Tag Archives: Neil Young

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One of Those Nights

May 20th, 2013

The Staves/Escondido – Mercury Lounge – May 17, 2013

The Staves

Late night at Mercury Lounge on Friday found the room sold out for two great sets of roots music. First, Escondido, a country duo from Nashville, began with a handful of nice, pretty country songs ably handled by Jessica Maros and Tyler James and backed by James’s brother on bass and keys. Both members looked resplendent in amazing retro all-white suits, James’s with silver metal buckles and trimming, and Maros’s a full white country-and-western jumpsuit with two-foot tassels lining the sleeves. Halfway through, the music caught up with the duds, “Rodeo Queen” being a minor-key highlight. After a short trumpet-and-guitar interlude of “Tennessee Waltz,” Escondido were joined by a full band of NYC ringers, including Scott Metzger on guitar and Tony Leone on drums. With the extra oomph, the band went “full Nashville” with songs like “Don’t Love Me Too Much.”

Between sets, Neil Young’s entire Harvest Moon played over the PA, and the headliners took the stage to “Walk On”—off another Young album, On the Beach—which may have been the best walking-on music I’ve witnessed in a while. The Staves, a trio of sisters from Watford, England, singing folk harmonies very much in the style of Crosby, Stills & Nash, but better looking and with just the right level of sardonic British wit. (My favorite line, regarding the show not starting until after midnight: “…had to be careful not to get smashed beforehand.”) Singing songs like “Gone Tomorrow” and “Icarus” with just a single acoustic guitar, the beautiful harmonies seemed to shock the audience to silence. Bass and drums joined in to heft up songs like “The Motherlode” and “Tongue Behind My Teeth” (“about someone we hate”).

The dynamic range of the music was awe-inspiring: from a single voice, to three-part harmonies overlapping with acoustic guitar, to getting loud with the full band and additional banging on a floor tom. As the set continued, the Staves loosened up with banter about the playful comedy of three sisters spending life together on the road. The best was saved for last, the Staveley-Taylor sisters around a single microphone singing “Wisely & Slow” in absolute gorgeous harmony before the song transformed into a rocking section with drums and handclaps. The encore featured the first song they’d written together, when they only knew the bottom two strings of the guitar, the title track of Dead & Born & Grown, before finishing with the last song on that album, “Eagle Song.” The latter tune used all six strings and featured a dreamy middle section, literally a pitch-perfect ending to a night filled with them. —A. Stein

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Matthew E. White Quietly Delivers

May 14th, 2013

Matthew E. White – The Bowery Ballroom – May 13, 2013


What is it that Teddy Roosevelt said? “Speak softly and carry a big stick”? Well, Matthew E. White sings softly and carries a big stick, namely his backing band. It’s hard to call a six-piece outfit a small band, but for Virginia Beach, Va., native White, who’s played and recorded with literally dozens of musicians at a time, the sextet he played with at The Bowery Ballroom last night was a decidedly slimmed-down affair. Still, when you’ve got a guy who’s equally up to playing some delicious countrified pedal steel as he is a rollicking piano, and a bass player who grooves like he backed Herbie Hancock in his Headhunters prime, in addition to the drummer, percussion and keys players locked into your sound, six is a big enough stick.

The group walked out to Stevie Wonder’s “Jesus Children of America” which, on Wonder’s birthday, seemed plenty deliberate for White, who matches soul with a Wonder-esque funkiness and whose music is accented by his personal faith. The set got moving with “One of These Days” and the ultragroovy “Steady Pace,” from last year’s Big Inner. These were prime examples of White’s style: soft, heartfelt vocals that melted into a steady buildup by the band, typically climbing to a surprising, ecstatic off-center climax. The band’s country-funk chops were on full display in a perfect cover of Neil Young’s “Are You Ready for the Country,” featuring the highlight pedal steel playing in a set filled with them. Although his vocals sounded great, White confessed it was a heavy dose of steroids that were keeping his sick throat up to the task and warned the side effects included extreme crankiness and irritability. Of course, he said this in his sweet, give-me-a-hug demeanor. It seemed perfect that White’s self-proclaimed “drinking song” was called “Hot Toddies” and featured a gorgeous, quiet minimalist section before a punchy finale. This is a groovy party band almost in spite of itself.

The heaviest hitter of the set was “Big Love,” a White masterpiece, mixing all the elements, in one high-energy heart-pumper, the band playing it loose, showing the clear comfort of musicians who know they’ll all get back to the same place, regardless of the different paths they take along the way. The set closed with a powerful one-two whack from the stick—“Gone Away” and “Brazos,” the latter a 10- minute mountain of a song that built upon a percolating bassline that appeared to lack a beginning or an end. It’s one of those songs that seems fit for a hundred musicians in a church in Virginia to do its climactic coda justice, but on a Monday night in NYC, White and his band were plenty big. —A. Stein

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Interpol Drummer Sam Fogarino’s EmptyMansions at Mercury Lounge

April 26th, 2013

Sam Fogarino is best known as the drummer for NYC’s own Interpol, but while they were touring in support of their 2010’s self-titled album, he was plugging away, writing songs that revealed his many influences—in literature, TV and especially music (like Neil Young, Stones, Pixies). Fogarino ended up recording the material with guitarist Duane Denison (of Tomahawk, among others) and producer and multi-instrumentalist Brandon Curtis (the Secret Machines), who handled bass, keys and backing vocals. The end result was the noise rock–filled Snakes/Vultures/Sulfate (stream it below), out earlier this month. The trio kicked off a tour in support of it earlier this week, which brings EmptyMansions (above, their video for “That Man”) to Mercury Lounge to play the early show tomorrow night.

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The Men Captivate The Bowery Ballroom

March 8th, 2013

The Men – The Bowery Ballroom – March 7, 2013


Capping off a big week that included gracing the cover of The Village Voice and releasing their fourth full-length album, New Moon, Brooklyn band the Men performed a sold-out show at The Bowery Ballroom last night. The five-piece have been lauded for their ability to blend elements such as Dinosaur Jr. levels of feedback and distortion and vigorous punk riffs with Neil Young– and Tom Petty–inspired crooners, often with surprising flourishes of harmonica or saxophone. In the capable hands of the Men, this confluence of disparate retro influences comes out sounding both familiar and wholly unique.

Band members traded off on vocal duties as they ran through songs from the new record as well as 2012’s Open Your Heart. The dirty and rough surface of their sound often belies the polish and precision beneath it, and although the Men may not seem to bother with details like perfectly tuned guitars, they took care to fine-tune their instruments as they readied to play “Turn It Around,” admitting, somewhat bashfully, “Gotta get it right, you know.”

As they played, band members at times turned their backs on the audience completely— riding a melody, lost in a guitar solo, perhaps simply having bounced, swayed or shredded a bit too heartily. However, rather than seeming disconnected, the band’s focus and intensity while playing created a natural magnetism, allowing the postures of conventional stage presence to remain an afterthought, captivating through authenticity. —Alena Kastin

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Two Bands Worthy of the Hype

March 1st, 2013

Unknown Mortal Orchestra/Foxygen – The Bowery Ballroom – February 28, 2013

Unknown Mortal Orchestra

The first time I saw Unknown Mortal Orchestra (or UMO) a couple years back, they were a support act you could just tell wouldn’t be an opener for too much longer. So it felt like no coincidence that their big sold-out headlining show last night at The Bowery Ballroom would feature an opening band riding an acclaimed debut album and the justified hype to sold-out headlining gigs of their own before too long. That band, Foxygen, took the stage in a blaze of manic energy and echo-reverb ooh la la’s, twitching their way through pretty much all of their new We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic album. Those recorded tracks come off as retrofitted rock gems, but live they were a delightfully jagged and ragged set. Untethered from the studio, the sound felt like 1960s rock and roll in a blender: a juicy cocktail of Jagger’s vocals, McCartney’s bass, Morrison’s lithe, wild-eyed stage presence, the Who’s bombastic energy, an occasional dash of Dylan’s off-kilter harmonica, topped off with Neil Young’s hat. It was a delicious brew that the expectant crowd guzzled down happily, highlighted by whiplash versions of “On Blue Mountain” and “No Destruction.”

If Foxygen offered a look back for Unknown Mortal Orchestra, UMO returned the favor. Riding on a next-step sophomore album, simply titled II, the Portland, Ore., trio crackled with the confident, cohesive energy of a band in control. On paper, UMO are a standard power trio—guitar, bass and drums—but their sound has a subtle surrealistic edge. This is a power trio as painted by Salvador Dali, melting over the limbs of trees and walls in a distorted reality. They opened with a splash of older material, centered on the catchy, off-center “Thought Ballune,” every bit of music crunched through just the right amount of distortion. From there, they unveiled track after track from the new album, the heavy-hitter middle section of the show characterized by a nonstop, groove-rock bass playing from Jake Portrait, which propelled along each tune. Frontman Ruban Nielson, looking downright wizardlike in poncho and hat, took over from there, leading the band through the set’s final third, which seemed to get better with each passing riff. Centered on a surprising sing-along version of “From the Sun,” Nielson fit powerful guitar solos into perfectly orchestrated pieces, with each sound from the pummeling drumming of Riley Geare to Nielson’s vocals locked into place. That tune relented into a wonderful Frank Zappa section, which kept at it through the remainder: The band sounding as if Zappa were leading Zeppelin as a power trio through an updated psychedelic catalog.

While the late-night packed crowd thinned out a bit around midnight, those who remained to the end seemed to hear pretty much everything from both albums by the end of the night, from the just-weird-enough “Ffunny Ffriends,” off the self-titled debut to the soulful “So Good at Being in Trouble,” off II. I was struck by how much better the already-darn-good band had gotten since that opening hit, getting me to already contemplate their next time through town, as well as what the future brings for Foxygen. And of course, most important, who will be opening for them when they’re playing their big sold-out headlining show. —A. Stein

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Hayden Celebrates a New Album at Mercury Lounge

February 14th, 2013

Hayden – Mercury Lounge – February 13, 2013

Toward the end of last night’s set at Mercury Lounge, Hayden mentioned that while the audience was great, he’d been “expecting a bunch of assholes.” It was a great line, one of many bits of banter that perfectly punctuated the show and complemented the music—witty, brief and honest. Indeed, the room was as crowded as I’d ever seen it: fans crammed into every available nook the Merc offers. And yet they were quiet and attentive and as appreciative of a musician who’s been in the business for decades could have hoped.

With yellow neon lights behind them declaring “Us Alone,” the title of his brand new album, Hayden and his two bandmates chugged through 80 minutes of material, new and “classic.” On the eve of Valentine’s Day, many of the songs seemed to hinge on relationships in disrepair, like “Worthy of Your Esteem” and “Just Give Me a Name.” The three rotated among instruments—bass, guitars (acoustic and electric), drums, keys and harmonica—bringing a variety of sounds to the set: nice rock riffs, occasional country bounce, acoustic folk. The best moments washed in a bubble-bath bass that seemed to elevate the superlative songwriting to a special place.

The set was anchored by some great anecdotes. Hayden introduced “The Hazards of Sitting Beneath Palm Trees” with a story about smoking too many cigarettes on an all-inclusive vacation and another had some black humor about “online content.” The audience hung on every word, spoken and sung, showing admirable constraint and listening without singing along. But the end of the set proved the strongest with “Don’t Get Down” (“My only hopeful song … but it’s over-the-top hopeful”), featuring all three guys acoustic around a single, probably unnecessary, microphone and a dedication to their drive with a surprising build-up rock-out in the middle. After an extended tuning session that found the crowd as patient and attentive as ever, Hayden encored with “Bad as They Seem,” sounding like very classic Neil Young, certainly not hopeful but definitely not alone. —A. Stein

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