Of Monsters and Men – Music Hall of Williamsburg – April 5, 2012
April 6th, 2012
(Tonight’s Of Monsters and Men show at Webster Hall is sold out.)
Tag Archives: Webster Hall
SBTRKT Proves He Belongs
April 4th, 2012SBTRKT – Webster Hall – April 3, 2012
(Photo: Jared Levy)
SBTRKT isn’t interested in the question of identity. He avoids it all together. A semicircular tribal mask covers the top half of his face, protruding forward. It shifts in relation to the movements of his head. It’s a layer of protection, although seemingly unnecessary. The name is actually the alias of UK producer Aaron Jerome. He explained last night at Webster Hall that the mask and the anonymity of the pseudonym are used because “I’d rather not talk about myself as a person, and let the music speak for itself.” Which is what he did, and in the process proved that SBTRKT belongs in the company of electronic music’s most acclaimed artists.
The music speaks with immediacy, but it’s not as easily categorized. On his eponymously titled debut, the songs touch on a number of genres: electronic, dubstep, soul and house. But when played live, the distinctions are meaningless. With the assistance of frequent collaborator Sampha, the two splayed the album onto the crowd. Jerome was constantly in motion—programming, adjusting and, presumably, improvising sections of electronic layers. He also added live drumming. Snare hits skittered across a broad pond of bass. Sampha’s voice, somewhere between James Blake’s without the puberty cracks and Antony’s without the pomp, wailed from below the depths. It felt natural until you realized that each sound filtered through many 1’s and 0’s and heavy amplification.
But the strength of the performance was in the immediacy of the arrangements. From show and album opener “Heatwave” to Sampha’s strong offerings of “Something Goes Right” and “Trials of the Past,” each song felt denser while remaining as approachable and fundamentally the same. Sampha rhetorically asked, “What would you like to hear?” midway through the set. The crowd responded in full, with multiple answers leading to auditory mush. The pair ended up playing a remix of “Wildfire” featuring Drake. This seemed to be the right answer. But SBTRKT’s choices, questionable as they may be, all seem to be the right answer, for himself and for his fans. —Jared Levy
Andrew W.K. – Webster Hall – April 2, 2012
April 3rd, 2012
Grow a Pair: Win Free Tickets to See Of Monsters and Men on 4/5
April 3rd, 2012
Of Monsters of Men play two sold-out New York City shows this week—on Thursday at Music Hall of Williamsburg and on Friday at Webster Hall. Thursday’s show will stream live on The Bowery Presents Live. But if you don’t already have tickets and still want to go, try to Grow a Pair from The House List. It’s easy. Just fill out the form below, making sure to include your full name, e-mail address, which show you’re trying to win tickets to (Of Monsters and Men, 4/5) and a brief message explaining the virtues of Icelandic rock. Eddie Bruiser, an open-minded sort, will notify the winner by Friday. Good luck.
Double Your Pleasure with Two Nada Surf Shows
April 3rd, 2012
Matthew Caws (vocals and guitar) and Daniel Lorca (bass) first met at a French private school in New York City. Together they formed Nada Surf in the early ’90s, and the band went through two other drummers before settling in with Ira Elliott in 1995. The trio’s first LP, High/Low, came out in 1996 and the single “Popular” quickly became a big hit. Despite the weight of having a summer anthem and the group’s label wanting them to duplicate it, Nada Surf (above, playing “Hi-Speed Soul” at The Bowery Ballroom) kept at it, touring and making new music. The newest music is their seventh LP, The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy, which came out in January. Experience some of it live (Saturday at Webster Hall is sold out) on Sunday at Music Hall of Williamsburg.
Because It’s Fun
April 2nd, 2012Wild Flag – Webster Hall – April 1, 2012
(Photo: Andie Diemer)
Wild Flag deserves two different introductions, depending on who you are. For older rock fans, the news here is that members Carrie Brownstein (formerly of Sleater-Kinney), Janet Weiss (Sleater-Kinney and Quasi), Mary Timony (Autoclave and Helium) and Rebecca Cole (the Minders) are all still kicking ass, perhaps even more so than any of them did in their previous bands. For younger fans and mere observers of pop culture, the headline here is that that chick from Portlandia (Brownstein) is one hell of a guitarist.
Playing almost entirely through their much-acclaimed 2011 self-titled debut, last night at Webster Hall, Wild Flag cranked out crisp performances of favorites “Short Version,” “Racehorse” and “Something Came Over Me,” as well as a few new songs. They closed with the single “Romance,” which, placed at the end of a set, can’t help but feel like a mission statement of sorts for the group, an ode to the romance of rock and roll.
Bands are driven for all sorts of reasons, with their motives usually apparent in the energy of their live performances. Wild Flag seems to be motivated by nothing more than having a ton of fun. It shows through their pure rock and roll swagger that’s impossible to fake. Why cover songs like the Rolling Stones’ “Beast of Burden,” the Ramones’ “Do You Wanna Dance” and Fugazi’s “Margin Walker” in an encore? Because it’s fun, and they want to. It’s as simple as that. Why start a new band when you’ve already made your mark with other noteworthy groups in the past? It’s likely for the same reason. —Dan Rickershauser
Of Montreal – Webster Hall – March 31, 2012
April 2nd, 2012
First Aid Kit Transports
March 29th, 2012First Aid Kit – Webster Hall – March 28, 2012
(Photo: Alexis Maindrault)
Every once in a while you hear a voice that transports and transforms, takes your surroundings and makes them something else. Last night there were two such voices onstage at Webster Hall, filling the room like a hot air balloon that lifted the audience out of the East Village to worlds unknown. The voices belonged to Johanna and Klara Söderberg, who, backed by a drummer, make up First Aid Kit. The ladies professed nervousness to playing this big sold-out New York City show, but they showed no sign of unease as they floated the audience across dusty roads, wind-swept plains, campfires and whiskey toasts.
Despite being from Sweden, their music is pure Americana, the folk of the coffee shops of yore and the old school country of cowboy bars. The sisters worked through much of their terrific new release, The Lion’s Roar. In early highlight “Emmylou,” names like Emmylou, Johnny and Graham were mythic metaphors powering the music. For “Ghost Town” they tried a “little experiment,” stepping away from the microphones and amplifiers and singing directly to the crowd, which dropped to absolute silence. Without a single dissenting voice in the audience, the effect was as if time had stopped—one of many goose-bumps moments during the set. Indeed, the crowd’s silence throughout the night was deafening: The respect and awe of raucous applause and hollering contained in absolutely no sound at all.
While you’d expect covers from a band like First Aid Kit to include the typical hallowed country canon, they delivered some pleasant surprises. First a shout-out to fellow countrymen and early supporters the Knife (actually Fever Ray) with “When I Grow Up,” which was ethereal and magical under the sisters’ spell. For the encore, they paid tribute to Patti Smith, calling her the “coolest fucking woman on Earth” before a great version of “Dancing Barefoot.” Still, it was the best-in-genre originals that kept the audience floating above the fray. The set proper ended with the aptly titled “The Lion’s Roar,” and the night concluding, like the album, with a raucous “King of the World,” claps, guitars and two sublime voices. —A. Stein
The Split Personalities of Gotye
March 28th, 2012Gotye – Webster Hall – March 27, 2012
There’s certain schizophrenia to Webster Hall: Is it a dance club or a rock club? Is it half and half? That dual personality was the perfect setting for Gotye, who last night split his live sound into three overlapping personalities: one-third dance, one-third indie rock and one-third hypnotic dreamscape. Webster Hall was sold out, which seems to mean different things on different nights—not all sellouts are created equal. On Tuesday night, it was truly packed from front to back, the audience bubbling in a multilingual, multiaccented din while awaiting the start of the show.
The band took the stage and immediately launched into “Eyes Wide Open.” While Wally De Backer uses Gotye as his professional pseudonym, it’s clear that in the live setting the name covers everyone in the band who plays an equally important role. The multitalented guitarist added a nice flourish of lap steel to the opening song (and later played an electric mandolin) while the bassist took control of the melody. Still, the story of the band was drums and rhythm, with De Backer surrounded by all sorts of stuff to hit in addition to the drummer behind him and plenty more taken up by the other three musicians. The sound sat on the verge of digital and analog, mallets hitting drums and electronic pads and xylophones in equal amounts. There was something scientific to the music, with the band acting like a single-celled organism, Gotye at the nucleus pulsing messages electronically to the other band members in their organelles. Opening-act Kimbra joined Gotye for lyrics on “Somebody I Used to Know,” getting an even bigger reaction from those in the audience screaming for every song like each one was a favorite.
Behind the stage a single backdrop held a constant stream of projected images, scenes flipping through ultrarealistic time lapses of landscapes and cityscapes and other animated scenes and psychedelic colors. These matched up well enough to the music that it felt like every tune was more than just a song, but also a live-action music video, with the audience sucked into the action. “State of the Art” matched a killer multisynth attack with a weird retro-cartoon music monster perfectly. Gotye worked several audience-participation moments into the set, more or less playing the beloved Making Mirrors album in its entirety, constantly splitting his personality to the crowd’s constant delight. —A. Stein
This Jam Is Your Jam
March 15th, 2012Jay Farrar, Will Johnson, Yim Yames and Anders Parker – Webster Hall – March 14, 2012
While the stage was loaded with talent last night show at Webster Hall, the real MVP might have been the lone roadie/guitar tech. The crowd watched this guy tune about a zillion guitars—acoustic, electric, bass—getting the stage ready. It was an impressive feat and all that work was absolutely necessary because every single instrument was used to its fullest extent over the course of an awe-inspiring show. This was a modern day supergroup playing music written to accompany unfinished lyrics and writings of Woody Guthrie. The band is Jay Farrar (Son Volt, et al.), Anders Parker (Gob Iron, et al.), Jim James (My Morning Jacket) and Will Johnson (Centro-matic, et al.), who nominally played rhythm guitar, lead guitar, bass and drums respectively.
They performed with a communal spirit that would have made Guthrie proud, sharing lead vocals and swapping roles throughout the night. As far as supergroups go, this one is about halfway between Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Blind Faith, matching hefty harmonies with all-out rock and roll. The first part of the show was expected as the band rolled through all the material on New Multitudes. It was great to watch each member take the lead role and see the others transform into a backing band in the style of that leader. So that Farrar’s opener, “Hoping Machine,” embraced Son Volt’s twang-with-grit feel while James’s “My Revolutionary Mind” had a distinct MMJ arc, starting with a focus on his voice and then exploding into a flesh-crawling rock jam. Practically every permutation of two-, three- and four-part harmonies were realized, with each voice distinctly on its own making powerful music together. My personal highlight was “Chorine My Sheba Queen” with James sweetly harmonizing with Johnson’s lead vocal while Parker and Farrar beautifully laid down atmospheric drum-melody behind them.
The set lasted about an hour, and the crowd, which had been a perfect balance of enthusiastic and attentive all night, howled for an encore. What they got in return would better be described as a full-on second set as each member played a solo acoustic tune of his own, capped by James’s spine-tingling sing-along version of “Wonderful (The Way I Feel).” Again the show felt satisfyingly complete, but the band wasn’t yet finished, as each member highlighted another of his songs with the whole band in tow, each seemingly topping the previous in a playful we-rock-harder competition. As the “encore” reached the hour mark, the band played a ninth song with every member taking lead for a verse. What followed was a blistering, jammy rock out with noisy guitar interplay shaking Webster Hall that went on in glorious feedback, surely exactly the way Woody Guthrie diagrammed it many years ago, until each musician left the stage one at a time to rousing applause (and a nod to the guy who had to tune all those guitars). —A. Stein
Fanfarlo Plays Webster Hall Next Tuesday
March 2nd, 2012
Their reputation preceded them. Shortly after forming, Fanfarlo quickly earned comparisons to Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene, probably because they also employ some of the overlooked instruments of the indie-rock world, like the mandolin, trumpet and violin—and because of their dreamy sounds and swelling anthems. Simon Balthazar (vocals and guitar), Leon Beckenham (trumpet and keys), Justin Finch (bass and vocals), Cathy Lucas (violin and mandolin) and Amos Memon (drums and percussion) came together as Fanfarlo about six years ago in London. And through a series of singles, the Internet and their frenetic live shows, word of mouth got out. So people knew to see the band (above, playing “Shiny Things”) before they’d ever even heard the band. And since their second full-length album, Rooms Filled with Light, just came out on Tuesday, it’s easier than ever to hear the band. Now go see them play Webster Hall on Tuesday night.
The Bowery Presents Live Features the Antlers
February 28th, 2012
The Bowery Presents Live features the Antlers today. Watch the band, above, discussing their writing process, how traveling affects the kind of music they make and their open-minded fans. But don’t stop there when you can also check out the Brooklyn trio’s Track + Field session, doing “I Don’t Want Love” alone in Webster Hall, plus a playlist of videos, live songs and interviews. And make sure to subscribe to The Bowery Presents Live to keep up with what’s new on the channel.
Heartless Bastards – Webster Hall – February 24, 2012
February 27th, 2012
Stones Fest – Webster Hall – February 22, 2012
February 23rd, 2012
The Voice
February 20th, 2012Zola Jesus – Webster Hall – February 18, 2012
For all the arguments about which subcategory of Goth Zola Jesus may be a part of, the fact is it’s her instrumentation—whether it’s the discarded cheap electronics from her debut, The Spoils, or from her three-piece backing band, which includes a violin—that serves her voice. A voice that pursued classical opera training in rural Wisconsin at age 10 and battled crippling stage fright to record The Spoils at age 20. Isolated in the long country winter, the singer-songwriter combined her talent with the modest tools at her disposal to record the sparse, industrial-sounding album. It’s filled with remarkable vocals that build on female innovators like Diamanda Galás and Lydia Lunch, who combined their impressive vocal abilities with the pop sensibilities of their respective eras, something that remains unmatched in indie circles by their male counterparts.
Several albums later, that voice headlined historic Webster Hall on Saturday night. The venue has long been a part of the rave and house-music scene but it was strangely fitting for the pop experimentation on Zola’s latest, Conatus. With platinum blonde hair and draped in a sheer white full-length dress, her minimal sounds that had populated previous efforts were epically drawn out with pounding live beats and walls of pulsating, blinding LEDs. Live, the tracks changed from a personal morbid confession to a forum for publicly celebrating her melancholy romanticism. She became something like a bygone pop crooner or cabaret singer, capable of making the darkness universal and popularizing electronic avant-garde with the strength of her voice. But after the last song ended, she’d managed to transcend labels altogether. —Jason Dean
