Tampa Calling

Don’t give stoners an excuse to stay home, they’ll take you up on it just about every time. Exams approaching, play-off basketball, a sluggish economy and, well, it was Monday night on 4/20 after all.  Those who ventured out to New World Brewery Monday night were treated to the awesomeness that is The Show Is The Rainbow.

TSITR’s compact set was comprised entirely from his new album Wet Fist, including “Made of Cardboard,” “Roar Means Run,” “Who He Say He Is” (with Kurt Cobain and Slash video), “Come Dry Your Flower” and “Whisper At Once.” Darren Keen is the one man, tour-de-force behind TSITR. He grew up on classic rock and Frank Zappa, moving onto punk rock and gangster rap as a teen. Now, he’s making an exhilarating mix of tripped-out, indie hip-hop. His shows — often just him with a guitar, computer and video projector — are a captivating, sweaty solo dance party.  Shirtless, uncut and sporting long locks, Keen refuses to submit to the unspoken line between performer and fan. Running up and down the covered porch of New World, Keen spent most of his time directly in the faces of the sparse crowd, encouraging dancing, banter and on-your-knees guitar and/or air guitar solo’s that stretch your belly flat. (Photo by Phil Bardi.)

Fellow Nebraskans Beep Beep followed, with Keen (also a member of Beep Beep) taking up duties on bass and keys. Seeing Beep Beep was like watching my new favorite blog — lookatthisfuckinghipster — coming to life. They were good enough, but if they were as good as they were awkward, then their set could have been special.

Allen Toussaint: The Bright Mississippi (Nonesuch)

I’ve long been aware of Allen Toussaint as a New Orleans treasure, a prolific songwriter, magic-touch producer and arranger, and solo artist with a rather middling voice. I knew he played piano, but did not know he was such a bad, bad man at the keyboard.

I do now.

The Bright Mississippi, produced by Toussaint’s friend and frequent collaborator Joe Henry, is nothing short of a revelation, an album of instrumentals (save one vocal) that both honors and reinvents a number of songs associated with early New Orleans blues and jazz: Sidney Bechets’ “Egyptian Fantasy,” Jellyroll Morton’s “Winin’ Boy Blues,” Joe Oliver’s West End Blues,” and traditionals “St. James Infirmary” and “Take a Closer Walk With Thee,” to name a handful.

Toussaint and his dream band — trumpeter Nicholas Payton, clarinetist Don Byron, acoustic guitarist Marc Ribot, bassist David Piltch and drummer Jay Bellerose — play the songs with an expansive ease, rather than employing tightly wound improvisational free-for-alls often referred to as Dixieland. One of the album’s charms, though, is the clattering, march-style drums heard on a number of the full-ensemble pieces (”Singin’ the Blues,” Monk’s “Bright Mississippi”), imbuing them with an antique quality.

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The house lights went down, synthesizers swelled and the stage oozed dry-ice smoke. This went on for so long that it seemed Seal and his band had experienced a Spinal Tap moment and taken a wrong turn backstage. But the extended buildup was just indicative of a show last night at Mahaffey Theater that was long on pomp and drama and crescendo — and pretty darn good because of it.

I’m pretty sure it was Seal’s first Tampa Bay show, and an adoring sell-out audience turned out to hang on his every note, every pose, every sly reference to his family (he mentioned his three kids but never wife Heidi Klum). An interesting crowd: Lots of MILFs all done up, fashionista fellas in vests, white trash, even an elderly lady wearing plastic wrap-around sunglasses who insisted on dancing directly in my sight line, if you want to call it dancing.

Seal flexed his star power, even though showmanship doesn’t come naturally to him. He’s not a graceful dancer, yet he moved around the best he could.

People came to hear him sing, and that he did very well, more convincingly and soulfully than on his recordings. Whether it was the early dance single “Killer” with Adamski, the big hits, or any of several songs from his current Soul album of R&B covers (“A Change is Gonna Come,” “It’s a Man’s Man’s World” among them), Seal commanded the material, hewing closely to the recorded versions but breaking out from time to time for Big Moments (like a serpentine a cappella line during “Love’s Divine”).

Backed by a three-piece band (guitar, bass, drums and mountains of computer-triggered synths), Seal paced the show beautifully; “Kiss from a Rose” and “Crazy” came back to back just before encore.

At home before the show, I was hit by a wave of Sunday night lethargy and thought it might be a better idea to stay home and watch the NBA playoffs. I’m glad I got my ass off the couch.

I’m pretty sure I was a sophomore in college when this happened.

I was sitting in a friend’s room in the dorm on a weekday afternoon when I heard this music from another room. The stereos, dorm stereos at my college at least, were shit, so the sound was faint. But the song captivated me. I tuned out the conversation, stood up, walked out the door, made a left, went down two, maybe three, rooms and turned right.

A medium tempo sort of folk-rock tune was playing on the shitty stereo. “Who is this?” I asked the guy playing it on the shitty stereo. Daryl Hall and John Oates, he told me. “Never heard of ‘em,” I said, and he handed me the LP cover of Abandoned Lunchonette.

“Ahh-oooo, uh-oooo, woo-ooo, it’ll be all right, when the morning comes,” the male tenor sang. It was Daryl Hall.

So began my long love affair with the music of Daryl Hall & John Oates. I followed them through the glam period, through the quasi-psychedelic period, through the quasi-disco period, through the superstar period of the 1980s, which turned into the set-the-drum-machine-so-it-sounds-like-a-baseball-bat-hitting-a-garbage-can period. I followed them through the “you like Hall & Oates?” jibes from my hipper-than-thou acquaintances, insisting that Hall & Oates were merely a pleasure, not a guilty one.

I’ve seen Hall & Oates six, seven, eight times, but I never heard them play “When the Morning Comes,” the song that first seduced me from another room.

They played it last night at Ruth Eckerd Hall. A lump-in-the-throat moment.

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Last night, the Murray Studio Theater at Ruth Eckerd Hall hosted Karla Bonoff, a Ming vase wrapped in 18th century parchment flown in on gossamer wings. And here I thought she was just a singer/songwriter who had some middling success in the 1970s.

Bonoff put on an embarrassing display of petulance in the first of two sets in the intimate black-box space. The sound setup was not to her liking, so the capacity crowd was subjected to her running complaints about the stage monitors and other glitches. Her on-stage partner, singer/multi-instrumentalist Kenny Edwards, got into the act as well — both performers spent the better part of their show looking perplexed and vexed about the technical problems. Bonoff even stopped one song a couple of verses in to chastise the sound man.

Memo to Bonoff and Edwards: It’s a fucking ACOUSTIC SHOW, a couple of acoustic guitars, a couple of mics, a piano and a bass. Stop whining and play!

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My men’s league basketball game ran into overtime, so I arrived at the Palladium’s Side Door club just in time for boogie-woogie piano master Bob Seeley to go on break. I was surprised, and pleased, to see a sell-out audience of 150 lingering around the tables, the crowd made up mostly of retirees.

Seeley, based in Detroit, is 80, but doesn’t look it — and he certainly doesn’t play like you might expect an 80-year-old to play. He’s a firebrand with remarkable technique. After doing brisk CD sales at the merch table, and a set by locals Liz Pennock & Dr. Blues, Seeley took to the baby grand and wowed the joint.

Whereas most jazz piano features the player’s right hand, with the left hand laying out chordal accents, boogie-woogie highlights the left hand, which pounds out a steady stream of eighth notes.

Not to say that Seeley’s other paw was sub-bar; he used it to execute some marvelous runs.

Boogie-woogie, played on solo piano like last night, is one of the most exuberant, joyous sounds to emanate from the annals of American music. Seeley sure proved that.

His show-stopper piece was “Mama Don’t Allow,” an old-time number that Seeley used to strut his skills in boogie, ragtime, stride, Charleston, Ellingtonia (”Take the A Train”), Gershwin (”I Got Rhythm”) and more. He blasted through the piece with supreme confidence and good humor.

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The good news: if you couldn’t make it to Fort Lauderdale last Thursday for the first Iron Maiden show in Florida since ‘95, frontman Bruce Dickinson swore up and down multiple times Maiden would return to our state in 2011.

The bad news: the classic Powerslave-era stage decor and the old-songs-only mantra of the Somewhere Back In Time tour are now a thing of the past … again.

I waited half my life to see this band in person. Were you to peruse my apartment, you would find no less than three dozen Maiden releases. Multiple copies of studio albums due to varying reissue bonuses. Rare singles.  Multiple live albums — some on both CD and DVD.  Even the ridiculous Eddie’s Archive metallic casket of rarities.  It’s silly and excessive(ly awesome), I admit. Given the band’s lengthy absence from Florida, I’m positive many others shared my situation. But would the British Heavy Metal legends live up to years of expectation?

Before the band could answer that question I had to sit through the worst case of rock ‘n’ roll nepotism since I saw The Poor open for AC/DC at what used to be the Thunderdome (Angus Young’s nephew played drums): the rock star aspirations of Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris‘ daughter.

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This review comes courtesy of Autopsy IV.

Justin Townes Earle: Midnight at the Movies (Bloodshot)

When Justin Towns Earle’s debut, The Good Life, came out a year ago, I hardly paid it any mind. Months later, when I finally got around to listening to it, I wasn’t expecting much — just the son of a legend fumbling through an album he only got to make because of his father’s name.

With Midnight At The Movies I wondered: Could Earle come close to the masterpiece that The Good Life was? Turns out that he may just have surpassed it, if that’s possible.

On the new disc, Justin seems more settled in his resolve to forge his own path and more comfortable with his songwriting. On tracks like “Mama’s Eyes,” Justin shows no hesitation about exposing himself to the listener, warts and all. When you couple that the ragtime hop of the track “Walk Out,” you start to uncover the true strength of this album. It’s somber, introspective and tender at its core, while still managing to maintain a country swagger.

The variety of styles on the album help to offset its greatest weakness: it’s length. Clocking in at a mere 33 minutes, it seems like the album is over almost as soon as it starts. But as Bobby Womack once said, “Leave them wanting more and you know they’ll call you back.”

With 12 tracks of all-killer-no-filler, you’ll definitely find yourself calling Midnight At The Movies back quite a bit this year. I’ll probably be calling it up come time for my year-end best-of list, but for now I’ll just call it Essential Listening.

A review by The 941 and Tampa Calling blogger and Creative Loafing Sarasota editor Cooper Levy-Baker.

By the time she released her sixth solo album — Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea — Polly Jean Harvey had pretty much stretched her sound in every direction it could logically go.

1992’s Dry was her fully formed indie-encapsulating debut; 1993’s Rid of Me her Steve Albini-produced exploration of caterwauling noise; 4-Track Demos her raw, immediate bedroom snapshot; 1995’s To Bring You My Love her confident, theatrical blues masterstroke; 1998’s Is This Desire? her electronica-dabbling incorporation of folk-rock touches. What was left but to streamline her sound, spruce up the recording studio and record a steamy slab of hook-driven pop-rock?

Don’t take that as criticism. Quite the opposite. Recording Stories, Harvey seemed to realize something that eluded many of her alternative generation peers: Rawness, ugliness and aggression are all artistic crutches every bit as lazy and retrograde over time as a dedication to beauty, craft and high production values. Read the rest of this entry »

A wrap of the Friday, April 3 show by B.Treotch; photo by Phil Bardi.

Walking by the Ritz in Ybor city last Friday night, you may have thought some tech convention was going on. Tucked-in shirts, leather belts and fresh haircuts are not your normal rock concert attire, but then again, Ben Folds isn’t your normal rock star. The clever singer/songwriter has straddled the line between thick-glasses nerd and cool piano-popster for more than a decade now.

The 42-year-old, supported by a drummer, bassist and multi-instrumentalist played over two dozen songs that spanned his solo career and his three studio albums with the Ben Folds Five. Drawing heavily from last year’s under-the-radar Way To Normal, Folds opened with “Errant Dog.” The band then worked the crowd with tracks from Songs for Silverman — “Landed” and “Jesusland” — followed by the Whatever and Ever Amen’s anthemic “Battle of Who Could Care Less,” Normal’s “Effington” and Rockin’ the Suburbs’ “Losing Lisa.” Then they brought it down with “Lullabye” from The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner and a new one, “Kylie From Connecticut.” Read the rest of this entry »

Raul Malo: Lucky One (Fantasy)

He’s one of the most gifted contemporary singers in any genre, and although he occasionally goes a little Andrea Bocelli on us, Raul Malo can really bring the swoon with his clear, heart-on-sleeve tenor. The ex-Mavericks frontman, solo since 2001, calls to mind his former band on Lucky One, although it’s less categorically country. He brings tinges of high-lonesome Western, Spanish, swing and classic pop balladry into play.

Malo, who has done a couple of cover records, co-wrote each of the 12 tracks on Lucky One, beginning with the title track, a jaunty charmer with a south-of-the-border air. He breaks out his inner Roy Orbison — not too much of a stretch, seeing as it’s right near the surface — on a few tunes, most notably “Something Tells Me.” He drops a little uptown blues on “Ready For My Lovin’,” finds just the right swagger on the breezily swinging “You Always Win” and hits the Tex-Mex with “Lonely Hearts.”

Malo is most apt to go over the top on ballads, none more so than “Rosalie,” which is bloated on passion and pain. Yeah, Malo’s a country singer, but he’s also Latino — so we’ll give him a pass on that one miscue.

Various Artists: Covered, A Revolution in Sound: Warner Bros. Records
(Warner Bros.)

To commemorate its golden anniversary, Warner Bros. Records commissioned a dozen artists on its current roster to each perform a favorite tune from the label’s first 50 years. The results, not surprisingly, range from insipid to almost brilliant.

We’ll start with the clunkers: Adam Sandler doing a rote, irony-free version of Neil Young’s “Like a Hurricane” whiny vocals and all. WTF? Taking Back Sunday’s “You Wreck Me,” another blatant copy that begs the question: Why would anyone ever listen to this version when you can cue up the Tom Petty original? On paper, Avenged Sevenfold’s covering Sabbath’s “Paranoid” would seem to have potential — but the original, while thinner sounding, is so much heavier and more menacing than this stiff, ProTooled remake.

James Otto’s “Into the Mystic,” while pretty faithful to Van Morrison’s, succeeds because of the sheer commitment in Otto’s blue-eye-soul vocal. Michelle Branch doing Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You?” A recipe for disaster? Nope. Branch proves herself a much more formidable singer than I ever gave her credit for.

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Neko Case: Middle Cyclone (Anti-)

Perhaps in 30 years we’ll look back at Neko Case with the same reverence that we do now with, say, Joni Mitchell — as a true original. Will Case ever carry the same legendary stature? Hard to say, but it seems to me that legends are not as easily made these days.

That’s OK. We have Case right now, 38 years old and at the peak of her powers. Middle Cyclone is a more than worthy follow-up to 2006’s brilliant Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. The new one builds on Case’s heady blend of country noir and airy folk-pop, with oblique song structures stitching together melodies that at first sound a bit unlikely, but quickly ingrain themselves. This is boldly inventive, new-sounding stuff that somehow evokes an antique feeling. Postmodern roots music, a contradiction in terms. All of which equates to something like wisdom.

Case is among the few artists in contemporary pop who is a legitimate poet. Her lyrics are like funhouse riddles left wide open to listener interpretation, yet not so obtuse as to be precious.

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Strawfoot is “an angry preacher and a bunch of foul-mouthed heathens” from somewhere in St. Louis. The moment I heard the track “Damnation Way” from the Rodentia compilation I was excited almost to the point of being giddy to hear more music from them.  Within 5 minutes of hearing them for the first time I was downloading their complete album from Amazon MP3.

Often in times like these you find that your hopes are met by inconsistent music that never quite measure up to the song that got you there. By the time I had gotten to the third track, “Chasing Locusts,” I knew that “Damnation Way,” the tune that had introduced me to Strawfoot, wasn’t even their best.

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I admit it that I start too many blogs lamenting about why it is that there are no shows (that I want to see, at least) for days/week/months and then there are several competing shows the same night …

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It’s not every day we’re lucky enough to see a veritable folk legend at New World Brewery — especially not one with a career as illustrious as Country Hall of Famer Charlie Louvin. On Friday, Mr. Louvin and his band graced New World Brewery with a special performance. At 82, Mr. Louvin tours regularly, releases new records and continues to inspire a new generation of musicians. He effortlessly connects with an all-ages audience by weaving stories and running commentary in between songs in a manner that most musicians can’t even dream of pulling off. Most of us can only dream of being this cool at any point in our lives — let alone at 82.

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Pearl Jam
Ten [Deluxe Edition]
Over 18 years and eight studio albums, Pearl Jam has proven itself to be far and away the most durable band to come from the original grunge movement. (Also the best, I would argue.) Nirvana trumps them on mystique and cultural impact, mostly because Kurt Cobain blew his brains out, but Pearl Jam had the courage to experiment, to risk failure, to grow up and shed the voice-of-a-generation pressure, to persevere.

And now for the just desserts: A sprawling reissue program that leads up to their 20th anniversary in 2011, kicked off by an expanded re-release of the band’s mega-hit debut.

Ten [Deluxe Edition] includes the original album, plus another CD showcasing a remix by producer Brendan O’Brien that additionally includes previously unissued bonus tracks. Also part of the package is a DVD of PJ’s 1992 set on MTV Unplugged.

Pearl Jam has made plenty of terrific recorded music during its tenure, but no cluster is as perfect as the first six songs of their debut album, a visceral, revelatory sequence: “Once,” “Even Flow,” “Alive,” “Why Go,” “Black” and “Jeremy.” If Nirvana’s Nevermind told us that hair-band rock was on its last legs, the first half of Ten threw dirt on its grave. The album’s ensuing tracks are solid, but to these ears they represent a noticeable drop-off in songcraft.

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This concert review was written by CL intern Michelle Stark; photos by Nicole Kibert.

Adding to a slew of sold-out shows across Europe and the United States, British duo the Ting Tings played to a packed Orpheum on Sunday night.

Lead singer Katie White, decked out in sparkly tights and red ankle boots, pounced energetically onto the stage and launched into the band’s first song, “We Walk.” She and her partner, drummer/singer/guitarist Jules De Martino — who was equally fashionable in neon green sunglasses that matched his T-shirt —filled the next hour with lovely vocals and some serious jamming. Read the rest of this entry »

A review by The 941 and Tampa Calling blogger and Creative Loafing Sarasota editor Cooper Levy-Baker.

Sign o’ the times: Band records album, band plots April 13 release date, album leaks, band quickly unleashes album digitally, band moves physical release date up to March 31. Such is life for a hot young rock group these days, and even the artists can’t get too worked up about it.

“We wanted to build toward a date, get excitement up and release it so everyone had it at once,” Yeah Yeah Yeahs lead singer Karen O told Pitchfork two weeks ago, discussing the file-sharing-induced rush release of her band’s third LP, It’s Blitz! ”But I guess that doesn’t really happen anymore. We’re still kinda stuck in 2003. I mean, even 2006 was a totally different time to release a record than 2009. It’s insane how quickly everything’s changed.”

The YYYs have, in a sense, been lapped. After all, the band was one of the first Internet-darling indie groups. They earned their early rep thanks to a mere 13 minutes of music on their 2001 self-titled debut EP. (A reputation for hellacious live shows, punctuated by O pouring beer all over herself certainly didn’t hurt.) By the time they released their first full-length, they’d already made the jump to a major label, Interscope, and ran into a distinctly ’00s trend: backlash that emerges even before a band has broken out. (For the most virulent example of this trend yet, please “read” these two Black Kids reviews, both from the same outlet.) Read the rest of this entry »

A review by The 941 and Tampa Calling blogger and Creative Loafing Sarasota editor Cooper Levy-Baker.

For all intents and purposes, the Condo Fucks’ Fuckbook is the 13th studio LP from Yo La Tengo, even if the Matador Records website for the “band” never mentions the words “Yo,” “La” or “Tengo.”

There are plenty of clues to go around. One: The name “Condo Fucks” comes from a fake promo card Matador printed up and inserted in Yo La Tengo’s 1997 classic, I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One. Two: In 1990, Yo La Tengo released a covers disc titled Fakebook (the name comes from musical sheets that outline the bare essentials of a tune — melody, chords, lyrics — and allow performers to learn new songs on the fly). Three: The Fucks website lists the band’s members as “Georgia Condo (drums), Kid Condo (guitar) and James McNew (bass)”; the members of Yo La Tengo happen to be Georgia Hubley, Ira Kaplan and James McNew.

And, four (as if you needed it): Recording a half-hour’s worth of fuzzy, Nuggets-like garage rock covers under an in-joke assumed name and then making a short “documentary” about the impact of the fake band on the music scene of southern Connecticut, well, that just seems like the kind of thing Yo La Tengo would do.

“I have no intention of explaining things more fully,” Yo La Tengo guitarist/singer Ira Kaplan told me in an interview two years ago, and that sentiment runs all through the band’s history: the Spanish-language group name (”I have it”), the beguiling album titles (I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass), the jokey songs (”Georgia Vs. Yo La Tengo,” “The Story of Yo La Tango”). This is a group unafraid to leave its audience guessing, and they never seem interested in clearing things up for definitive interpretation.

So Condo Fucks. Fuckbook. Yeah, it kind of makes sense. Read the rest of this entry »

This review comes courtesy of Cooper Levy-Baker, editor of Creative Loafing Sarasota and contributor to The 941 and Tampa Calling.

Saturday night’s big Ghostface Killah/Raekwon gig at The Ritz Ybor was billed as the Skatepark of Tampa’s “Pro Contest Party,” and, as a party, it was sick. (Photo below not from the show.)

A pleasantly multicultural crowd — skate kids, rap aficionados, hipsters — filled the wide expanse in front of the stage; free PBR flowed for a couple solid hours; some dude wandered through the crowd handing out gratis T-shirts and trucker hats. The fans went appropriately nuts when Raekwon and, later, Ghostface first emerged onstage, throwing their Wu hand-Ws in the air. The beats boomed, Wu classics flew and bodies started moving. A good time was had by all. Read the rest of this entry »

Kylesa
Static Tensions
(Prosthetic)
Between a tour with Mastodon and a killer new album, Kylesa seem poised for a breakthrough year in 2009. The ten songs on this Georgia band’s fourth full-length, Static Tensions, speed by in 40 minutes — relatively brief by sludgy, stoner-groove standards; more abstract than Crowbar, but not as otherworldly as Neurosis. The long-time experimental Australian band Alchemist is my closest point of reference. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll be honest, I’m not really too into tribute albums. I mean, they usually have their high points but when you take them as a whole, they tend to feel mailed in or uninspired.

Such is not the case with this particular tribute album, and while I am sure there have been no shortage of tribute albums dedicated to Hank Sr. or Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter, I am sure there hasn’t ever been one quite like this. For one, check out the take-no-prisoner’s, my-way-or-fuck-you roster of contributing artists. With acts like Scott H. Biram, Possessed By Paul James, Bob Log III, Jawbone, Wayne “The Train” Hancock and Soda involved, you know these aren’t just gonna be mere remakes of classics. For another thing, take the folks putting it out — Hillgrass Bluebilly Entertainment. In what dealings I’ve had with these guys, two things are certain. 1) They have as much passion about the whole punkass/deep blues scene as anyone, and 2) if they are gonna do something they are gonna do it 100 percent all out. Taking all that into account I had a hard time imagining how this particular tribute album couldn’t be awesome.

I was right. (Tracks after the jump.) Read the rest of this entry »

Where to begin? Last Thursday seems like so long ago, the start of a very long weekend of incredible music. With the Harvest Of Hope festival bringing bands by the boatload to Florida, many of them played shows throughout the state before and after the weekend. I (with my girlfriend and a few other friends) went to four shows in six days across the state. I did my best to document all of this with pictures and video; and even managed to score a short video interview with Bryce Dessner of The National. Read the rest of this entry »

Lucero played a long, raucous set Friday night at New World Brewery, plowing steadfastly through their extensive catalog while managing to thoroughly engage a sold-out audience. Lucero’s regular band members are Roy Berry (drums), Ben Nichols (vocals/guitar), John C. Stubblefield (bass) and Brian Venable (guitar). On this tour, they are joined by Todd Beene (pedal steel) and Rick Steff (keyboard/accordion).

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A review of Sunday’s Britney Spears show at the St. Pete Times Forum by The Scenestress; cross-posted from The 941.

The ritual is about to commence. We have gathered, donned in our ceremonial garb of revealing tops with denim and high heels. We have imbibed holy spirits and taken our seats in the temple. As the lights dim, the high priestess takes the stage dressed in knee-high stiletto boots and a bright red ringmaster’s jacket.

It’s Britney, bitch. And the crowd goes wild.

Ms. Spears kicked off her set Sunday night with her hit “Circus” and the performance definitely lived up to its title. Aside from the artist herself, there are a slew of backup dancers and acrobats as well as a giant cage, flashing lights and a video screen projecting sexy images of the lady of the hour. Brit tackled hit after hit (“Piece of Me,” “Radar,” “Boys”) while looking fierce in various combinations of sparkly pants and bras and high, high heels.

Every three songs or so, we were treated to a new distraction to give Ms. Spears a breather and time for a costume change. These breaks included a martial arts-style dance performance, a music video of Brit set to Marilyn Manson’s “Sweet Dreams” (super hot), and another break showcasing each of her backup dancers breakin’ it down. These were some of the best parts of the show, and that’s saying a lot considering the stuff that Brit was about to bust into.

When she returned to the stage to perform a couple In the Zone-era tunes (“Breathe on Me” and “Touch of My Hand”), things got super steamy. Britney writhed on a settee in a bustier until two boys in bondage gear joined her and pulled her into the air for more acrobatics. The performance of the song alone was worth the price of admission. But there were more hits to come. To read more, click here.

Gerald Cleaver/Willliam Parker/Craig Taborn: Farmers By Nature (AUM Fidelity)

This is full-immersion music — on the part of players and listener alike. Farmers by Nature captures a live performance by three of the most accomplished improvisers to be found anywhere — drummer Cleaver, bassist Parker and pianist Taborn — in a completely extemporaneous setting. The level of interactivity is at a ridiculously sophisticated ebb, each player leading and reacting equally, the trio moving organically from minimalist solo forays to manic, almost violent, crescendos.

There aren’t a lot of pretty notes here, but the music is not the non-stop, high-dudgeon cacophony that informs most free jazz. During a good portion of “The Night,” Taborn fixates on the middle range of his piano, wringing all he can from a limited palette of notes. On the ensuing two pieces, “Cranes” and “Not Unlike Number 10,” he murders his instrument, spewing out fusillades of sound like he’s a deranged octopus.

Very little of Farmers by Nature grooves, but most of it finds a shifting but discernible pulse. A section of “In Trees” features Taborn’s scattershots over something akin to a frenetic bop rhythm. Occasionally, Parker gets a bit enamored with plumbing the sonic possibilities of his acoustic bass and devolves into lone noodling, but soon enough the trio rediscovers its collective momentum and (dis)order is restored.

The trio has no particular destination during the set — and is in no particular hurry to get there. But the immersed listener, with sensibilities geared to this sort of music, will find it a most invigorating ride.

—Eric Snider

The Von Bondies
Love, Hate and Then There’s You
(Majordomo/Shout Factory)
Thrust into the limelight a few years ago after Jack White punched out lead singer Jason Stollsteimer, The Von Bondies’ new release, Love, Hate and Then There’s You, is a straightforward, intense-yet-safe alt-rock record that might allow listeners to actually forget the brawl and focus on the band’s music.

But despite strong, driving drum beats designed to keep heads bobbing and some of the stickiest riffs and choruses I have heard lately, the record doesn’t tread any new ground and could easily be mistaken for the latest by any number of other like-sounding bands. The Von Bondies enlisted Butch Walker (Hot Hot Heat, Avril Lavigne, Fall Out Boy, The Donnas) to produce three of the tracks, and his influence is easy to hear — like in “Pale Bride” (the “single”), which is catchy, though it blends in with the other tracks and its riffy bridge comes off like a lazy, last-minute addition.

“The Chancer” has a frantic intro that segues perfectly into the female-voiced chorus (”Hey now, hey now/ Take it to the other side”), but other than this and “21st Birthday,” the band doesn’t go out on a limb very much. Overall, the songs are infectious, but way too safe to make me want to return to the album often. Otherwise, it’s a good rock record for the MySpace generation and fans of Kings of Leon, Franz Ferdinand and Marvelous 3.

–Ivan Peña

U2
No Line on the Horizon
Interscope
Four years after “Vertigo” blasted from speakers and iPod commercials — can it really have been that long? — U2 continues to defy the odds. While the ranks of legendary rockers limp along with lame new offerings that suggest they’re all but tapped out (it wouldn’t be polite to name names … but Springsteen comes to mind), U2 unveils its 12th studio album, No Line on the Horizon, which is marked by nothing less than consistent excellence.

While No Line does not include a song quite as incendiary as “Vertigo,” nor quite as soaring as “City of Blinding Lights,” it is, track for track, a superior effort to 2004’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.

The tunes take a bit longer to insinuate themselves, in part because U2 is even more infatuated this go-round with long and winding intros. And while sometimes I find myself just wanting them to get on with, there’s always a payoff at the end of the slow build, usually delivered by the Edge, be it with a wave of orchestral guitar textures, a punchy riff or a chord sequence in full chime.

Bono, 48, continues to progress as a vocalist, without showing any degradation of pitch or range. Sometimes it’s a surprising spike into falsetto, or a wordless cry (you can see his head thrown back), or a dialed-down foray into speak-sing, which sets apart the quiet, minimalist closer “Cedars of Lebanon.” Read the rest of this entry »

I vowed not to risk a good night’s sleep on another potentially turbulent …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead show 90 minutes away – not after what happened at Jannus Landing last time they visited the Bay Area; but a last minute ticket and ride offer from my co-worker and good friend Kate proved too tempting to ignore.

I wouldn’t normally describe a transcendent concert experience as ‘uneventful,’ but in this case, it’s just what the doctor ordered! Two years and change after Conrad Keely threw his entire body weight behind a shove that sent a drugged-out Kevin Allen over an amplifier stack barely half-way through their gig at Jannus, …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead simply gave a pretty-full-for-a-Monday crowd in downtown Orlando an incredible hour-plus of anthemic, frenetic indie rock. Read the rest of this entry »

Giddy-Up, Helicopter!: Something that Needs Nothing
A surprising warmth pervades Giddy-Up, Helicopter!’s new CD — surprising in light of the quintet’s propensity for shoegaze and general outward aloofness, in light of a vocal approach that favors a matter-of-fact delivery over emoting. “Tiny Moon,” five tracks in, brushes closest to warm ‘n’ fuzzy with its loping rhythm, luxuriant melody and the cozy vocal interplay of male singer Conner and female counterpart Nikki. Then a crescendo — built around a soaring vocal chant and swell of instruments — that’ll raise the hairs on your neck.

Something that Needs Nothing becomes even more gregarious with the ensuing “Cub Jr.,” an uptempo track that rises and falls in intensity, but never stops climbing toward a climax. “Bones” veers into Brit-style dream-pop, with drummer Ryann lending propulsion and bassist M To The D letting her fingers loose during an instrumental break.

Longtime fans of the Tampa Bay band shouldn’t fret, though. While GUH! has embraced some pop and art-rock elements, they haven’t abandoned their stock-in-trade of droning, hypnotic sequences.

The music’s most beguiling aspect is the layered guitar arrangements imagined and executed by Conner and Nikki: intertwined parts that meld ringing long tones with cascading arpeggios, echo-drenched chords, blasts of fuzz and Edge-esque flourishes. One of the band’s signature conceits is to pull back on the reins, delve into a thoughtful, even pensive, guitar interlude, and then re-marshal the energy, gradually revving back into the song structure. These sequences can be considerably more interesting than standard-issue guitar solos.

Something that Needs Nothing does occasionally lapse into numbing repetitiveness, and sometimes the band’s overall remove can come off as just a tad precious, but in the end this 11-song set shows maturity, growth and, probably best of all, artistic ambition.

A tip: Turn it up. Some of the nuance gets lost at lower volumes. (It’s Not a Monster Records, myspace.com/giddyuphelicopter)

—Eric Snider

Check out more CL coverage of Giddyup, Helicopter!

The last time Dr. Dog played Tampa was Halloween ‘07 to a light crowd with only a few fans singing along. Though it was only a year-and-a-half ago, it was must have felt like a small lifetime for the Philly fivesome. Since then, the band has been on several “Best of” lists, put out a well-received album, ’08’s Fate, and eevn appeared on NPR a few times, too.

Just before midnight last night, Dr. Dog returned to the stage at Ybor City’s Crowbar and played to a packed house, tearing into “The Ark” first, following it up with an excellent rendition of “The Way the Lazy Do,” then filling the room  with warm melodies and three- and four-part harmonies as they performed almost all the tracks from Fate as well as a few cuts from 2005’s Easy Beat, like the grating “Fools Life.”

A guy in a dog costume replete with lab coat and stethoscope joined Dr. Dog for some dancing and clapping during “Oh No,” the the band closing the set shortly after with a haunting rendition of “The Beach” and “The Rabbit, The Bat and The Reindeer.” The crowd roused the band for a two-song encore, “Say Something” and “My Old Ways.” The show ended somewhere around 1 a.m.

Here’s the complete setlist: Read the rest of this entry »

Check out Eric’s review of the debut solo effort of Black Keys’ frontman Dan Auerbach:

The singing, guitar-playing half of the Black Keys drops his first solo album, and very little of it measures up to the music of his regular band. The Keys’ lean guitar-drums attack always imposed certain limitations, but Auerbach has not used his solo freedom to add refinement or polish; rather, he sinks deep into the slop: sloppy performances, sloppy production, sloppy sound.

He recorded the meandering, 14-track affair in his home studio, playing most of the instruments himself, and otherwise calling on friends and family.His songwriting does stretch beyond the hardscrabble garage-blues of the Black Keys, but his efforts at acoustic ballads, country-rock, Western twang, noise-funk and other stuff don’t come fully together. Click here to read more.

Recognizing the release (and very good reviews) of Morrissey’s new album, Years of Refusal, out today, Paste has released a list of the 10 best Smiths songs. Let’s see if we at CL agree with it:

10. “Bigmouth Strikes Again”—One of three Queen Is Dead songs on this list, “Bigmouth” features a nice anachronistic lyric about Joan of Arc and a Walkman. The song rocks fairly hard by Smiths standards; a colleague recently told me that “Morrissey actually growls on the live version off Rank,” then played me the clip. (Sure enough, he does.)

9. “Ask”—A highlight among highlights on Louder Than Bombs, in which our narrator spends “warm summer days indoors / writing frightening verse to a buck-toothed girl in Luxembourg.”

8. “Rusholme Ruffians”—An underrated Meat Is Murder track, which makes our list for three reasons: Johnny Marr’s jangly guitar, Morrissey’s schoolboy angst and the hopelessly romantic lyric, “I might walk home alone / but my faith in love is still devout”

7. “Girlfriend in a Coma”—A vicious two-minute pop song that leaves you reeling.

6. “How Soon Is Now”—Thanks to Marr’s epic riff, this may be the most widely known Smiths song amongst the general public. For a band that specialized in intimacy, “How Soon” works surprisingly well as an ’80s anthem.

5. “Panic”—I’ve always wanted a radio show with this as my theme song. (Bonus points if you can watch the video without vomiting.)

Read the rest of this entry »

About 50 folks came out to New World Brewery Thursday night to see Parlor Mob, B.L.O.R.R., Gasoline Heart and The Sheaks.

New Jersey based Parlor Mob play what best can be described as a mashup of Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin and Bon Jovi, without a hint of irony. They converted a few local skeptics with an absolutely frenetic live show. One attendee said, “I never listen to this kind of music, but these guys put on an amazing show.”

Speaking of frenetic live shows, Jacksonville’s B.L.O.R.R. (Bastard Love Child Of Rock ‘n Roll) managed to work a dozen young fans into a torn shirt, dancing tornado of hormones with their synth-driven set. Fearless Tampa Calling contributor Aly Carr managed to take a picture with their pants-less drummer.

More pictures below the jump. Some NSFW.

Read the rest of this entry »