Category Archives: Music

Music, We Love Music
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We Love Music: The Kaiser Chiefs @ 9:30 Club — 3/9/12

Photo courtesy of sergione infuso
Kaiser Chiefs @ Magazzini Generali, Milano – 13 novembre 2011
courtesy of sergione infuso

Could it be? Could it be that you’re joking with me and you don’t really see you with me?

The Kaiser Chiefs weren’t joking at all as they pummeled the sold-out 9:30 Club Friday night with a one-two punch in a testosterone-fueled new wave rampage. The lads from Leeds (UK) never missed a beat as they rocked out through songs about hanging out with their fellows, scoffing at the lack of intelligence among the masses, and questioning the veracity of women, the best testosterone booster without a doubth.

I always absolutely loved the music of the Kaiser Chiefs after being introduced to the upbeat songs from their first album Employment, which skillfully married punk sensibilities to new wave dance tunes. The Kaiser Chiefs delivered great advice for men by men on that album: watch your back, love your friends, mind your diet, and keep a wary eye on women. Indeed, the band writes music primarily for men while many of their new wave contemporaries create music for girls.

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We Love Music: Tennis & White Rabbits @ Black Cat — 3/7/12 (or “With Great Expectations Come Great Responsibility”)

Photo courtesy of musicisentropy
Tennis
courtesy of musicisentropy

A very sold-out show at the Black Cat Wednesday night offered two remarkably different flavors. I went into it with expectations that one band would be mediocre and the other band would be pretty good, but my expectations were reversed!

First, Denver-based pop band Tennis charmed the audience with its sweet sunny pop songs, evoking images of a journey through Americana. The sound of Tennis, made up at its core by husband and wife Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley, completely recalls earlier times of simple lovesongs albeit set to Moore’s pleasing synths and Riley’s surf guitar.

I knew them as a band that tours a lot but I had low expectations. Boy, did they surprise me. The very look of the duo, even augmented by their band, evoked happy, retro feelings. Moore has a look about her straight out of an 80s high school yearbook and she sings with a lovely sophisti-pop air. To me, her voice contained elements of Kristy MacColl and Tracey Thorn, although she remained so chirpy that she would be completely at home on a twee pop mixtape with Heavenly.
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Entertainment, Music, Night Life, The Features, We Love Music
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We Love Music: Korallreven @ Black Cat 3/5/2012

all photos by Nathan Jurgenson

Stockholm-based electronic duo Korallreven played their first DC show Monday night, headlining the Black Cat backstage. They were joined by openers Young Magic and Stout Cortez. Korallreven are currently on their first US tour, in support of An Album by Korallreven, out on Acephale Records.

Young Magic played an enthusiastic and energizing set. The trio, currently based in New York City is comprised of Australian ex-pats Isaac Emmanuel, Michael Italia, and Indonesian-born Melati Malay. They mixed dreamy vocals and ambient guitar with tribal-sounding rhythyms and hypnotic, thumping beats. Their performance and sound was fresh, intense, and engaging.

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Adams Morgan, Entertainment, Music
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Well that should be good for a few more bids

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If you were up up in the air about whether you wanted to buy that diner on ebay maybe it being the site of a music video will help tip you over. It’s set entirely at the Cap City Diner – the logo is clearly visible in a few shots as singer Flo Anito comes in and out of the door – and it’s a fun little visual story and a good song.

I’m sure some of you will hate that the car in it has a Virginia license plate but hey, without the diner to go to maybe she’s fleeing the city. If so she didn’t stay gone long – she and our own Rachel Levitin are amongst the performers tonight at Chief Ike’s Mambo Room if you’re in the market for a little live music.

Music, We Love Music
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We Love Music: Young Prisms, Boy Friend, & Ceremony @ DC9 – 3/4/12

Photo courtesy of Ethan.K
Young Prisms
courtesy of Ethan.K

I have a friend who swears a 90s revival is around the corner. It’s going to be big and it’s going to make industrial music popular again.

But while my friend wasn’t looking, the 90s revival already has come, but not in the form he envisioned. In the past several years, there have been an explosion of dreampop and shoegaze bands leaping out of their dens and onto our stages, putting any so-called 90s revival much more in the debt of bands that followed My Bloody Valentine than those that followed Nine Inch Nails.
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Entertainment, Interviews, Music, Night Life, The Features, We Love Music
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Q&A with Marcus Joons of Korallreven

photo courtesy of Korallreven

Swedish dreamy-electronic-pop duo Korallreven, aka Marcus Joons and Daniel Tjäder (of The Radio Dept) have announced their first US shows ever, with select East and West coast dates supporting their debut album, An Album By Korallreven, available now on Acéphale.

We Love DC’s Alexia Kauffman got the chance to ask singer Marcus Joons a few questions.

Alexia Kauffman: What music inspired you when you were growing up?

Marcus Joons: I remember getting touched real early by Velvet Underground, I must have been like eleven or twelve when I first came across their heroin romantic pop songs. Maybe too early. Apart from that I think that I, free from my mind, got the biggest kicks from Screamadelica, Spiritualized, everything by The Beach Boys and Daft Punk’s Homework. All of this has inspired me more to live and breathe than to make music though. Continue reading →

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We Love Music: Spineless Swine @ The Red Palace on 2/23/12 (or “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Smiths”)

Photo by author.

Spineless Swine is a local cover band of The Smiths. They sound great and you should go listen to them sometime. I’ll get back to them in a bit, but first bear with me while I digress.

A mere 10 years ago, I only had in my collection the singles compilation from The Smiths. I hadn’t given them a lot of thought but I liked some of the more easily digestible songs like “Panic,” which protested the state of pop music — a sentiment everyone can embrace completely from time to time. “Panic” also had the easy pleasure that came from lifting a guitar riff from “Metal Guru” by T. Rex, and I always have been a fan of the early 70’s glam musicians like Marc Bolan, David Bowie, and Roxy Music.

It turns out that Steven Patrick Morrissey also had been a fan but he explicitly rejected the direction the musical progeny of those bands took when they went electronic and started crafting sophisticated synth arias. Rejecting music by bands such as Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark in substance and presentation, The Smiths then embarked on a short-lived rock journey that some (including me) say begat britpop.
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Entertainment, Music, The Features, We Love Music
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We Love Music Field Trip: Bjork @ New York Hall of Science, 2/18/12

Photo Credit: Julieta Cervantes

While We Love DC typically focuses on events in the Washington, DC metro area, we sometimes make exceptions for special events that are not coming to the area. Bjork‘s performance on Saturday night at the New York Hall of Science is one of those exceptions. The concert was part of her ten-show New York residency in February and March of this year.

It is rare to be at a concert and feel that you are having a once-in-a-lifetime experience; that you’re  truly a part of something monumental. I have been to hundreds of concerts in my lifetime. I have seen Bjork perform five times now. Saturday night’s performance was among the top concerts I’ve ever experienced, and it was more than just a concert- it was a multimedia art extravaganza. It was ground-breaking in many ways, and truly unforgettable. Continue reading →

Music, The Features, We Love Music
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We Love Music: Dead Milkmen @ U Street Music Hall, 2/18/12

Photo courtesy of xrayspx
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courtesy of xrayspx

The Dead Milkmen, Philadelphia’s top punk export, stunned a sold-out crowd at U Street Music Hall with the nervy verve of their declarations against mainstream America along with an amazingly acute understanding of their musical niche and a nod to DC hardcore punkers Fugazi.

Rodney Anonymous and crew tore through about 30 3-minute musical selections in a show at U Street Music Hall on Saturday, Feb. 18, to a largely respectful crowd who formed perhaps the most civil mosh pit in history at the front of the stage as the show reached its halfway point. By its halfway point, the Dead Milkmen had dispensed with some of their comparatively polite standards like “Punk Rock Girl” and “Methodist Coloring Book,” which thumb their nose as social acceptance, as well as new song “Fauxhemia,” which rails gently against things people are “supposed” to like, such as NPR. These songs, while rooted firmly in the Dead Milkmen catalog, hit their targets with a bit more of a slap upside the head than a kick in the ass. Continue reading →

Entertainment, Music, Night Life, The Features, We Love Music
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We Love Music: Zola Jesus @ U Street Music Hall, 2/16/12

Synth-chamber-electronic songstress Zola Jesus and her band performed to an enthusiastic crowd at U Street Music Hall Thursday night. They were supported by openers Talk Normal, a female experimental rock duo from Brooklyn who are accompanying them on much of their tour. They are in the midst of a US tour before heading over to Europe at the end of March.

This was the third time singer Nika Roza Danilova, who performs as Zola Jesus, had played in DC. Previously she has toured as on opener for acts including The XX and in Europe toured with Fever Ray. Her music is dark, moody, heavily electronic, with some piano and strings mixed in, with dramatic vocals. At times it brings to mind Massive Attack, other times Fever Ray, even hints of Kate Bush, but Danilova’s vocals are the unique element of her music. Continue reading →

Music, The Daily Feed
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Hot Ticket: The Dead Milkmen @ U Street Music Hall, 2/18/2012

Photo courtesy of xrayspx
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courtesy of xrayspx

The Dead Milkmen, enduring critics of the status quo, bring their jangly punk rock to U Street Music Hall Saturday for an early show. Best known for their 1988 single “Punk Rock Girl,” which epitomizes their irreverence for societal norms, the group likely will present their classics and new material from last year’s self-published The King in Yellow.

Shows like this don’t come around too often, especially if you’re someone who grew up listening to various punk and new wave acts in the mid-1980s. The Dead Milkmen are not in the midst of a full-scale tour, so it’s a great one-time opportunity to relive the contributions the mid-Atlantic region, including DC and the Milkmen’s hometown of Philadelphia, made to the vibrant punk scene.

Tickets to this all-ages early show are still available online for $18. Philadelphia-based psych-poppers Bleeding Rainbow open.

Music, The Daily Feed
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Hot Ticket – For a Cause: A Benefit Show for DC Vote

Interested in hearing some cool music while supporting the work of DC Vote? Head over to DC9 on February 23rd for the next in the on-going Monument Music and Arts series of benefit shows which have previously supported other great local non-profits like 826DC, We Are Family, and Common Good City Farm.

The line up on the 23rd features Raleigh, NC’s Heads on Sticks and the DC-native-fronted Farewell Republic. Both bands specialize in takes on buzzy, psych-inflected rock that should appeal to a wide audience. Before and after the band sets, local artist and DC voting rights activist Adrian Parsons will DJ – under the moniker Jeanne Pierre le Douche.

Tickets are only $10 and are available now.

Music
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We Love Music: Sharon Van Etten at Black Cat

Kevin Hill, chunkyglasses.com

Guest review by Jeffrey Lamoureux
All photographs courtesy of Kevin Hill

Sharon Van Etten was recently featured in the New York Times Magazine in a piece that took stock of her new neighborhood in Brooklyn and its “oddly charming florist/speakeasy.” The article is accompanied online by a video of her performing in said florist/speakeasy. Ms. Van Etten sings while gazing at the floor, the ceiling, and occasionally the camera or her backup singer, cracking a slight smile as she does. It’s a spare and intimate portrait of her music, the appeal of which is its honesty. Ms. Van Etten’s music embodies transience, heartbreak, and, ultimately, strength. When she sings, “I’m alright,” you’re not inclined to believe her, until she grins at the end of the song.
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Entertainment, Music, Night Life, The Daily Feed, We Love Music
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Hot Ticket: Zola Jesus @ U Street Music Hall, 2/16/2012

photo courtesy of Zola Jesus

Goth/synthpop princess Zola Jesus will be performing her enchanting, dark tunes Thursday night at U Street Music Hall. She has toured with Fever Ray and The XX, and collaborated with M83, LA Vampires and Burial Hex, among others.  Check out her video for “Vessel,” off of her 2011 album Conatus, out on Sacred Bones Records.

Zola Jesus

U Street Music Hall

7pm/$15/All Ages

Arlington, Entertainment, Interviews, Music, Night Life, People, The Features, We Love Music
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Q&A with Justin Trawick

Justin Trawick is a local singer-songwriter, band frontman, and musical entrepreneur.  In addition to his exhaustive solo performance schedule he has created a series called The 9, that packages nine singer-songwriters into one show, joining their forces to create a theatrical and diverse night of entertainment. We Love DC’s Alexia Kauffman sat down with Justin to talk about his endeavors.

Alexia Kauffman: So first can you tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, and what is on your plate right now?

Justin Trawick: I’m a musician in the area. I’ve been doing music full-time for about four years. I live in Arlington, and I play most of my shows in the Washington, DC area, and then I go out of town, a lot of east coast shows up and down from Boston down to Georgia. And I play in a lot of cities around the country via airplane- I go to Austin and L.A. a lot. Continue reading →

Entertainment, Music, Night Life, The Features, We Love Music
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We Love Music: The Darkness @ 930 Club, 2/8/2012

photo by Nicole Geldart

Tight pants, long hair, moustaches, falsetto and acrobatics abounded onstage Wednesday night at the 930 club. Freddie Mercury would have felt right at home. British glam-rock extravaganza The Darkness blended sex-appeal, silliness and virtuosity into a delicious pop explosion at their sold-out show. They were joined by outrageous openers Foxy Shazam.

Cincinnati rockers Foxy Shazam took to the stage with theatricality, lead singer Eric Nally swooping on draped in a black-sequined cape. (When he removed his cape to reveal his tight black pants and cropped leather jacket, combined with his Prince Valiant haircut he somehow looked to me like what Sonny Bono might have looked like as a member of The Ramones.)  Continue reading →

Entertainment, Music, Night Life, We Love Music
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We Love Music: Thurston Moore, Kurt Vile @ Black Cat 2/6/2012

photos by author

At Monday night’s Black Cat show Thurston Moore  dished out jokes about Dischord house, stories about Black Flag, Jello Biafra, conspiracy theories about Jimmy Carter, credited Reagan for the birth of Hardcore, and had a gin & tonic chugging contest with his guitarist. Oh yeah, and played some amazing music too.

Moore, frontman of the iconic experimental/noise/post-punk band Sonic Youth is on tour in support of his latest solo album Demolished Thoughts, released in 2011 on Matador. He brought with him fellow Matador recording artist Kurt Vile, as well as a band on his own label, Ecstatic Peace Records – Hush Arbors, which features his touring guitarist, Keith Wood. Continue reading →

Entertainment, Music, The Features, We Love Music
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We Love Music: The Grey Area

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Photo Courtesy of The Grey Area

Happenstance is what brought The Grey Area together. It was March 2010 when Jason Steinhauer (vocals/guitar) stopped by Zoo Bar for an open blues jam. Drummer Timothy Jones (TJ) was playing with a few other guys on stage at the time, so Steinhauer sat at the bar and waited for his turn to join.

It didn’t take long for Steinhauer to get in on the action though. Instead of waiting for his name to be called, Steinhauer jumped on stage as soon as the song being played was finished. From there, he grabbed the mic, looked at TJ, and said, “‘You Shook Me,’ the Zeppelin version.”  TJ smiled, kicked the beat, and started the song. That’s all it took — an indie-rock band with the ability to write pop hooks and catchy choruses was born.

Steinhauer and TJ exchanged numbers that night, forged a friendship, and started writing music with each other. After toying around with the idea of adding a bass player, the duo made their official band debut eight months later at the Canal Room in New York City. Now they’re nominated for three 2012 Washington Area Music Association awards (including Best New Artist) and are playing an album release show at Strathmore this Friday.

Steinhauer took a few minutes to share The Grey Area’s story with We Love DC in anticipation of Friday night. Here’s what he had to say. Continue reading →

Entertainment, Music, Night Life, The Daily Feed
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Listen Local First Launches Kickstarter Campaign to Bring DC Music to SXSW

You may have noticed the signs posted in the front windows of Tryst, Local 16, Solly’s, or maybe even Hello Cupcake. But in case you didn’t , here’s the low down. For the past four months, there’s been a monthly “DC Local Music Day” (FYI: It’s February 8 this month).

What is DC Local Music Day? It is the day in which the aforementioned shops (and others) stream music created by local artists from open to close. This is all thanks to Listen Local First.

If you haven’t heard of it yet, LLF is a new local music initiative in town. LLF is devoted to building awareness and creating opportunities for local musicians and venues in order to raise the profile of DC’s local music scene. All things considered, they’ve been doing a pretty good job so far. They’ve got a growing list of local business partnerships and show no sign of slowing down.

LLF is the brain child of co-founders Chris Naoum and Rene Moffatt and their next goal for the project is bringing the DC music scene to SXSW this March.

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