The Aislers Set

Slumberland Records, the locally formed label that has released some of the best, noisiest indie pop ever pressed to seven-inch, turned 20 this year, and it’s celebrating all weekend. Tonight’s show at the Black Cat features current Slumberland bands Crystal Stilts, Brown Recluse, Frankie and the Outs and Pants Yell!, as well as three reunited bands from the area, the Ropers, Lorelei, and Nord Express.

We asked some of the people involved with Slumberland over the years to share their favorite memories of the label. We ran some yesterday, and here are the rest:

Read More “Guilty Feet Have Got No Rhythm: 20 Slumberland Memories, Part 2″ »

Mexican singer Ximena Sariñana has said that her debut studio album, 2008’s Mediocre, was meant to take on old-fashioned images of women as demure, repressed, one-dimensional beings. The only thing that drives home that point better than Sariñana’s album is the artist herself.

At 23, she is a film and television star, in addition to being an outspoken Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter, and she’s currently headlining her first U.S. tour. Her beautiful voice and laid-back, jazzy style have drawn comparisons to Norah Jones, but Sariñana is more complex than that. Songs such as “Normal” and “No Vuelvo Mas” are mellow, for sure, but always with a bit of edge bubbling just under the surface.

As is often the case with newly crowned industry darlings, Sariñana is pretty busy these days: On Thursday she’s headed down to Miami for the Billboard Latin Music Awards, where Medicore is nominated in the Latin Rock/Alternative Album Of The Year category. But, you can see her tonight at the 9:30 club, with Matthew Santos. Take advantage of the opportunity-from the look of things, Sariñana may soon be hard to catch.

Sariñana performs at 7 p.m. at the 9:30 club, 815 V St. NW. $18. (202) 265-0930.

The American babysitting industry won’t soon see another year like 2008, when a wave of iconic Gen-X bands—Built to Spill, My Bloody Valentine, Gray Matter–reformed and lured their increasingly creaky fans back into nightclubs. The intent wasn’t to show that artistic vitality knows no age. These bands performed cherished albums, in their entirety, live. This goes against all the rules of rock, of course: LPs and set lists are invariably sequenced differently; experiencing an album like it was a movie throws the ratio of deep cuts to hits way out of whack. But it’s less problematic with an album like Jimmy Eat World’s Clarity. Released in 1999, two years before the Arizona band brought emo-rock to a wide audience with hit singles like “The Middle” and “A Praise Chorus,” Clarity is best heard start to finish, and it sparked a generation of Nirvana fans’ little brothers and sisters to harness their disappointment and ride forth into the mainstream. As Chris Carrabba’s accountant can attest, that boom eventually went bust, but maybe emo makes more sense as a footnote anyway—measured pessimism gets less charming with age, and now that Jimmy Eat World is performing Clarity live in its entirety, lyrics like “And with pride keep every failure in/And with pride hold on to your thinking” have an unexpected plangency for emo kids navigating the rocky shoals of their 30s. And if that doesn’t make you feel better about the fact that one of your favorite albums came out 10 years ago, just remember that at least you’re not paying to see Hey Mercedes perform a rock opera. Yet. JIMMY EAT WORLD PERFORMS CLARITY TONIGHT AT 9:30 AT THE 9:30 CLUB, 815 V ST. NW. SOLD OUT. 

Finding words to describe Vampire Weekend seems futile, since they’ve become the A-list blog stars of 2008. But in case your Internet has been disconnected since January, Vampire Weekend is the project of four Columbia-educated Upper West Side turned Brooklynites who play intoxicating indie pop imbued with Afro-beat inspired soukous rhythms and melodies. The band’s eponymous debut album was released in January and has become one of the most vibrant and refreshing albums of the year. They’re playing tonight and tomorrow at 9:30 Club with The Teenagers. (Sorry, kids, both shows have been sold out for months, but there’s still hope!).

Drummer Chris Tomson took a few questions from Black Plastic Bag before they electrify a sold out audience tonight.

Read More “Interview: Vampire Weekend” »