Morning, folks!

The mysterious purveyor of the Felice Brothers golden-ticket essay contest named a winner Friday. I’ll share the winning essay here later today, but here’s a taste of the author’s pathos at work:

I don't know how I missed out. But don't make me sit at home alone on Friday night, listening to Adventures of the Felice Brothers Vol. 1, masturbating in the dark, and waiting for the tears to come.

As it turned out there were no real winners at the sold-out show at the Rock & Roll Hotel that night. The gig started out promising before someone in the front row teased the musicians that their beloved Yankees were about to be eliminated from the playoffs. The rest of the concert had a spiteful air; the band, visibly pissed, played a lot of uncharismatic new material and never got in sync with the audience. Kudos to the Felice Brothers for being unafraid of veering from their gothic folk-rock wheel house, but this was clearly not their night.

Comedian Louis C.K., by contrast, managed to give a packed Warner Theater an hour and sixteen minutes of new material without losing anyone for a second.

Anyway:

The discordant guitaring of D.C.’s ‘90s hardcore punk scene is apparently not the District’s only six-string legacy; turns out the DMV is also something of a classical-guitar mecca, reports WaPo. Writer Anne Midgette traces the lineage back to Greek immigrant Sophocles Papas, who built the scene back in the ‘20s. Tally another point for the Greeks in the canon of D.C. music—you’ll recall it was another Greek, John “Johnny Boy” Katsouros, who launched erstwhile Washington R&B legend Terry Huff back in the early ‘60s.

Arena Stage opened in its new home. It tweeted all the relevant coverage.

Finally, New York magazine has an article about the death of early 21-century hipsterism—a condensed version of an investigation by the literary journal n+1. The music piece figures most prominently in what the author calls the “Hipster Primitive moment,” when we all grew beards, donned flannel, and pretended the Industrial Revolution never happened. From the article:

Music led the artistry of this phase... Here are the names of some significant bands, post-2004: Grizzly Bear, Neon Indian, Deerhunter, Fleet Foxes, Department of Eagles, Wolf Parade, Band of Horses, and, most centrally, Animal Collective. (On the electronic-primitive side, LCD Soundsystem.) Listeners heard animal sounds and lovely Beach Boys–style harmonies; lyrics and videos pointed to rural redoubts, on wild beaches and in forests; life transpired in some more loving, spacious, and manageable future, possibly of a Day-Glo or hallucinatory brightness.

The n+1 book version, by the way, has contributions by City Paper columnist Moe Tkacik, who, speaking at a Symposium, blamed neo-hipsterism on the era’s big movers: the Internet—for breaking down the barriers to subculture—and China, for enabling the sort of credit flow that would let American Apparel open 200 stores in two years. (She does not venture to explain where the Hipster-primitive animal fetish came from.)

Me? I blame the Internet for how little I am being paid to write this.

Bye!

I’ve heard the Name Game play out in many contexts, but at a concert—between the drummer and some guy standing ten rows into the audience—was a new one. “Do you know Rebecca Callahan*?” shouted a tall kid in a white Polo. “She was, like, two grades ahead…”

“Rebecca, oh, yeah,” replied Fleet Foxes drummer J. Tillman.

This, one supposes, is the fate of stage banter at a show when the drummer admits he grew up in a nearby suburb (Rockville) and is pressed upon to kill time between every song while the lead singer re-tunes his 12-string guitar and the rest of the band hangs out in unhelpful silence. But that was the sort of casual vibe Fleet Foxes brought to the 9:30 Club on Wednesday, breaking down the distance between the band and the sold-out audience in such a way that it felt less like a crowded concert hall than the living room of a buddy who makes you pay $9 for a Guinness. Other topics of band-audience banter included the menu at Rockville pastry shop The Fractured Prune, frontman Robin Pecknold’s bad haircut (hidden beneath a red knit hat, which he refused to remove), and whether Tillman more closely resembled Jesus Christ, Charles Manson, or Rob Zombie.

The singing, though, was the show’s real fascination. The band’s post-Beach Boys, fjord-folk sound (which has finally given a cappella nerds and hipsters something to talk about with each other) relies heavily on dynamic three- and four-part harmonies, with subtle moving lines within them. It’s a slippery weapon to wield, and proper use requires absolute precision. But from the opener—the a cappella “Sun Giant” leading into “Sun It Rises”—through the epics “Mykonos” and “Blue Ridge Mountains,” the Foxes were tuned to each other far more consistently than Pecknold’s 12-string. This was especially impressive given that it was their opening show of the tour, and the tea-swilling Pecknold, as he put it, already felt “like dying.”

M. Ward, who played the following night, actually sounded like he might be dying—although that’s just an incident of his naturally laryngitic voice. No matter for Ward, whose mission seemed to be keeping old styles alive. The Hoarse Whisperer deployed his definitive rasp in service of what sounded like a blend of throwback blues melodies, surfer rhythms, and country-folk instrumentation (an alchemy that is rendered all too generic by the “indie” distinction that is often foisted upon him). Ward hinted at these influences all night—particularly on songs like “Big Boat,” an uptempo 12-bar that could have been lifted directly from the ‘50s pop charts—before sending the crowd into a full-fledged fit of twisting and hand-jiving with a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven.”

On both nights I only caught the tail end of the opening acts, but my impressions were that Espers—who played pleasant baroque despite the considerable handicap of being comatose—was all substance and no style; Ledroit Park natives Chain & the Gang—who dressed in striped prison jumpsuits and played one interminable, mostly spoken-word “song” for the last 15 minutes of its set—was all style and little substance. (But bear in mind, these were only superficial impressions.)

*not her real name.

Photo courtesy of www.jeremycharles.com.

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

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.

So as far as I was concerned, Grizzly Bear was on trial last night. The courtroom: The 9:30 Club, packed thick with an audience of breezy post-adolescents reveling in June's redefinition of Monday night.

Things did not start auspiciously. The opener, Here We Go Magic, confirmed my fears about how hypnotic, post-structural indie rock would play live to a hall full of people who seemed high on little but a glass and a half of Old Rasputin. With each song, Here We Go Magic appeared to follow the same protocol: Build a wall of sound, then drag it an arbitrary distance. Hearing these songs unfold was kind of like watching a wave gather itself without ever breaking. The full set, accordingly, felt like staring at the ocean.

Grizzly Bear came out strong, bathed in blue and violet stage lights. If Here We Go Magic was like watching the ocean, Grizzly Bear was like watching the ocean during a storm: bigger swells, more variegated, more dramatic, occasionally peaking with piercing guitar trills. The most impressive aspect of their sound by far was the vocal, which featured (primarily) three voices with three distinct timbres: Daniel Rossen's wood-solid tenor, Christopher Bear's quavering one, and Chris Taylor's soaring falsetto–the latter two benefiting from some serious reverb on the mic. Grizzly Bear definitely shares some alleles with Fleet Foxes in the post-Beach Boys lineage. But where Fleet Foxes's songs are grounded in folk music's inherent respect for structure, Grizzly Bear seems tethered by nothing at all.

Which, when you're trying to hold someone's attention for an hour and a half, is like fishing without a hook. Sure enough, after about 35 minutes I found myself glancing compulsively at my cell phone. Even in a storm, you can't stare at the ocean for too long without growing weary of its motion.

Fleet Foxes, they of the empyreal harmonies, are in high demand these days. The band's self-titled debut LP, released a year ago, quickly earned a spot on the contemporary folk syllabus. Frontman Robin Pecknold, a social recluse whose lyrical incantations seem to echo along the slopes of some far-off mountain range, has managed to hook into a sound that Brian Wilson might have discovered if Brian Wilson were a hermitic goatherd. Actually, Pecknold comes from the wealthy Seattle suburb of Kirkland–but he's spent plenty of time in the mountains, and used to be way into Lord of the Rings. His songs bear a sort of mythical seal, dealing with wanderers and wildernesses and grounded by an extraordinary reverence for kinship.

Lucky us: The capital has been selected as one of the 10 cities in North America Fleet Foxes will hit on their summer tour, Sub Pop announced yesterday. They'll be playing at the 9:30 Club on Wednesday, July 29. Tickets for the show go on pre-sale at 10 a.m. tomorrow. In advance of the tour, the label today released the song "Mykonos," off the band's 2008 EP Sun Giant, as a single. It is a gorgeous song, all long shadows and ghostly harmonies singing of solitude and struggle. Pecknold's brother Sean, whom the song is rumored to have been written for, directed the exceptionally groovy music video.

FLEET FOXES NORTH AMERICAN TOUR DATES, SUMMER 2009:

5/25/09 George, WA Sasquatch Festival – Gorge Amphitheatre
7/29/09 Washington DC 9:30 Club
7/30/09 Philadelphia, PA Electric Factory
7/31/09 Jersey City, NJ All Points West – Liberty State Park
8/1/09 Newport, RI Newport Folk Festival – Fort Adams State Park
8/03/09 Montreal, QC Metropolis Theatre
8/04/09 Toronto, ON Massey Hall
8/05/09 Royal Oak, MI Royal Oak Theatre
8/07/09 Chicago, IL Lollapalooza – Grant Park
8/09/09 Minneapolis, MN First Avenue (on-sale May 9th)

Below: this year's top-sellers at Melody Records. Glad to see Gnarls on there; chagrined to see Coldplay; not surprised to see either; curious whether any other stores were able to move the Hancock album like this.

1. Madonna, Hard Candy
2. Coldplay, Viva la Vida
3. Erykah Badu, New Amerykah Part One
4. Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend
5. Portishead, Third
6. Jennifer Hudson, Jennifer Hudson
7. Amy Winehouse, Back to Black
8. R.E.M., Accelerate
9. Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes
10. Gnarls Barkley, The Odd Couple
11. Sigur Ros, Med sud i eyrum vid spilum endalaust
12. The Raconteurs, Consolers of the Lonely
13. TV on the Radio: Dear Science
14. Herbie Hancock, River: The Joni Letters
15. Duffy, Rockferry