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Music
You've seen artist Steve "ESPO" Powers' giant love letters around town, and you saw him on the cover of City Paper just last month. And you know Kurt Vile, Philly's constant rock hitmaker and no stranger to our cover, either. Well, as you might have heard, the former did the cover of the latter's latest record. On a wall. This is Matador Records' promo video for all that.
View galleryI have to stop getting surprised by bands with warm, pastoral three-part harmonies and deliriously catchy guitar hooks being from Philadelphia. I’m not in Kansas anymore (or ever), but instead in an East Coast city with enough Americana heart in its native musicians to make Kansas City (yeah, I know, not actually Kansas) tip-toe home with its tail between its legs. Nobody at The Great Unknown’s vinyl release show on Saturday at Johnny Brenda’s, myself included, will ever forget that again.
Said to be a traditional band from Puglia, Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino certainly builds upon the old styles. Pulsing compositions use the traditional instruments in arrangements rather than the jam style, with layers of voices entering and exiting. The official video of “Nu Te Fermare” gives us a clue of what to expect. We see a decrepit building, a handsome young man resting amid the refuse pondering. Cue the music, follow it around the corridor to an arts be-in complete with sculpting and painting on canvas and faces, juggling and of course, dancing -trad and trance- to the sound of the tartantella. It could be two separate songs alternating within one, the parts contrast so strongly, both supported by accordion, bouzouki, violin and bass over ceaseless frame drumming. Your people don’t have to be from the boot of Italy for this to grip your imagination; anybody who loves new acoustic music will get this.
Sun., Feb. 3, 8 p.m., $10, World Café Live, 3025 Walnut St., 215-222-1400, worldcafelive.com.
The Ramones piling out of Doc Brown’s Delorean to play the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance — that’s a pretty good visual representation of The Vaccines’ sophomore release, Come of Age. Fizzy guitars, ’50s doo-wop pop hooks and Justin Young’s woe-is-me croon attest to the West London’s Ethan Johns-produced record as a root beer float toast to the birth of American rock ’n’ roll and all its drive-in movie romantic imagery. But Young’s a loner, Dottie, a rebel, promising us he’s “not magnetic and mythical / I’m suburban and typical” on the jangly “Teenage Icon.” Closing track “Lonely World,” with its soaring guitar solos and shuffling tempo, basically invites a slow dance. Just try not to screw it up, McFly.
Sat., Feb. 2, 8:30 p.m., $20, with San Cisco, Union Transfer, 1026 Spring Garden St., 215-232-2100, utphilly.com.
If you’re looking to dance after doing the First Friday thing, head to Kung-Fu Necktie. You won’t want to miss headliners Gemini Club, the Chicago-based trio whose electronic dance-rock is continually remixed and reinvented live on stage, but you’d be wise to get there in time for show openers The Downtown Club. This Philly-based trio, rooted in British post-punk and New Wave like Gang of Four and Public Image Ltd., combines metronomic drumlines and gritty picked bass with warm synths and reverb-drenched guitars. Singer April Harkanson’s vocals, alternating between hushed utterances and anguished belting, sit over the instrumentation to create as haunting as it is groovy.
Fri., Feb. 1, 7:30 p.m., $15, Kung Fu Necktie, 1250 N. Front St., 215-291-4919, kungfunecktie.com.
"In a fair world, I should be carrying Jef's bags."
—Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson
I was sad to see that Germantown guitar veteran Jeff Lee Johnson passed away on Monday. Johnson never got super famous, but he was always there in the fringes: He put out several under-heard solo albums. He backed the likes of Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan, George Duke, D'Angelo and McCoy Tyner. He played the starring role in that amazing Lonnie Johnson tribute album a few years back. Questlove loved him.
We put Jef Lee Johnson on the cover of City Paper in 2010. A.D. Amorosi did the interview. Mark Stehle did the photos. Here's a Johnson quote that sorta sums him up, maybe:
"I've had that said to me, that I'm too good at what I do and that I show people up. I'm not looking to show off other musicians' shortcomings. Their shortcomings are not my problem. I may be a guy who has said no more often than I said yes, but I'm just trying to knock the gig out of the park every time."
For more about Johnson's passing, check out Dan DeLuca's piece in today's Inky.
Chuck Ragan and Chris Wollard aren’t singers — they’re scruffy, flannel-clad, Southern, guitar-playing lions.
Hot Water Music has been pioneering a brand of gravel-throated rock somewhere between punk and post-hardcore (or whatever you want to call it) for nearly 20 years now. Their set at the Electric Factory Saturday only reminded the crowd that yes, their live show as refined as it is impassioned; yes, they will still play “Trusty Chords”; and yes, Ragan’s roar of a voice in particular is enough to occupy and quake every open space in the venue.
HWM’s set was balanced nicely with long time favorites from Caution, A Flight and a Crash and No Division, and a handful of tracks from their latest record, last year’s Exister (Rise). “Mainline,” “Paid in Full,” and especially “Drag My Body” were solid picks from Exister that highlight the band’s exceptional rhythm section (Jason Black is a bass guitar hero).
I caught Ragan last March at the Philly stop of his Revival Tour, so I wasn’t caught off guard by how jovial and appreciative he is when addressing the audience between songs, but I wasn’t expecting him to pour even more of himself into his playing — this is a dude who sings with his entire body. But the best HWM songs are always the ones where he and Wollard share vocals, the bromance-y songs like “Wayfarers” and “It’s Hard to Know,” where you’ll look around the Factory and find pockets of 30-somethings with neck beards arm-in-arm at the balcony bars, shouting right back.
Though Christopher Owens’ face is obscured by a curtain of perpetually lanky hair on the cover of his new (and debut) solo album Lysandre, a near-unprecedented proportion of his face was visible during his set last night at Union Transfer. These slightly tamer locks were just one of many changes to Owens’ post-Girls identity. He was also, for example, joined by seven-piece band – a figure that sometimes felt overinflated, especially in the presence of two distractingly under-utilized American Apparel-esque waifs. Much about the songs from Lysandre felt similarly ornamental. With a running time of less than thirty minutes, Owens’ album is slightly insubstantial – a fact which frequent and slightly anachronistic-sounding flute flourishes seemed to emphasize, rather than disguise. And the sameyness of the recurring instrumental theme which runs through each track of Lysandre was not much mitigated by the live performance.
But this somewhat middling first set was mostly redeemed by an extended encore of covers, including The Everly Brothers’ “Let it be Me” and Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice.” Owens and Co.’s rendition of Simon and Garfunkel classic “The Boxer” was particularly excellent and marked one of the few times that the generally enthusiastic crowd rose from the plastic folding chairs which had been set up for the occasion. Though easily the highlight of the performance, these covers also drew attention to the relative weakness of Owens’ own material.
It wasn’t a bad show by any means — but I did leave more with the desire to hear Owens cover the rest of Bridge Over Troubled Water than to replay Lysandre ad nauseum.
Hopefully you saw Neal Santos' awesome Birdie Busch photo on our cover last week — and read A.D. Amorosi's interview. Well, then you know what you should do tonight.
The Philly Opry and album release party for Birdie Busch and the Greatest Night, Fri., Jan. 18, doors at 8 p.m., music at 9 p.m. sharp, $12-$15, with Joy Kills Sorrow and Jason Loughlin, Johnny Brenda’s, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., 215-739-9684, johnnybrendas.com, birdie-buschmusic.com.
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