The weather may be cooling off, but Sockets isn’t quite ready to pack up the shorts and deflate the beach balls. The label recently posted this mixtape–which includes songs by Food For Animals, BLDGS, and Edie Sedgwick–in the hopes of stretching the summer season out for a few more weeks.

Here’s the tracklist:

1. “Love Showers” – The Dirty Church
2. “Tomorrow” – Buildings
3. “Would You Kill?” – The Cornel West Theory
4. “Fifty Seven” – Andrew Black
5. “Dope” (Ricky Rabbit Remix) – Food For Animals
6. “Preproduct” – Aaron Thompson
7. “Wilderness” – Roses They Won’t Hurt You
8. “Doubting Thomas” (Sockets Mix) – Edie Sedgwick
9. “1000 Miles” – Metropolitan

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” »

Bootlegging a concert used to be a real pain in the ass. Well, it was in the mid-’90s, at least. My cousin used to use a pair of stereo microphones that were sewn into the collar of his flannel shirt and then connected to a minidisc recorder (remember those?) stashed in his jacket. This setup–some of it rather bulky–had to be smuggled into the club under the bouncer’s nose.

All of this for a noisy, chatty, tape of a Grant Lee Buffalo concert.

Disclosed Mp3 must have built a better mousetrap, though.
They certainly don’t seem to be mired in the microphone->chums->minidisc->cassette deck quagmire that plagued fans a few years ago. Instead, the blog has been turning around decent quality audience-recordings of local shows within just a few days of the performance. Right now there are Mp3s of True Womanhood, Laughing Man, BLDGS, and Hume, as well as some out of town groups like Mi Ami. And the whole access-via-downloading thing also knocks out another aggravating vestigial part of the bootleg process–trading via the postal service.

The music blog RCRD LBL recently posted a few songs for new Mp3s by D.C.’s own BLDGS (pronounced Buildings). The songs, “For You” and “Now,” are drawn from the band’s upcoming EP Endless, which should be out on Sockets within the next few weeks. Check them out here.

Sockets, the local record label/blog, just posted a interview with BLDGS as well as some live footage of the band performing live at Kansas House. If you didn’t believe them when they said they were into wearing Dashikis, well, now you can witness it for yourself.

Buildings from Sean Peoples on Vimeo.

This is a few days old, but check out this mind-destroying promo for the Old Bridge Festival on Aug. 1 and 2:

Per the video, location is 1256 Old Bridge Rd., Amissville, Va. (about an hour west of D.C.), and the cost is $10, which also gets you burgers, ‘dogs, beer, and space to camp (the property is over 150 acres).

Oh, and the bands! So far, the list includes Future Islands (!), BLDGS, La Otracina, Laughing Man, Hume, Age Sixteen, The Black Powder, Cave Caverns, The Fordists, Ga’an, Gay Knowledge, Google Earth, The Independent, Invisible Hand, Landlords, Mystic Flavor, Paper Mice, Pretzlcoat, Rifle Recoil, Surf Nazis On Ecstasy, and We’re Glad You’re Dead, with apparently more to be announced.

Read More “A Batshit Crazy Promo For Old Bridge Festival” »

Friday

• An Evening w/ King Sunny Ade & his African Beats. 9:30 club. $25. All ages.
• The Paulverizers, Idle Americans. Bangkok Blues. Call for price.
• Oleta Adams. Birchmere. $39.50.
• Novalima, Pistolera. Black Cat. $18/$22. All ages.
• Lovvers, Small Doses, Cigarbox Planetarium. Comet Ping Pong. All ages.
• John Legend, India.Arie. Merriweather Post Pavilion. $36–$109.
• Hello Society, Marbin, Lucky Dub. The Red & The Black. $8. +21.
• Stellastarr, Wild Light, The Postmarks. Rock and Roll Hotel. $12/$14. All ages.
• BLDGS, Screen Vinyl Image, Cobalt & the Hired Guns, The Water. Velvet Lounge. $8. +21.
• Danny Harris (Fatback DC): Mashed Potatoes. Cafe Saint Ex.
• Eastern Music Festival Piano Program. Kennedy Center Millennium Stage. Free.
• Friday Nights Out Back w/ Chopteeth. Strathmore. $10.
• Aural Tapestry: An Evening w/ All Our Noise, feat. Seas, Typefighter, John & Paul Thornley (of US Royalty). Fort Fringe. $10. See Fringe & Purge for WCP’s take on the best and worst of CapFringe thus far.

Read More “Weekend Music Round-Up” »

DC’s BLDGS (pronounced Buildings, or so I hear) and The Andalusians will be performing tonight at Big Bear Cafe over in Bloomingdale, and I would encourage people to check it out, although I realize now that I can’t reliably say what it’s going to sound like.

I’ve dropped the ball on seeing BLDGS thus far, although I’ve had myriad opportunities to do so, so I can’t really say much about the band beyond mentioning that I enjoyed the trippy crescendo jams that are posted on its Myspace page. But they’ve been through a lot of guitarists, bassists, and singers lately–so really your guess is as good as mine.

As for The Andalusians, the ever shifting line-up of songwriter Basla Andolsun’s band makes it hard to accurately predict who’s going to show up beyond, well, Basla. It will probably be pretty punk though. I also remember conga drums being involved, somehow.

The Andalusians, BLDGS, The Caribbean, Kenny Hamilton
7:00pm – 10:00pm
Big Bear Cafe
1700 1st St NW

Show up on time!

Stephen L Ponce
http://www.myspace.com/kennybryanhamilton (Richmond)