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thebowerypresents · 8 months

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Boygenius Are Right at Home at Madison Square Garden

Boygenius – Madison Square Garden – October 2, 2023

Boy (!), did these people love those people. These people were all of us — the assembled throng at Madison Square Garden on Monday night, anyway — deeply enthralled by what was occurring on the stage and the vibe filling up the whole place. Those people were boygenius — the inspired supergroup comprising Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers — headlining there for the first time and completely owning it.

Supergroups are usually good-natured stunts, or at least don’t feel set up for any kind of real longevity. Boygenius, on the other hand, are convincingly a band. The three principals share an affinity for the space where open-armed, melancholy, confessional folk-rock meets steely, fist-pumping resolve, and while their individual styles are different, boygenius are the through line among them where somehow all this deeply intimate, soul-bearing music translates to a huge stage, way bigger than its individual parts, losing none of its quietly (and sometimes un-quietly) devastating power.

They began the set a cappella, singing “Within You Without Them” from backstage in gorgeous three-part harmonies, like a next-generation Emmylou Harris/Alison Krauss/Gillian Welch. From there they took the main stage to rapturous applause in front of a sturdy four-piece band — drummer Madden Klass, bassist Tiana Ohara, keyboardist Sarah Goldstone and well-utilized multi-instrumentalist Melina Duerte — and sliced into “$20” and “Satanist,” both full-throated rockers, sometimes with screams, as if to remind us that despite sometimes-delicate music, this would not be a delicate show.

Throughout it, boygenius proved masters of balance. The three-part harmonies returned to great effect on tunes like “True Blue.” Each took multiple turns singing lead vocals, drawing briefly from their own catalogs — Baker’s “Favor,” Bridgers’ “Graceland Too,” Dacus’ “Please Stay” — but focusing largely on the already-formidable boygenius catalog — the tender, ethereal, pained “Emily I’m Sorry,” the heavy “Bite the Hand,” the stirring “Me and My Dog,” all highlights.

There were newer songs, too: The set closed with “Powers,” debuted a few nights earlier in Philadelphia and one of four tunes the band played late in the show from a B-stage, immersing in the audience — endlessly, that joyful, triumphant vibe. Joined by opener MUNA for the final encore, “Salt in the Wound,” boygenius left us feeling benedictory — take these good feelings and embrace them for how beautifully raw they really are. —Chad Berndtson | @Cberndtson

Photos courtesy of Grayson Wise | @grayokay

#Bowery Presents #Boygenius #Chad Berndtson #Emmylou Harris #Gillian Welch #Grayson Wise #Julien Baker #Lucy Dacus #Madden Klass #Madison Square Garden #Melina Duterte #MUNA #New York City #Phoebe Bridgers #Photos #Review #Sarah Goldstone #Tiana Ohara

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thebowerypresents · 6 days

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Tyler Childers Makes a Statement Over Two Nights at Madison Square Garden

Tyler Childers – Madison Square Garden – May 28-29, 2024

Tyler Childers has one of the great voices, not only in modern country and Americana, but in music, period: pained, howling, lived-in, oaky, scuffed-smooth when it needs to be, utterly recognizable. Over a series of sturdy albums that shows increasingly deep songwriting, his sound has become a through line from ancient twang to countrypolitan modern and many other points easily adjacent or distantly related, from gosxpel to folk, blues to Appalachian string. Especially in a live setting, they’re all usefully blended.

Childers and a massive version of his Food Stamps band — eight players in all — hit Madison Square Garden on Tuesday, the first of two statement-maker shows at the arena. Name-checking Joe’s Pub and some other much smaller NYC venues that dot a steady rise to bigger and bigger crowds over less than a decade, Childers seemed genuinely moved by the grand expanse of the room and the lordly reception from fans. Naturally, he responded in kind: a big show, a big sound, gorgeously emotional whether it was the whole band hitting at full throttle, or Childers alone onstage in guitar-storyteller mode.

The band all together revealed many layers as they fleshed out the tunes, from the country stomp of “Percheron Mules” to the gorgeous blends of pedal steel and fiddle that ramped into “I Swear (To God).” “All Your’n” was an example of a tender, piano-dappled love song — more than a few couples were asway at all levels of the arena — and snatches of accordion, mandolin and organ shot through at various points, too. “Purgatory” was a stuttering, busy boogie, and then came a see-and-raise to an even busier boogie, an instrumental reading of the traditional mountain picker “Cluck Ol’ Hen,” with Childers on a fiddle and the whole group moving into psychedelic hoedown territory. It was that kind of wild.

As deservedly much as he’s lauded for songwriting, Childers is a gifted interpreter of others’ songs too — never more than a few during a show and positioned just right. Tuesday’s show included a Kenny Rogers (“Tulsa Turnaround”), a Hank Williams (“Old Country Church”), an S.G. Goodman (!) (“Space and Time” — stunning) and … yep, a Kermit the Frog (“Movin’ Right Along”), complete with the green puppet himself, singing on both that song and, as a bittersweet duo with Childers just before it, on “Lady May.”

I mean, sure, why not, right? Kermit was just one more part of the full serving — a continuous, two-hour set with a solo-acoustic segment in the middle that unfolded panoramically and went for broke near the end with a run that included usual Childers bangers like “Whitehouse Road,” “Way of the Triune God” and the triumphant “Universal Sound.” The finale was “Heart You’ve Been Tendin’,” which built gradually on the back of the chant-like refrain “All that you’ll take” and stacked the tension, yielding to a bone-saw-sharp solo from guitarist CJ Cain that pushed the band to Crazy Horse–like levels of vicious choogle. But heavy and sonic as it all was, Childers himself remained the center of the action regardless of the mode, letting his humility be even bigger than his voice and then pushing that howl even harder, paying off the tender hearts and the rage-ready alike. A great night. —Chad Berndtson | @Cberndtson

Photos courtesy of Marc Millman | www.marcmillmanphotos.com

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thebowerypresents · 7 months

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Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real Cut Loose at Webster Hall on Saturday Night

Lukas Nelson – Webster Hall – November 18, 2023

It’s been a few years since Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real last visited Webster Hall and what feels like a lifetime of world tumult, happenings and music that’s passed since then. That the songs from the band’s crisp 2023 release, Sticks & Stones, sound like people eager to break out and boogie is probably not an accident, but then Nelson and his snappy country-rock squad have always walked the line between wistful-moving and barroom-blastoff — better than most. They’re love-me-tender when they want to be, with a joyful, almost goofy earnestness. They can deliver sad songs that hit the feels. And they can rock your face off.

There’s a lot of Nelson’s dad, Willie, and a lot of occasional employer Neil Young, and a little of other obvious touchstones like Tom Petty in what they do, but these days POTR sound most like one of the best live bands of the past decade, never leaving behind their party-hardy roots, keeping the rock part of folk-rock firmly in mind, writing better and better songs that adequately pace a lip smackingly fun show. On Saturday they once again got after it, nailing the newer tunes and finding new excitement in the old ones. Opener “Entirely Different Stars” began mysterious, got to a crowd-stoking boogie and ended with a psychedelic guitar breakdown. “Sticks and Stones” had double-barreled piano and plenty of saloon in it to push the song forward. Nelson was rocking so hard during the fist-pumping “Four Letter Word” that his signature hat flew off. The early POTR favorite “All the Pretty Horses” underscored just how far the band’s come in their command of their own dynamics, starting quietly solo, patiently building to a full-band sound that filled up the room.

Those were just part of the action. The tunes that at this point might be called the POTR classics — including stinging-sweet “Forget About Georgia,” groovy “Find Yourself,” country-gospel “Set Me Down on a Cloud” — all delivered, as they always do. But the band went deeper still, especially Nelson himself, who delivered a good chunk of the set solo, near-solo and acoustic, either guitar or piano, and left the room spellbound with the sentimental “Smile,” the proud “Just Outside of Austin” and the achingly beautiful parent-to-child-benediction “Giving You Away,” shimmering with steel from multi-instrumentalist Logan Metz. There were surprises, too: The brilliant NYC-based soulful R&B singer Emily King joined Nelson to duet on what was described as a new song, loaded with New York-centric lyrics. As ever Nelson and the POTR band — Metz, Corey McCormick, Anthony LoGerfo, Tato Melgar, aces, all — brought things to a blowout finale, barreling through the hilarious “Wrong House,” a nifty segue from their own galloping “Ladder of Love” into Willie’s “Bloody Mary Morning” and then “Find Yourself” to close the set. It was as full and varied a show as POTR have ever played here. We wrote of this same band at this same venue in 2019 that they’d “earned their swagger.” In 2023, they totally own it. —Chad Berndtson | @Cberndtson

(Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real play Royale in Boston tomorrow night.)

Photos courtesy of Marc Millman | www.marcmillmanphotos.com

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thebowerypresents · 8 months

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Les Claypool’s Fearless Flying Frog Brigade Deliver at Brooklyn Steel

Les Claypool’s Fearless Flying Frog Brigade – Brooklyn Steel – October 22, 2023

The Frog Brigade are the jam-band-iest of Les Claypool’s many thrilling projects. Or they’re a jammy band with a love of funk, prog, psychedelia and Frank Zappa that would be surfing the big waves out near the edges of sanity anyway but just so happen to get their marching orders from Claypool. (That is, not unlike all the musical projects the relentlessly quirky, generationally talented bassist puts his name on.) Either way — or, more likely, both — they’re a force, and what a treat to have them back, 20 years after their heyday and any semblance of regular touring — and in midseason form, to boot.

At Brooklyn Steel on Sunday, the Frog Brigade were on the attack. As in most of the shows during this year’s reunion tour, this one housed a full, go-for-it, manic-jammy full reading of Pink Floyd’s Animals. But what came before and after the Floyd excursion over the course of two sets and nearly three hours was just as delectable. And maybe marching orders isn’t the right way to describe the Claypool effect on a band like this. Claypool himself would seem like the command-and-control boss of this outfit but in practice he’s more the chief creative officer, giving like-minded creators enough room to be their zany selves in the framework he’s created.

This version of the Frog Brigade is assembled and plays like a Frankenstein’d version of the original — many of the same players, yes, from the heady days of ought-three, but also coconspirators from other Claypool bands like the Claypool Lennon Delirium (whose other namesake, Sean Lennon, now has the guitar chair for the Brigade). Sax sorcerer Eric “Skerik” Walton is here, and so is Mike Dillon, the percussion-and-vibes madman. Keys are handled by the prog-inclined Harry Waters (son of Roger), and Paolo Baldi, the Claypool regular and former skins-man for Cake, is on the drums. Together, as in all Claypool bands, they create a cauldron of sonics to which the listener and concertgoer aren’t so much witnesses as they are plunged in, the band driving up the intensity using aggressive, nudging rhythms, often sinister (but not untender) melodies, and free reign to, y’know, beat and blow shit up. This year’s repertoire overall is polyglot Claypool, and on Sunday, that meant plenty of Brigade cuts, but also tunes from Sausage (“Riddles Are Abound Tonight”), from the Holy Mackerel, from the Delirium (“Blood and Rockets”), and from the Bucket of Bernie Brains (a fizzy “Thai Noodles” in the encore), plus covers as varied as Prince Buster (“One Step Beyond”) and the English Beat (“Mirror in the Bathroom”).

The Pink Floyd stuff? Yeah, totally fun, as advertised. I could listen to Claypool and Co. pillage their way through “Sheep” for hours (and their “Dogs” is just as on point). But no matter what it is, these guys kick up a mighty groovy racket. Late in the second set came “Precipitation” (from the Holy Mackerel back pages), which built to a whirring, stab-syncopation solo-fest around its “Rain, rain, rain” refrain. “Hendershot,” another Claypool staple, had a bit of ragtime piano from Waters thrown in before it became a surf-rock adventure, Skerik’s sax screaming over it. The tale of “David Makalaster” (both parts!) had the band at a steady-rolling chant, pushing, pushing, pushing its stabbing rhythm.

There’s a tendency to call this music wacky but that kind of misses the musicality in it, especially when each of these songs gets a healthy work-through. The six of them don’t for a second lose the collective sonics — if you really listen closely, you hear them playing off one another with subtle asides, even when one of them is blasting away out in front of the jam. —Chad Berndtson | @Cberndtson

Photos courtesy of Dana Distortion | distortionpix.com

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thebowerypresents · 9 months

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Willie Nelson Brings Outlaw Music Festival to Forest Hills Stadium

Outlaw Music Festival – Forest Hills Stadium – September 17, 2023

You don’t so much attend a Willie Nelson concert these days as you conform to its warmly understated, sometimes leisurely, sometimes-invigorating pace. Then again, he’s always seemed to have that pause-a-sec-and-listen effect: Whether 30 or 90, delivering sad-eyed, tear-in-beer weepers, tender folk, inspiring hymns or outlaw country rousers, he’s got you. Hearing him play, surrounded by his adoring band, still has that time-stopping quality, and Forest Hills Stadium was in thrall to one of American music’s true and unimpeachable legends on a rainy but warm Sunday evening.

The Outlaw Music Festival, a going concern for a while now, is Willie’s eclectic seasonal caravan, loading up a sprawling six-hour bill with a range of artists that don’t sound quite like Nelson but are at the same time just right for a show like this, underscoring his own lineage and place in the history of many potent strains of Americana. As ever, he and his impressive band crowned the show with an hour-long set of their own, setting a brisk but not workmanlike pace through his classics (“Whiskey River,” “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” “On the Road Again,” “I Gotta Get Drunk,” “Always On My Mind,” “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die”) and those of friends and favorites, including Billie Joe Shaver’s “I Been to Georgia on a Fast Train,” “Stay a Little Longer” from the Bob Willis catalog, “Move It On Over” from Hank Williams, and the immortal “Georgia on My Mind.” Willie’s sung these songs thousands of times, but each one still felt like a warm embrace, even the wistful ones, and even the ones for which he wouldn’t need to do more than go through the motions but is just too classy for that.

About the bill: There were plenty of willing conspirators and indeed, half the fun of a tour like this is the cross-pollination and spirit of collaboration that happens throughout. No less than Norah Jones — a surprise guest, unannounced — low-key sat in on keyboards for most of the Willie set. (It wasn’t even clear it was her until she took a few backing vocals and then a full verse of “I Gotta Get Drunk.”) Harmonica ace Mickey Raphael — a stalwart of Nelson’s band — joined for sections of earlier sets from Los Lobos, the String Cheese Incident and Bob Weir & Wolf Bros using a range of harmonica modes, from sawing roadhouse blues to sweet-’n’-tender folk. And as ever, Willie made his customary invite to many of the musicians, including a game and all-smiles Weir, to join in for the rootsy, hymnal “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” and several more selections, hootenanny-ing up the stage to close the night.

Weir’s Wolf Bros — one of the most interesting post–Grateful Dead bands and as oddly compelling a capture of Weir’s Weir-ness as any other group he’s been part of — got about 90 minutes to roam as the night’s coheadliner and more than made the most of it. The core trio of Weir, Don Was and Jay Lane has mushroomed on the road into a full ensemble, including Weir’s longtime swingman Jeff Chimenti on keys and ace pedal steel from Barry Sless, plus a sturdy horns-and-strings section called the Wolfpack. That bigness was well used here: “Jack Straw,” “Estimated Prophet” (neatly segued into its forever companion, “Eyes of the World,” which itself neatly segued into Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”), the Sunday-special “Samson & Delilah” and a rollicking “Turn On Your Lovelight” were Grateful Dead staples all getting jammy workouts.

Earlier came a potent set from jam-bluegrass stalwarts the String Cheese Incident, somehow now approaching their own 30th anniversary. And earlier still came the mighty Los Lobos — themselves, whoa, 50 years along! — who played a ripsnorting 45-minute frame full of cumbia and full-boogie rockers, including the beloved “Georgia Slop.” 30 years? 50 years? So much beautiful longevity here, but the bar appears to be 90 years, gang. —Chad Berndtson | @Cberndtson

Photos courtesy of Silvia Saponaro | @Silvia_Saponaro

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thebowerypresents · 9 days

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Paul Oakenfold Is Timeless and Current at Racket on Sunday Night

Paul Oakenfold – Racket – May 26, 2024

As one of a handful of legendary DJs and mix sorcerers whose name, by now, isn’t just associated, but downright synonymous, with certain sounds, Paul Oakenfold minds (and mines from) a sweeping sonic legacy that connects many dots in club and dance music from the late 1980s to the present. No doubt he was many peoples’ first exposure to terms like trance and Goa, and the legends of all-night parties in Ibiza and countless other locations associated with hadda-be-there scenesterism in some of dance music’s richer eras.

Well-tended, he’s still doing it. At Racket on a steamy Sunday night, with a giant Union Jack emblazoned across his shirt, Oakey was as ever in his element, taking the stage close to midnight for a typically pulse-racing set that checked all over his bag of tricks, from “Ready Steady Go” to countless others, his and not. What was oddly invigorating about the set was how workmanlike it was, which is a compliment. At this point in the history of dance music — especially EDM, with its arena-, stadium- or desert-filling moments of high-production-psychedelic surround-sound-crazy — we’re accustomed to a whole lot of STUFF being part of the live DJ concert experience.

Oakenfold brought some popping backdrops, sure, and the lights were on fleek, but mostly sported a mischievous grin, lacing together sequences and keeping his transitions unforced. He played as if here to be an expert club DJ first, a performer behind that. His old buddy BT — a fellow journeyman from the 1990s pantheon of trance DJ titans — brought something similar to the party, leading a groovy earlier set with little more than a big smile and some percussive handclaps. On the decks together — briefly — he and Oakenfold hit wordless, simpatico conversation, the crowd riding the untz-untz like it was 2024 or 1998 at any old warehouse club. —Chad Berndtson | @Cberndtson

Photos courtesy of Katie Dadarria | @dadarria

#Bowery Presents #Brian Transeau #BT #Chad Berndtson #Katie Dadarria #Live Music #Meatpacking District #Music #New York City #Paul Oakenfold #Photos #Racket #Review

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thebowerypresents · 3 months

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The Dandy Warhols Return to Webster Hall Ahead of New Album’s Release

The Dandy Warhols – Webster Hall – March 9, 2024

The Dandy Warhols are one of those bands that inspires all manner of wordsmithery in attempted service of what best captures their rather hard-to-describe-but-unmistakable swagger. (I like appealingly louche.) These songs, especially the ones that made them famous as alt-rock scene-stealers starting in the mid ’90s, balance affected distance (you’re convinced you’re just not going to feel as cool as they are) and unspecific but embraceable aggression (this is often so groovy, head-nod-able, danceable, even). Their psychedelic pop and woozy rock leanings set a vibe, and it carries for as long as they choose to keep it coursing.

Set up at Webster Hall on Saturday evening, the Dandy Warhols delivered a 75-minute panorama, mixing tunes from throughout their thirtyish years as a going concern, including a few new cuts from their upcoming album, Rockmaker, out on Friday. Some tunes announced themselves with sardonic insistence: “We Used to Be Friends,” “Crack Cocaine Rager” and “Summer of Hate” all pulled you along with various flavors of midtempo chug, pogo or hammering psych. Others took a more subtle approach, such as the bouncy, seductive “Styggo,” the ethereal “I Love You” and “Arpeggio Adagio,” folkie, druggy and trudging. Many of their classics from the late ’90s and early aughts (“Bohemian Like You,” “Godless,” “Boys Better”) turned up as a run of punches and sugar rushes toward the end of the set.

Frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor, drummer Brent DeBoer and guitarist Peter Holmström climb on top of this music and its gauzy sounds and deliver it nonchalantly, as if they don’t have to produce its cool, just direct it. And the ace in the hole, as ever — with the most entrancing vibe onstage — is Zia McCabe, all over her island of keyboards but never without something extra, whether a piece of percussion shaking from an unoccupied hand, a lead vocal here and there or dancing from her perch — yep, all swagger. —Chad Berndtson | @Cberndtson

Photos courtesy of Dana Distortion | distortionpix.com

#Bowery Presents #Brent DeBoer #Chad Berndtson #Courtney Taylor-Taylor #Dana Distortion #Dandy Warhols #East Village #Live Music #Music #New York City #Peter Holmström #Photos #Review #Rockmaker #Webster Hall #Zia McCabe

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thebowerypresents · 5 months

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Umphrey’s McGee Deliver with Two-Set Show at Brooklyn Steel on Friday Night

Umphrey’s McGee – Brooklyn Steel – January 19, 2024

In the vanguard of 2000s-era jambands, Umphrey’s McGee have often been thought of as the prog-rock one, and undoubtedly, the way their more complicated tunes can sprawl out into guitar-storm, drum-clattering, puzzle-box creative madness recalls some prog-rock forebears, especially King Crimson. But prog is only a slice of how eclectic Umphrey’s can get and how they make that eclecticism a weapon instead of a neat trick. As a going concern for more than 25 years now (!), Umphrey’s shows travel what often feels like the full gamut, from arena rock to psychedelia to scraping-crunchy industrial metal, brain-bender jazz, acid blues, reggae and tender ballads. Yeah, there’s many a jamband trope — dual guitar stack-ups, lengthy excursions, brilliant improvisation, oblique lyrics and song titles, the kinds of setlist gymnastics most bands would go hands up at — but in each Umphrey’s era, they’ve sounded more like themselves, even as they got more varied, their songwriting got better and their fan base grew and stayed.

At Brooklyn Steel on Friday night, the first of three local shows in what’s become a traditional(-ish) Umphrey’s swing through NYC at this time of year, the six-piece got to business as only they know how, creating two sets of sonic voyages that sometimes felt like visits to little worlds, destination assured, and sometimes felt like madness-bordering searches for those worlds, destination unknown. They do both, equally well.

Set 1 stops included “There’s No Crying in Mexico,” “40’s Theme” and a long excursion from “Half Delayed” into the prog-metal “1348,” plus the big guitar crunch of “Hourglass.” “Sociable Jimmy” was that first stanza’s standout. It began like a gnarly Frank Zappa workout and moved into a soaring guitar noise. Set 2 featured the instrumental “Nothing Too Fancy,” starting with a wash of cooling synth, kicking up the kind of slippery drums-and-percussion you’d associate with Radiohead, and then going full Zeppelin stomp. Other highlights included “Cemetery Walk” — a Police-meets-Traffic kind of thing — which bled into its constant companion, “Cemetery Walk II,” keyboards-forward and somewhat soothing until its jittery drums kicked in again. The beloved “Ringo” — more than 20 years in the Umphrey’s repertoire — closed the show, its not-quite-laid-back-not-quite-jittery reggae lilt briefly shifting into a cover of Tenacious D’s “Kielbasa” before taking things home.

Umphrey’s McGee — as ever, guitarists Brendan Bayliss and Jake Cinninger, keyboardist Joel Cummins, bassist Ryan Stasik, and the monster drums-percussion core of Andy Farag and (back behind the kit after an injury-sidelined 2023) Kris Myers — are so adept at so many styles because they seem to approach each of them like a really dialed-in jazz combo would. The lead instruments duck and weave around one another. The rhythm instruments are tight in the pocket. They all have big ears and use them. Improvisation is constantly inspired, rarely wonky or wanky. In another band this would all be too much, from the varying styles to the arsenal of effects and the fortress-like stage setup. Umphrey’s make it all not just coherent but effective, and after their show, you’re spent. —Chad Berndtson | @Cberndtson

Photo courtesy of Chad Berndtson

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thebowerypresents · 11 months

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Ravenous Crowd Welcomes Turnpike Troubadours to the Beacon Theatre

Turnpike Troubadours – Beacon Theatre – July 25, 2023

“Turnpike is still Turnpike.”

It perhaps wouldn’t mean much to big swaths of the known universe, but to the pocket of country music lovers for whom Red Dirt country is a calling card, and the Turnpike Troubadours are one of its most-revered exports, it was everything. Specifically, it was April 2022, and as the beloved Oklahoma six-piece returned to the stage after a hiatus — and, for a hot minute there, a very uncertain future — it was word-as-bond: The band was back in action and ready to slay.

On Tuesday night at the resplendent Beacon Theatre, slay they did. Turnpike Troubadours played their first proper New York City show since 2018, and a ravenous crowd greeted them like conquering heroes, lapping up every snare crack and twang of a 90-minute show. This is a band that really feels it when they’re all on and makes the crowd feel included in that too — you grok these songs. Along with charismatic frontman and singer-guitarist Evan Felker, drummer Gabe Pearson and bassist R.C. Edwards lock in and never fall out of their pocket, and lead guitarist Ryan Engleman and fiddle player Kyle Nix set things ablaze — counterpointing the other’s string tone in hot moments and soft ones alike. Hank Early is the other not-so-secret ace. A swingman in this group, he plays banjo, pedal steel, accordion and dobro, always just right, whether it’s a dapple, pluck, undertone or something else needed. The bigness and nuance in the band’s sound feel like it needs all six of them, any one musical voice would be a conspicuous absence.

The best Turnpike Troubadours songs balance the poignancy of folk with the rollick of stadium country that could veer pop but for these guys, doesn’t ever quite go there. Felker and the rest of the six-piece got to business right away with them on Tuesday, summoning Turnpike staples “Every Girl” and a raucous “7 & 7” and then steering the band into the whipcrack hoedown of “Before the Devil Knows We’re Dead” and the wistful country waltz “The Bird Hunters.”

They’d play with all of these modes again — often multiple times — as they moved panoramically through their best-loved material, including the choogling “The Winding Stair Mountain Blues,” the stinging, rock-leaning “Gin, Smoke, Lies,” the tender “Diamonds & Gasoline” (performed as a duo between Felker and Early on dobro) and “Good Lord Lorrie,” the sad-sardonic love story with not a little Bob Dylan in it. There were new songs too, anticipating the band’s long-awaited new album — next month’s A Cat in the Rain — including “Chipping Mill,” which was self-effacing and somber, and “Mean Old Sun,” which was kind of sinister sounding. Welcome back, fellas. —Chad Berndtson | @Cberndtson

(Turnpike Troubadours play the Beacon Theatre again tonight.)

Photos courtesy of Silvia Saponaro | @Silvia_Saponaro

#A Cat in the Rain #Beacon Theatre #Chad Berndtson #Evan Felker #Gabe Pearson #Hank Early #Kyle Nix #Photos #R.C. Edwards #Review #Ryan Engleman #Silvia Saponaro #Turnpike Troubadours

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thebowerypresents · 3 years

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Yves Tumor Defies Just About Everything at Webster Hall

Yves Tumor – Webster Hall – October 26, 2021

Whoa.

A hot-take reaction to a show like Yves Tumor’s is a visceral one—really, an uncontrollable whoa. And while the music blogger is meant to demonstrate some kind of critical remove—whoa isn’t a traditionally acceptable descriptor, no? We’re here to discourse? Well there’s just no other immediate reaction to confronting the angsty, jerky, psychedelic, full-throttle, assaulting, pillaging, propulsive, innovative and all-out, balls-to-the-wall fun Yves Tumor and crew deliver as a live-concert experience.

Yves Tumor is a force: feral, aggressive, a callback to (and maybe a leap forward from) the best of pop and rock and roll frontpeople. Their show is also a “dancing-about-architecture” experience. You can spend plenty of breathless prose trying to describe what’s going on right there in front of you—as in the classic comparison of writing about music being like dancing about architecture—and you’ve realized you’re wasting copy space on multihyphenate adjectives and pretzel-knotted descriptors, when what you should be doing is absorbing the Yves Tumor experience in brightly-colored-although-slightly-sinister, electrical-current waves. You can reach for some kind of Funkadelic-Prince-shoegaze-pop-R&B-electronica-glam-art-rock mash, and sure, you can hear all of that at times, often in mutant form, and it’s going to help but not going to explain it, beyond being a vaguely useful set of guideposts. Just drink it in. Or more accurately, strap yourself in and feel the G’s.

Back on tour following one of the most-talked-about sets at this year’s Pitchfork Music Festival, Yves Tumor—the stage name and performance identity of artist Sean Bowie—roared into Webster Hall, packed to the gills despite a wet and uncharitable day of weather in NYC. Beginning with “Gospel for a New Century”—and maybe that is the descriptor we’re looking for—the band was almost immediately in the pocket, with songs that would sometimes start slow and then turn into big arena-rock shred-fests, or cannonball headfirst into psychedelic morass, but not just to ambiently vamp or jam—the destination was always certain. Some tunes morphed unchecked into another—“Dream Palette” began before “Romanticist” ended, or maybe was it vice versa—and some hit a steady rolling groove (“Operator”) and stayed there, albeit impatiently, until the statement was made. Yves and band owned the stage—all of it, actually, considering the keys and drums were perched atop seven-foot-tall platforms overlooking the rest of the band below. And they owned the sound, not least for its wall-shaking, carriage-vibrating, ear-splitting volume, at levels that would make Dinosaur Jr. blush.

They had us, that’s for sure, and proceeded to make us boogie. “Jackie,” a newer song, had a woozy delivery, while crowd-favorite “Kerosene” began in a dreamlike trance before cracking its shell and opening into Van Halen–style guitar pyrotechnics. The build-and-then-crack-it-open approach became a familiar pattern. Many songs started as pummelers, or didn’t start as pummelers but eventually became pummelers, or stomped themselves into a noise-rock thicket, or, as in “Crushed Velvet,” had the audience at steady, giddy pogo, or, as in “Licking an Orchid,” started as a Daft Punk–like, spacey-sounding thing with chant-signing before getting gnarlier and funkier, hitting explosive peaks. Later, “The Feeling When You Walk Away” was an oddly compelling choice—spectral, almost trip-hop sounding when it might have otherwise been time to rock out, each musician yielding the stage one by one to give in to a quick guitar-and-drums jam before the set ended.

Yves Tumor is a fascinating study. They barely address the crowd—heaps of charisma, certainly, and also something appealingly confrontational, cold and removed, as if warmth would file down the necessary edges of the music. But it’s not unwelcoming. Wholly present, Yves Tumor jumped into the audience several times—communing, vibing, simmering—and spent a large part of the set holding—no, wielding—a bouquet of flowers, taking small, savory moments to pause among angsty struts around the stage. You’re in their orbit, oh yes. A 16-or-so-song main set and encore went faster than an eyeblink. Really, the energy had been building for hours—the parade of openers was worthy of its own salute, not least the kaleidoscopic dance-pop-rap of Ecco2K—and then came Yves Tumor and crew to completely draw you into their orbit and melt or rip away your resolve. At the heart of this, of course, is pure genre-defying, gender-defying, expectations-defying rock—a line that goes back to at least Little Richard and much farther still. Yves Tumor makes that playbook their own. They’re back at Webster Hall Thursday night. Do what you gotta do to be there. —Chad Berndtson | @Cberndtson

Photos courtesy of Dana (distortion) Yavin | distortionpix.com

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thebowerypresents · 4 years

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Puss ’n’ Boots Celebrate New Album on Friday Night at Rough Trade NYC

Puss ’n’ Boots – Rough Trade NYC – February 14, 2020

Puss ’n’ Boots are Norah Jones, Catherine Popper and Sasha Dobson. As a musical unit, they land somewhere on the country-pedigree diagram where Kitty Wells intersects with Wanda Jackson, blended with a drop of smoky jazz, a slice of R&B and not just a little of Ronettes-style girl-group pop. It’s playful ay-eff, a bit tantalizing, a bit mischievous and wholly charming. And why not? These three personalities together could mellow a strung-out hyena, let alone soothingly capture a Brooklyn audience. But to be clear: It’s not sleepy music, and it’s only slightly relaxing. You can unwind, but you go at its pace, you surrender to the relentless charisma of its three, instrument-swapping leads and you’re totally, totally good.

Remarking that they hadn’t played together in a few months, Jones, Dobson and Popper took the stage at Rough Trade NYC on Friday, carrying Valentine’s Day heart balloons and dressed for the occasion. They have a loft-party vibe that turns heartily sarcastic at will—each likes her wit with a little blood ’n’ bite in it. But when the music takes over—especially their deft three-part harmonies—Puss ’n’ Boots just feel on, like time-stoppingly on. That was true whether they tackled cannily chosen cover tunes by the likes of Tom Petty (“Angel Dream”), Concrete Blonde’s Johnette Napolitano (“Joey”) and Tom Paxton (“Leaving London”), not to mention Dolly Parton (“The Grass Is Blue”) and (Dobson’s aunt) Helen Rogers (“Same Old Bullshit”), or originals like “You and Me,” “It’s Not Easy,” “Jamola,” “The Razor Song,” “Don’t Know What It Means” and “The Great Romancer,” some of them from a smart new record called Sister, and most of them turning up during the judiciously paced, but generously lengthy show on Friday.

The interplay among the three, musical or otherwise, is what makes this. Underneath the cock-eyed glances, tart asides and “let’s not take this too seriously lest someone fuckin’ turn an ankle” chuckles are three musicians who just plain love playing together. They all took turns on drums, bass and various guitars, each took lead vocal spotlights, all were happy sliding back into harmonies and supporting roles. I’ve long been amazed at how Jones, a bona fide international star, can seamlessly blend into a band, seemingly just one of the neighborhood players (although when she sings, especially a lead, you remember whom you’re hearing from). But this is a band of equal balance, as much Popper’s and Dobson’s. It wouldn’t work if any of them were missing from a single tune. Here’s guessing they knew they had something as a trio even before they played a note together. —Chad Berndtson | @Cberndtson

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thebowerypresents · 5 years

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The Mighty Mighty Bosstones Deliver Career-Spanning Set

The Mighty Mighty Bosstones – Webster Hall – August 21, 2019

Where the Mighty Mighty Bosstones land on the list of Boston’s greatest musical exports is a subject of much debate. What isn’t up for debate is what the now-35-years-going-strong band did to help repopularize ska, marry it with sneering punk and further juice it with solid pop songcraft, occasionally enough to be radio-friendly and nationally known.

Funny thing, though, about the Bosstones: They don’t play like they’ve been at it through the feast and famine acceptance of what they do for nearly four decades, or that it’s been four, two or even one decade. No, Dicky Barrett and company play like it’s just as vital as it felt back then, when checkered ska found a like-minded dance partner with punk and elements of other genres, keeping just enough soul and even a little R&B in the bleating, blasting horn section to avoid a full-blown tip-over into grimy hardcore. The nine-piece—including, as ever, beloved skanking dancer and tour manager Ben Carr—roared into Webster Hall on Wednesday night, and if you were generous about a few extra facial wrinkles and gray beards, you could swear it was 1994, and they’d just come through Taang! Records on their way to mainstream success.

Last night their headlining set felt like an anthology, mixing the best-knowns (“The Rascal King,” “Someday I Suppose,” “The Impression That I Get”) with nuggets from all across their catalog. “A Reason to Toast” is from the early 2000s and “You Left, Right?” from late in that decade. “Hope I Never Lose My Wallet” (whoa!) goes all the way back to 1989, and “Kinder Words” is almost just as old. There’s newish music, too, and the band had a few to serve from last year’s While We’re At It, one of their most aggressive albums, along with covers they’ve been doing forever (the Wailers’ “Simmer Down”) and jaw-drop rarities (we see you, Murphy’s Law’s “Cavity Creeps”—with special guest Jimmy Gestapo, to boot).

That they don’t fuss a lot is not to be confused with businesslike. Barrett and friends charm the shit out of you even when they get on a tear and one song seems to become the bouncing, skanking, rocking, grinding next one before you’ve even caught a breath. The final song of the encore, “A Pretty Sad Excuse,” seemed to roll it all up into one, protracted ending: a laid-back, loping reggae bounce with a little soul thrown in that opened up to a big, bash-it-out finale. Had the place going apeshit, just the way the Bosstones always do it. —Chad Berndtson | @Cberndtson

Photos courtesy of Brian C. Reilly | www.briancreilly.com

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thebowerypresents · 5 years

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Vulfpeck Make It a Funky Saturday Night at Madison Square Garden

Vulfpeck – Madison Square Garden – September 28, 2019

They went and did it, this wily pack of wolves—called their shot, said Madison Square Garden wasn’t out of reach, and then sold out the fucker in advance. If you’re keeping score, yeah, that’s fewer than six years from Vulfpeck’s first official New York City gig to selling out the Garden, at about a 150x multiple in terms of seating capacity. How’d this happen? Well, Vulfpeck are simply dynamite, man—an approach to funk that has appeal broad enough to touch everyone from D’Angelo to Herbie Hancock fans, with a core of musicians who insist on it being tighter than tight. There are melodic leads and ample room for standout voices, but what’s pronounced are the rhythm and the grooves—supple, electric, greasy, cerebral, loping—and a deep and variable pocket. Vulfpeck take inspiration from the legendary rhythm-first crews with names like Muscle Shoals, Wrecking Crew and Funk Brothers. You get the sense they could take any project and own it pretty convincingly.

Less talked about than their chops is how Joe Dart, Theo Katzman, Woody Goss and Jack Stratton have evolved as songsmiths. Earlier Vulfpeck—if there is such a thing (they just got here!)—focused more on sketches that could be jam-able. They’ve since fleshed out things without abandoning those loose constructs. The MSG show focused on their material, without apparent need for themes, lengthy cover asides or gimmicks to round out the bigness of the gig. Where they indulged was with friends: The core quartet swelled to double and triple its size at times as old pals like Joey Dosik, Cory Wong and Nate Smith worked their way in and out of the ensemble. And hey, this was MSG and it was time to flex a bit. Dave Koz and Chris Thile were some of the guests who stopped in to be part of the action.

But it all felt like a friends-and-family party, someone’s basement jam that just happened to occupy MSG. They romped through favorites like “Dean Town,” “Daddy, He Got a Tesla,” “Funky Duck” and “Back Pocket.” They laughed, even when occasional technical flubs stalled mics or fuzzed some transitions. All good. Vulfpeck had the Garden in their grasp and worked it hard. They earned their ovation. —Chad Berndtson | @Cberndtson

Photos courtesy of Marc Millman | www.marcmillmanphotos.com/music

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thebowerypresents · 5 years

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Live from Here with Chris Thile Officially Makes a Home at Town Hall

Live from Here with Chris Thile – Town Hall – September 7, 2019

Live from Here with Chris Thile officially moved to New York City this year from its longtime home base of the Fitzgerald Theater in Saint Paul, Minn., but if you’ve been fortunate to hear—and even more fortunate to see—any of the Live from Here episodes that have occurred here since Chris Thile took over as host in 2016, you know the show is already home. Thile’s Live from Here retains much of A Prairie Home Companion’s homespun, kinda-goofy charm, but it’s very much an NYC thing now.

Almost everything about the show feels polyglot in taste, and one of the most fascinating things about it is how Thile and company, show after show, can draw musicians, comedians and influencers from all walks, genres, flavors and dispositions, and make their offering feel like patches on the same tastemaker quilt. Put another way, what other variety show, festival or happening could announce this kind of guest lineup for its fall run and have it make just bang-on perfect sense?

Like almost all Live from Here installments, Saturday’s fall premiere at Town Hall drew familiar pals (Sarah Jarosz, comedian Holly Laurent), big-name guests (Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig, actor Jake Gyllenhaal) and fascinating up-and-comers (the amazing Mexican pop-rock singer Natalia Lafourcade) and have it all work smoothly, welcomed as always—although never overpowering—the relentlessly affable Thile and his wicked mandolin. There were some new-season adjustments to the format, but as always, the show somehow moved Mach-speed fast but felt like time had stopped, visiting little moments like the hootenanny-style delivery of Vampire Weekend’s “Hannah Hunt,” or Lafourcade’s “Mi Tierra Veracruzana,” or, in what might have been the showstopper, Jarosz’s reading of Fiona Apple’s “Extraordinary Machine.”

Go to a Live from Here show this fall. The Lumineers, Raphael Saadiq, Trey Anastasio, Jamila Woods and others you’ve definitely heard of will be there. So will a lot of musicians and comedians you probably haven’t spent much, if any, time with or never much thought you needed to. The thing about this thing? It’s all good. —Chad Berndtson | @Cberndtson

Photos courtesy of Ellen Qbertplaya | @Qbertplaya

(Get tickets to a Live from Here with Chris Thile taping.)

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thebowerypresents · 5 years

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Foals Fill Brooklyn Steel with House Party Energy on Saturday Night

Foals – Brooklyn Steel – April 13, 2019

Foals have appeared on big stages all over the world, but they still commit like it’s a house party and they have everything to prove. What fun to have a band that can sell out a room the size of Brooklyn Steel three nights in a row, but play like they’re only as good as their most recent show—and might be forgotten if it isn’t a scorcher. Saturday night was the second at Steel and the band offered a healthy cross-section of their career while keeping the focus on newer material from their latest, Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost: Part 1, an album loaded with loaded songs for loaded times. Those tunes cooked: “In Degrees,” with its fractured–Talking Heads vibe, to open, the Doors-y groove in “Syrups,” the truckload of portent in “White Onions.”

Frontman Yannis Philippakis had enough in the tank to go for it on nearly every tune, although the band seemed genuinely charged any time the audience joined the heavy lifting, helping fuel pleasers like “Providence” and “Spanish Sahara” with sing-along, fist-pumping energy. The run of songs to close, from set-ender “Inhaler” to the screaming, shattering one-two of “What Went Down” and “Two Steps Twice” was a big-blast finish, draining all the fuel.

Philippakis gets most of the ink and that’s for good reason: He’s a frontman with old-school charisma, and he can single-handedly control the energy in a room. The full band summoned the wild spirit, though—drummer Jack Bevan, guitarist Jimmy Smith, keyboardist Edwin Congreave and new recruit, bassist Jeremy Pritchard, on loan from Everything Everything for the tour—and whether leaning into the brawnier dance-punk or brainier math-rock corners of Foals’ catalog, commits to an honest racket. There’s a reason every other review of a Foals show use the words honest or classic rock and roll show: It feels like one. —Chad Berndtson | @Cberndtson

Photos courtesy of Adela Loconte | adelaloconte.com

#Adela Loconte #Brooklyn #Brooklyn Steel #Chad Berndtson #Doors #East Williamsburg #Edwin Congreave #Everything Everything #Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost: Part 1 #Foals #Jack Bean #Jeremy Pritchard #Live Music #Music #New York City #Photos #Review #Talking Heads #Yannis Philippakis

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thebowerypresents · 5 years

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Kevin Morby Brings Terrific New Album to Town Hall on Friday Night

Blink and you’ll miss it with everything else going on at the end of May, but two of the country’s greatest songwriters are on the same bill as the month closes, fittingly at a stage graced by so many of their antecedents, the Town Hall. Kevin Morby, noted time and again for the strength of his craft, has returned with Oh My God (stream it here), maybe his most assured statement yet. In 2016 he went dreamy and folkie—bucolic, even—with Singing Saw (stream it here). The following year’s City Music (stream it here) went back in the direction its title suggested, with songs that were more cosmopolitan, grittier, scuffed. Oh My God, in turn, has an unmistakably spiritual streak, landing somewhere between City Music’s urban grit, the unadorned instrumentation of much of Morby’s previous work, and a cynic’s appreciative but distanced view of gospel and other forms of faith-based music. In other words, lest you think our boy’s gone all heavy and Christian rock’d, he gives you a tune like “OMG Rock n Roll,” unloading as “Oh, if I die too young/ Oh, if the locusts come/ Oh, I don’t give a fucking shit.”

It came from a decidedly personal place, Morby has noted. “I’ve explored a lot of darkness with writing and with my music. That really sent me down that wormhole,” Morby recently told the Fader. “I was always intrigued by death and by the Grim Reaper in a storybook way, but when my friend passed away [the musician Jamie Ewing], it became very real.” Oh My God was produced by Sam Cohen, the second world-class songwriter on Friday’s can’t-miss Town Hall bill. Cohen, best known for his years as Yellowbirds—and before that the beloved, much-missed psychedelic pop band Apollo Sunshine—has a superb new album called The Future’s Still Ringing in My Ears (stream it here), coproduced with the ubiquitous Danger Mouse. For someone who’s produced or collaborated with everyone from Morby and Norah Jones to Joseph Arthur, Trixie Whitley and Shakira, it had been nearly four years since Cohen put out any of his own music. “[Danger Mouse] really helped me get motivated to make this record,” Cohen says in the album’s release notes. “His support pushed me to get started and to value myself as an artist. It came at a time where I needed to hear that from someone.” —Chad Berndtson | @Cberndtson

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