“I was gonna say that we’re going to play an old song, but…” J Robbins quipped halfway during Friday night’s show. Vaunted DC quartet Jawbox decided to join the throngs who shake a couple decades worth of dust from their road cases and get back on the stage. Not counting a small hometown warm […]
FOTOBOM: FLORENCE + THE MACHINE
Coming through on the second leg of her High As Hope tour, after over 70 concerts Florence and her well-oiled machine show no signs of flagging, nor any disinterest in the material from that record. With good reason – there’s some cracking material on the ‘never in one spot for too long’ Welch, and […]
FOTOBOM: TASH SULTANA, PIERCE BROTHERS @ ROCKLAND TRUST BANK PAVILION
Mention the term ‘one person band’ and you might fill your head with images of some old German guy with an accordian and tuba strapped to his body, castanets stapled to his pant legs, all the while playing a battered acoustic guitar and occasionally chanting something. Well, banish that mental picture to the depths […]
FOTOBOM: BOSTON CALLING 2019
Humans love to use base ten as a function of assigning milestones- is it because we’ve got ten fingers? As such, the 10th anniversary of any particular event carries some additional weight, earned or not. And here we are at the tenth rendition of Boston Calling. Has it delivered on its promise? […]
FOTOBOM: BEIRUT @ HOUSE OF BLUES
If you entered the House of Blues in search of something surprising on a recent Tuesday night, you may well have left disappointed. The unexpected is not in store for you at the Beirut gig. But for the faithful who braved a snowy winter evening to pack the cavernous room on Lansdowne Street, the all-business […]
FOTOBOM: THE CHILLS @ THE MIDDLE EAST
The word ‘seminal’ gets tossed around a bit cavalierly these days, when any decent band with a pulse and a couple of dusty records are suddenly reissued on some boutique label, and are suddenly yanked out of obscurity and proclaimed the as long-lost Beatles or some such nonsense. Martin Phillipps is a rare case […]
FOTOBOM: JON SPENCER AND THE HITMAKERS, BODEGA @ GREAT SCOTT
Jon Spencer has been slogging it out on the front line of the trashy garage war for so long he’s got foxholes named after him. As the primary or co-leader of vaunted groups like Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Pussy Galore, Boss Hog, Heavy Trash and now the HITmakers, his resume is unassailable. He’s got […]
FOTOBOM: STEVE GUNN, MEG BAIRD & MARY LATTIMORE @ GREAT SCOTT
Over the last ten or so years, Steve Gunn has managed something that eludes most musicians. As he’s slowly transformed his craft from open string Fahey worship to a more tightly-crafted, song-oriented approach that is more akin to 60s troubadours like Fred Neil or a less ornate Tim Buckley, he has also been able […]
FOTOBOM: NEKO CASE, MARGARET GLASPY @ ROYALE
It took a little while, but Neko Case finally landed in town for a headlining slot instead of as support for someone else’s tour. She’s still in the promotion cycle for last year’s excellent Hell-On, and if you’re a fan of that record you got a heaping handful and then some. Three quarters of the record […]
FOTOBOM: RYLEY WALKER, MUTE DUO @ GREAT SCOTT
There are a few ways of getting your name into the music press headlines, with some methods a whole lot better than others. If you didn’t bother to click the first link, the random meeting between folk/jazz/psychster guitarist Ryley Walker and jam band/bro-deity Dave Matthews wasn’t totally random. The mercurial and always questioning Walker […]
