It's hard to write a lede for D.C.'s The Caribbean. They're an extraordinarily interesting band, but they aren't all that young, hip, or fucked up. The ever-complex, highly thoughtful music they make isn't headline-grabbing, but it's remarkably well-crafted and entirely worth your patient consideration. "Mr. Let's Find Out," the band's new single from its forthcoming LP, [...]
As if sensing an opening for gloomy, expansive, fuzzy art rock, the e-mail featuring a new version of "The Grey Man" (the song was on a 2008 demo recording) was billed as "your monthly True Womanhood fix." This latest song from the D.C. outfit once again features singer and guitarist Thomas Redmond's voice garbled by [...]
Local funk-inflected ass-movers Poor But Sexy are still putting out. The unusually soulful assemblage of white boys keeps writing lascivious lyrics, and this new offering is no exception. The less-than-subtle innuendo on "Cherry Delicious" is backed up by what sounds like Prince's Revolution as fronted by Daryl Hall. On the chorus, David Brown's lead vocals are [...]
Fine, so she lives in the wrong Washington now. New Pacific Northwesterner Carol Bui spent years in D.C. and recorded her upcoming album, Red Ship, at Inner Ear in Arlington with a host of local musicians. Now she's released the first song from that album, "Mira: You're Free With Me."
It takes the soaring, aggressive emotiveness [...]
The first time I saw Matthew Hemerlein perform, I thought he had some major nervous tics. As he chatted with the audience, his hands ranged over his violin, thumping on the fingerboard, plucking strings on the wrong side of the bridge. But as Hemerlein launched into his performance, I realized he was recording the entire [...]
Last month, the 9:30 Club announced that it had formed a record label—9:30 Records, natch!—and that it had signed Justin Jones, the local altish-country singer/songwriter who also tends bar at the venue. The first release? Jones' Little Fox EP, which he'll be selling at a free show tonight at the club. It'll double as a [...]
A glacier could never survive in this weather, right? Tell that to Gods'Illa, a Forestville trio whose new single, "Glaciers," is a heater focused on delivery, not depth. The three-minute track, with a driving bass drum provided by Joe D., is full of memorable verses, none more remarkable than those of Powerful Rasheem and Acem Eternal Mind. "If you're [...]
As promised, Jon Meyers has found a new host and a new URL for his popular mp3 blog The Vinyl District—a move spurred by Google's Blogger service and its policy on the posting of mp3s in violation of the federal Digital Millenium Copyright Act. The new Vinyl District, at www.thevinyldistrict.com, should be launching soon, Meyers writes [...]
Too bad no one nominated D.C.'s Aaron Thompson to open for Phosphorescent at the Black Cat tonight. Thompson, who's also comfortable recording star-kissed incidental music, writes elegant pop songs that draw from the American folk vernacular but have a healthy sense of atmosphere. So does Phosphorescent's Matthew Houck, only lately, his tunes have upped the [...]
So. Earlier this week I collected some news about forthcoming releases from the Dance Party—the synthy D.C. party-rock band whose name says it all—and the Factory, a late-'80s/early-'90s D.C. whose singer, Vance Bockis, was a veteran of the city's rock scene. I snarked about both (but also self-deprecated!). This upset people.
Rick Ballard of Acetate Records, [...]
