about the origins of the band's name, [...]
Franz Ferdinand fans can download a live cut of "What She Came For" (track eight on the new album) for free through NME.com/franzferdinand . You'll have to complete the one-step e-mail registration process before you can gain access to the mp3, but it only takes a moment. I've been eagerly anticipating FF's third full-length, Tonight: Franz Ferdinand , ever since I first heard the track "Lucid Dreams" earlier this fall. I wasn't sure what to make of the chopped-up versions of "Ulysses" that surfaced in the blogosphere recently, but the newest track available from Tonight: [...]
I went to my first (part of a) CMJ show on Wednesday night at a familiar place, the Bowery Ballroom. Margot & the Nuclear So & So's headlined a show that spanned nearly seven hours, ending at almost 2 a.m. I arrived just in time to hear the final opening band, Alabama's own Wild Sweet Orange (three guitarists, some dude on bass, and a drummer), whom I heard for the first time, and who played a dense and rapid set of solid indie folk-rock. They were a pretty high-quality opening band, but I was too anxious to [...]
Last fall, flush with the glory of having seen the adorable Bishop Allen a mere two days hence, I trekked to Baruch College in Gramercy for a small radio station festival featuring We Are Scientist. I sat through all of the opening bands, discovering a couple of really terrible bands as well as the pretty awesome Robbers on High Street. Ben Trokan of Robbers on High Street sets up gear: Pre-gig tuning: Bass player: Ben seems very tall while onstage, [...]
I can remember two very distinct moments in the evolution of my love for Spoon: the first was when I was sixteen or seventeen and listened to Kill the Moonlight for the first time and disliked it. Well, we've all been unpardonably blind at one time or another. Thankfully, I gave Spoon another try, and tried to get tickets to their show at the Fillmore last fall, but it was sold out. Then, in March of this year, the second pivotal moment of my Spoon obsession hit me when I listened more intently to Ga Ga Ga [...]
New songs from the forthcoming albums by Franz Ferdinand, the Little Ones, Peter Bjohn and John and Keane have trickled into the music blogosphere lately. Here are my thoughts: "Lucid Dreams" by Franz Ferdinand (from Alex Kapranos & company's forthcoming, untitled third LP). I'm a huge fan of Franz Ferdinand, but, unlike most, You Could Have it So Much Better , not Franz Ferdinand , did it for me. They have an incredibly distinctive, catchy sound and they stick to it consistently without being repetitive or sounding overdone. I would never have thought [...]
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