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” »

Your sacred cows mean nothing.

That, at least briefly, was the message of Los Campesinos! last night at a packed 9:30 Club. “I never cared about Ian MacKaye,” sputtered Gareth Campesinos!, the Cardiff, Wales-based group’s frontman, in “The International Tweexcore Underground,” surely aware of the lyric’s particular application. Not that the audience — whose average age couldn’t have exceeded 18 — noticed or cared. Throughout the evening it returned the septet’s considerable panache in triplicate, pogoing and mouthing along to each sarcastic word, even when the group’s schoolyard accents and entropic arrangements swallowed the vocals whole. Energy overpowered attitude, and for a while, that was fine.

Read More “Stick With The ‘Rubbish’: Los Campesinos!/Girls @ 9:30 Club” »

Fleet Foxes have sold out two shows at the 9:30 Club tomorrow night. If you’re one of the folks with tickets, a word of advice: show up early to see Espers, who will be opening both shows. Espers are a Philadelphia-based band playing folk music with a heavy dose of psychedelic rock influence. Acid-drenched electric guitar and gorgeous vocal harmonies are their tools of the trade. Fronted by Meg Baird (who had a recent solo album out on Drag City, Dear Companion) and Greg Weeks (who – obscure trivia time! – once ran a prog-rock mail-order operation called New Sonic Architecture), this sextet takes beautiful but brooding folk songs and turns them into dark, intense journeys into the night.

Listing bands like Fairport Convention, Pentangle and Incredible String Band as influences, Espers are a solid pairing with Fleet Foxes. Their music is weightier and darker, but equally inspiring in its ethereal beauty. They’ve been largely inactive since their 2006 sophomore album II, so this is the first chance in a long time that anyone has gotten to see them. If you don’t have a ticket to either of these shows, Espers will also be appearing at Sonar in Baltimore, supporting Kurt Vile, on August 11.

Photo courtesy of Espers’ Myspace page

Thursday and Friday offer fun danceable afropop gigs.  Thursday night, the Chicago-based Occidental Brothers Dance Band International will be at DC9 with their meld of classic Ghanaian highlife, Congolese rumba, various other African styles and a bit of jazz, indie-rock, and folk.  While most golden era African bands had more than one guitar and frequently a full horn section, these folks(including 2 Ghanaians) do just fine with one axe-player plus trumpet, sax, bass, and percussion. 

On Friday Nigerian juju legend King Sunny Ade and his African Beats return to town, at the 930 Club.  At home, Ade (pictured above) has released two cds since his fine 2005 appearance at the Lincoln Theatre but here we have only gotten a reissued Seven Degrees North, which was originally released in 2000.

Back in 1988, Ade and his then-26 piece band put on a memorable all-night show at the 930 Club, when it was still the WUST Radio Music Hall.  Now 62 and with an injured shoulder, Ade reportedly does not play as much guitar himself as he used to, but hopefully the other guitarist(s) in his now 16-piece band will compensate. The band will certainly offer plenty of percussion plus spoken and gorgeously trilled call and response Yoruba vocals.  The dynamic juju grooves, with or without Ade’s playing, will be generated largely through strummed and picked stringed instruments drawing from Nigerian, rock, and even Hawaiian and country traditions.  While they’ve done some short shows on this tour, Ade has noted in interviews that his band and dancers can still go for hours.  We will see what happens Friday.

Thurs. 7-16- Occidental Brothers Dance Band International with the Moderate at DC9 • 1940 9th Street, NW

Friday 7-17 King Sunny Ade and his African Beats at the 930 Club, 815 V St. NW

Last month, mid-90s emo rockers Sunny Day Real Estate announced a reunion tour in support of their first two albums LP2 and Diary, both of which are being reissued by Sub Pop in September. (More on those special reissues at the band’s new official site.) The good news for Midatlantic emo junkies is that the tour will include a September 30 show at the 9:30 Club (buy tickets here).

New to Sunny Day Real Estate? Try “In Circles” (video below) off Diary. And for the latest from SDRE lead eccentric singer Jeremy Enigk, listen to “Mind Idea,” which Stereogum released in March. 

Heavy on Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon because, well, they’re fun to watch.

Sonic Youth performs again tonight at the 9:30 Club, doors at 7pm. The Entrance Band are opening. Like last night’s show, tonight’s is sold out, but tickets seem to be readily available on Craigslist.

More photos (and a setlist) after the jump, as well as at the full Flickr photoset.

Read More “Photos: Sonic Youth @ 9:30 Club” »

Femi Kuti and Positive Force performed at the 9:30 Club on Saturday night.

Read More “Photos: Femi Kuti @ 9:30″ »

As the lights came up at last night’s Metric set at the 9:30 Club, all eyes were on frontwoman Emily Haines—and her sparkling, light-reflecting top. The focus quickly shifted to music, though, as Haines (along with bassist Josh Winstead, guitarist James Shaw, and drummer Joules Scott-Key) kicked things off with “Twilight Galaxy,” from Metric’s latest album, Fantasies. The song started slow and built to a dance-y crescendo, which was a nice lead-in for “Help I’m Alive,” one of the best tracks on the new disc.

Read More “Metric @ 9:30″ »

Grizzly Bear has caught some flack on this blog, but the jury was still out for me going into last night’s show. I bought Yellow House a few weeks ago, and while I had listened to it through a few times and found it intriguing (if not exactly catchy), I was not convinced enough to drop $9.99 on Veckatimest (or the other one, or the EP). It wasn’t that Grizzly Bear’s brand of wafting psychedelia turned me off; it was that after each listen I came away having absorbed nothing–not a single lyric, theme, or idea. I would listen again, straining to concentrate on the music, finding this impossible. For all its entrancing dynamics, the music just didn’t have any handholds. I wanted to ride along, but it kept slipping away.

Read More “Sound Walls: Grizzly Bear & Here We Go Magic at 9:30″ »

Much hyped Interscope signee and self proclaimed DC RAP AMBASSADOR Wale will be rocking the 9:30 Club on Wednesday night, backed, as usual, by inimitable go-goers UCB. We’re just going to pretend that his atrocious Lady Gaga collaboration never happened.

Equally talented but less blogged about about locals Tabi Bonney and X.O. (of Diamond District) are opening. Get your Nats fitted ready and hit the jump for some videos.
Read More “Wednesday: Wale & Friends @ 9:30″ »