REAL ESTATE, FAMILY PORTRAIT: LIVE AT MONSTER ISLAND BASEMENT
Last time I saw real Estate they were opening for Woods at Market Hotel. I liked them well enough then to catch them at another Todd P show this weekend, featuring a total of 4 bands, although we only saw 3 of them.
Liam the Younger was on stage when we got there, and they were going at it. They weren’t bad, but they did need some help in the vocals department. Both of the singers were a little bit weak. Neither projected enough and there wasn’t any balance, you could barely hear the poor kids. I am going to chalk it up to a little bit of inexperience and a little bit of nerves.
Family Portrait was up next, and in my opinion, they stole the show. Their music has a lot of variety and a lot of energy. Styles swing from 60’s surfer songs to Nirvana inspired rock songs. Despite the range of influences, it was still a consistent sound, and enjoyable the whole way through. I look forward to hearing more from these boys (guys? we were guessing at their ages, and the results were inconclusive). Whatever they are doing, I hope playing Todd P basement shows is the springboard for a real record. Stay tuned, I’ll be following up on them.
Real Estate headlined the show. Here’s the thing about them: they are extremely consistent in their sound. They all sort of blend together a little bit. They put on a good show technically, despite a crowd of adoring fans, people weren’t getting into it. On another note, they had some er…supporters there who were sort of shouting in between songs and it was rather unprofessional. I don’t want to be that uptight person at a show…but I feel like these guys are probably going to do very well for themselves in the next couple of years and the time to establish themselves as professionals is now. As far as their musical performance was concerned they played like top notch gentleman, I think they just need to get their friends under control a little bit.
A few words about Monster Island Basement: I miss Market Hotel. It had such character (i think that character was old nicotine) and it was a good shape so that you were never in a bad sopt. MIB has lots of suppor beams, and a weird corner stage that makes it easy to be in a blind zone or stuck right next to a speaker. I’ll take it over nothing for sure, but I amholding out hope that Todd P can get proper licensing in place for MH so that it will come back to life. Without the nicotine.
<3 The Elephant
THE MORNING BENDERS, HOLIDAY SHORES: LIVE AT MUSIC HALL OF WILLIAMSBURG
Saturday (4/24) night’s line-up at Music Hall of Williamsburg was a sunny pop-rock theme adventure. Featured headliners The Morning Benders are from lovely San Francisco and their music certainly reflects it. As much of today’s west coast rock, they are breezy and infectious–ladies seem to be most susceptible to the beguiling charms of lead singer Chris Chu’s charms. Big Echo has received tons of critical acclaim (a great 8.2 from LTH) throughout the blogosphere since day 1, so it was no surprise that they were able to completely sell out 2 shows here in New York. Their particular brand of 50’s surf inspired indie pop is nice because it blends contemporary indie rock with obvious throwbacks and lots of charisma.
<3 The Elephant
(Photos courtesy: Jeremy Bold)
FILM REVIEW: EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP
By the end of the film you’ll be scratching your head trying to separate “Art” from well… everything else. Exit Through The Gift Shop is an insightful commentary on street art, and how easily it can go from countercultural movement to a social status symbol sold to the highest bidder.
The film centers on LA vintage boutique owner and confused francophone Thierry Guetta, an overweight man in his mid 40’s, with a face full of hair and a shaky command of the English language (often to comic effect). Guetta is obsessed with recording his every waking moment, which he accomplishes with the aid of a handheld camera. Guetta’s obsession with filming combined with an enthusiastic but ultimately delusional sense of the world takes him on a journey from amateur cameraman, to bogus graffiti documentarian, to self-proclaimed street artist and overnight sensation.
As the first to turn a camera on the world of illicit street art, Guetta was in a unique position to document a majority of the world’s greatest street artists. Influenced by his relationships with Banksy, Shepard Fairey and others, Guetta eventually finds himself motivated to create his own art. Putting the camera down at the suggestion of his role model/friend, Banksy, Guetta takes to the LA streets, reflecting back the style of the artists he so assiduously documented. Like a happy little puppy having just been tossed a new bone, Guetta begins plastering Los Angeles with building-sized stencil portraits of his newfound persona “Mr. Brainwash”.
Inspired to create an event around his art, Guetta’s prolific plastering was ultimately outshone by his self-sponsored solo exhibit of over 200 pieces. The pieces are, in some cases, massively derivative and, some might say, knockoffs and caricatures of his friends’ and mentors’ work. Instead of developing his body of work over time, Mr. Brainwash mass produces his pieces on a factory-style assembly line, staffed by several unfortunate “assistants”. When Mr. Brainwash’s solo show grosses over a million dollars in sales, it leaves the art world in a wake of questions and confusion. Was what just happened art, commerce, self-promotion? Or something far more insidious? And what implications does Mr. Brainwash’s success have for the art world?
Exit Through The Gift Shop is amazing, humorous and insightful; much credit is due to the director, artist and long time social prankster, Banksy. In the end, Guetta may have us all brainwashed.
-David Jackowski
LIARS: LIVE AT BOWERY BALLROOM
Upon initial listen, Liars sound rather hardcore and angry, and you know me, I shy away from hardcore. Lately though I’ve been signing a different tune, I have started to get into lo-fi, which has led me closer to noise rock and hardcore.
So with a little nudging from the deeply trusted Nana, and some other music friends, I decided to go see them at Bowery Ballroom on 4/15/10. If I don’t like them at Bowery, then they just aren’t for me. I really gave their 2007 ST album a few good listens before the show. At Jeremy’s recommendation I started with the last track, Protection. It’s the softest and most melodic track, and really demonstrates the depth of what Liars are doing. Before the show I was still not 100% on board, but hey, I love shows, so nothing to lose.
We got there just in time for Liars. To me they seem to be a great paradox: the sound doesn’t match the act of the band. This can be either a good thing or a bad thing, in this case it’s a wonderful thing. They clearly work really hard to build the sound they create, and do it with fervor and enthusiasm. Front man and lead singer Angus Andrew has incredibly long forearms, and when he dances he looks a bit like a transvestite orangoutang, very feminine and little awkward. I loved his dancing, it really defined the paradox: post punk meets Brittany Spears? Also, Andrew is totally raging on stage, and sweats like crazy. He would be still for a moment and then start head banging, and it was like a backlit shower. In the meantime, while Andrew is on stage rocking out, the crowd was essentially moshing in the front. Their music does have some violent undertones (“Blood, Blood, Blood” from the track “Broken Witch”) but also some sweet moments. Part of me wonders if it is intended as sarcasm and humor, validating the fact that upon first listen they are merely a hardcore band, but in reality they have a serious musical background and strong theme.
They were having fun onstage, and being badass rocker pirates has nothing to do with the image, and everything to do with the music. They were incredible onstage, created such energy that I am considering seeing them again at Music Hall of Williamsburg on Sunday. They make me want to run out and see Fuck Buttons and No Age and every other angry band that I previously thought I didn’t want to see.
Have a nice weekend Lovies!
(all photos courtesy of Ryan Muir)
<3 The Elephant
MGMT: CONGRATULATIONS
[rating:3]
MGMT: Congratulations
Label: Columbia
Release Date: April 13, 2010
A lot can happen in three years. Just ask Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden, the duo behind Brooklyn-based MGMT. In 2007, the band released Oracular Spectacular, an album made up mostly of neo-psychedelia but highlighted by a trio of glorious candy-colored synth-pop singles. One of them, the anthemic “Time to Pretend,” employed an ironic rock star daydream—complete with models, drugs, cars and choking on your own vomit—to convey genuine angst about expiring youth and the threat of a future spent in the muck of normality; it was also catchy enough to make them into actual rock stars. Only a few years after graduating from liberal arts college, the pair were opening for Radiohead, yielding collaboration requests from Paul McCartney, topping charts and winning Grammys and having the cliches they had previously only joked about thrust in their faces. It wasn’t exactly a leftfield success story—of all their fellow Williamsburg Players, it’s easy to imagine these two fashionable hipsters being the ones to hit it the biggest—but as guys who believed they could only pretend of a life beyond morning commutes and office jobs, Goldwasser and VanWyngarden would probably tell you the last three years have been totally fucking crazy.
Maybe too crazy. As hinted at by the sarcastically self-impressed title, Congratulations is a song cycle about fame, but musically it is a retreat from everything that actually made MGMT famous. Nothing here is as instantly grabby as Oracular Spectacular‘s Holy Trinity of “Time to Pretend,” “Kids” and “Electric Feel,” nor do any of the songs aspire to that level of supreme pop ecstasy. Instead, it expands on the elements of its debut overshadowed by that trio of tight, focused gems—namely, Oracular‘s loose, unfocused second half. Except with duller production. And less hooks. Oh, and fake British accents, for some reason.
Is this just a classic example of Difficult Second Album Syndrome? Or is it, as some early reviews have theorized, the band’s deliberate attempt to torpedo itself and, in the process, a fanbase it doesn’t really want? A little of both, probably. Those disappointed critics are forgetting that Oracular‘s singles were the anomalies on that album; the sound of Congratulations is more honest about what kind of band MGMT really is: retro-revivalists enamored with the free-flowing quirkiness of ’60s psyche-pop. But after fooling everyone into thinking you’re an electro-dance group, sticking a 12-minute, shape-shifting cloud of opium smoke (“Siberian Breaks”) in the middle of your sophomore effort is clearly an act of intentional polarization: Either you’re on this trip with them, or you never were to begin with.
All that’s fine, of course, if the songs are there. For the most part on Congratulations, they aren’t. Too many ideas feel incomplete. Opener “It’s Working,” driven by an ascending pseudo-surf guitar riff and underpinned by harpsichord and burbling percussion, starts with great forward momentum but eventually goes limp. “Someone’s Missing” begins with VanWyngarden’s lonely voice floating somewhere out in the ether before bursting into the sunniest moment on the album…and then it promptly fades out. At other times, the band shoves a bunch of those half-formed ideas into one song, causing the whole thing to either break apart at the seams (the schizoid panic of “Flash Delirium”) or drift off to nowhere (“Siberian Breaks,” the useless instrumental “Lady Dada’s Nightmare”). “Brian Eno,” a speedy hallucinogenic fantasy that imagines the titular producer doling out career advice from a black cathedral, pairs the record’s catchiest chorus with its goofiest concept, which must’ve thrilled the band’s label as it dug through all those fractured parts searching for something to sell the album on.
And then there’s the title track. It ends Congratulations on a somber, acoustic slow-dissolve, but it is really the sequel to “Time to Pretend,” where that song’s impossible rock’n’roll dreams come true. Only, instead of models and cars and drugs, the band finds itself surrounded by sycophants and accountants and new friends “that keep on combing back their smiles,” choking not on vomit but its own hype and living for nothing but empty pats on the back. If this is fame, VanWyngarden and Goldwasser would probably rather not have it anymore. And after this album, they might get their wish. As someone once said, life can always start up anew.
-Matthew Singer
A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS, THE BIG PINK: LIVE AT WEBSTER HALL
A Place to Bury Strangers:
Brooklyn’s volume knob maximalist trio A Place to Bury Strangers is an experience in noise. They played Webster Hall last night, March 30th and made me believe the hype that they are New York City’s “loudest band.”
MP3: A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS: EXPLODING HEAD
MP3: A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS: IN YOUR HEART
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The Big Pink:
Mp3: THE BIG PINK: VELVET
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ACRYLICS, LISSY TRULLIE, BEAR HANDS, HOLY GHOST!: LIVE AT GLASSLANDS
Lissy Trullie:
Lissy Trullie has become the rocker du jour for fashionistas and hipsters throughout New York. She oozes hipness. With her 60’s mod warhol haircut, dangerously high mini skirt, and sexy pouty stage persona, there is no question, Lissy is interesting to look at. But its not all style over substance. Her set on Friday showed she can be interesting to listen to as well. Working through a mix of noisy garage pop rock hits with Strokes-like riffs, along side some more poppy Blondiesc tunes, and a surprisingly good cover of Hot Chips “Ready for the Floor”, she managed to grab my full attention and leave me wanting [to hear] more…and I swear it wasn’t just the mini skirt… I think.
Lissy Trullie – “Self-Taught Learner (TMDP Remix)” | download