In the T2: Judgement Day-style techno-battle for punk rock's soul, the machines are winning. At least that's how it seems listening to Brooklyn's These Are Powers. On its '07 debut, Terrific Seasons, the trio was still pounding out wiry post-punk rhythms with fairly conventional gear–bass, guitar, a drum kit. But over the last couple of [...]
Washington Post music critic David Malitz and I have our quarrels, but they tend to be relatively benign—mostly involving Pavement records and rides to concerts. There's no serious beef.
But tonight we're manufacturing a rivalry—because there are no worthy basketball games to watch, because I wanted a reason to change out of my pajamas, and because [...]
In 2007, for one brief moment, the sun came out on The Clientele. The moody London-based quartet's breakthrough–'05s Strange Geometry–framed suburban melancholy in surrealist lyrics and reverb-laden guitars. It was somber stuff. But by the time the band completed its next record, God Save the Clientele, it's outlook had improved. Interviewed back then, guitarist/songwriter Alasdair [...]
There's no question that J. Robbins can still rock-out–Jawbox's recent sorta-reunion proved that much (although NBC Universal seems to have stricken the video footage from the internet). But nailing the coffee house vibe? That's another mater entirely.
Friday night Robbins–accompanied by cellist Gordon Withers and the smallest drum machine I've ever seen–performed an all acoustic [...]
It's hard to imaging a quiet J. Robbins. His skill with booming drums and thrashy guitars–both as an engineer and as a member of the post-hardcore band Jawbox–has pretty much defined his career. But tonight, he's gonna turn it down a little. For the first time ever Robbins will perform unplugged, as part of the [...]
Sampling the thought-streams of DC musicians past and present.
Tittsworth:
-'Losing my' ...lust for porn. Is that what that R.E.M. song was all about!?
-According to the guard, low pants was started cuz they didnt give belts in prison + u would get shit too big. Baggy bottom prison bait
-The word 'hipster' has similarities to the n word.. [...]
Last year D.C.'s Sockets Records–working in partnership with True Panther Sounds–released the debut record by Brooklyn's Fly Girlz. On Da' Brats From Da' Ville six teenage MCs rapped over tracks composed by Nathan Corbin, a member of weirdo-industrial-improv group Excepter. The record was a big success. It bridged the hipster-to-local divide. It got on morning [...]
Psychedelic rock is kind of like pornography, you know what it is when you see it. The Beach Boy's sunshine-soaked pop and the 13th Floor Elevators grimy riffs don't have much in common, yet an iTunes genre-grid can't seem to tell them apart. But however you choose to define psychedelic music, the tag certainly [...]
Back in September we interviewed D.C.-based singer/songwriter Aaron Thompson about his sleepy laptop jam "Vals." Thompson explained that the lyrics referred to imaginary landscape–a pastoral nowhere that he dreamed up while tinkering around with some chilly keyboard sounds. “I follow the telephone wires in the street lights and the sleeping houses,” he sings.
Perhaps the [...]
Tennis System's Matthew Taylor and Ra Ra Rasputin's Patrick Kigongo have been working together over the past couple of months to organize Done & Done, a music festival designed to cultivate an exchange of ideas between music scenes in D.C. and New York. But sometimes they jam, too. Intrigued by the concept of playing outdoors [...]
