A semi-regular look at music festival news, rumors, and gossip

2009 Umbrella Music Festival: Our pals over at the Chicago Reader noted in their ’09 Fall Arts Guide that the Umbrella Music Festival “is eclipsed only by the Chicago Jazz Festival as the most impressive and adventurous jazz event of the year.” Since those guys seem to know what they’re doing, we’ll take their word for it. This year’s event—which, for the fourth turn of the calendar, “celebrates jazz and improvised music from Chicago and beyond”—extends over four days and includes performances from Matthew Shipp and a quartet that includes Tortoise’s John Herndon. But the clear highlight is a closing-night performance of compositions by Joe McPhee arranged by Ken Vandermark for a nonet which features both players. Tickets for events vary in price, but most (if not all) still seem to be available. The first night’s slate of events is entirely free.

Read More “Festival Watch: Umbrella, Troika, All Tomorrow’s Parties” »

Heavy on Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon because, well, they’re fun to watch.

Sonic Youth performs again tonight at the 9:30 Club, doors at 7pm. The Entrance Band are opening. Like last night’s show, tonight’s is sold out, but tickets seem to be readily available on Craigslist.

More photos (and a setlist) after the jump, as well as at the full Flickr photoset.

Read More “Photos: Sonic Youth @ 9:30 Club” »

In honor of Sonic Youth’s two sold-out 9:30 Club shows this week Washington Post writer David Malitz invited a group of local music writers–myself included–to weigh in on their favorite Sonic Youth albums.

If you follow this blog with any regularity, you’re probably already aware of my thoughts regarding the band’s 1995 album Washing Machine (a masterpiece, clearly). If not, read them here along with contributions by Malitz, Marc Masters, and others.

The new Sonic Youth album, The Eternal, leaked this week. Yesterday, our own Aaron Leitko got heartfelt and nostalgic about actually paying for it and listening to it via Matador’s pretty sweet buy-early program.

Full Disclosure: I have nothing to say about the album. I have not heard the album. I don’t want the crummy leak and I’m too broke to spring for the advanced payment plan. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been tempted to just download thing. The most interesting content so far has been the blog comments after the leak and after the Web Sheriff busts them. It’s like a cop busting a college dorm. Everyone screams Oh Shit and scatters. Then the stupid sense of entitlement sets in. And then really stoopid anger blossoms.

Read More “Sonic Youth Album Leaks. Web Sheriff Seeks And Destroys.” »

In 1995 my mother graciously agreed to take me to The Delta Center, in Salt Lake City, Utah, to see R.E.M. Sonic Youth opened this show, playing all twenty-minutes of “Diamond Sea” and a bunch of other stuff from its then-forthcoming album Washing Machine. That music was a big deal for me–it bridged the jam bands of my upbringing to the artier, noisier music that I would soon start seeking out and it had an open-ended spaciousness that I immediately associated with suburbs and the empty western landscape where I lived. It’s still my favorite Sonic Youth record, and I was disappointed when I recently read that Steve Shelly (the drummer) thinks that it’s the worst record they ever made.

Anyway, that was the birth of my long-running Sonic Youth fanboy-ism, which culminated earlier this week in my purchase of the band’s new album, The Eternal, through Matador’s Buy Early Get Now program.
Read More “Eternal Devotion” »

Sonic Youth: “Sacred Trickster”
For a while there Sonic Youth was becoming a band that your dad could maybe get down with. Well, as long as your dad was a baby boomer with a taste for Bare Trees-era Fleetwood Mac. No more, though. “Sacred Trickster”, from the band’s forthcoming record The Eternal, brings back the diminished chords and the heavy bashing. Those dads are just going to have to buy-in or get out.

Dave Matthews Band: “Funny the Way It Is”
Give Dave Matthews a little credit. He’s the guy who brought pathos to the jam-band world. While Phish’s Trey Anastasio was singing about tires, worms, and mango-footed children, Matthews was giving Teva-wearing Americans a glimpse of the darker side of his psyche with songs about addiction, death, and sleazing your friend into a one-night-stand. On “Funny the Way It Is”, Matthews grapples with the fact that even while he’s kicking back with a jimi thing at a palatial estate built on a foundation of Bonnaroo ticket stubs, somebody, somewhere is suffering. Which brings him down. On the bright side, Boyd Tinsley doesn’t rap.

Deerhunter: “Rainwater Cassette Exchange”
For some reason, indie-rock bands either want to be all commune-pastoral or American Apparel-urban. No band wants to let the lonely, washed-out, emptiness of the suburbs into its aesthetic. But Deerhunter really nails the psychedelic strip-mall vibe, though. Maybe it’s because they’re from Atlanta and not Brooklyn. At any rate, the ambling, clattering space-rock of “Rainwater Cassette Exchange”, would make a perfect iPod soundtrack for a stroll around an abandoned ShopKo.

The Bats: “Castle Lights”
Don’t let Flight of the Conchords fool you, New Zealand has more to offer than garish synth-pop send-ups. No, there’s also some pretty good jangle-pop. For instance, this new song by The Bats, which maintains all of the mumbly, three-chord, goodness of the band’s heyday.