The first lesson from Friday’s New Pornographers’ show at the House of Blues was this: do not mess with Neko Case.
For some reason, an audience member hurled a CD — no case, just the shiny, sharp-edged disc — at the stage early in the band’s set. This prompted New Pornographer Case to say, half-jokingly, “Whoever threw that, come up here, and I will fucking fight you. . . . I will go to jail, I don’t give a shit.”
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Dirty Projectors frontman Dave Longstreth seems like a very nice, easygoing guy, but he’s about to get angry. “Fuck!” yells Longstreth into his phone, while walking around his Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint. “I had this awesome biscuit, and I’m walking down the street, and I just dropped it on the ground!” This outburst is understandable. The Brooklyn-based sextet — singer/guitarist Longstreth along with a rhythm section and three multi-instrumentalists/vocalists — have had few days off for eating biscuits this year.
On her new Kill Rock Stars release, Know Better Learn Faster, Thao Nguyen starts the song “Easy” with this line, spoken matter-of-factly: “Sad people dance too.” That sentiment is also fitting for Nguyen’s work in general.
This isn’t what I thought would happen. I thought I would listen to this 27-year-old live album and compare different eras of Talking Heads: the 1977-1979 version (disc one), the 1980-1981 version (disc two), and, based on their later material, what the band eventually became. To their credit, Talking Heads sound equally energetic, smart, and dedicated on both discs.
Philadelphia’s Free Energy are sitting on a tiny landmine of potential buzz. A couple of their members were in the late, great Minneapolis band Hockey Night, and Free Energy’s debut record – Stuck On Nothing, due January 12, 2010 – will be released on DFA with James “LCD Soundsystem” Murphy producing. The band recently released a 7-inch featuring two songs, and the message is clear: this band is all about joy.
3 Feet High and Rising remains an indisputable classic, and there’s something charming about De La Soul’s efforts to match its heights. You can hear this awkward scrambling in the dark humor of De La Soul Is Dead or in the funky experimentation of 1993’s Buhloone Mindstate. By 1996, De La Soul were not only trying to live up to their own reputation, they were trying to remain relevant in a new hip-hop landscape.
I love the Go! Team, but I seldom listen to an entire record by the band – it’s like eating ten Pixy Stix, or drinking three cans of Coke.
There are rock bands, and then there are Rock Bands. It’s like the difference between an actor and a Movie Star: there are people who do their job, and then there are people who completely entrance while doing it. When Karen O. slinked onstage at First Avenue, with her face lit up by a pink neon mask, the category in which she belonged was clear: capital letters only.
Within its first season in 1989, The Simpsons was a massive hit; America ate it up. So did you, as your parents surely remember — they’re the ones who threw away your “Don’t have a cow, man” t-shirt in 1996. They also probably tossedThe Simpsons Sing The Blues while they were at it, unless you set it aside as a cultural artifact you thought you’d find funny in, say, 2009.
By the time the Northrop lights dimmed long after the Flight Of The Conchords show’s scheduled start time, the audience had earned a good performance. After standing in long, poorly organized lines, the audience had to evacuate the theater when the building’s fire alarm—sounding like the alarm for a 1993 Audi—went off due to some malfunction. Five minutes later, we were all herded back in.
For a guy who’s known for being interested in everything old — old song styles, old equipment, old instruments — Matt Ward sure has a lot of new things going on. Ward, known to the indie music world as M. Ward, just put out his seventh album, “Hold Time,” less than a year after his previous effort, a collaboration with actress/singer Zooey Deschanel billed under the name She & Him.
Full disclosure: my dad, who died five years ago, loved this record, a fact that will likely cloud my judgment. In fact, I’m counting on it: I decided to check out Here They Come! as an exercise, a way to understand his tastes. He was a guy who knew what he liked and knew when he needed the things he liked. As a music obsessive, I’m the same way; he was no addict, but we shared a belief that music can heal almost all wounds. [Click 
Throughout Bishop Allen’s set at the Triple Rock on Monday night, guitarist and vocalist Justin Rice was surprised at the fervency of his audience; at one point he mock-dramatically covered a set list with his hand when fans tried to peek. Later, he announced they were about to play “a real old one,” which was met with cheers, followed by a look of complete surprise on Rice’s face.
Every culture, subculture, genre, and category has its wonks. Improvisational comedy is no exception; its biggest snobs scoff at Robin Williams’ zany talk show antics, and they eschew the hackery of television shows like Whose Line Is It Anyway? by decrying the lack of characters and scenework. I am one of those snobs.
I’ve written a lot about songs in which acoustic guitars are more than acoustic guitars. Think Neutral Milk Hotel, Elliott Smith, “I Summon You” by Spoon. In each case, you don’t picture a person with a guitar, but whatever universe the artist wants you to imagine. [Click 
Much has been made of Elliott Smith’s performance at the 1997 Oscar ceremony, and rightly so. Not only is it an inherently bizarre moment in pop culture, it’s a nervous but typically brilliant performance, with a surprisingly understated Academy orchestra in the background. It marked the beginning of a new chapter for Smith, who had been a relatively successful indie rock musician until he was suddenly the Oscar-nominated center of attention.
Decider: The first line on Never Better is “Sorry it took so long.” Was there pressure to do this record?
Where they haven’t been replaced by charmless, trend-crunching tune-bots, jukeboxes can say a lot about a place, not to mention make it more fun. In Jukeboxing, Decider spends some quarters and punches some buttons at Twin Cities bars and venues. This edition takes a look at the 331 Club.
A rock debate via e-mail: How a couple of critics learned to stop complaining and almost love Coldplay, sort of.
This article will begin the same way my interview with They Might Be Giants’ John Flansburgh did: with a disclosure of personal bias. Flansburgh and his Giants cohort John Linnell are from Lincoln, Mass., and attended Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, athletic rivals to my Acton-Boxborough Regional High School (go, Colonials!). Things could get ugly, I warned Flansburgh.
Aimee Mann’s new record is, in fact, not new at all. It’s more of her melancholy, melodic pop — songs about heartbreak and disappointment sung in soberly deadpan tones. It’s not groundbreaking or discordant, and it’s not going to top the charts. In other words, it’s everything an Aimee Mann record should be.
City Pages: How did the Twin Cities scene in the ’80s affect what R.E.M. was doing at the time?
I could listen to Haley Bonar sing anything. It helps that her songs are usually well-crafted, and that the production is meticulous, but for me, it’s all about the voice. It’s light without being weak, airy without being empty. There are years in there, experiences you don’t, and never will, know about.
Much has been written about the boombox of The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle. The machine acted as the minuscule recording studio for early Mountain Goats albums, which featured Darnielle alone on guitar and vocals. Each track on these records begins with a click, followed by the familiar hum of Panasonic gears. These sounds, as well as the records’ overall lo-fi white noise, lend early Darnielle recordings a sense of voyeurism. Even when seemingly fictional, his songs are deeply personal. The boombox technique adds to this feel; the singer’s simple, propulsive guitar playing completes it.
Jonathan Fire*Eater’s story is unfortunately all too common in the music business: band releases strong EP, band signs to major label, band releases major label debut, band is never heard from again. DreamWorks released Wolf Songs For Lambs on the heels of mountains of buzz, only to see the record fizzle despite critical acclaim. Yet it’s hard to imagine Jonathan Fire*Eater failing in 2007.
Sam Beam, the singer-songwriter behind the name Iron & Wine, made a name for himself with the four-track masterpiece The Creek Drank the Cradle in 2002. But rather than staying lo-fi, he’s moved on to bigger productions. On his third Iron & Wine full-length, he goes for his biggest sound yet, but the production is mere window dressing for some of his best songwriting.
Reveille: Is acting something you planned on doing?
Adam Stephens and Tyson Vogel have long been trying for a sound that’s both earthy and artsy, Bright Eyes folk rock delivered with an aw-shucks squint. So far — on two full-lengths and a pair of EPs — the results have been underwhelming.
Chances are, when you heard the New Pornographers were replacing Neko Case on their tour with Carl Newman’s niece, you said to yourself, “Someone’s taking Neko’s place? And Carl Newman has a niece old enough to sing for the New Pornographers!?”
The A.V. Club: This album sounds a little more accessible than your others.
Minneapolis-based Mouthful of Bees, with its barbed guitar lines and swarms of distortion, is a rare musical species: a band whose name perfectly fits its music.
“Ahhh, breakfast,” Mark Mallman said, easing onto the stool. It’s 5pm. His hair is tousled, and he looks like he was up all night. He takes off his sunglasses, gets comfortable and puts down his Budweiser.About David Brusie
David Brusie is a Boston-based writer and musician. Originally from Acton, Massachusetts, he is a writer for and co-founder of Music (for Robots), and his reviews, interviews, and essays appear regularly in The Onion, City Pages, Tiny Mix Tapes, and Vita.MN.