Jeffery Broussard has been playing zydeco music on various instruments for most of his life. By age 8, the French- and English-speaking Louisiana native was drumming in his father’s band, Delton Broussard & the Lawtell Playboys. That’s impressive for such a young kid, but even more so because his 10 older siblings must have been [...]
I met Jeff Simmermon in 1986. We went to different schools in the Northern Virginia suburbs but attended the same theater camp the summer between fourth and fifth grade, where we appeared together in a production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. My recollection is that Jeff was one of a few kids who [...]
There was a moment last night, during Wild Flag's set at the Black Cat, when singer/guitarist Carrie Brownstein basically gave herself over fully to her band's musical frenzy. During "Racehorse," she fell to her knees as if in a trance, slapped her own face a couple of times, and writhed around on the stage, all [...]
Last month Baltimore post-punk trio Double Dagger announced it was breaking up after a little more than nine years together. The six-paragraph note on the band's site sums up the bittersweet nature of Double Dagger's demise, which is taking place simply because, in their words, it's just time.
Followers of vocalist Nolen Strals, bassist Bruce Willen, [...]
It’s a confusing time to be a D.C. concert-goer. The Fillmore Silver Spring has invaded the established order. DIY spaces flicker and fade like so many lightning bugs. Perhaps you’ve had one too many drinks. If you find yourself at a rock concert and you can’t remember where exactly you are, this might help.
Illustration by [...]
Years ago, Cymbals Eat Guitars leader Joe D'Agostino took guitar lessons with Charles Bissell—The Wrens' guitarist, who for obvious reasons goes by the nickname Pedal Boy. Bissell later worked with Cymbals on early demos for the album Why There Are Mountains. So it wasn't surprising at all to see so many pedal decks scattered [...]
Slave Ambient, the latest from The War on Drugs, is adorned with hazy blue-and-red artwork that suits the album’s warm, swirling sound. The Philadelphia band places a premium on production: Soupy, Spiritualized-esque atmospherics surround Adam Granduciel’s Tom Petty sneer, and even the tunes themselves meld together at times, softened by Eno-like sonic washes. Yet Slave Ambient [...]
When the band was around between 1998 and 2003, Sterling, Va., post-hardcore group PG. 99 may have been easy to miss. The screamo band bathed its sound in a kind of dark, unrelentingly violent aura that doesn't have much in common with the pop-fueled punk sounds that dominated alt-rock airwaves in the early aughts. PG. [...]
Marginal Man, one of the early bands on Dischord Records, played a one-off reunion show to a packed Black Cat on Saturday night. "When [Government Issue] did their reunion show back in December, [Marginal Man drummer] Mike Manos and I sat in on a couple of Marginal Man songs with Set to Explode, who opened [...]
When local indie-pop singer Olivia Mancini decamped to New York last fall, it seemed as if D.C. had lost yet another artist to that giant creativity magnet to the north. Not so, says Mancini, who is playing at the Black Cat on Friday with her band, The Mates. She swears she is just there to [...]
