Arcade Fire in Concert

Last night we saw Arcade Fire in concert at the Verizon Center. They covered Fugazi, as part of their efforts to cover local artists. Check that out here.And here.

And pictures HERE. Playlist here.http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/arcade-fire/2014/verizon-center-washington-dc-73ce3251.html

It was a really fun show--they started with Afterlife, also had other favorites like No Cars Go, Sprawl II, Neighborhoods (1) (tunnels), Ready to Start, and Neighborhood (3). Lots of energy, over the top dynamics, crazy silver mirror man, and absolutely unbelievable visuals. Great fun. And I gained a new appreciation for a few of their newer songs, especially those I've been a bit anemic on. One of the better shows I've seen lately. 

Best of the July-August DC Concerts

Lots of shows coming up, some I am attending, others not (but would like to). My picks:

1. On Sunday, August 17, Arcade Fire is coming to the Verizon Center. Tickets purchased.
2. Sunday, July 20 brings Ha Ha Tonka to the Rock & Roll Hotel.
3. The Hamilton is hosting old AI favorite Elliot Yamin on Wednesday...
4. and new sensation Phox on Saturday, July 19.
5. Bishop Allen is coming to the Black Cat on August 23.
6. Matthew Sweet is coming to the Birchmere on July 16.
7. Sarah Borges is coming to Iota on August 21. Remember the Broken Singles? Remember the "Day We Met?"
8. O.A.R. and Phil Phillips are coming to Merriweather on Saturday, July 19.
9. Mates of State (love them) are coming to the U Street Music Hall on Monday, July 28.
10. And though I find the 9:30 Club schedule a bit thin, I'd go with the Antlers on July 25.

Willie

We saw the Kacey Musgraves, Alison Krauss, and Willie Nelson concert on Saturday night at Merriweather. Perfect weather. Willie was...awesome. He's 81 and seemed to have tons of energy, playing favorites like...well see the playlist for yourself. Favorites like "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys," "Always on My Mind," and "On the Road Again" were played. The closing act with everyone singing "Let the Circle Be Unbroken" followed by "I'll Fly Away" and "Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die" almost seemed to be poking fun of his advanced age.

It was a raucous show; wish we had real seats. We both preferred Kacey Musgraves opener over Alison Krauss', which seemed flat. "Follow Your Arrow" is still stuck in my head.

Better than Ezra Concert

I've seen Better than Ezra at least five times, I think. At least three or four times at 9:30 Club, stretching back to 1998. In Baltimore and at Constitution Hall. And each time, I leave and think: damn--this is why I go every time.

Kevin and Tom and Michael played one hell of a show, and Kevin always strikes the perfect tone as the the front man. He engages the crowd, compliments DC, muses on how U Street has changed...Perfect. The show started with King of New Orleans and ended with In the Blood, which had some amazing cowbell drums. He covered some of Lorde's Royals and Sublime's What I Got and of course Laid. Desperately Wanting closed out their main set. In between, there were all of the classics, plus some new tunes like Sunflowers, Gonna Get Better, Insane, and Crazy Lucky, which were great tunes. Also on the setlist, A Southern Thing, Sincerely Me, A Lifetime, Under You, Porcelain, Juicy, Extra Ordinary, Absolutely Still, At the Stars, and Good (of course). Their banter with the crowd and their interplay demonstrate how much they love performing and that they all seem to actually like each other. It's a great show, and absolutely worth getting home at 11:45ish.

Amended: Setlist is up. One song they said they had not played in years: Live Again. Forgot how great that one was!

Fanfarlo Concert

I had the pleasure, for the third time, of seeing Fanfarlo in concert at the U Street Music Hall.

Nothing beat seeing them at the the Red Palace (RIP), but it was a great show as they wrapped up their U.S. tour. Highlights? A Distance, of course, Ghosts, and Harold T. Wilkins. And their grand finale of "The Walls Are Coming Down." Their horn player is seriously ridiculously great. I mean, that made the show. You could tell the band was a bit tired. Lillies on Mars opened, and while we only saw part of the set, they were a great complement. Will try to update with a playlist, but it was similar to this one.

Shearwater Concert

We really enjoyed Shearwater last weekend, especially opener Jesca Hoop, who was fun and kind of naughty and a great "addition" to the band, despite some technical issues. I saw this interview with Shearwater about their recent album. Some of the tracks included:

‘Natural One’ by Folk Implosion
“People who were in high school or college when the movie ‘Kids’ came out [in 1995] know this song,” Meiburg says of the Lou Barlow-penned track, which was on the art-house shocker’s soundtrack. “Then it kind of vanished. I thought it would be fun to resurrect it by covering it very precisely.”

‘Ambiguity’ by David Thomas Broughton
“David is very unusual,” Meiburg says of the British folk singer. “When we toured with him, he would wander into the audience and start knocking things over, or engage in long, uncomfortable staring matches with the audience.”

‘Cheerleader’ by St. Vincent
“I tried to imagine it was a song about the frustration of being a perennial opening band,” he says. “I don’t want to be ungrateful, but opening can be a frustrating experience. It would be nice to be the team that people are cheering for, and not just the cheerleader.”

‘Our Only Sun’ based on ‘Deeper Devastation’ by Jesca Hoop
“She’s our official fellow traveler for these shows,” Meiburg says of the singer-guitarist, who is opening for Shearwater and playing in the band. Her music is “very ornate and precise — unlike anything else I’ve heard.”

‘Hurts Like Heaven’ by Coldplay
In 2008, Shearwater opened the first four shows of Coldplay’s massive American tour. “The experience of getting up in front of 20,000 people who don’t want to see you is something I recommend to everyone in life,” Meiburg says with a laugh. “It was like opening for Cirque du Soleil.”

‘A Wake for the Minotaur’ by Shearwater
This duet with singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten, whom Shearwater supported in 2012, is the only original on the album. “It’s about how touring makes you feel that you and the people you’re traveling with are the only three-dimensional beings in the world,” he says. “Everything just flies away from you at such a speed.”

‘Mary Is Mary’ by Wye Oak
“It’s a really beautiful melody,” Meiburg says of the Baltimore band’s song. “I kept it in the same key, I just took it an octave down from where [singer] Jenn [Wasner] has it. It’s the lowest vocal I’ve ever recorded.”

‘F—ed Up Life’ by The Baptist Generals
“Fellow Travelers” culminates with an upbeat yet dark song by one of Meiburg’s favorite unsung bands. “The characters on this record, many of them are sort of broken or disturbed in some way,” he says. “The answer in this song is that it doesn’t matter.”

Shearwater!

I'm looking forward to Shearwater tonight at the Rock & Roll Hotel.

Fellow Travelers wasn’t supposed to be a full-length record, so I’m a little surprised to admit that it’s my favorite Shearwater album so far. Somehow it slipped under the door.
It was meant to be a small thing, maybe a home-recorded EP, to release between Animal Joy and the next full-length (for which we’re in the studio right now). But it took on a life of its own. Re-imagining and renovating songs by the bands we’ve toured with was like leafing through a scrapbook, and brought back the highs and lows of a decade of touring, from dives in Oklahoma and squats in Slovenia to the Fillmore West, the Bataclan, and the MGM Grand (ask me about that one sometime).

Audiences never see most of touring life, and it’s the hidden moments that came to mind while we were recording. I thought of Chris Martin, pacing nervously in the bowels of the LA Forum, before the first show of a tour for an album on which EMI had staked its existence; of Brian Campbell, Clinic’s indomitable bassist, muttering “I hate these f_____ things” before donning a grimy surgical mask for the thousandth time; of David Thomas Broughton wandering into an audience in Brussels mid-song, knocking things over and falling down, then slipping us a half-smile offstage; of Xiu Xiu hiding stuffed animals and candy in the stacks of a university library for their devoted fans to find; of Sharon Van Etten playing us the rough demos for the album that would put her on the map while she drove our van through the snowy Idaho mountains.

Touring is an expression of faith – in yourself, in your friends, in the hope that the world has a place for you. In that spirit, I invited all the bands we covered to play on Fellow Travelers, with the caveat that you couldn’t play on your own song. Almost everyone rose to the bait: Chris from the Baptist Generals turned Clinic’s “Tomorrow” into a bewildered, stomping incantation, while Clinic, in turn, infected the Generals’ “Fucked Up Life” with drum machines, radio signals, and their trademark combo organ. I added recordings I made of birds and waves in the Falklands to David Thomas Broughton’s “Ambiguity,” and he sent us a tape he made of sparrows, bulbuls, and the clanking shovels of highway workers in Pyongyang, North Korea (long story), which we spliced into our rock-anthem version of Xiu Xiu’s “I Luv the Valley OH!!” And Jenn from Wye Oak, who, like us, had also toured with Lou B, added vocals to “Natural One,” our most straight-up reading of the bunch, since I couldn’t think of a better way to honor a perfectly-constructed song.

Leon Trotsky, who gave the words “fellow travelers” their political aura, once wrote that “a protest against reality, either conscious or unconscious, active or passive, optimistic or pessimistic, always forms part of a really creative piece of work.” Maybe that’s why these songs seem like they belong together, to me. Listening back, I get a feeling of common effort, of common purpose, among all of our different musical paths; we’ve all tried to defy or transform reality in small ways with our music, and to prove it with our performing lives. Playing these songs felt like riding a wave.

First Black Cat Show

So a hole in my concert going experience has been never seeing a show at the Black Cat. That should change on Sunday night when we see Frightened Rabbit, a favorite band in our household."State Hospital" is their latest single. We love Winter of Mixed Drinks.

As a side note, I'm enjoying the Lord Huron album streaming on NPR music.

Other great shows around town include the Walkmen at the 9:30 Club and Greg Laswell & Katie Herzig at Rock & Roll Hotel. The latter also on Sunday! Thank God for holiday weekends!

Springsteen

We are off to Nationals Park tonight for the Springsteen show. I hear it could be 3.5 hours of music. Wow. We really don't know all too much of his recent stuff, but hearing just enough classic Bruce would be sufficient. Concert time!

Favorites Friday

Cave Singers, Shearwater, Great Lakes Swimmers. 

Oh yeah, and I bought Frightened Rabbit tickets! October 7 at the Black Cat.

Springsteen

So I'm not a huge Springsteen fan, though I've recognized that he'd be great in concert.  And come September 14, we will see him at Nationals Park. Close and check that off of the "Concert Bucket List."

What else is on my concert bucket list? Pearl Jam. The National. Frightened Rabbit.  Maybe Foo Fighters.  Sarah McLachlan. Probably too many bands to count.

Of Montreal

Last night, we saw Of Montreal at the 9:30 Club.  I can't say I was a huge fan of theirs, but the over-the-top concert (complete with white balloons, crowd surfing, graphics and more) was definitely memorably interesting. I recognize a few of their songs and while I enjoyed the show, I ended up with a headache this morning. Sigh. We are getting old. The psychadelic pop kind of reminded me of Queen.  Opener Loney Dear (I keep writing Lonely Dear) was kind of mellow and bland. We missed Kishi Bashi, who seemed a bit more our speed.

Fanfarlo Take Two

We saw Fanfarlo last night at the U Street Music Hall.  Despite what was a bad night for them (apparently a van braekdown and lack of soundcheck), the concert was fun.  They played quite a bit of "Rooms Filled with Light," though I still think the highlight was Harold T. Wilkins, which closed out their main set. They only played "Bones" and "I'm a Pilot" for their encore. We definitely enjoyed the Red Palace show more, which was a bit more intimate and experimental, since it was several months before their new "baby" was born.  However, it is such good music, and we enjoyed it. I think "Tunguska" was really the only new track off their new album they didn't play that we would have liked to hear. Replicate, Deconstruction, Tightrope, Feathers...all of our favorites.  As for the venue, it was basement like and the sound wasn't great. Very loud. Young Man opened, and they mainly came across as loud.

DC Music Around Town

The Hill is Home provides a useful guide to music in my neck of the woods for this month here. Howlin Rain, Other Lives, and the Twilight Sad are some of the slightly bigger named groups coming to H Street NE.  We're quite lucky to have both the Red Palace and Rock & Roll Hotel so close.

Jack's Mannequin is playing a sold-out 9:30 Club and the Black Cat hosts a sold-out Sharon van Etten and Shearwater. All good shows.

Rainy Day Music

It's yet another rainy day in the winter for DC. Depressing, right? I started with Sharon Van Etten, then moved to Great Lake Swimmers (remembered how much I liked them when I was listening to shuffle!), and now Wintersleep. "New Inheritors" is a great, great album. It's days like these that always lead to the National later, too.

Last week, I was bemoaning the lack of good concerts coming my way. Now Delta Spirit, Fanfarlo, and Sleigh Bells are coming this way.  And Snow Patrol! So many good shows...so many....