Howlin’ Rain @ The Uptown
June 24, 2009
Howlin’ Rain plays in their local downtown at the Uptown on Saturday (9pm, $10) with Radio Moscow and Matt Baldwin (PA). Fans of front-man Ethan Miller’s Neo-Psyche band Comets on Fire know that Howlin’ Rain is a different beast. More focused and melodic than CoF, Howlin’ Rain pares down the melodies into complex but pop-sensible tunes that try to connect the listener to the art without alienating them in the intricacies that CoF is known for.
After a long span away due to a world tour and supporting Queens of the Stone Age, this will be their first Bay Area show in nearly 11 months. They have a few more dates around the area after their Uptown show before going on tour with Akron Family in August. Their newest album Magnificent Fiend was co-released by Birdman records (SF) and Rick Rubin’s American Recordings (L.A).
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Review: San Francisco Embraces its New BFF Band…Sleepy Sun @ GAMH, 6/19
June 23, 2009
Photos by: Nicole Browner
Earlier this year, I attended one of those Brightblack Morning Light showcases at Cafe Du Nord. It was so resolutely weird (both good and bad weird), that in hindsight, it has proven to be a personal turning point for my overall consideration of the Bay Area’s so-called “freak folk” or your ‘term of choice’ movement. Symbolically, at least.
Like a plume of smoke, the 10 mph soothing and repetitive soul stoned picnic that is Brightblack, wafted over a suspiciously passive audience, a great number of which funneled out the door before the set’s end. It was unfortunate, but not surprising. The energy was low, the music was slow, and it was after all, past midnight at a show in SF. That said, this was an “it” band less than year before this particular show. A band that perhaps embodied the spirit and future of evolving indie/major Matador.
I found my head rambling, in no particular order: “are these guys/gals really drifters?”, “are they blissfully unaware?”, “can urban dwellers in places like NY and SF continue to stroll with small animals wrapped around their feet, sporting quasi Native American regalia, and name-checking no name psych folk acts from their esteemed record collections while reconciling such natural environments?”, “are both Devandra Banhart and Joanna Newsom still dating Hollywood people?”, “where is, what is, or do we want a new Haight?”, and finally, “what is the new freak rock people”?, “Is it all the new lo-fi we swallow up (cuz it’s so raw man, and they’re not trying too hard), or the obsessive tinkering of any number of kid geniuses hailing from Brooklyn?”,
2009, June, enter Sleepy Sun. Hailing from Santa Cruz, where health food stores, edgy surfers, university students and bohemian street musicians and peddlers struggle to compete for real estate with the ascending techy, hybrid-driving urban sophisticates. Will the last quintessential, larger coastal beach town on the California coast preserve in the slightest? Tell me, is there still a trailer park on the UCSC campus? Does the school shrug its shoulders at a group of students who call themselves “woodsies” and live, well, in the woods? I’ll never know. [More...]
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Battlehooch (Podcast #169)
June 23, 2009
Stream the episode:
This week, we’re excited to feature Battlehooch, a band whose sound and antics border on the indescribable, combining elements of art rock, prog, and pop to create funky, winning songs. After building a strong reputation as an energetic live band, who often performed on City streets with a homemade generator, the group released their debut EP, 2008′s Oof Owf. This week, the band returns with their first full length album, Piecechow, which maintains their trademark kitchen sink approach, with a variety of horns, synths and drum machines, while staying catchier than a lot of proggy music. That’s no small feat, especially considering that the band challenges itself to avoid ever doing the same thing twice.
If you haven’t experienced Battlehooch before, our interview will make clear that the band is comprised of some eclectic characters (which may be something of an understatement). The guys met in Santa Cruz, where they were music students at UCSC, and emerged as Battlehooch upon moving to San Francisco in 2006. Most of them now live and record together in a house in the Sunset District, and the close quarters have no doubt contributed to the guys’ development of a shared vocabulary of Battlevans (their tour van), Battlepads (their home), and Battlerags (the distinctive headbands group members wear). But behind their eccentricity, there’s a wealth of musical talent and inventive compositional ideas, fused into a unified aesthetic of do-anything musical freedom now captured on Piecechow.
We sat down with the band at The Bay Bridged Studio recently to discuss their origins, the meaning of “piecechow” and more. We’ve also included four songs from Piecechow in the episode.
Upcoming Shows:
[More...]
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Starfucker, Atole, White Cloud tonight
June 23, 2009
Portland’s Starfucker are playing at our very own Bottom of the Hill tonight, June 23rd, as part of the band’s West Coast tour promoting their newest release on Badman Recording Co., Jupiter. Tour-mates Atole are based out of Portland as well, with SF/East Bay’s White Cloud getting things moving at 9.
A cut off of Starfucker’s new record, “Medicine”, was recently placed on Spin Magazine’s list of “songs you must hear now.” Jupiter can be purchased either through Badman or on iTunes.
The show is 21+, and for more info click this way.
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The Dodos announce Time to Die
June 22, 2009
The Dodos – “Fables” (from Pitchfork.tv)
Last week, The Dodos announced details surrounding their upcoming third album, including its ominous title, Time To Die. Word is that the band’s picking up where they left off with the stripped-down frenzy of last year’s Visiter, although there are some new faces in the mix, including awesome producer Phil Ek (Built to Spill, Fleet Foxes, The Shins) and new bandmate Keaton Snyder, described as “a 21-year-old music school dropout who plays a mean vibraphone.”
The Time to Die tracklisting is as follows, and includes “Fables”, which the band performed recently for Pitchfork.tv (seen above).
Time To Die:
1. Small Deaths
2. Longform
3. Fables
4. The Strums
5. This Is A Business
6. Two Medicines
7. Troll Nacht
8. Acorn Factory
9. Time To Die
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Giveaway: AA Bondy / Lesser Lights @ Cafe Du Nord
June 22, 2009
These days it has become increasingly hard to come across more of the purist folk variety, as higher profile “indie” folk artists tend towards the orchestral, going psych, doing remixes with hip hop producers, or god forbid, using vocoders.
Lesser Lights - The Harvest Halt
Lesser Lights – “The Harvest Halt”
Thursday’s pairing at Du Nord of New York’s A.A. Bondy and San Francisco’s low profile Lesser Lights (Nathan Baker) promises to be a truer calling to the form — sparseness in composition, and lyrically, historical and societal introspection trumping heartbreak and self-importance. Bondy, originally hails from Alabama, while LL’s Baker once called Indiana home.
A.A. Bondy’s sophomore album, When The Devil’s Loose, will be released September 1, 2009 on Fat Possum. Some advance copies of Lesser Lights’ new EP, One Day In May, recorded with Aaron Prellwitz (Sun Kil Moon) at SF’s Tiny Telephone will be available too.
We are giving away a pair of tickets to this show! All you have to do is E-mail contest@thebaybridged.com with your name, address, and the phrase “I want to go to Cafe du Nord on Thursday!” by Wednesday at noon. The winner will be chosen randomly and notified via E-mail.
Show is at 9pm, $12, 21+
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Review: The Blacks @ The Rickshaw Stop, 6/18
June 22, 2009
Photos by: Julie Schuchard
Yes indie’d a sincere, sweaty performance out of your SF-based The Blacks. Also a CD release but yes, idie’d again (and proud of ourselves and clever as a left-handed skyhook from Pixar, that is, [look Up] a metanym for “snipehunt”?) our The Blacks, America’s The Blacks and their buttons made of irony say with no emoticons “We [heart] The Blacks”:
Perhaps a discussion lay in the cards about such an eponymous flirtation with, or stab at, art–art as cultural effrontery–but keep in mind this here review comes from a guy who knows not whether any of the band The Blacks’s members really has Black in his name or if that matters at all, and who speaks in awful ragged pidgins so to try and impress French folks trying to seem coincidental . . ; what it’s supposed to call up and mean and everything for people in sitting bookstores on rugs, I mean from a cultural, say Post-Radicalistical perspective but let’s hope we can table that for now and resume later on the same rugged internets or over a joe. No wonder The Blacks are “takers” [see Instinct] in New York City and SF. They are tambourine tossers. Duck! The set was real, real good, the only way the name gets carried off unless of course there’s black in all their names but from the looks of it, well, who knows these days, yeah?
It makes me think of a “Got Milk?” t-shirt saying only redundantly, “Got Got?” in milkfont.
Show was tight.
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Preview: Isis @ Great American
June 22, 2009
Isis has the dubious distinction of being too influential for their own good. Formed in Boston, the quintet picked up where Neurosis and The Melvins left off, crafting lengthy, repetitive songs full of ponderous, gradual builds. This new approach to metal songwriting spawned a roiling mass of instrumental imitators, all trying to capture the titanic crescendos and meticulous dynamics that made the band so popular. United under the banner of “post-metal,” the scene was soon chock full of clones.
Isis - 20 Minutes/40 Years
Isis – “20 Minutes/40 Years”
It’s hard to blame the innovators for all this aping, and Isis still stands above the fray on the strength of distinctive, warm guitar tones and a keen ear for melody. New album Wavering Radiant is another strong example of inventive, atmospheric songwriting, matching the band’s crushing riffs with a limber musicianship that abets the complicated arrangements. As the band continues to develop, eerie interludes have come into their own alongside their traditional riff-earthquakes.
Founding guitarist Aaron Turner is also the progenitor of Hydra Head Records, which has established itself as a premier label for all that is heavy, but also quirky. Featuring many artists Isis-like and not, Turner’s dual responsibility keeps the band at the center of a scene, independent of their musical inspiration.
The show at the Great American on Tuesday will feature labelmates Helms Alee and Mammifer (another Turner project), providing a three-Hydra-headed dose of captivating, mostly instrumental metal. Expect stately progressions and epic shifts, with the occasional moment that sounds like planets exploding in slow motion.
The show is $16, starts at 9pm and is 6+
