Saw the Mountain Goats last night--enjoyed the show despite a far too long opening set by Kaki King, who also played a few songs in the Mountain Goats set, although not the Super Mario Brothers song that was on the collaborative EP that was for sale.

It seems like there were some people who were really excited by the Kaki King set, but to my ears, she overstayed her welcome. Had she played half an hour or 45 minutes, I might have been interested to seek out her recordings. But she kept playing--the set must have approached 80 minutes. The instrumental stuff really started to blend together and the vocal stuff wasn't especially special. (This pitchfork review to one of her albums mirrors my feelings about her show.)

Mountain Goats played most of their set as the 3 piece with drums, like last time.

The idea of the Mountain Goats has always involved a bit of ontological slapstick: Darnielle walks onstage with his guitar and introduces himself by saying, “Hi, we’re the Mountain Goats.” For Darnielle, America’s best non-hip-hop lyricist, being in a band is a feint.

SFJ in 2005

This part is pretty much lost, as is the idea that attending a live performance of the Mountain Goats will convert the uninitiated/doubtful.

Darnielle hasn't fully committed to the Mountain Goats as proper band-- he hasn't constructed a really coherent setlist since adding the drums. This show came in three different parts- Darnielle solo, the band, the band + Kaki King - and wasn't entirely satisfying because of the stilted nature of the set.

Still, it was a good time, especially with a strong ending. I also was surprised to find the new double 7" ep for sale on the merch table. I guess either people don't buy vinyl of stuff they can download for free, or there was careful rationing to get a supposedly limited (665 copies?) record to the second to last show of the tour.

On Wednesday night, we saw Beck at the United Palace Theater (and so did the NY Times). It was the first time I'd seen Beck, and it was basically curiosity that led to ticket-purchasing for this show. I'd never seen a show at the United Palace, and so I was curious about the venue as well as the performance. Our view from the upper loge was pretty good, although the sound wasn't great--it was one of the louder shows I'd been to, and there were moments during which I wished I'd brought earplugs.

photo from animalvegetable flickr


Photo from Samuel Stroube Flickr

The whole show was pretty much Beck-as-garage-rock, which I was fine with. There was a light show behind the band, which was ok but not as interesting as some of the earlier Beck stage set-ups I'd read about.

The set started with Loser and continued through the most recent album, which I think is pretty good. I don't think there's been a Beck retrospective, but there would be a pretty good cd of songs from even just the last few albums, which I haven't paid much attention to. It seems to me that the Beck set invited a pretty interesting look at music consumption--starting with the could-have-been-a-novelty-hit, playing songs from Odelay (back when radio and mtv would play several songs from an album), ignoring Mutations (most people I know's favorite Beck album), and then playing the more recent stuff which seems like they should have been radio hits, but weren't (as far as I know) and playing an itunes single or two (I don't think that timebomb song was ever on an actual album).

MGMT opened and were uninteresting but apparently popular.

Since I've neglected this blog space for so long, there's a lack of mention for a bunch of shows we saw over the summer.

Wilco at McCarren Park was good. (Photo from Kurt Christiansen Flickr) I'd been waiting to see Wilco again for quite a while, and this was a good time. Jennifer O'Connor opened and I enjoyed her stuff.

We saw the Long Winters at Castle Clinton this summer and it was a fun, free show, even if the crowd was kind of small and I got called out by John Roderick for leaving to go to the restroom right as he announced that the band didn't play encores.

We saw Basia Bulat at the Highline Ballroom in a seated show that I got free tickets for. It was pretty classy, and most of her album is really nice, but it was a bit of a stretch for the limited material for a full show.

We saw Feist in the rain at Prospect Park. It was the kind of concert that was attended by many people who go to one concert a year, and to be honest it wasn't all that different from seeing a bit of Sheryl Crow at Central Park (my sister got tickets from work), except that Sheryl Crow has more hits. Juana Molina opened backed by loops and I don't think anyone paid attention, which was a shame.

I saw My Morning Jacket at Radio City and the first hour was pretty amazing, although it just kept going and I don't have that much endurance, I guess. Or, they played the more recent ready-to-go-in-an-arena stuff first and then I guess the played stuff for the true fans...

We saw R.E.M. at Madison Square Garden and it totally remedied most of the problems from the last time we saw them (day after the 2004 election, when they played a bland album blandly). The newest album is pretty useful for breaking up the stuff that I wanted to hear without sapping all momentum from the room. Modest Mouse opened and didn't play the hit.

I think I did type elsewhere that the Silver Jews were fun live (even if they become less special every time they play a show) and that Shearwater was pretty.

I'm closing some tabs while logged into blogger for the first time in quite a while...

some David Berman interviews:
with Sean Nelson in The Stranger,
in which DCB makes some interesting remarks about "selling out", Obama, and making an effort to give different interviews some unique flavor

and, also in the Minneapolis City Pages, a false explanation of the origin of the Silver Jews:

Argentina, the Silver Republic, has the fourth largest Jewish population in the world after the US, Israel, and France. Silver Jews are gaucho Israelites.

I saw the Silver Jews play in Williamsburg about a month ago, and it was enjoyable...probably more enjoyable than the most recent album is. Consensus among people I've talked to is that the album doesn't "sound" that good--not really a hi-tech/lo-tech thing, but more because of production choices. I think it was helped by Mark Nevers, but I think that Berman was steering the ship on the Silver Jews album, since most all of the other Nevers-helped albums I can think of (Bonnie Prince Billy, Lambchop) sound pretty good.

We saw Ray Davies at the Beacon Theater on Tuesday night. Certainly a different crowd than most shows we go to, a function of the ticket prices as much as the performer, I expect. Worth the money for an upper balcony seat, in my opinion.

I thought it was a well designed show, with an intermission. The first set was mostly Kinks, followed by some of the newest stuff done acoustically and then more Kinks. Including the intermissions, the show was over 2 hours--it was great, although the Kinks catalog is such that there were many other songs I would have been thrilled to hear.

RD was energetic and had quite a few hops and jumps throughout. Parts of the stage patter and treatment of songs (call and response, singalongs, extended codas) reminded me of the way that the Simpsons sort of molds every rock music guest appearance into a very similar thing, but I didn't mind.

In looking at the tour dates, it seems like this was a fairly brief tour with spread out dates (I don't think anything was back to back nights) and I think that helped RD's voice. I looked at some of the reviews of other shows and it seems like people have mostly been kind about the vocals, which unsurprisingly are not at the same strength as from various recordings from the past.

Here's a reuters review of the show.

Setlist at some kind of Rolling Stone blog.

We saw Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks last night in Brooklyn; I'd been looking forward to this show and it was good. I left the show buying into the Janet Weiss hype fully, although I wonder today if I've dismissed Moen unfairly due to his seemingly excited participation in some lame-to-me Decemberists stage schtick.

The setlist was basically the new album, so it's a good thing that I am liking the new stuff. They did start with Pencil Rot, from Face the Truth, which is a favorite from that album. I was somewhat surprised that they only played one song (Oyster) from the first two albums, but the show was too enjoyable to really complain. There was a bit of excitement for a snippet of Old Jerry, which reminded me of the other good stuff from the Pig Lib bonus disc. People are pretty excited about Pennywhistle Thunder, an outtake from this album which hopefully show up on the Buy Early site at some point. I've only heard a live version.

There's probably more than enough stuff for some kind of post-Pavement Malkmus b-sides/outtakes collection. It would be nice for something to come out. For a while I was buying the Domino singles for things like Polish Mule, but I don't think I've really kept up.

John Vanderslice opened. I've seen him open for other bands, too, and from what I read on blogs and such I should like JV, but I don't. I really don't get the appreciation for JV; interestingly we had the exact opposite reaction to the JV set than did fluxblog.

Here's a Malkmus radio thing.
Here's an interview.
Here's an interview in which Malkmus distinguishes his variety of indie rock from the Rilo Kiley type. (I wonder how Rilo Kiley feel about the fact that their name must get somewhat confused with the whole Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana thing.)
Another interview with the Village Voice; I find it kind of disappointing that the Malkmus involvement with I'm Not There turns out to be pretty minimal--or he seems to minimize it anyway, and not really have any interest in playing the songs or doing much else in that direction.
Here's the DC show audio from NPR. I haven't listened yet.
The NY Times reviewed the first Bowery Ballroom show; everyone seems to figure that it's not that fair a review.

We saw the Mountain Goats on Wednesday night in Williamsburg.
It was a good show; I like Heretic Pride well enough. The first half was solo and the second half was full band...bass and drums and some electric guitar from JD. The drums were high... I only saw Superchunk a couple times so I can't remember if Wurster always played on a big riser. JD said he was sick and it showed a bit, even before he had the audience sing the encore.

Here's audio and stuff from the Mountain Goats on soundcheck

Here's the NY Times review of the Mountain Goats at Webster Hall

Here's a Billboard review of the Williamsburg show, missing the final song "Houseguest" from the setlist.

Here's the CMJ review of the Williamsburg show

Here's a review of the Philadelphia show

Photo from revbean flickr

I hadn't mentioned other shows I'd seen on the blog.

So here:
Bowerbirds/Phosphorescent/The Acorn at Mercury Lounge a few weeks ago:

Bowerbirds were really good, but played pretty short. Phosphorescent took forever to set up and played long and made me sleepy. The Acorn was pretty fun. I would have liked to have skipped Phosphorescent in between if I could have. Also, it snowed that night.

Joanna Newsom at BAM:

It was really quite nice, a good venue for this show. They played Ys straight through with the orchestra (except for one song in the middle with no orchestra) and then played another selection of stuff in mini-band (no orchestra) form.

Looking forward to seeing a few more shows later in the Spring. I think Malkmus will be next, since going outside can be tiring.

My year in music: 2007

According to itunes, I have over a thousand songs on there that were released in 2007. I have bought a pretty decent amount of music this year, as well as using my emusic downloads conscientiously. I never did a 2006 list or wrap-up, but here's a go at 2007...

I could do this in the style of All Songs Considered...

Biggest Surprise
(take 1)
Elephant Six Related Bands Get Sort of Really Popular on Really Pretty Great Albums
Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?
Apples in Stereo - New Magnetic Wonder

(take 2)
I end up liking more female vocal products this year than in previous years:
Lavender Diamond - Imagine our Love
Meg Baird - Dear Companion
St. Vincent - Marry Me
Marissa Nadler - Songs 3: Bird on the Water
and yes,
Feist - The Reminder

Biggest Letdown
The New Pornographers - Challengers
The White Stripes - Icky Thump

Their big arena rock show kind of encapsulated how I feel about the White Stripes right now. The recordings seem to be about providing more material for the shows rather than leaving a really great statement. At the show I enjoyed the old stuff and then the new stuff and then I found myself wanting to go for a walk while the new stuff kept coming.

Most Innovative
Grizzly Bear - He Hit Me

Creepiest song of the year, for sure.

Best New Band
Bowerbirds - Hymns for a Dark Horse

They were good when we saw them open for Mountain Goats, too.

Best Album of Bob Dylan covers that almost everyone likes
I'm not there

A few more things...

If I was just making a "best of list", these would probably be in there too:
Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha
Bill Callahan - Woke on a Whaleheart
Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity

Best Album by a Band that Doesn't Really Sound Like Anyone Else but Still sounds like the Same Band but in a Non-stagnant, Impressive Way
Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

Album that converted me from "not impressed"
Okkervil River - The Stage Names

Album that I didn't understand why it was getting deluxe reissued until I actually listened to it
Shearwater Palo Santo (rerelease)

Album I Wasn't All That Into at first But is Actually Quite Enjoyable to Listen To
Wilco - Sky Blue Sky

It's a really a shame that Wilco shows are kind of impossible to get tickets to nowadays.

I wish I liked these more quickly than I am liking them:
Times New Viking
No Age

I bet these bands are really fun live. I just haven't spent the time really getting through to the songs that seem to be in the recordings somewhere.

Albums by bands that I have liked at one time or another that just haven't compelled much listening this year:
Antibalas - Security
Devendra Banhart - Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon
The Ponys - Turn the Lights Out
The Shins - Wincing the Night Away
Stars - In Our Bedroom After the War
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Living with the Living
Vic Chesnutt - North Star Deserter
Fiery Furnaces - Widow City

This list is of stuff that is currently "underwhelming", not as disappointing as the "letdowns" but not what I'd hoped for. Although I tend to hold out hope that if I give a few more listens, I'll enjoy them more.

Xmas gift that I'm looking forward to listening to
the Robyn Hitchcock Box set

Irritating and Probably Dumb Record Label Maneuvers
Drag City and Anti taking their stuff down from emusic.

FYI, record labels for things I'm curious about but not sure about, I'm probably going to wait and buy it used rather than new or itunes, if it's not on emusic.

Fun and Smart Use of a Music Website
Stereogum's Cover Projects - tribute albums to OK Computer and Automatic for the People

And the price was right for these tribute albums--free. Probably what the going rate for tribute albums should be.

As for the past year's shows seen,

Most enjoyable
Yo La Tengo's Freewheeling Show

Seen It Before But Still Surprisingly Fun
The Hold Steady and Art Brut (alone or together)

Other shows that I remember as being especially good
Mountain Goats
Okkervil River

You have to go see this band to see how dedicated their fans are
Drive-By Truckers

Most surprisingly amazing show
Shearwater at Pace University

yes, it sounds strange to me, too.

Good free shows in parks
Sloan
Apples in Stereo
Spoon

Hopefully next year's free shows are as good.

Shows that made me enjoy seated venues
M. Ward
Feist

Wednesday night we went to go see The Hold Steady and Art Brut at Terminal 5.

It was satisfyingly good; both bands seem to be perpetually on the verge of becoming uninteresting/annoying to me, but they've managed to maintain their appeal on the basis of fun.

The middle of the Hold Steady set included a bunch of new songs. A big part of the overall Hold Steady concept seems to be the recurring characters and cross references between songs. New song Stay Positive seemed to take this to an almost Destroyer-esque level. I guess it makes the new songs seem less new when there are lots of reference points built in.

Art Brut are still more enjoyable than I thought they'd be by now. The setlist was obviously from a can as they had powerpoint projections for each song and a bunch of the banter. Still a lot of songs are so recognizable and fun that they feel like hits.

You can listen to the Washington DC sets from the bands at NPR.

The Washington Post has an A to Z Hold Steady Glossary.

Photos by Ezwai Flickr

Friday night we went to go see the Freewheeling Yo La Tengo show in Williamsburg, and it was everything I hoped it would be.

The band played seated and answered questions in between songs. I think the setup made Georgia the star of this show, but there were moments that led audience members to comment that "that song sounded like you were standing up". YLT also revealed that they are just as happy to have a quiet audience rather than a dancing audience. Overall, the show was kind of like recent Mountain Goats shows where there was a lot of banter but then very quiet during songs.

The Hanukkah shows all sold out very early this year and so I'm not going, but this was the special Yo La Tengo show of the year for me.

The show was at that new Music Hall place that replaced Northsix in Williamsburg, and it was pretty nicely set up but eerie how much the overall design took from the Bowery Ballroom.

Photo from yolatreacy flickr.

The Jennifer O'Connor Myspace has some streaming covers, including Stockholm Sweden and an Elliott Smith track.

A good week of Daytrotter sets, with Magic Numbers and Emma Pollock following Okkervil River.

I'm really not too impressed with this Amazon Top 100 books of the year list.
Knuffle Bunny Too as the kidlit pick? Not really the one book I'd pick for such a list.

British papers are reviewing The Book of Other People, created by all the trendy writers and graphic novelists

Yesterday we went to BAM to see the Sufjan Stevens show. The first part was the multimedia BQE experience...an orchestral work composed by SS, presented with video footage and five hula hoopers. The hoopers had a costume change. The hoops were on sale for $40. SS didn't want to leave the hoops/BQE connection up to the minds of the audience...he published an essay about the connection in the program and online.

I saw this article a few days ago:
The Lamest Pop-Classical Crossovers in Music History
although I wonder: what are the "great" pop-classical crossovers?

Anyway, the SS composition was amusing in parts in conjunction with the overall presentation, but not really memorable. Parts of it were just too loud.

We saw the Elvis Costello orchestral thing at BAM a few years ago, so it's an obvious point for comparison. I think the Elvis Costello piece was probably a bit more boring overall, but probably a bit more tasteful. I don't need to hear either of those orchestral pieces again, but they were good excuses to see each artist in the BAM space.

After an intermission, SS played the hits. His "band" proper was pared down a bit from the last times I'd seen him, but of course it was augmented by the orchestra. I didn't think the set choices and arrangements were particularly great, although I like the songs. Again, bits were just too loud, in an out of place way. While a couple horns complemented the songs before, a bigger brass section was pretty much unnecessary and counterproductive. There were also irritating "banging on the piano" moments during intros and outros that didn't add much. When SS does noise, it doesn't really work. I also think his arrangements of late (e.g. the ring them bells cover on the I'm Not There soundtrack) are a bit too much and need paring back. I think Ring The Bells may be my least favorite song on that soundtrack.

It's nice that BAM kept the cheap (balcony) tickets decently priced on these shows...$20 was about right for this show. They probably could have charged more but didn't...I feel better about the price for this show than $50 for football fields away from the White Stripes at MSG.

The NY Times saw the BQE

"CDs — who knows if you're going to be able to play a CD in 20 or 30 years? Come the apocalypse, they'll certainly be useless. Maybe people in millennia to come will find all these CDs embedded in clay and they'll think they're part of some big spinal column. They'll think they're vertebrae. 'We've found a lot of these things and we're constructing our idea of what kind of beast it was that had these in their back, rows of Doobie Brothers and Michael Jackson and Celine Dion CDs, making up some kind of spine.'

"Whereas vinyl, I'm figuring that any smart mind from the future or from another galaxy — or both — will be able to figure out, 'OK, this is some sort of rotating tablet. Let's put it on a wheel.' Somebody smart would drop a pin in there and could listen to it. Of course, they might accidentally play it backwards."

Amusing quotes from Robyn Hitchcock

Here's a Fiery Furnaces interview

If anything, you’re one of the few groups trying to escape the confines of a traditional rock band.
MF: We don’t try hard enough. We don’t have the solution to the rock problem of four people in a van coming to play in a club. We rearrange our songs in concert, but we still just go up and play. That’s not very interesting.

Stream S Malkmus's take on Ballad of a Thin Man
I don't think I necessarily agree with the entire commentary (I'm fine with the Cat Power song) but overall it's a good writeup.

The video for Marissa Nadler's Bird on Your Grave

Chris Ware designed Sundays with Walt and Skeezix, a Gasoline Alley collection

For lack of a better analogy, some writers tell stories and other writers write -- that is, they try to capture the texture and feeling of life within the limited means of their literary tools, and the story lives somewhere within. To my mind, King was really the first real "writer" in the comics, and its in these vista-filling sunday pages that he allows himself to write most eloquently. How many other cartoonists would dare make the colors of autumn the subject of their work? How lucky were the readers who received these temporary observations of life on their doorsteps every week; it seems almost inconceivable now that strips trading on such tenderness appeared in common newspapers.Which is not to say that Gasoline Alley is not funny.

A common complaint about we cartoonists writing about and citing our forebears' influence is that we highlight "sensitive" qualities in strips that others see as negligible (i.e. the deep empathy of Peanuts, for example.) In our defense, we're only picking out elements and tones that might not be otherwise immediately obvious. That's only because we really love what we're reading and writing about, and worry that these feelings might be lost in the visual translation. Here, however, there is no translation; this is how King's pages -- and Walt and Skeezix -- were always meant to be seen, read ... and felt.

Chris Ware also designed a poster for the The Savages movie (Laura Linney/Philip Seymour Hoffman)

Here's a NY Times article on the Sweeney Todd adaptation

This week's George Saunders from the Guardian

Jens Lekman doesn't need blog hype; the NY Times review should suffice

Photo from ryandombal Flickr

We saw Jens Lekman Saturday night. The show was pretty slick but enjoyable. Opening a cappella Silver Ages were unnecessary, but people seemed to enjoy it.

photo from gaelenh flickr

I went to see the New Pornographers show on Wednesday night; it was kind of blah.

The good news is that both of the openers were good. Benjy Ferree and Emma Pollock played nice, fairly engaging sets.

Also in good news: the old NP songs are still great, and Dan Bejar is fun.

Why the blah? Carl Newman doesn't do much for me as a live performer. (Idea: give a lot of his parts to Kathryn Calder to sing). I like most of his songs on album, but live they've always felt thin.

I'm not a big fan of the new album. Maybe preordering the overkill box raised my expectations, but a lot of the new songs are just kind of boring.

For this show they had flute, french horn and strings going on. It was pretty unnecessary.
I thought the big light up sign was more dumb than cool. There were also sound issues and feedback while I was there.

The other recurring thought I had concerned how old the band seemed. But that's not really fair.

I was tired all day from the extensive 4 day weekend -of-fun, which was concluded with the Mountain Goats/Bowerbirds show.

The show totally lived up to my high expectations. I've really enjoyed the Bowerbirds recordings, to the extend that I was a little worried that I wouldn't like them for some reason when I saw the band. Worries were proved wrong...the songs were great, the performance good, the players seemed nice and not annoying.

The Mountain Goats set was a nice between albums mix of things, with typically great banter. I haven't been to a show in which people have been so quiet for extended moments.....

Great.
Photo from Ketchup_Life Flickr

Last night we saw Iron & Wine and Arthur & Yu at Town Hall. A Sunday night show to continue the weekend-of-fun.

Iron and Wine was a pretty big band (8? players) and played the pretty sounding Iron and Wine songs. It was kind of a sleepy set for me; very pleasant but not so attention getting. Iron and Wine records make me kind of sleepy so I wasn't too surprised by the the sleepy feeling, although it may have been one of the bigger bands I've seen to make me almost fall asleep. Thinking about the difference between Iron and Wine and Lambchop, for example...the difference is the bite that Kurt Wagner has in the delivery. Iron and Wine guy has none of that. But a nice performance, if a bit same-y...

Photo from Bumpershine Flickr


I thought Arthur & Yu were pretty good. The second to last song went on too long, but they were a pretty good time. Apparently this was their first show in New York.

Last night we started the weekend of activity-fun with Okkervil River and Damien Jurado at Webster Hall.

The Stage Names is one of the better albums of the year, and I like it better than Black Sheep Boy. The new songs play well live and the show was a good time. I find W. Sheff a bit too precious at times, even as I like most of the songs well enough.

Damien Jurado's set would have been better suited for another room, and his songs deserve more attention than I was able to give them last night.

Photo from Muzikspy Flickr

Here's a link from one of the free morning newspapers to have a little coverage of OR this week.

Tomorrow's D.C. show will be streamed by NPR.

This evening I went to go see the free show with the Hold Steady, Old 97s and Illinois. It was at 7 World Trade Center. Larry Silverstein came out to say how the music was louder than in his day but still great. He got heckled by conspiracy theorists.

Why did this show exist? I'm not sure I know why. It's outside the other River to River-esque events and didn't even have quite the equivalent boatload of corporate sponsors. I doubt that anyone in attendance was moved to lease space in Silverstein's buildings and the location was strange. Not too many people there early but it was pretty dense by the time the Hold Steady played.

Anyway, I went because it was free.

The Hold Steady shared their joy as usual; even though the show is always kind of the same, I've enjoyed them every time I've seen them. The stage gestures are kind of bigger than ever, but the tiny hand clapping is great.

Old 97s were good; a band I've been aware of but haven't actively followed. Any suggestions for emusic albums/tracks to download?

Illinois were alternately fun and annoying.

Old 97sIllinois
All Photos from Forklift Flickr


M. Ward is playing tomorrow, but I think I'll skip it as I could use more at-home-after-work time and there's only so much time I can handle at Larry Silverstein's front door.

Last night I made it out to Celebrate Brooklyn. The bandshell with seats may be my favorite free/$3 summer venue. A good, fun show with The Hold Steady, The Big Sleep and Teenage Prayers.
The Hold Steady were great, as they've been each time I've seen them. It was fun to see them in a bigger place and I'm consistently impressed with Craig Finn's contagious happiness. Even though some of the elements of the shows are almost identical, this band never really comes across as rote or going through the motions. Apparently they're opening for the Rolling Stones in Ireland next week, and they're happy, as they should be.


The Big Sleep were largely instrumental and pretty loud. There was some singing but mostly it was pleasant in a droney, sludgey kind of way. For a while, I thought they were really appropriate in a palate cleansing kind of way in between The Hold Steady and Teenage Prayers, but their set felt a little long by the time it was over.

Teenage Prayers tried really hard to do something interesting, I thought ... and in places it worked and in other places it didn't. I think my ratio of neat to annoying would have been a bit higher if I hadn't seen so many other pretty competent and fun enough but not amazing or especially memorable newer bands. Certainly, I'm sort of jaded. But they could be a band to watch in the future.

All photos from DFactor Flickr

I also saw Drive by Truckers on Thursday at Castle Clinton.Photo by rogo2000 flickr

It was a good show, with the first half of the set alternating songs between Hood and Cooley pretty much one for one. Spooner Oldham played with DBT for this show. (According to their site, they're all playing on the new Betty Lavette album.)

The audience for this show was sort of interesting. It seems like the band has some number traveling fans and there were many more DBT tshirts in attendance than you usually see band of that night tshirts around here. Also a bunch of "DBT" chants that somewhat reminded of the "GBV" chants from Guided by Voices shows. There would seem to be some crossover in fans between DBT, GBV, and also the Hold Steady, and it's that kind of a show, just a bit more rural/country seasoned, I guess.

I saw a couple of free shows last week that I didn't mention at the time.
Went to go see Neko Case and Eric Bachmann at Summerstage on Friday.

Photo by RNeg Flickr

photo by Kalana Flickr

I enjoyed Eric Bachmann's opening set. It touched on Archers of Loaf and Crooked Fingers materials as well as the newest stuff. Pleasant and well constructed songs.

Neko Case stands out for her voice more than anything else. The New Pornographers are indisputably better when she is able to play with them. I like her last solo album and the ones before are pretty OK too. Still, I found her show a bit same y as it kept going. The covers, such as Buckets of Rain, stood out, so I guess that says something about her earlier songwriting.

Last night we went to the big rock concert at Madison Square Garden, to see the White Stripes, Grinderman, and Porter Wagoner.

White Stripes photo from pixxiestails Flickr

Grinderman photo fromwallyg flickrPorter Wagoner photo by Randsom Flickr

A few years ago I would have been really excited about seeing the White Stripes and would have tried to get the best possible tickets. That isn't really the case right now after the past few albums and a sort of annoying show at Roseland a few couple years ago. Anyway, it was a summer show and a chance to engage in arena rock nostalgia so we decided to go. Our seats ended up being pretty good as far as being able to see the whole stage, but I didn't bring opera glasses or a telescope. I'm not sure if the show ever sold out...it was pretty full but not capacity.

The show started off quite well...about 5 songs in I realized that they hadn't played anything newish yet. Of course this meant that the second half of the main set was less interesting, but that was an opportunity to go and buy popcorn. There was either a really long encore or a short second set in which a bunch on songs that would have punched up the second half of the main set. Anyway, Meg White is still officially Jack White's sister, and they seemed proud of themselves for playing a big room and it was a fun show overall.

It was a good arena rock nostalgia experience, and I'm sure it was some kid's first concert and they got a fun time. It was fun to see a bunch of behaviors that you don't see too often, like the hundreds of fans who can't wait until the next day to wear the $30 tshirts they bought at the show. I guess there is no school tomorrow to show off your tshirts as concert attending proof, but maybe summer camp?

Other points:

• Was Jack White thinking of $180 kilts when he was sitting in his little room?
• There were counterfeit/bootleg/"unauthorized" white stripes tshirts for sale afterwards. I guess this is a sign of success?
• Getting out of the show from high up seats was a bit challenging. Escalators were turned off and there were no staff people to direct anyone.
• It's a shame that the concessions people can't have a tip jar. I imagine the disparity between what the drink pourers at MSG get paid by Cablevision and what the average night at somewhere like the Mercury Lounge is for the bar staff is pretty big.
  

Openers:
Country Music Hall of Famer Porter Wagoner's band played a short and sweet set. I think the band was on stage for 25 minutes and Porter was on stage for less than 20 minutes. That was probably the right length to keep this audience happy, but the set was fun and enjoyable. I think they're playing on Letterman tonight.

Grinderman was sort of predicatably sort of awesome and sort of stupid. Awesome because it was Nick Cave and stupid because these were Nick Cave songs written in like 5 minutes. But I liked them overall, even if I don't need to download the other half the album from emusic.

Last week we saw some bands.
Photo from Flickr Alexistheo
Last Monday we went to the Highline Ballroom for the first time, to see Art Brut and White Rabbits.

White Rabbits were kind of OK, but the closing cover of Maggie's Farm that required an introduction/explanation, "it's a Dylan song that we're doing in the style of the Specials" kind of summed them up in the least flattering way. A six member band showing a bunch of influences but not really too much original. There didn't seem to be a dominant creative voice or anything really remarkable.

Unfortunately we didn't stay for all of Art Brut, as going to this show after going to the dentist proved to be a bad idea for my concertgoing companion. The second Art Brut album couldn't possibly be as good/fun as the first, but it's still pretty OK. The Eddie Argos comments to the effect of the "the first album I was 16 years old, now I'm 17 years old" is actually about right, I think. The show was a good amount of fun.

As for the Highline Ballroom, I would go back again. The wide stage and wide but relatively shallow room afford good views. The lights were a bit out of control during both band's sets and the in between sets music was terrible. It was also very loud. I see the Bill Callahan show on the calendar and want to go, but I'm not sure about convincing anyone else to go.
Photo from Flickr Forklift

Wednesday night we saw Spoon at Rockefeller Park. It was a short set that started late because of heavy rain. The show had a lot of new songs, which I thought played well. They had horns on Underdog and some other new and old ones. I'm very happy that I went to this show as I'm planning to skip the October Roseland show (because it's at Roseland). Spoon is probably the most consistently pleasing live band I've seen over the past few years.

The new Spoon album is really good, definitely in that unique territory that Spoon has marked out. The bonus disc has some good stuff too, and this preorder bonus from Merge is pretty neat: