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 […]
FOTOBOM: KHRUANGBIN @ ROYALE
Some bands have a pretty distinct aesthetic when it comes to their music, how it sounds and how it’s presented. Khruangbin have taken that vision and run with it, all the way to the tailor and back. Laying down the most laid-back grooves one can think of, they coolly play a brand of music […]
FOTOBOM: KURT VILE, JESSICA PRATT @ HOUSE OF BLUES
Kurt Vile had to know that including a song like “One Trick Ponies” on his seventh record would be a vulnerable action, as rumblings from certain cynical/critical corners would gleefully point to Bottle It In and say, “See! He’s just released the same mid-tempo collection of songs he’s always done.” But see… that’s the thing. […]
FOTOBOM: KAMASI WASHINGTON @ ROYALE
Pundits and talking heads say that traditional band-based rock music is dead, and if we’re gonna look back at the fossil record, then jazz has been calcified for a couple of decades. But, like most things, the ‘experts’ have painted the wrong picture. Still, I wouldn’t have put much money on heading to Royale […]
FOTOBOM: COURTNEY BARNETT @ HOUSE OF BLUES
“You know it’s okay to have a bad day.” Courtney Barnett spends a lot of time, thinking about the edges of the daily human existence, sketching out brilliant pastiches of the small moments that everyone experiences. It never hurts to have a catchy song to drape lyrics around, and her case she’s shown […]
