Music
▼ Concerts & Festivals
Negative Approach @ Club Manhattan 11.21 with The Casualties, M.D.C....
John Brannon’s lip is bleeding, Harold Richardson is wailing away that wiry solo on “Lead Song.” Some idiot is screaming out for a Suicidal Tendencies (what?) cover. These songs are quick, borderline psychotic snaps of furor. Perfectly crafted by some mystic core entity into some divinely inspired audiovisual ratio of power and speed. No frills, no whistles. The calcified gristle of rock n’ roll’s fattened carcass, the parts that stay behind when the glistening flesh has long rotted away. … read more
Dawes @ Eccles Center 11.30
Opening with “Most People” from their 2013 album Stories Don’t End, lead singer/guitarist Taylor Goldsmith flawlessly captured every member of the audience both young and old with an epic yet interesting guitar solo, which set the tone for the rest of the show. … read more
Meat Puppets @ The State Room 11.26 with Cory Mon
The remainder of the evening progressed, or degenerated, into the more Butthole Surfers’ end of the psychedelic swimming pool/cesspool. At the same time, their music, song after song, proved itself as just solid rock n’ roll that doesn’t fit easily into a pigeonhole of country, psychedelic or punk—it’s a little of all of those things. … read more
Built To Spill @ Urban Lounge 11.27 with Slam Dunk,...
If you haven’t seen Built to Spill live, you have no excuse. Starting and ending their most recent tour in Salt Lake City, they gave me the opportunity to see them twice in the last two months. … read more
Cat Power and Nico Turner Live @ The Depot 11.25
It wasn’t utterly packed—just full. Cat Power draws an interestingly eclectic crowd: professors, obligatory hippies, hipsters and maybe a vegan–straight edge kid, too. After the release of her electronica album, Sun, it seemed that there was a yearning for the older, more classic styling of Chan Marshall, and there was no better way to realize that desire than an intimate, seated setting where she would perform solo. … read more
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin @ Kilby Court 11.22...
From the get-go, the small cluster of people to my right, all huddled beside the large speaker hanging from the ceiling, are in their thrall. Two kids with jet black hair are laboring over a sharpie mural on the plywood wall, only stopping intermittently to do something that resembles a dance, but is more likely some ancient satanic ritual, their possessed bodies twisting along with those sweet bass lines. … read more
Bill Callahan @ The State Room 11.23 with Judson Claiborne
Bill Callahan seems like the minimalist indie songwriter par excellence, letting his lyrics, often more spoken than sung, work their dry yet poetic magic, but on stage with a full band, you realize that they are capable of a much more deep and uncanny array of tricks. They surprised from the get-go, opening with a cover of the Velvet Underground’s “White Light/White Heat,” in tribute of the recently departed Lou Reed. Callahan is perhaps the only singer who could deliver the lines more dryly than Reed. … read more
Julianna Barwick @ Kilby Court 11.18 with Grizzly Prospector and...
From where I’m standing, Julianna Barwick is a perfect silhouette. A projection of a slow moving video of white forests and breaking ocean waves frames her figure in the background, and the 50 or so people in the audience are in a trance, strewn out across the floor, some lying, some sitting, some standing, as her voice builds and reaches crescendo like a gothic one-woman choir. … read more
L’Anarchiste, Lake Island @ Velour 11.15
The music was aggressive but not necessarily loud. I enjoyed it, but I couldn’t help but feel like something was off. As their first song ended, the room remained quiet. Not in a disapproving way, I don’t think … No, this felt more like a hypnotized way. It was like it caught everyone a little off guard, or maybe not. … read more
The Dreaming (Stabbing Westward Reunion Show) @ The Vinyl, Las...
At 11:45 p.m. I found myself pushing past the crowd at The Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. NIN had just ended their two-hour show (review here) and thanks to social media, Christopher Hall, the man behind The Dreaming and former Stabbing Westward frontman, informed the world that this is the first time Stabbing Westward has ever had NIN open for them. … read more