If folk music’s prime currency is authenticity, Langhorne Slim might well earn some crooked eyebrows. Classically trained at the SUNY-Purchase conservatory, Sean Scolnik donned loafers and floppy hat and named himself after his hometown in the tradition of all those rail-hoppin’ ramblers who used to do that. The blogosphere gobbled up this aesthetic and and have cast Slim in the role of Guthrie-Dylan inheritor he came dressed to play.

Really, Slim doesn’t make music like that at all. His music is much more poptimistic, with an evangelical energy that has led some critics to call his music religious (and not in the way Bob Dylan equated Woody Guthrie’s music with religion). Slim’s lyrics lunge, albeit passionately, with a blade that is shinier than it is sharp. Cat Stevens, with his spiritual conceit, is an apter analog—or the Avett Brothers, with whom Slim has toured.

Read More “Tonight: Langhorne Slim @ Rock ‘N’ Roll Hotel w/ Dawes” »

The First Lady was at the Verizon Center last night, daughters and Secret Service in tow, to witness Miley Cyrus‘ first tour under her own name rather than the Hannah Montana brand. Many more photos after the jump (click on any photo for a larger version).

Note: these photos may not be republished elsewhere.

Read More “Photos: Miley Cyrus @ Verizon Center” »

Directed by Kenny Ortega

There’s no mention of Michael Jackson’s death in This Is It — not even dates under his photo in the closing-credits dedication. But even if director Kenny Ortega had chosen to acknowledge the King of Pop’s passing, it’d still be easy to forget the fact while watching this extraordinary and eye-opening cobble of footage shot during rehearsals for Jackson’s fatefully named tour.

The last decade or so has framed Michael as an alleged pedophile and frail freak, the butt of jokes and scorn whose decision to perform 50 shows in London this year seemed a desperate attempt to dig himself out of bankruptcy. The truth of his past, however, feels irrelevant in light of the truth shown in this film: By the time the tour was gelling, the Weird One had left the building. Read More “Reviewed: This Is It” »

Compared to the utter preposterousness that was Lady Gaga at the VMAs, last night’s show in Richmond was surprisingly tame. Still, if you’ve got tickets for Gaga’s show tonight at DAR Constitution Hall, you’re in for a pretty bizarre spectacle. Lots of photos after the jump and at the full gallery.

Read More “Photos: Lady Gaga @ Landmark Theater, Richmond” »

On Daisy, Brand New is still providing soundtrack material for countless unwritten bildungsromans, the kind set in suburban high schools, dorm rooms, and first apartments, and which feature protagonists who didn’t have it rough growing up, and don’t have it all that rough now, but who, deep down, would rather feel pissed off for no reason, than feel, you know, just so so.

Incidentally, Brand New front man Jesse Lacey has implied this might be it. If true, Daisy’s glumness and cacophony are both a touching coda to the group’s own confused youth (fighting with other bands, bitching about neurotic fans, living on Long Island) and a melancholy disclaimer that adulthood does not guarantee equilibrium. (Lacey still lives on Long Island.)

Read More “Reviewed: Brand New’s Daisy” »

“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” »

On Sunday, the New York Times ran an article about Jim O’Rourke, an underground overachiever who, in addition to recording his own solo music, has played in Sonic Youth and Gastr Del Sol, and worked in various other capacities with Wilco, Joanna Newsom, and Superchunk.

His latest project is the new solo album The Visitor, a recording that, at times, features as many as 200 tracks of instruments.

As one might imagine, an album such as this would require quite an intricate mix, which is perhaps why The Visitor will only be available on CD and vinyl—no digital download.

Read More “Has the Pushback Begun?” »

This review involves a lot of name-dropping. So don’t say you weren’t warned.

And, really, how else to consider Free Energy? The Philadelphia-based blogosphere favorite doesn’t strive for originality, nor even hipster cachet: You can hear Television or Big Star all you want in the quintet’s peppy, big-guitar sound, but really, these guys are all about what you hear on “corporate classic rock stations.” Why it works — at least on record in mp3s — has as much to do with the group’s nonironic approach as its mindless raison d’être and taut, oft-inspired songwriting. We’re understandably skeptical of “woo-ooh,” “oh-oh,” and “hey alright” choruses, but it’s refreshing that Free Energy can actually sell them. Whether that places the band, in those gilded annals of nostalgia rock, closer to The Strokes or The Darkness, I can’t say.

In a quick, fairly energetic, and underattended show at the Black Cat downstairs last night, Free Energy cribbed T. Rex’s “Mambo Sun” almost verbatim and sometimes invoked The Stooges, but mostly, it reveled in the stuff of Alice Cooper, Cheap Trick, early Tom Petty, and (most centrally) Thin Lizzy — think big, loud, elemental, and poppy. Objectively, it was perfect: Hooks breathed, guitars sirened, cowbells clanged. Skinny as death and neon as fuck, singer Paul Sprangers pranced and strutted and crooned, a little bit Iggy Pop, a little less Julian Casablancas. And I was utterly nonplussed.

Read More “Hey Alright: Free Energy @ Black Cat” »

Pastiche can be a funny thing: When Paul Sprangers and Scott Wells played fuzzy, proggy slacker pop in the St. Paul, Minn., band Hockey Night, I figured that as long as Stephen Malkmus keeps pumping out decent-or-better albums every few years, my brain just doesn’t have the RAM for a Pavement Lite.

If this is beginning to sound like a half-hearted endorsement, I’ll stop and say this: Sprangers and Wells’ new outfit, Free Energy, makes anthemic, insanely catchy music with a hefty, forgivable debt to your favorite ’70s pre- (but not proto-) punk bands — think Thin Lizzy’s chutzpah, Cheap Trick’s contagiousness, and the wide, romantic eyes of The Raspberries. The much-buzzed-about group (now based in Philly) recently signed with New York’s dance-punk mavens DFA, which some people find strange or something, since Free Energy isn’t a dance band. Bullshit. I’m shimmying in my desk chair just writing about these guys. What they lack in originality (plus ça change… and all that), they more than make up for with insistent songwriting, strutting rhythms, and insane hooks.

Free Energy brings its old-is-new-again rock to the Black Cat backstage tomorrow, and the show, also with Bear In Heaven and D.C.’s BLDGS, is well worth your $10. Unless, of course, you’re set on getting your Gossip Girl on with Cobra Starship instead.

This blog has already covered Free Energy’s self-titled single, so check out the hometown-loving video (and show deets) after the jump. (I lived in Philly for two years, so sometimes I gotta rep, too.)

Read More “Live Tomorrow: Free Energy @ Black Cat” »

You probably could take the phantasmagorical art pop of Bat For Lashes and resoundtrack Labyrinth with it: Hell, the 1986 Henson/Lucas/Bowie collab might even benefit from Natasha Khan’s spooky, finicky arrangements and fantasy-genre imagery. The poetry of crystal towers, emerald cities, wizards and white magic — not at all credible on paper but enchanting and believable in Khan’s hands — mesmerized a large crowd for much of last night’s show at the 9:30 Club; at other times, a brittle, more grounded Romanticism reigned. And a massive backdrop of a wolf howling against a full moon (twice between songs, Khan howled, too) stressed that despite its medievalist reveries, Khan’s album Two Suns is 2009’s best, most ambitious paean to the caprice of nature (along with its distant thematic cousin, Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone).

To an extent, seeing Bat For Lashes in 2009 feels like seeing Kate Bush in 1985 (well, I imagine). Last night, Khan’s voice was fuller and less quirky than Bush’s, but it shared its mystifying quality, and occasionally its sensuality. And Khan’s expert touring band (like her, multi-instrumentalists all) conjured up music that, not unlike Bush’s best albums, blended precocious ideas of what pop should sound like with a pre-Renaissance ethos. Even the stage set-up — shrinelike, with statues of angels and ravens, antique lamps, and glittery accouterments — suggested a spirituality built on the bones of dead cultures.

Read More “Fantasy Gets Spooky: Bat For Lashes @ 9:30 Club” »