Tampa Calling

As an addendum to my recent column, “Traveling to see music without losing your money (or your mind),” I’ve put together this small group of shows and fests that provide some good selections for music-motivated travel. If you haven’t already made travel plans this summer, here are some of your best bets.

Grizzly Bear and TV on the Radio
Saturday, June 13, The Tabernacle, Atlanta
If you wanna go, get your tickets now — it’s a Saturday night co-headlining bill featuring of two of Brooklyn’s most hip and beloved bands, both with recent albums — Grizzly’s just-released Veckatimest, TVOTR’s fantastic Dear Science from last year — so the show will most definitely sell out. I would be at this show, front row, if I wasn’t just returning from a music-motivated vacation that same Thursday.

The Decemberists (pictured) with Andrew Bird and Blind Pilot
July 18-19, Edgefield, Portland, Oregon
The chamber rock quintet only comes as close as Atlanta and plays that date on Wednesday, June 3 — not at all convenient for a road trip unless you plan on taking that week off. But the tour also includes this appealing Saturday-Sunday run in Portland, and with whistling singer/songwriter Andrew Bird, and Portland’s own indie pop duo, Blind Pilot. Read the rest of this entry »

A new weekly roundup of what the CL team is listening to right now.

Wild Sweet Orange
We Have Cause To Be Uneasy (2008)
This is one the most well-rounded albums I’ve heard in a long time. It came in a press packet to me last year, and my loyalty and love for this album has not faded since. In fact, while grocery shopping yesterday, it was all I listened to on my iPod and it made selecting vegetables a shit-ton of fun. The album is very deep lyrically, and I appreciate the diversity in the song selection. Some songs are surprising because the intro doesn’t give you any indication of what the bulk of the song is going to sound like, other songs are slow but pick up at the end, and some songs simply rock out with screaming and drums. Warning: Don’t listen to this album if you aren’t in the mood to be forced to contemplate the meaning of life.
Recommended tracks: “Tilt,” “House of Regret,” “Land of No Return”
–Aly

Big L
Lifestylez Ov da Poor & Dangerous (1995)
Big L’s wordplay is still impressive more than a dozen years later. The rhyme scheme and wit of his verse on “Da Graveyard” (which features a very young sounding Jay-Z) would embarrass most of today’s so-called heavy hitters. The title track and “All Black” have that explicit, self-assured swagger your inner alpha male loves. Big L definitely deserves to be on the Brooklyn Hip Hop Mount Rushmore and that’s saying something.
–Infinite Skillz

Plants and Animals
Parc Avenue (2008)
Montreal trio Plants and Animals put out their full-length debut last February, got nominated for the 2008 Polaris Music Prize (a coveted Canadian award with $20,000 in booty for the winner), earned top marks from PopMatters and Pitchfork, and somehow flew completely under my radar. Sad because this album is indie rock gold with its warm and majestic balladry, sometimes bolstered by grandiose choral arrangements, other times gently meandering into the rootsy poignancy of ‘70s folk psychedelia.
Recommended tracks: “Bye Bye Bye” and “Faerie Dance”
–Leilani Read the rest of this entry »

Lots of great music this year; here’s my subjective list of the best. Snider’s will be posted later.

1. of Montreal: Skeletal Lamping (Polyvinyl)
I’ve lauded this album to the moon and back, and I love it for the very reason it turns other people off – the quick and abrupt rhythm changes within the songs, the clever and suggestive lyrics, and the layers upon layers of rainbow-hued sonics. Kevin Barnes’ refusal to dumb down his music for mainstream audiences is commendable and refreshing, especially since the result is a virtual masterpiece. I’ve listened to it at least 100 times over the past three months and I’m still not sick of it, which, in my book, makes it the best album of ’08.

2. Bon Iver: For Emma… Forever Ago (Jagjaguwar)
Bon Iver is Wisconsin singer/songwriter Justin Vernon. His rootsy debut album under this moniker is the sort that takes your breathe away with its stunning, austere beauty — light drums, acoustic guitar, the occasional wash of background sonics. But the sole element that makes For Emma’s subtleties and well-crafted songs of longing and loss work so well is Vernon’s delicate, soulful falsetto, sometimes multi-tracked to elegant effect and so magnificently expressive it brings a tear to the eye.

3. TV on the Radio: Dear Science (Interscope)
Bumpin’ disco-funk dance music marked by out-of-the-box beats and brimming with sexiness and soul, Dear Science found a rather serious Brooklyn art rock band building upon their dark meditative style by letting loose and having fun with it.

4. MGMT: Oracular Spectacular (Columbia)
People use the word “derivative” a lot when discussing this band. But MGMT does ’70s-style psychedelic glam rock right, throws in some funky electro-pop for kicks, and presents it with the sort of cock-strutting confidence you’d expect from a band on its fifth record, not its first (or second, depending on who you’re asking). What really makes this album a top 10, however, is the production quality; I’ve heard demos and the songs wouldn’t be nearly so good if they hadn’t been jazzed up in the studio.

5. Icy Demons: Miami Ice (Obey Your Brain)
The experimental Chicago/Philadelphia ensemble departed from their distinctly Zappa-esque-jazzified-prog-rock-meets-New-Wave-pop sound to an album so out there that even I couldn’t wrap my mind around it at first – off-kilter melodies, shifting time-signatures colliding with warm and mellow samba beats, menacing cello and buzzing synthesizers broken up by a xylophone-infused vocal interlude. In the end, the novelty spoke to me.

Read the rest of this entry »