The first half of their set was tentative and a bit underwhelming, but Florence and the Machine quickly got more comfortable during their second show ever in the United States. By the end of the set, Florence Welch and company had the entire floor of the 9:30 Club jumping up and down, which as many [...]
There was no Stephen Colbert cameo during Alicia Keys' set last night at the Verizon Center, but there was still some additional star power in the house. This was yet another phone-booth event attended by members of the Obama family, in this case the First Lady and the Obama daughters. There was quite a stir [...]
Zevious and Seabrook Power Plant were a perfect pair at Baltimore's Orion Sound Studios on Saturday night, each bringing a viciously complex brand of mathy rock to the table. Zevious' compositions stood out, building enormous tension and proving to be much more than just an exercise in counting out weird rhythms. Seabrook Power Plant was [...]
Tomorrow: Although the guitar trio Zevious started off as a jazz combo, it quickly spiced up its compositions with strong hints of math rock, complex prog, and even a touch of technical metal. The group recently released its latest album, After the Air Raid, on Cuneiform Records, a perfect fit if there ever was one. [...]
By now the crappy, rainy weather of last weekend is a distant memory—but it was very, very real indeed for anyone who went to the 10th annual Shamrock Fest near RFK Stadium. Although it was a sideshow to the excessive drinking that is the real reason folks go to this thing, some music did happen, [...]
Folk/Americana band Red Molly played to a full house at Jammin' Java last night, singing songs that, in the words of one fan, fall into one of three categories: "lost love, lost life, and get lost." Three-part harmonies and sensitive string arrangements were the name of the game as the trio played tracks from [...]
"I know it's weird," Tanya Tagaq said of her music on Friday night at National Geographic. Tagaq's emotional stage presence was both a strength and weakness, as she vacillated between cathartic release while throat-singing and vapid philosophizing while singing conventionally. Despite the low points, the performance, which mostly consisted of a single long [...]
Just the idea of an Inuit throat singer performing at National Geographic should be enough to pique the interest of many adventurous music listeners. But if that weren't enough, a mere list of Tanya Tagaq's musical associations should lead to outright fascination. To wit: Tagaq's latest record, Auk/Blood, was released on Mike Patton's [...]
About three songs into the performance last night, a fan somehow got onstage—"I don't know where the hell he came from," a Verizon Center staffer said afterward—and rushed Jay-Z, before being unceremoniously thrown off the high stage by a bodyguard (he was shaken up, but fine). If you're looking for photos of that excitement, they're [...]
Atomic plays what I like to think of as free jazz for prog fans—relatively accessible avant-jazz that revels in stop/start dynamics, abrupt thematic shifts, bizarre time signatures, blazingly intense solos, and the juxtaposition of beautiful melody with raucous dissonance. Despite the near-destruction (twice!) of a borrowed upright bass, the quintet successfully ran through a [...]
