As half of the creative duo Ultimate Painting, Jack Cooper was responsible for some tightly-crafted songs that were equally at home as comparisons to late-60s Kinks or at times the thuggish savagery of prime Spacemen 3. The band abruptly imploded just as their fourth and still-unreleased record Up was to be released, and he's got new endeavor alive in its place. Modern Nature came to town on a very stacked pop/psych bill, with Cooper bringing along co-founder Will Young from Beak> on keyboards, Woods' drummer Aaron Neveu, and saxophone player Jeff Tobias adding some very interesting texture to the mix.
live music
FOTOBOM: WEEN @ HOUSE OF BLUES
Boston turned brown on Friday, as hordes of Ween fans descended onto House of Blues, filling the room’s every square inch in a manner that might make a fire marshall’s head spin. On the front rail were people who journeyed in from North Dakota and Chicago, and as Ween only played ...
FOTOBOM: ROBYN HITCHCOCK @ CITY WINERY
Robyn Hitchcock settled in at City Winery for the second time in just over a year, with just himself, a guitar, a harmonica and a piano as tools to enthrall and humor the collective room. Oh, and his wide-ranging internal thought process too. That’s pretty essential and has been his secret ...
FOTOBOM: ELECTRIC WIZARD, MIDNIGHT @ THE PALLADIUM
Do you like your doom metal with a heavy ladleful of occultism and leather-clad biker imagery? How about with a cannabis cloud that could suffocate a small village? Scores of battlevests were seen massing around the streets of Worcester last Friday in anticipation of a rare Stateside performance ...
FOTOBOM: TOOL, KILLING JOKE @ TD GARDEN
A bizarre clash of music fans took place this past summer, when the hotly anticipated, decade-plus return of Tool got Swifties all upset when Maynard and company’s Fear Inoculum banished Taylor Swift’s Lover from the top spot on Billboard after one short week, ...
FOTOBOM: THE NATIONAL @ AGGANIS ARENA
I said it when I last caught up with The National, headlining two nights at a New York City festival of their own curation last year, and it bears repeating now: it’s still a little weird for this band, of all bands, ...
FOTOBOM: OH SEES, PRETTIEST EYES, OCEANS OF THE MOON @ THE SINCLAIR
After ignoring Boston for close to a decade while NYC shows were not so unusual, Providence native son via SF > LA John Dwyer has brought his ferocious, multi-headed garage/psych/neo-jam ...
FOTOBOM: BORIS, UNIFORM @ THE PARADISE
Around the time in the early 90s when I became aware of bands such as Acid Mothers Temple, Ghost, Zeni Geva and The Boredoms, I’ve come to live by one simple rule. If a Japanese band is playing in your town, go see them. It’s not that complicated, it doesn’t overrun your social ...
FOTOBOM: THE WHO @ FENWAY PARK
Without disparaging the good name of The Pretty Things, The Who really put the term ‘rock opera’ on the musical books when they created not one but two enduring works in Tommy and Quadrophenia. So what do you do when you’ve done countless tours and it seems ...
FOTOBOM: PSYCHO LAS VEGAS 2019
A multi-day metal fest in the middle of the summer, in Vegas? What could possibly go wrong? Well, aside from punishment to your bank account, liver, and skin if you weren’t smart about routine SPF applications, most things went right. Set in the city where dubious decision making is a ...