Saturday night’s alright for dancing: After gracing the big stage at Forest Hills Stadium as part of the Head in the Clouds Music & Arts Festival earlier in the day, electronic producer and DJ Illenium doubled down — and kept everyone moving — with a late-night headlining set at Terminal 5.
Photos courtesy of Toby Tenenbaum | @tobytenenbaum
After putting out a pair of EPs and a slew of singles, pop singer-songwriter Holly Humberstone’s much-anticipated debut full-length, Paint My Bedroom Black, arrived last fall. And the monthlong North American tour in support of it, brought the talented English musician to a sold-out Brooklyn Steel on Saturday, her first of two nights at the venue.
Photos courtesy of Michelle Paradis | @michelleparadis_
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets – Webster Hall – May 10, 2014
There are good crowds, there are excited crowds and then there is the audience that packed into Webster Hall to see Psychedelic Porn Crumpets onFriday night. If the mosh pit didn’t start before the band even took the stage, it was very, very close. The opening song, “Tally-Ho,” off their 2021 release, Shyga! The Sunlight Mound, overflowed with electric guitar and electricity period. It may as well have been called “Lit Match Meets Gasoline” as it ignited the crowd, sending everyone percolating in every direction. The band performed in front of super-psychedelic imagery, a lysergic Saturday morning cartoon for the Friday night crowd.
The Perth, Australia, band announced it was the biggest show they’d played in North America, and it did feel larger than life, a short stop on their way to bigger, louder venues with more ecstatic, manic audiences bouncing and banging to every song. The set moved through their catalog, songs flowing one into the next: “Surf’s Up,” anything but surf rock, a heavy bass groove and whiplash changes, then “Nootmare (K.I.L.L.I.N.G.) [Meow!],” moving from one section to another like a nonlinear nightmare, tied together by the sheer will of the band. “Bill’s Mandolin” followed with characteristically surreal lyricism, frontman Jack McEwan singing, “Carnival’s rolled up, now get your coffee pots on high / Architect the cause of my division in a conscious country mile,” the audience caring more about keeping the crowd surfers aloft than what the words meant.
The full-tilt psych-rock found extra texture as they continued, the Porn Crumpets expertly dropping crowd-favorite “Found God in a Tomato” at just the right time, quiet moments of melody contrasting with yet another explosion of bass, guitar and drums. Each of the last four songs felt like they could have ended the show, the room fully wild-eyed and the band feeding off the energy on “Cubensis Lenses” and finally the appropriately named “Hot! Heat! Wow! Hot!” It was “Wow!” indeed for the band and pretty much everyone inside Webster Hall. On to bigger and bigger. —A. Stein | @Neddyo
Photo courtesy of A. Stein
Sweet Pill – Music Hall of Williamsburg – May 9, 2024
With just two nights left on their first headlining tour, in support of their new EP, Starchild, Philadelphia five-piece Sweet Pill — combining “the sonic armaments of hardcore with the sugar-fueled anxiety of emo pop” — played a sold-out Music Hall of Williamsburg on Thursday night.
(Sweet Pill close out their tour with a hometown show at Union Transfer in Philly tonight.)
Photos courtesy of Katie Dadarria | @dadarria
Chicano Batman – Brooklyn Steel – May 9, 2024
We all have seen that optical illusion: You look at it and see an old hag, blink a couple times and the same picture is now of a beautiful lady. In reality, it’s both at the same time. Playing to a raucous crowd at Brooklyn Steel on Thursday night, Chicano Batman were the musical version of this, at points a scintillating rock band, a couple “blinks” of the ear and they were now a dance-ready funk band. And during the strongest moments of the set, they were both at the same time. The opening trio of songs — “Beautiful Daughter,” “Itotiani” and “Freedom Is Free” — hit three distinct bilingual eras of the band’s repertoire, but all mixed elements of rock, soul and funk into an irresistible bass-forward sound.
Chicano Batman’s latest album, Notebook Fantasy, is barely a month old, and while they played much of the material over the course of their 100-minute set, it never felt like the focus of the night. No, the set was more about showing the crowd a good time, frontman Bardo Martinez, equal parts Jim Morrison and James Brown, dancing, tumbling and strutting across the stage as he sang and played, at different points, organ, guitar and bass, dressed in a blazer and then, blink a couple times, bare chested.
At times, the rock took center stage, “Magma” going full organ-heavy Doors with appropriately yellow and red lights, and “Losing My Mind” was more ’90s alternative. Then others, the groove dominated, from disco to funk to Funkadelic on “Color My Life,” “Fly” and sexy slow jam “Invisible People.” Hope-you-didn’t-miss-it opener Lido Pimienta joined to duet with Martinez on “Lei La,” another highlight off the new record. The show ended as it began, groove and rock, coexisting on the set-closing “Cycles of Existential Rhyme” and the encore, “Black Lipstick,” simultaneously a hag and a lady and always a good time. —A. Stein | @Neddyo
Photos courtesy of Ken Grand-Pierre | www.kenamiphoto.com
Kamasi Washington – Beacon Theatre – May 4, 2024
“It’s good to be in New York,” exclaimed Kamasi Washington. One day after the release of his new record, Fearless Movement, the crossover jazz musician announced he’d be debuting most of the album’s material to the giddy Saturday night crowd at the Beacon Theatre. “We’re in this together,” he explained while leading his band through the first track, “Lesanu,” a tribute to a friend who had passed, but also, Washington described, a “celebration of gratitude.”
The song evolved from a wash of cymbals from drummer Tony Austin, then percussion, bass, keys and horn joining in. Washington is as much a bandleader as he is a player, a visionary as much as a saxophonist, but his solos, starting from the opening number, were tours de force, avalanches of melody dragging along the bass of Miles Mosley and the keys of Brandon Coleman, unstoppable momentum and power, somewhere amidst jazz, rock, soul and hip-hop.
Washington’s band has remained surprisingly consistent over the years and the comfort and the love he has for his guys was easy to feel. By the time they had completed the third song, 45 minutes had already transpired, and the rapt-but-rowdy audience had witnessed nearly every band member featured in an impressive solo. Ryan Porter on trombone and DJ Battlecat adding their thing to “Asha the First,” which went from larger-than-life to a quiet meditation, the band equally adept both ways.
“Computer Love” featured soulful vocals from Patrice Quinn and a building synthesizer solo from Coleman as well as soprano sax from Rickey Washington, Kamasi’s father. Mosley went full funk with a scintillating bass solo on “Road to Self,” which also gave Austin the spotlight on his relentless drumming. While the solos were all impressive and gave the new material an organic freedom, it was when the full band was working together, like on “Interstellar Peace (The Last Stance),” that the full weight of the ensemble turned the music completely weightless.
At points during the night, dancers appeared onstage, as if out of a dream, one of them appearing to float above the floor adding a surreal dreamlike depth to the music that was already plenty deep. The set closed after two hours with “Prologue,” the ending but a beginning as Washington explained, his band of close friends and family both heavy and light, powerful individually, even more so together. —A. Stein | @Neddyo
Photos courtesy of Ellen Qbertplaya | @Qbertplaya
Out on the road across North America for the first time in 11 years, Brazilian dance-rock band CSS brought their It’s Been a Number of Years Tour to the East Village on Saturday night, getting the party started at Webster Hall.
Photos courtesy of DeShaun Craddock | dac.photography
Guitarist Royel Maddell and singer-guitarist Otis Pavlovic have been making their own take on guitar-driven rock for five years now. Their acclaimed debut Royel Otis long-player, Pratts & Pain, dropped in February. “This is an album destined for festival season greatness — for cool-breeze drives, warm summer parties and late-night sing-alongs,” raves NME. About a third of the way into the North American tour in support of the new music, the fun-seeking Australian duo sold out Racket on Tuesday night.
(Royel Otis play Racket again tonight.)
(Royel Otis play Union Transfer in Philadelphia on 9/24.)
(Royel Otis play Brooklyn Steel on 9/25.)
Photos courtesy of Michelle Paradis | @michelleparadis_
Ty Segall – Webster Hall – April 29, 2024
The rock and roll polymath Ty Segall and his scintillating band came to Webster Hall Monday night and ran the crowd ragged with a 90-plus-minute workout. They opened with the pairing of “The Bell” and “Void,” just as his latest release, Three Bells, does, nearly 15 minutes of nonstop churning of guitars, organ, bass and drums, Segall singing, “To realize, to be alive” as red lights bathed the stage. That first stretch found them evoking at times Pearl Jam, Metallica, Pink Floyd and Yes, featuring everyone in the band and creating a singular amalgam of rock for the giddy crowd.
The new record would be featured prominently all night, heavy and heavier, boot-stomp rhythms, but also music to dance to. “I Hear” was drenched in squealer guitar with an extended two-guitar outro. “Hi Dee Dee” was both clean and dirty, serrated-edge melody with Segall’s voice turning almost sweet. And later in the set, “My Best Friend,” with a contrasting sweetness, nearly funky with bubbles of bass floating up into the crowd.
Older Segall favorites found their place, fitting right into the setlist. “Love Fuzz,” off 2012’s Twins, was a highlight, the band exploring the limits with an extended section of depths-of-hell guitar dueling. “Looking at You,” off the more recent Hello, Hi album, was Segall at his most noodling, the band stopping on a dime and then restarted, finding a chaotic near-jazz that segued into the set-closing “Denée.” One more banger off the new record, a little more dancing, a spare two-guitar crescendo for those who hadn’t gotten their fill, just another night for Ty Segall. —A. Stein | @Neddyo
(Ty Segall plays Royale in Boston tomorrow night.)
Photos courtesy of Edwina Hay | thisisnotaphotograph.com
