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.

The irony, of course, is that once Langhorne Slim is amputated from the Guthrie-Dylan continuum the question of authenticity ceases to pose a problem, and we can appreciate Scolnik for what he is: An upbeat kid with a folk-gospel bent who makes dynamic, non-threatening, thoroughly enjoyable pop music.

Langhorne Slim plays tonight at the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hotel with Dawes, left-coast country rock act whom Rolling Stone last week certified as “breaking,” and who occasionally go Steinbeck all over their blog. Doors at 8 p.m.; $12-$14.

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.

Metro Station, featuring Miley’s half-brother Trace Cyrus, opened:

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.

Ortega, who was also the show’s director, generously filled the nearly two-hour This Is It with mostly performance footage. Of course, there are snippets of interviews with Jackson’s dancers, musicians, and other crew, all of whom gush (and occasionally tear up, even before his death) about the opportunity.

And even viewers whose fandom has grown latent will quickly see why. Jackson looks thin but hardly feeble. His feet were still fluid, his voice still silky. The precision of his choreography is astounding. (When asked how he’ll be able to respond to a visual cue if his back is turned, he hardly waits a beat before saying, “I gotta feel it. I’ll feel it.” You believe him.) And when anything was off, he’d try it again and again, never hesitating to hammer out details that would seem minuscule to us commoners.

The film’s arguably more impressive achievement, though, is showing a Jackson who’s human — and likable. He was often funny and unfailingly kind, whether correcting someone or coaxing his 24-year-old lead guitarist, “It’s your time to shine.” This is the oxygen-tank-sleeping chimp lover?

With the tour’s debut only a couple of weeks away when Jackson died, this footage also showcases the show’s elaborate set pieces, including a 3D film and floating ghost-brides and -grooms to accompany “Thriller” and an alternately amusing and action-packed backdrop to introduce “Smooth Criminal,” in which Jackson’s inserted into the 1946 Rita Hayworth movie, Gilda. (He catches a glove she tosses to the audience after a performance.) It all points to a concert that would have been spectacular, and a talent who was rightfully adored.

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.

The fans were as much fun to photograph as Gaga’s performance was:

Full gallery here.

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.)

To that end, Daisy is loud, simple, and–with 11 tracks clocking in at 40 minutes–short. Thematically, it contains the same cathartic accusations and dense but intuitively satisfying metaphors as 2006’s The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me, which I listened to obsessively while recovering from one friend’s suicide and another friend’s attempted suicide, all the while feeling that Lacey’s melodramatic lyrics were about characters whose experiences were somehow worse than my own.

Mega-suffering takes a slightly different form on Daisy. For instance, the line, “I’m a preacher without a pulpit,” from the title track,  doesn’t make sense at first. Brand New has the 16-24 demographic pinned down like a bull walrus during mating season, and it’s difficult to imagine why, or in what way, they feel like no one’s listening to them. But plenty of their fans, especially the ones who are maturing into the music (as opposed to growing too old for it) probably feel this way once or twice a day, even though their parents and friends/significant others are likely listening to them more than they realize.

Such melodrama probably gave rise the term “emo” being used as a pejorative, but for my money, blowing psychological speed bumps into trenches beats happy-go-lucky any day of the week.

If you’ve never dug Brand New, or if you’ve never listened to them based solely on their reputation, this album is a great place to start. It’s punkish and sonically mature. Especially good music for night drives, overtime at the office, or whenever something bad has happened to you and you need a little help emoting to your full potential.

Stream Daisy at Brand New’s Myspace.

“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.

We missed the first few songs due to car trouble and an overcrowded lot that forced us and the other latecomers into an office park about a quarter mile away, but the song that played our arrival—“Fans”—seemed apropos as we politely elbowed our way into the pavilion. “Fans,” from the third album, Because of the Times, is a model of form following function—a bouyant pop paean that instructs its muses to “rock to the rhythm and bop to the beat of the radio.” Votaries from the band’s earlier, indier years years might have preferred the Kings not embrace the idea of radio pop so openly, but the adoring masses at Merriweather cheered wildly at this and other new-fan favorites such as “Sex on Fire” and “Use Somebody,” the display screens on their digital cameras glowing like moon jellies.

Their stoic stage presence notwithstanding, the Kings went big and they went loud, Caleb hitting the rockstar notes with his simultaneously torn-up and pitch-perfect voice. “This is the most fun I’ve had at a show in a long time,” Caleb said as the set drew toward the end. “That means we’re going to come back real soon.” I swear I felt the cheers resonate in my kidneys. Native sons of the American South and pop idols in the U.K., it appeared by night’s end as though the Kings of Leon had successfully made a fiefdom of Maryland.

Footage from those moon-jelly digicams is all over YouTube, but the ear-caving volume of the show made for a lot of clipping. The below video was taken from far enough away to capture the audio pretty well, if you don’t mind getting seasick. For the full effect, plug your computer into a speaker stack and swallow it.

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.

Here’s part of the Ben Ratliff article from NYT:

He’s taking a stand against the sound quality of MP3s; he’s also taking a stand in favor of artists being able to control the medium and reception of their work.

“You can no longer use context as part of your work,” he said, glumly, “because it doesn’t matter what you do, somebody’s going to change the context of it. The confusion of creativity, making something, with this Internet idea of democratization …” he trailed off, disgusted. “It sounds like old-man stuff, but I think it’s disastrous for the possibilities of any art form.”

He’s not the first artist to attempt a download pushback. But is he a part of the vanguard or a dying breed?

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.

I suppose I owe you a mea culpa: Strange as it seems, somehow it’s easier to appreciate Free Energy on an academic level than a visceral one. To Sprangers and his bandmates, they’re just channeling their heroes and playing it straight. Hell, drummer Nick Shuminsky was wearing a Styx shirt. But the band’s songs conjure up grander, arena-sized associations it can’t pay off live — never mind the half-empty room. What I’m getting at is this: If you’re going for pure homage, then mean it. Execute rock kicks. Flash a devil sign or two. Spit on your fans. As long as the songs are good — and Free Energy’s songs are very good — it’s not self-parody.

The lexicon Free Energy trades in — of partying ‘cuz it’s all you’ve got left, of girls called “child” and “babe,” where “hold on” is the only imperative — is a seductive one. So are the choruses, repetitive, sure, but entirely infectious. And slowly, the charisma is creaking toward 11.

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In an entirely different sense, the evening’s openers also made smart use of repetition. With drummer David Rich hospitalized, Buildings (or BLDGS) , usually a quartet, became a one-piece for the evening (BLDG?). Guitarist Collin Crowe smiled nervously as he played, constructing slow-building soundscapes with his guitar, synth, and laptop (chirp noises abounded). In the post-rock tradition, Crowe’s compositions involved much guitar noodling, but these moments were more barbed than fluid — more Nels Cline or Loren Connors, say, than Mogwai or Do Make Say Think.

And the Brooklyn band Bear In Heaven favored crescendoing song structures and unusual rhythms over verse-chorus arrangements and 4/4 beats. The quartet drew from bands blending the epic and the artsy — some Spiritualized, much Deerhunter — and half its members played synths half the time. What resulted was a glazed, insistent aesthetic that probably could use more attentive songwriting, but showed promise. Not terrible for an evening of works-in-progress.

Photo by Benjamin R. Freed.

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.)

Wednesday, Aug. 26 | Free Energy, Bear In Heaven, and BLDGS | Black Cat downstairs | 8 p.m. | $10

Photo courtesy of Free Energy’s MySpace page.

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.

It also nodded at the group’s aural crosspollination: Like so much music coming out of the U.K. this decade (Khan is half-Pakistani, and grew up in Britain), Bat For Lashes’ assimilates disparate sounds (hip-hop, synth pop, Minimalism) without, well, batting a lash. In “Sleep Alone” and “Trophy,” Sarah Jones’ drums were all thunder claps and whip cracks, ratcheting up tension beneath Khan’s bassy piano stomps, Ben Christopher’s nauseous synth pulses, and guitarist Charlotte Hatherley’s well-calibrated pick scrapes.

And songs like “Glass,” “The Wizard,” and especially “Daniel” balanced ambient, bare-bones moments with dramatic upward swoops; often, the band achieved catharsis with small, percussive touches — a cymbal crash, a glimmering autoharp strum, chimes dangled like rosary beads — in the little moments between verses and choruses. (The evening’s opener, the mopey Americana act Other Lives, whose set I mostly missed, also thrived on dramatic crescendos and idiosyncratic gestures.) But the evening’s unifier was Khan’s theatrical vocals, sometimes breathy or bathetic, always enunciated. Even when the songwriter wailed (like in the majestic climax of “Siren Song”), she was more narrator than songstress.

There is, of course, much that’s ridiculous about Khan’s on-record persona; the same went for T. Rex in the late 1960s, when it sang about Middle Earth. But Khan doesn’t wear her eccentricity on her sleeve. With her knowing smile, bobbing bangs, and quipping banter ( “It’s getting hot in here,” she jokily sang at one point), Khan struck a demeanor at odds with her elegiac, genre-fiction hymns. The effect was easy digestion. I’d buy her fantasies any day.

Photo courtesy of Bat For Lashes’ MySpace page.