Some metal bands play consistently great live shows simply by virtue of their music's relative simplicity. Unlike the kind of metal that relies on technical complexity and mathematical precision, the straightforward brand of stuff that Kvelertak plays really just comes down to big, catchy riffs. With these guys there's just not a lot of nuance [...]
"We've been kind of a soap opera for the last couple years," admitted Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams about halfway through her headlining set on Saturday night at the Fillmore in Silver Spring. But the band seemed to have emerged from their tabloidy interlude not too much worse for the wear either musically or commercially. They [...]
Thursday night, on the second-to-last show of her current tour supporting her new album The Chronicles of Marnia, Marnie Stern started off with an apology: "My voice is shot." Not something you want to hear from a musician whose compositions are heavy on fast-paced, aggressive vocals. But after a couple of admittedly rough songs, Stern [...]
"How many of you came with your dancing shoes on?" asked Solange at the 9:30 Club show last night. "How many of you came with the wrong shoes but you're gonna dance anyway?" The sold-out show was short: She played only 12 songs, and that included a two-song encore. But throughout the show, both onstage and [...]
After three months of renovations, the reopening of Echostage—a Saturday night show featuring Canadian dubstep DJ Excision—didn't go as smoothly as one might have hoped. Doors opened a full hour late. The upstairs bars are completely unfinished. The women's restroom flooded within an hour, forcing the club to split the men's restroom in two and [...]
At some point in the Von, Ágætis byrjun, ( ) era, I counted Sigur Rós as one of my favorite bands. The group lost me a bit after that, and I hadn't seen its live show since the very early 2000s. Last night, they played to a sold-out and ecstatic Patriot Center. [...]
In front of a sizable audience at the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage last night, Faroese folk musician Eivør showed off the full range of her utterly unique voice, darting from snarling ferocity to high, almost saccharine sweetness. Her set drew primarily from her 2012 album Room, with a smattering of earlier pieces sung in her [...]
Meshuggah vocalist Jens Kidman was sidelined with the flu for several dates of the Swedish metal band's current U.S. tour, though the group famously played at least one show with a cardboard cutout of him onstage. He appeard back in full force on Saturday night at the Fillmore Silver Spring, leading the band through a [...]
Yo La Tengo's current tour gimmick involves them playing two long sets, one "quiet" and one "loud," at each show. It's a pretty great gimmick, though; on Friday night at the 9:30 Club, the entire capacity crowd was dead silent during the stunning quiet set, which opened with a compellingly subdued version of the [...]
Coheed & Cambria brought their blend of rock, metal and prog to the 9:30 Club for the second of two nights on Tuesday, headlining a well-thought-out bill with Between the Buried and Me—whose own rock/metal/prog hybrid is notably more schizophrenic—and slow-burning instrumentalists Russian Circles.
Check out the slideshow for photos of all three bands.
