Fat White Family live in NY 12/2014 by Gretchen Robinette for BrooklynVegan
Fat White Family is touring in support of their Fat Possum/Without Consent-released album Songs for Our Mothers (out this past January) and bringing the party to Underground Arts tomorrow, April 29. Known for putting on a great live show, FWF are as entertaining as they are bizarre – and a band that Vice once called “British rock’n’roll’s final hurrah.” Watch the video for the album’s first track, “Whitest Boy on the Beach,” below.
Joining them is Canadian band Dilly Dally (Partisan Records)– if Courtney Love and Joey Santiago had formed a side project in the 90s, this is who you’d get. Katie Monks’ gritty voice paired with lush pop guitar distortion make for some delectable rock tunes. Watch “Purple Rage” below and don’t miss them.
Get there early for Philly (seltzer-loving) band Littler, who just independently released Of Wandering in March will open the show. Watch their video for “Slippery,” below (from AV Club).
Thao and the Get Down Stay Down bring their sunny, folk-tinged pop to Underground Arts on Saturday, April 16th, headlining a great bill that includes Saintseneca and Little Scream. They recently released what may be their best album yet, A Man Alive. The album was produced by Merril Garbus of tUnE-yArDs, and it bubbles over with positive energy. While it’s hard not to snap along to the rhythm of songs like “The Evening” and lead single “Nobody Dies”, Thao and the gang maintains their unique idiosyncrasies. Even the slower songs keep you looking up, as Thao Nguyen’s voice and songwriting shine. A Man Alive is a perfect album to welcome in spring. Continue reading “Concert Preview: Thao and the Get Down Stay Down at Underground Arts on Saturday, April 16th”
Your favorite experimental Baltimoreans since Zappa are back in action with some unlikely guests. Excluding Deakin (Josh Dibb aka the Deakmeister), who has been busy polishing his Kickstarter-funded solo debut scheduled to come out later this year, Animal Collective’s Avey Tare (Daniel Portner), Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), and Geologist (Brian Weitz) have teamed up with Wiki, Hak, and producer Sporting Life of New York’s hip-hop outfit RATKING to embark on a world tour in support of their forthcoming album Painting With. Fortunately for us, Union Transfer is the first stop of the tour; unfortunately, the groups’ odd allegiance has generated much attention, causing most U.S. dates to sell out immediately, and with good reason.
AnCo has come a long way since its formative years in Baltimore County, honing its fusion of ambient, psychedelic, and folk, equally influenced by krautrock and horror movies. With all members of the collective having solidified their respective stylings of electronic, from Panda Bear’s critically-acclaimed Person Pitch and Avey Tare’s inventive Slasher Flicks, the good ol’ gang is back, in more ways than one. With its newest single “FloriDada,” Animal Collective has returned to its more organic, percussive, freak-folk roots that it nearly perfected in its albums Feels. Channeling the left-field pop of Merriweather Post Pavilion, vivid colors of Strawberry Jam, and the cacophonous textures of Sung Tongs, the neo-psychedelic outfit has hybridized its past influences into a newly improved brand of accessible, highly melodic, and quasi-danceable pop that we have grown to love. And it’s damn well better than Centipede Hz. Painting With will be released by Domino Records on the day of the show, February 19th.
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RATKING isn’t as much of a wild card for the tour roster as some might think; in fact, it makes a good deal of sense with AnCo’s great influence of the hip-hop group’s atmospheric, wall-of sound sampling, and cerebral lyricism, as well as their collaboration with Avey Tare’s former noise project Black Dice. As grimy and abrasive as RATKING’s name suggests, referring to a cluster of diseased rats being tied together by the tails, their music weaves stories and images of the decrepit lows of passion. Making their XL label debut with 2014’s So It Goes, the trio has blown up among the underground rap community, including features with King Krule (Archy Marshall) and tour dates with Death Grips. Their live sets often include motion pictures of gory violence and social alienation, similar to that of Godspeed You! Black Emperor; although, Wiki “One Brow” will typically bludgeon himself in the head with his microphone simultaneously. To put these guys’ talent and ridiculousness into perspective, I have a friend driving up from Northwest Indiana to Philadelphia, an eleven-and-a-half hour drive, just to see RATKING with me. Don’t you dare miss it.
As WKDU’s resident jazz weirdo (at least until Marcel—er, the Night Fly, returns from his Southern Californian sabbatical), I feel some responsibility to keep the fine followers of WKDU abreast of Philadelphia’s jazz goings on. Fortunately, Ars Nova Workshop, longtime supporters of some of the best jazz and improvised music Philadelphia has to offer, recently announced a couple of killer shows for the month of January: the Tomeka Reid Quartet this Thursday, January 7 at the Art Alliance, and Nels Cline/Larry Ochs/Gerald Cleaver Trio at Boot & Saddle on January 15.
Wild Child, an indie pop six-piece with folky origins from the coolest city in Texas, is coming to Philly’s Union Transfer this Saturday.
When they first entered the music scene in Austin in 2010, Wild Child was all sugar and no spice. The band’s self-released first album, Pillow Talk, was bouncy and sweet—pleasant in the way that coffee with too much sugar is nice until about halfway through. The album blurred together into a stream of harmonized melancholy lyrics and toe-tapping guitar riffs.
But with their Kickstarter-funded second album, The Runaround, the band started to take on more wit and grit. My intro to the band came here, with “Crazy Bird,” the song they took to the stage of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.The Runaround experimented with more melodic diversity and some slightly edgier lyrics, propelling the band beyond the Austin scene.
Wild Child is currently on tour for their latest (and best) album, Fools, which hit the Internet October 2. Read the description for their newfound label, Duotone Records, and you’ll find it’s a match made in Americana-folk-indie-pop heaven. The title track gets the album off the ground with a more rock-influenced vibe than the band’s previous work—a welcome addition. The album then follows a long and enjoyable slide back to a soulful vibe that takes full advantage of lead singer Kelsey Wilson’s nostalgia-inducing pipes, though it often sidelines co-lead singer and baritone ukulele player Alexander Beggins to background vocals. But she shines, and she brings it home, backed up by some badass baritone ‘lele.
So tap your toes. Go to the show. I’ll see you there.
I see it as a positive sign when a label I like signs a band outside their wheelhouse. Deerhunter on Kranky. Nick Cave and Liars on Mute. When a label with a well-established niche gives a group that significant of a vote of confidence, the results are often excellent.
This was part of what initially drew me to Sinkane, whose first album with the label, Mars, is a relative outlier in DFA’s relatively consistent dance sound (sure, they signed Black Dice, but many of the label’s acts are instantly identifiable). Mars runs the gamut from jazz, to krautrock, to funk in a strikingly elegant way–much like label mastermind James Murphy’s LCD Soundsystem, Sinkane synthesizes his influences in a way that feels less derivative, and more like original expression thorugh existing sonic templates.
His more recent effort, Mean Love, dials back the eclecticism a bit. While I prefer the more free-wheeling Mars, Sinkane’s restraint is not without its merits. The record is packed with slinky, funky jams, packed with the attention to detail one might expect from a studio rat multi-instrumentalist (he has previously worked with Yeasayer, Caribou, and of Montreal, among others).
Sinkane will be playing at Johnny Brenda’s on Tuesday, and I’d highly advise checking it out. The dude can play, and I’m sure his band will have chops to spare as well. Get more info and tickets here.
