Soundboard Calendar
| Today 05.26.13 | Monday 05.27.13 | Tuesday 05.28.13 | Wednesday 05.29.13 | Thursday 05.30.13 | Friday 05.31.13 | Saturday 06.01.13 |
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When the last book in the Harry Potter series came out in summer 2007, a friend started habitually pointing out people reading it in public, and it seemed like we couldn’t get on a train without seeing one or two. Over the past few weeks I’ve been doing the same thing for Acid Rap, the new second mixtape from 20-year-old Chatham MC Chancelor Bennett, aka Chance the Rapper—I’ve heard it leaking out of strangers’ headphones on the streets and on the el so often that I’m beginning to believe that Chance is as ubiquitous as Harry. »
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Your Turn (Northern Spy) is the second and best album by Ceramic Dog, the knotty rock trio led by guitarist Marc Ribot. The group’s 2008 debut, Party Intellectuals (Pi), felt a bit slick and chilly, but the new one—with raw, vibrant production by Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier—is elbow deep in blood and grit, and Ribot sounds his most inspired and concise, even on extended solos. »
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Yonkers, New York, might not seem like a natural hotbed for death metal, but it’s produced at least one great band. Immolation came together in Yonkers in the late 80s, and right out of the gate guitarist Robert Vigna was writing punishing, demanding music—their first album, 1991’s Dawn of Possession, is often considered one of the foundational documents of technical death metal. »
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Every good rap crew needs its “rampant id” character, the one who’ll jump in on an otherwise sedate track or show and gleefully tear everything up—and do so with enough charm that you’re happy to forgive the mess. In Rick Ross’s Maybach Music Group that role is capably filled by Richard Morales Jr., the tatted-up, dreadlocked blast of mayhem better known as Gunplay, aka the Human Bath Salt. »
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Chicago Jazz String Summit: Musique Noire, Jessica Pavone & Mary Halvorson, Tomeka Reid Trio, James Sanders's Blue Violin Quartet Arts Incubator May 31
Guitarist Mary Halvorson is duly celebrated for her excellent trio and quintet projects, to say nothing of her valuable work in bands led by the likes of Tom Rainey, Ingrid Laubrock, and Ches Smith; violist Jessica Pavone has become a terrific long-form composer, and last year she released the song cycle Hope Dawson Is Missing (Tzadik). But as much as their long-running duo together has been overshadowed lately, I retain a great fondness for it. »
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DIY five-piece Restorations come from Pennsylvania, one of the most fertile breeding grounds for the nation’s underground emo scene—they’re from Philly, in fact, though from the sound of their music you might assume they’re blue-collar guys from the sticks. Restorations’ nervy, cathartic punk makes it easy to picture these dudes wiping motor oil off their hands and heading into practice. »
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This scrappy instrumental trio was born in 2009 as the rhythm section of the Horse’s Ha, the elegant folk-rock group fronted by Janet Bean and Jim Elkington. As Stirrup, though, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, bassist Nick Macri, and drummer Charles Rumback have a sound of their own. »
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Mako Sica claim on their Bandcamp page that their name means “Bad Lands.” Zelienople is named for the town in Pennsylvania where two band members pulled the plug on an unsuccessful road trip. On their new unnamed split LP for Slow Knife Records both combos turn inward—each contributes a side-length exploration of mostly blue moods—but it’s probably a stretch to connect that to the geographical bad vibes implied by their names. »
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I’ve long assumed that Scranton band Tigers Jaw would be one of the acts to help boost the emo revival from the basements and lofts of the DIY scene into the big time. Their sturdy punk combines the shameless hooks of power pop with lyrics about existential woe and romantic entanglements, pitting washy, soothing keyboards and swooning male-female vocal harmonies against pent-up riffs that sometimes erupt into huge, blissful melodies. »
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Born in New York and based in Oxford, Mississippi, singer-songwriter Shannon McNally recorded the new Small Town Talk (Sacred Sumac) in 2007, when the man the album celebrates was still alive. Its 14 songs are all by New Orleans great Bobby Charles, who died in 2010 just short of his 72nd birthday. »
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I’m pretty sure that in the mid-aughts I was a high-ranking member of the unofficial Devendra Banhart Haters Club, so nobody’s more surprised than I am that over the past five years I’ve enjoyed his newer music more and more. He’s seriously toned down his hippie affectations, overripe vocals, and distracting self-consciousness, all without changing who he is at heart. »
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This weekend’s Bolt Thrower shows both sold out in a few hours almost four months ago, and for the benefit of everyone who didn’t know that already I’m going to try to explain why. Formed in Coventry in 1986, these legendary UK war machines have been called “the AC/DC of death metal,” and since 1991, when they dropped blastbeats from their songs, Bolt Thrower have been refining a stripped-down, deceptively simple style that combines merciless martial drive with infectious groove. »
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Pianist Gerald Clayton has recorded every one of his three albums since moving from his native Los Angeles to New York seven years ago, and in that brief time his music has undergone a dramatic transformation from brisk and lively post-Oscar Peterson postbop to burnished, thoroughly contemporary jazz that borrows rhythmic ideas from hip-hop and dices them up with staggering technique. He pushes even further on his latest album, Life Forum (Concord Jazz), beefing up his core trio of bassist Joe Sanders and drummer Justin Brown with three horn players (trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and saxophonists Logan Richardson and Dayna Stephenson) and two vocalists, Gretchen Parlato and Sachal Vasandani, who add refined wordless singing. »
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Gorod, Kamikabe, Vale of Pnath, Inanimate Existence, Wet the Steel, Epitasis Reggie's Rock Club May 27
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Your Turn (Northern Spy) is the second and best album by Ceramic Dog, the knotty rock trio led by guitarist Marc Ribot. The group’s 2008 debut, Party Intellectuals (Pi), felt a bit slick and chilly, but the new one—with raw, vibrant production by Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier—is elbow deep in blood and grit, and Ribot sounds his most inspired and concise, even on extended solos. »
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LA lo-fi garage-trash outfit Pangea, which sprang from the brain of songwriter and front man William Keegan, has never been bashful about being a party band. And yes, they live like they sound. »
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Four years ago Chicago reedist and composer Geof Bradfield premiered the poignant, stately suite African Flowers, whose peripatetic and stylistically rich pieces he wrote after a State Department-sponsored tour of Africa with pianist Ryan Cohan. With his latest album, Melba! (Origin), Bradfield proves that this success with long-form, programmatic writing was no fluke. »
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