With monikers such as The Colonel, Tait Nucleus?, and Smorgasbord!, and a catalog that includes an album called I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being the Master, the Detroit-based sextet Electric Six is often mistaken for a novelty act parodying the aggressive sexuality of disco and arrogant posturing of rock and roll.

But the band’s frontman, Dick Valentine, chafes at the suggestion that the Electric Six are anything short of straight-faced. “Cynical, yes, but not satirical,” says Valentine, whose real name is Tyler Spencer, in a phone interview with Washington City Paper. “Novelty is something that you premeditate, and you’re doing something that you wouldn’t normally do because you want to call attention to yourself or you want to sell more records. And with this band, it’s always been my path of least resistance—it’s just that these songs come naturally… I don’t think we’re trying to make a statement about other types of music in that way.”

Read More “Electric Six @ Black Cat” »

Monsters of Folk might seem like an inappropriate moniker for indie darlings Jim James, M. Ward, Conor Oberst, and Oberst collaborator Mike Mogis.

The supergroup kicks off its self-titled debut with a number that might fit more comfortably in the genre of Christian R&B pop: “Sometimes it’s so hard to believe in/But God, I know you have your reasons,” sing James, Ward, and Oberst on “Dear God (sincerely M.O.F.)”

But childlike faith gives way to adolescent rebellion on “Baby Boomer,” teachable strife on “Man Named Truth,” and finally cheerful optimism on “The Sandman, the Brakeman, and Me.”

Read More “Reviewed: Monsters of Folk” »

For a city populated largely by bureaucrats being slowly strangled by their neckties, Son Volt might be just what the doctor ordered. Frontman Jay Farrar, late of Uncle Tupelo, has made a living celebrating wanderlust and the American landscape with his laconic baritone and increasingly weary-sounding alt.-country tunes. Even if he’s surrendered the punk edge that defined his earlier music, Farrar is still a great songwriter, penning lyrics that are rarely complex but have your average Obama speech beat on romanticizing America and stirring up dormant patriotism. NPR recorded Son Volt when the band played the 9:30 Club in 2005. If you’re chained to your desk, you can listen to that concert here. But if restlessness still has any purchase on your soul, I recommend a sojourn to the 9:30 tonight.

SON VOLT w/ SERA CAHOONE, 9:30 CLUB, TONIGHT, 7 p.m. $20

“I’m having a lot more fun than I thought I would,” said Kings of Leon frontman Caleb Followhill, sweat dripping down his newly trim hair into his stern blue eyes. “I thought you like, wouldn’t be here, or, wouldn’t know who were were, or…”

He said this to a crowd of at least 7,000 bellowing fans Tuesday at the Merriweather Post Pavilion, where the Kings played a two hours of pulsing pop rock, roughly half of which were off their most recent album, Only By the Night. Caleb and his band of tightly jeansed kinfolk might have acted surprised by the high squeal factor of the boiling sea of an audience—which appeared equal parts sleeveless dudes and doe-eyed girls (the one in front of me was wearing a shirt reading “It’s my baby!” and nearly had a conniption fit when the guys played “Knocked Up” during their encore set)—but given the band’s arena-rock turn on its latest record, this is the sort of crowd they should learn to expect.

Read More “The Kingdom and the Power Chords: Kings of Leon @ Merriweather” »

Pomona professor Kevin D.H. Dettmar has an essay in this week’s Chronicle Review, titled “The Discreet Charm of the Bad Voice,” where he argues that listeners find atonal singing uniquely empathetic because it is easy to imitate. Dettmar’s examples are sometimes dubious—Neil Young, John Mayer, and Thom Yorke aren’t exactly the three tenors, but I would hesitate to call their voices bad by any pop standard—and he devotes a lot of space to name-dropping that might have been better used exploring the sociological underpinnings of the bad-voice appeal. But his basic thesis is worth considering: Are we drawn to certain “bad” singers because their badness makes their music more accessible? To put it in Tocquevillian terms: Is the popularity of imprecise singers like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and Tom Waits due to the equality of conditions in America, and the democratic tastes it engenders?

It’s an intriguing question, but I think it ultimately misses the point. The difference between Dylan, Cash, Waits, et al. and Joe Karaoke is that those three write extraordinary songs. That is their primary appeal. A shitty song can be popular if a great-sounding vocalist sings it, and a great song can be popular if a shitty-sounding vocalist sings it, but a shitty song by a shitty singer has won’t draw democrats or anyone else. The gap between the musician and the listener must still exist. In the Kurt Vonnegut story “Harrison Bergeron,” set in a dystopia where absolute equality reigns, the characters react with a justified lack of enthusiasm to a ballet performance featuring dancers that are no more or less talented than anyone else who might care to don a leotard. Surely a bad voice alone does not capture the democratic ear; it is merely an ornament of an otherwise moving melody, composition, or narrative. A more honest vehicle for a more honest song. Style following substance.

Read More “The Appeal of the ‘Bad’ Singer/David Dondero @ Jammin’ Java Tonight” »

The crowd that saw Back Door Slam Davy Knowles and Back Door Slam execute an acrobatic set at the Birchmere last night probably hadn’t seen guitar mastery like that since they were Davy Knowles’s age.

The audience skewed middle-aged—I was probably the youngest person there apart from the 22-year-old Knowles himself—and didn’t fill up the entire hall, which was too bad. But that didn’t stop Davy from turning on the electricity and sending portions of the crowd (one exuberant “young” lady in particular) to fits of hooting and flailing with his vintage blues howl and exceptionally lithe digits.

Opener Rob Drabkin, who flew all the way from Colorado for the occasion, was another technical whiz. He played a brief opening set, crooning over some complex acoustic licks in a style that a little too Dave Matthews for my taste. Then came Davy and BDS, and things got loud. Several thousand sixteenth notes, trills, and string-bends later, the show culminated in a slow jam in which Knowles good-naturedly schooled Maryland guitar-maker Paul Reed Smith, who in turn awarded Knowles a $30,000 guitar.

Read More “Cirque de Knowles: Back Door Slam @ Birchmere” »

If having your first name added to the name of your band is a bellwether for burgeoning celebrity, then you could say 22-year-old Davy Knowles has arrived. A British blues guitarist with a soulful baritone, Knowles has sort of an Stevie Ray Vaughan-meets-Richie Havens thing going on. His band, Back Door Slam Davy Knowles and Back Door Slam, released an album earlier this summer called Coming Up For Air. Produced by Peter Frampton, the record is very much pop with a blues sensibility, rather than the other way around.

In many ways, Knowles & BDS sounds like the younger brother of Grace Potter and the Nocturnals; both jam-ish blues-pop bands with lead singers who have great pipes and love to show them off—the main difference being that Knowles plays guitar, and Potter plays keyboards your heartstrings.

Speaking of Knowles’s weapon-of-choice, the dude flat-out shreds. For guitar nerds, this will be well worth the drive to Alexandria.

DAVY KNOWLES & BACK DOOR SLAM, TONIGHT @ BIRCHMERE, 7:30 P.M. $20

“Hey, there’s an interview goin’ on in here, asshole!” James Felice calls out the door of the Winnebago in the direction of guitar music. His brother Ian is strumming outside with a wild-eyed, fu-manchu’ed man named Searcher, who is singing along in falsetto.

Searcher pokes his head through the passenger’s side window. “Hey, you don’t need to call people ‘asshole,’ douchebag!”

Ian’s nasal voice arrives with the crown of his head at the side door. “I had to get the secret cigarette I keep here.” He produces a cigarette from somewhere.

“There’s only one? Ah, fuck.” says James.

“Yeah, and you don’t get one, you know why?” says Searcher through the front window.

“There’s an interview goin’ on in here!”

These are the Felice Brothers at home. They’ve lived in the beat-up Winnebago for the duration of their summer tour opening for Old Crow Medicine Show—the two brothers, their bassist, their fiddle player, two drummers, and their tour manager. It’s a crowded little cavern, with every surface buried beneath clothes, books, and miscellaneous clutter. There’s a tub full of beer, wine, and ice on the floor inside the door. James has poured us Delirium Nocturnum ale in plastic cups.

Read More “Ordinary Madness: An Interview with James Felice” »

When Levon Helm and The Band hosted a five-hour send-off concert in 1976, it was a musical event of mythic proportions. The Band and its guests—among them Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Joni Mitchell—were torchbearers of the American folk revival. And though it might be overly dramatic to say the movement “ended” with The Last Waltz, it was just a few years later that folk, blues, and gospel-soul began yielding pop to the second British invasion, arena rock, grunge, and hip-hop.

It would be likewise overdramatic to equate Sunday’s Route 29 Revue at Merriweather to The Last Waltz—certainly in terms of importance. But those attendees who’ve made a religious custom of watching the eponymous Scorcese film could not deny the aesthetic similarities. Old Crow Medicine Show, Iron and Wine, the Felice Brothers, and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals are very much torchbearers of the second folk revival, the one that began in the mid-’90s and has broadened in the new millenium thanks to the Web revolution and the consequent fragmentation of pop. Presiding over Sunday’s festival was Helm, the godfather.

Read More “‘We’re All In This Together’: Route 29 Revue @ Merriweather” »

It’s Christmas in August for Radiohead fans. Pitchfork reported yesterday that yet another new Radiohead track has hit the Internet, the second in a week!

The first—“Henry Patch (in memory of),” a paean to the eponymous last British World War I veteran, who died in July—was announced on the band’s Web site and covered widely in the press. The latest one, called “These Are My Twisted Words,” appeared yesterday without fanfare on a Radiohead fan site. Its origins are, apparently, a mystery—so much so that Pitchfork was unable to verify that it’s actually a Radiohead song. (It definitely is.)

The appearance of these two singles is part of a Web-era trend that has bands releasing material bit-by-bit, rather than in LP-sized chunks. Although musical purists might decry the incipient death of album, Thom Yorke—perhaps music’s purest purist—isn’t one of them. He hates making albums, calls the process “creative hoo-ha,” and finds recording them insufferable. This from the architect of arguably the best album of the 1990s.

In unrelated news, Slate’s Emily Yoffe today writes that because of something to do with the distinction between dopamine and opioids, animals are driven into insatiable fits when given morsels of sustenance at a time, rather than a full ration.

So, is our reverence for albums simply arbitrary, based on archaic packaging methods? Is the serialization of music going to turn us into crazed lab rats?

While you think about it, enjoy maybe-Radiohead’s latest song:

Read More “Killer Serials: Another Radiohead Release?” »