“Take Me Out To The Ballgame” is probably the only song that comes to mind when you think of baseball-related music. (Okay, and maybe “Centerfield” by John Fogerty.) But that is about to change, as The Baseball Project is about to release their second set of baseball inspired tunes, Vol. 2: High and Inside. The band’s quartet includes Steve Wynn, Linda Pitman, and members of R.E.M. Scott McCaughey and Peter Buck.
Here they are performing on Letterman after the release of their first album:
As you can see, these songs have a great classic rock/Americana feel, and Volume 2 includes guest spots by artists such as Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie, Craig Finn of The Hold Steady, Yo La Tengo‘s Ira Caplin, and others. The band will be playing in Clarendon, VA tonight at IOTA Club and Café, but if you can’t make it, you are in luck, as we have a copy of their new record to give away!
Stevie Nicks is a pioneer of female rock who successfully moved past her Fleetwood Mac heyday to garner a successful solo career for decades, with songs such as “Leather and Lace,” “Stand Back,” and a song whose famous beat still remains in Top 40 today via “Bootylicious” by Destiny’s Child, “Edge of Seventeen.”
Nicks now appears to be on the “Edge of Seventeen” herself—seventeen tours that is—as she reaches that amount this year on her In Your Dreams tour. And now you can be there to see it! Stevie is playing at the Jiffy Lube Live in Bristow, Virginia this Saturday, September 3rd and we have a pair of Pavilion tickets to give away.
To enter to win, simply leave in the comments your favorite Stevie Nicks song from her solo career. (None of the ones I mentioned above though, that would be too easy!)
The winner will be chosen Friday (9/2) at noon and must confirm the tickets via email by 5pm.
In honor of their headlining show at DC9 tonight, we are giving away an autographed copy of Jeff the Brotherhood’s latest LP, We Are the Champions.
Recorded by Roger Moutenot, who has also worked with Yo La Tengo, Sleater Kinney, and Velvet Underground, the album has a classic rock and fuzzy psychedelic sound. When performing live, the band takes that fuzziness and adds a heaviness to it that has allowed them to tour with the likes of hardcore bands such as Fucked Up and metal legends Pentagram.
To win this record, leave in our comments section a classic rock song (i.e., something from a rock band originally released in the ’60s or ’70s) that still gets you groovin’ today. One that will always remain excellent in my mind is “Iron Man” by Black Sabbath. Rock on, readers!
The winner will be chosen Friday (9/2), and must have a mailing address in the continental US or Canada.
First and foremost, in appearance. All of her promotional posters and album covers have her with pixie-cut blonde hair, but the woman I saw on-stage at IOTA Club & Cafe had chin length brown hair, so I was thrown off a bit from the start. Cute and coquettish, she shyly opens her lips when speaking on-stage to reveal a full mouth of girlish metal braces.
And yet, counteracting this demeanor was her very short high-waist dress and four-inch clear heels, the kind that are generally seen in strip clubs and mentioned in Chris Rock HBO specials.
Modern man, in today’s society, is not a simple group. But Modern Man, the indie rock band from right here in Washington D.C., succinctly state right on their band website their favorite simple pleasures: tube amps, koozies and shouting.
Now, their admiration for koozies is something you would have to witness firsthand, but tube amps and shouting you can hear for yourself on the band’s debut EP Long in the Tooth, produced by Hays Holladay of Blue Brain. As a matter of fact, we have a TVD exclusive track from that EP, titled “1957,” right here for your ears:
Eventually, Long in the Tooth will be available on vinyl, but in the meantime, you can pick up a CD when the band headlines at the Black Cat for the first time this Friday (8/26), with opening acts The Dustys and Harper Blynn.
We’re hanging out with The Shivers all this week, and after recounting their story and revealing what is in their record collection, we hope you are ready for more! No, literally. Today we will be giving away the duo’s latest album, More.
Being compared to today’s Deer Tick, Grizzly Bear, and even the excitable Titus Andronicus is nothing for this or any band to sneeze at, seasoned or otherwise. And once you hear this album, you can definitely sense those comparisons. These ten tracks about love and loss will certainly leave you—okay, last time i’m going to say it—wanting more.
What can I say, they just don’t make ’em like this anymore. Amid a sea of Iron Maiden, Scorpions, and Blue Oÿster Cult t-shirts, I was able to catch a performance of the heavy metal band Queensrÿche, currently embarking on their Thirtieth Anniversary Tour with Ireland rock band The Voodoos.
This means, yes, Queensrÿche has been around since 1981. It also means, no, they don’t sound as good as they did in 1981. Granted, I did not hear them play in 1981. In fact, I was not even alive in 1981. So you may take this review with a grain of salt if you wish.
Now, there are a few things that Queensrÿche absolutely does right. First of all, they have four out of five original members still playing in their band! After thirty years, that is an amazing accomplishment and shows that this band is very dedicated to each other and their music.
A few things have changed since I last actively listened to Death Cab For Cutie circa 2007’s Narrow Stairs release: most notably, Ben Gibbard has lost his baby fat and glasses, and gained the babeliest of all indie chicks, Zooey Deschanel, as his wife. But regardless of the effect of any changes the band has gone through between now and that first 1998 album Something About Airplanes, Death Cab began their set at the Merriweather Post Pavilion Sunday night with “I Will Possess Your Heart,” and for the entire performance, they did.
The second song they played was “Crooked Teeth,” which begins with the line, “It was 100 degrees…” and that is exactly what it was; even as the sun went down, whether you were sitting, standing, or lying in the grass, every fan had sweat coming out of every pore. Once the song was over, the band’s jeans were so shiny and soaked in sweat that they looked like leather pants, and Gibbard commented, “I believe it just went from ‘hot’ to ‘balls hot’ out here.”
In this day and age, thirty years together is much longer than most marriages even make it, let alone ’80s metal bands, but this year prog-metal outfit Queensryche is celebrating the big three-oh with an anniversary tour with The Voodoos and making a stop here in DC at 9:30 Club next Tuesday (8/9).
In an effort to help you make it out to this anniversary tour date, we are giving away a pair of ticketsto the show that also include a meet and greet with the band! All serious metal heads need apply.
When it comes to creating swoon-worthy indie rock, Ben Gibbard and the rest of Death Cab For Cutie are a few of the men among boys. With seven studio albums spanning over ten years, the band arguably caught their “big break” back in 2003 with Trasatlanticism and songs such as “The Sound of Settling,” “The New Year,” and “Title and Registration.”
Even though the band has put those songs three albums behind them, we hope they will break out a few of the classics for their upcoming show at Merriweather Post Pavilionon Sunday (8/7), for which we happen to have a pair of lawn tickets to give away!
“Sometimes you try to paint the town red, and it just turns out pink,” mused William Elliott Whitmore as he began his set on Sunday night in a very red bar, The Red Palace.
The combination of a small third-story room and a sold out crowd made for a very intimate performance setting as the audience faced the fully tattooed and slightly sweaty Whitmore, on stage armed with no backing band, but only with a guitar, banjo, and bass drum.
Whitmore is an artist who clearly feels comfortable on stage, as he conversed with the crowd in his deep, Iowa-accented baritone and happily accepted their offers to buy him beers and whiskey drinks. Unlike many artists who quickly run through their pre-determined set, Whitmore would play tracks he had never before recorded like “South Lee County Brew,” a delightful song about moonshine, on-the-spot suggestions shouted out by his fans, and songs from EPs that were many years old.
When talking about a new band, foreign art film, or craft beer, indie kids are known for constantly attaching the dangling phrase “…you may not have heard of it” to the end of their story, with a certain air of snobbery in their voice. What should always be remembered, however, is that before TV On The Radio, there was Tesla, and before Beirut there was Black Sabbath.
I am talking about metal, the genre that truly started out in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s as music for weirdos and misfits. This is a unique unity that only fellow outcasts can share together, and is a unity that was definitely felt at the performance of the Miami, Florida bred stoner/sludge metal band Torche at the Rock and Roll Hotel last weekend.
Today, of course, metal has become streamlined in many ways and many genres, but bands like Torche still carry that truly heavy metal sound in the deep tonality of their music and in lead singer Steve Brooks’ deep vocals. The doom-like, stoner feel of their songs embrace an ideology of today that “legitimate” metal should lurk dark and low with that “bowels of hell” sort of feeling. But Torche’s songs also simultaneously harken back to day’s of metal’s past as they are played with a driving rhythm and Brooks integrates true singing and harmony into his vocals, not just monolithic groans and growls a la Cannibal Corpse or Burning Witch.
Light, upbeat and poppy, listening to Architecture In Helsinki perform live is like putting that first sip of a fizzy fountain drink up to your lips. (If you could picture it now: the Architecture In Helsinki soda pop would probably be pastel blue, with maybe a pastel pink foam on top, and Pop Rocks bubbling on the bottom. Pepsi, jump on this.)
We Americans often enjoy anything with novelty, and just as the accents and unique slang words of ladies and fellows of foreign lands often turn us on, we tend to appreciate their indie pop in the same way. Los Campesinos! does it for us England-style, and Architecture In Helsinki is the Australian equivalent. Like with many a sold-out show, the crowd at the Black Cat that night was giddy, sweaty and happy to be there.
With Architecture In Helsinki having multiple albums under their belt, fans old and new were able to delight in the songs they played. 2003’s Fingers Crossed and 2005’sIn Case We Die definitely express the fizzy sound I mentioned above, but Places Like This and the band’s latest album,Moment Bends, have begun to develop a fuller, more developed sound for the quintet.
This new sound has a more deliberate electronica/house beat and dance vibe to it, which when combined with that down-under charm makes it easy to envision songs such as “Escapee” or “Contact High” being played in a trendy European discotheque, glow sticks and all. The band’s sticky stamina lasted for quite a long set and kept fans hopping and foot-tapping long into the night.
Opening for the band was Hooray For Earth, a New York synth-pop act that with a sound that was low and drone-y while at the same time beat-heavy and dance-able. As an opening act, they were a great choice, as their music complements the more mature house beat Architecture In Helsinki is moving towards.
With both acts now crossing back over the pond to begin an overseas tour, it felt good to know that overall this was a delightful performance that left fans happy and satisfied. Not as satisfied as I would be drinking an Architecture In Helsinki Pepsi though! (Really guys, I’m not letting this go…)
To today’s critical and jaded music fan, in terms of musical taste, the word “country” is often met with the same grimacing look of disgust associated with words such as “nu-metal” and “Ke$ha.” However, there are very genuine and talented country artists performing today that don’t sing about their pick-up truck or perform with Gwyneth Paltrow at the CMT Music Awards, and Ryan Bingham is one of them.
Bingham has enjoyed well-deserved commercial success with his small role as Tony in the 2010 film Crazy Heart and his win for Best Original Song at the 2010 Grammys for the film’s title track, “The Weary Kind,” but none of this appears to have affected the thin, long-haired and plaid-wearing front man for Ryan Bingham and The Dead Horses.
Performing to a sold-out audience at DC’s 9:30 Clubon Friday night, Bingham’s main opening act was The Americans, a rockabilly-style country band complete with stand-up bass, ’50s greaser haircuts, and white tees perfect for rolling up your pack of cigarettes in the sleeve. On more than one occasion did members of the band actually take out combs from their back pockets and comb their hair back into the perfect greaser coif.
The lead singer’s low and warbling voice also evoked thoughts of music’s past, as it was reminiscent of an early Elvis Presley or Hank Williams. These elements of country’s old school got the audience moving and conveyed to the audience what they were going to need to know about that night’s performances, which was… You are going to hear some real country music tonight.
By the time Ryan Bingham and The Dead Horses took the stage, the audience was packed in tight, a buzz emanating both from excitement about the band beginning to play and the three or four overpriced Bud Lights every fan had somehow managed to collectively consume. Like many hard-working bands that put musicianship before entertainment, Ryan Bingham and The Dead Horses played a solid two-hour set with nearly no breaks in-between songs. No one told a trite anecdote, and there were no special effects, costumes, or big hair. Just five southern gentlemen that love to play country music, and are happy to be promoting their most recent album, 2010’s Junky Star.
While Bingham and his band have many songs in a classic country drawl that work very well, they really come alive with tracks that alternate between beats that are slowed down and then speed up, teasing the listener’s ears and delightfully engaging them with every heavily electric guitar-driven chorus. “Day Is Gone” and “Bluebird” off of 2009’s Roadhouse Sun especially show off this skill and drove fans wild during the band’s set.
Now leaving to depart on a European tour, Friday night’s show was the last chance any of us Americans had to see Ryan and his boys play for a while. But don’t fret; all you have to do to create the ideal Ryan Bingham listening environment is to blare his songs while driving down a long country road, or for us more city-minded folk, sip a glass of whiskey while sitting on your front stoop. I promise that you will achieve the desired effect.
Let’s get down to brass tacks. If you read TVD, you know what’s up, music-wise. Thus, you know who Architecture In Helsinki is. You know they play Australian indie pop. You know they sound like Death Cab For Cutie, The Polyphonic Spree, and Belle & Sebastian all rolled into one. You know if that’s your thing, it sounds pretty great.
But what you may not know until now is that you can win a pair of tickets to see them right here in DC, for their performance at the Black Cat on Friday, June 17th. And that they have a new video out for their song “Escapee” from their newest album Moment Bends.
To win the tickets, in the comments below, give us the name of the song that you listen to when you want to escape.
And remember to keep your Fingers Crossed in hopes that you might win!
