For Real Estate’s Martin Courtney, returning to his native New Jersey  last summer after graduating from college may have been a regressive move, but it also turned out to be a productive one.

“I almost exclusively hang out with people from high school these days,” the singer and guitarist says, echoing that common post-collegiate experience of hometown dive bars and procrastinated job searches.

But Courtney also spent last summer writing songs and jamming in his parents’ basement with guitarist Matt Mondanile, bassist Alex Bleeker, and drummer Etienne Duguay, laying the groundwork for what is, little more than a year later, one of 2009’s most promising new indie-pop acts in a year replete with lo-fi fast-burners. Six months after its first gig, Real Estate—which plays at the Rock & Roll Hotel tonight with Japandroids and Neon Indian—was generating buzz at the South by Southwest festival in Austin and tickling the blogosphere with woozy, summery singles. Now, the band is about to release its self-titled debut on Woodsist Records.

Read More “Off the Beach: Real Estate @ Rock & Roll Hotel” »

It’s likely no accident that, at least on cursory listens, Psychic Chasms (Lefse Records) sounds out-of-time and incidental, like the gauzy score to a local-access television spot long relegated to the backwaters of YouTube. Certainly, there’s a degraded and lo-fi quality to this debut by Neon Indian, the project of 21-year-old Alan Palomo, who is based in Austin. That hissy, washed-over aesthetic is essential to the 30-minute album, but unlike the other glo-fi acts the blogosphere slobbered over all summer, Psychic Chasms has a productive tension between sound and songwriter.

Read More “Reviewed: Neon Indian’s Psychic Chasms” »

Experimental hip-hoppers Anti-Pop Consortium were at their incomprehensible best at Rock & Roll Hotel this Saturday, performing a set heavy on tunes from their recent reunion album, Fluorescent Black. It was a welcome return to form for a group that has seen its individual members involved in a huge number of side projects after APC’s breakup in 2002, none of which were as satisfying as APC itself.

More photos after the jump and at the full gallery.

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There are two questions Sacramento, Calif.’s Ganglians say they’re asked all the time: Is the band named after ganglion cysts? (Those are gross and kind of cool, frontman Ryan Grubbs said Tuesday, but no.) Also, what’s it like to trip on ayahuasca?

Grubbs said he loves talking about psychoactive drugs almost as much as taking them. But he and his bandmates have never ingested that particular one, which is hard to find outside of South America. (Not that he wouldn’t, he said.)

“We definitely talk about acid experiences a lot,” said Grubbs, whose band opens for Wavves tonight at the Rock & Roll Hotel. “I think it was Rob [Enbom] of Eat Skull who told some guy from The Agit Reader that when we were on tour with him we were finding psychoactive stuff along the road like ayahuasca and ingesting it.” Which is true, Grubbs said, except for the ayahuasca part. “Our bass player Adrian [Comenzind] is a botanist. He’s like the hippie of the group.”

Read More ““What’s the Question, Again?”: A Trippy Interview with Ganglians” »

With the help of vocalist Mark Lanegan, Britain’s Soulsavers put together an album with Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers, Mike Patton of Faith No More, and Martyn LeNoble of Porno for Pyros. But instead of a crappy update of ’90s alt-rock, Broken, released last month, features Haynes and company making dark, symphonic pop…. And they can conjure that same sort of sadness onstage, without the aid of a Macbook. —Mike Riggs

Read the full City Lights pick here. Deets below the jump.

Read More “Tonight in Music: Soulsavers with Mark Lanegan at the Rock & Roll Hotel” »

Whether or not you regard the Rock & Roll Hotel as the, erm, jewel in the Atlas District’s crown, there’s surely no better place to see live, local music this weekend. That’s because the H Street NE venue enters its preschool years this weekend, celebrating its third birthday with six events and more than 20 acts — and, coincidentally, a whole lotta craft beers.

Tonight’s show in the venue’s main space, sponsored by Instrumental Analysis, is all about big hooks and singalong choruses: Area favorites Jukebox The Ghost are headlining , and the piano poppers say they’ll be testing out some new songs. And John Davis’ (Q And Not U, Georgie James) power-pop outfit Title Tracks, whose debut drops early next year, should have some fresh material to show off, as well. And in the upstairs bar, All Our Noise sponsors a free dance night with DJ sets by Micah Vellian and Outputmessage.

On Saturday, the pendulum swings from ra-ra rock to artier (or least idiosyncratic) pop, with an early show headlined by D.C.’s Death By Sexy, with local support from Meow vs Meow and Dj Doc Rok. Out-of-towners Starlight Mints (one of the few bands I’d describe as psych-twee) and Gringo Star also will play sets. Show up early and there’s free PBR(!). Stay in the same space after that, and queer dance nights MIXTAPE and Taint are teaming up all Voltron-like.

Full deets for the six events after the jump:

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I spent much of the last two years writing movie reviews, and I had just one ethical guideline for my morning press screenings: Don’t take the food. So how should I have reacted when Tobacco, the frontman the costumed, dancing hype man of the acid-caked post-rockers Black Moth Super Rainbow shoved a stick of warm string cheese into my hand last night at the Rock & Roll Hotel?

It turns out the Pittsburgh quintet—more performance art than post-rock, really—thrives on blowing up expectations. The venue (quite full for a Sunday) seemed primed for something more studied—understandable, given that on record Black Moth Super Rainbow’s verve and heavy use of Vocoder can suggest something out of the Battles playbook, with all the attendant influences. Live, though, the group was dancier, pithier, and freakier, as much flower-child bliss-out as art-school iconoclasm. Not just once was I compelled to abdicate my journalistic distance.

Read More “Hot Freaks: Black Moth Super Rainbow @ Rock & Roll Hotel” »

I. The Perils Of *dom

Somewhere between stellastarr*’s self-titled semibreakthrough and Civilized, its latest, self-released effort, the New York band went from benign and enjoyable indie bubblegum to disposable Guitar Hero rock. That much was clear, anyway, at the group’s packed show at Rock & Roll Hotel Friday with Wild Light and The Postmarks. Here is a band that long has inspired easy dismissal, and after three albums seems to have ironed out all idiosyncrasy. The crowd—rollicking, fist-pumping, high-fiving—couldn’t have asked for anything more.

I don’t mean to sound flip. In 2003, stellastarr*’s debut was derivative, sometimes involving stuff that—with its blatant debt to Talking Heads and Pixies—arrived during exactly the right moment of post-punk and college-rock revival. That album’s singles, “Jenny” and “My Coco,” were mainstays of my iPod for months. So I was somewhat nonplussed when stellastarr*’s hour-plus set Friday produced no Proustian flashback to younger days.

Read More “Gah: stellastarr*/Wild Light/The Postmarks @ Rock & Roll Hotel” »

I’m going to hazard a guess that during yesterday’s music-packed evening in D.C., the only show that could rival Peter Brötzmann’s trio in intensity was The Dillinger Escape Plan at Rock & Roll Hotel. If you’ve seen DEP before or you read my writeup of their Baltimore show this past Feburary, you know the drill.

R&R Hotel had a few security guys lined up in front of the stage to try to keep control. I asked one of them if they knew what they were in for. “Oh yeah, we know all about it,” came the confident reply. The thick padding taped over the venue’s giant wall mirrors, and the ceiling above the stage, seemed to confirm this, but the “NO STAGE DIVING / NO CROWDSURFING” signs posted everywhere were overly optimistic.

Photos and a few more thoughts after the jump. Full gallery here.

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In 1970, when Sixto Rodgriguez released his debut LP Cold Fact, U.S. listeners likely dismissed the Detroit-based psych-folk singer as an angrier, gritter, version of Donovan. Well, the few that heard him did, anyway. But an ocean away, unbeknownst to Rodriguez, Cold Fact made a larger impression. He made it onto the radio in Australia and New Zealand and a compilation record of his work eventually went platinum in South Africa. At some point during the late ’90s somebody finally tracked Rodriguez down, alerted him to his success, and he resumed touring.

Which brings us to tonight, when Rodriguez will perform at the Rock & Roll Hotel with, through some unexplained but welcome fluke of fate, certain members of local avant-brass band Gestures. Yeah, The Thermals are playing too, over at Black Cat. But look, Rodriguez has been in the wings for some thirty years to bring his songs to his own country. The Thermals, on the other hand, will probably show up again next month. Hear tonight what the people of Australia already understood decades ago.

Video after the jump
Read More “Rodriguez w/ Gestures Horns @ Rock & Roll Hotel” »