Dark Star Orchestra @ The Variety Playhouse in Atlanta

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the Grateful Dead were and are a force to be reckoned with—the blissed-out crystallization of a culture devoted purely to bliss itself. The Dead spawned not only the jam band concept, but the jam band culture, including the raggedy, tie-dyed legions of ubiquitous yet unassuming fans that remain still today determined to keep the dream alive.

Enter Dark Star Orchestra, self-described only as a band that “recreates Grateful Dead shows, song for song, live on stage.”  Yet to call DSO a mere cover band would be doing them a major disservice.  This aint no wedding ensemble folks, this is the pinnacle of devotion, supported by sheer talent and validated by the acceptance of preexisting fan base with very specific tastes.

Since 1997, DSO has performed hundreds of shows across the country, drawing heaps of critical praise for their impressively obsessive attention to detail. The band is known to actually recreate specific Dead shows in their entirety, with ardent artistic loyalty to the original pieces that has been said to wow not only the critics, but even the fiercest of Deadheads, including 5 members of the original band that have played alongside DSO. 

Stepping into the Variety Playhouse for Friday’s show, my first thought was, where did these people come from?  One thing’s for sure, the Deadheads are alive and well, and either I’m not going to the right places to find them in Atlanta or they’re a traveling contingent, following DSO across the country just as they followed the Dead in previous decades. Grizzly old guys with grey manes and foot-long beards mingle with young jam band-aids in dreadlocks and baja pullovers, swaying around like underwater plants and illustrating the 

incredible breadth of influence the Dead still hold, even sixteen years after their demise.

About halfway through a five-hour set that truly blew me away, the bear-like man behind me shot his Red Stripe-bearing fist in the air and yelled, “October 27, 1980! Radio City Music Hall!”  This man definitely did not have an iPhone anywhere on or around his person—he just knew.  As did the majority of other diehard heads in the room, I soon discovered.  “The next three songs will be ‘Truckin’,’ ‘Scarlet Begonias,’ and ‘Fire on the Mountain.’  Then there’s going to be a really epic drum solo.”

Sho’ nuff, there they were, nearly as clear and true as they must have sounded back in 1980, judging by the reactions of a crowd filled with people who would know much better than I.  Coasting along through the catchy shuffle of “Truckin’” to a rousing, jammed out version of “Johnny B. Goode” to a drum solo that was, indeed, epic, to a melt-in-your-mouth rendition of “Casey Jones” for dessert, DSO proved that they have earned their reputation as the next-best thing to a live Dead show.  And really, what could be better for the ultimate Deadheads than masterfully recreating the magic of their idols amidst a riled-up crowd of their own brethren?  These six grey-haired dudes are not only keeping the dream alive; they’re living it, too. 

Review & Photos by Hilary Cadigan

Last Aurora and Hollywood Heartthrob at Vinyl (Atlanta, 10/2)

Atlanta-based up-and-comers Last Aurora are a band with enough heart to fill a room much larger than the one they performed in at Vinyl on Saturday night.

Band photoshoot by Hilary Cadigan

Rocking their way through a short set of powerful tracks, the fervent foursome—including vocalist Robeen Dey, guitarist/synthmaster Alex Lafley, bassist Donnie Dey, and drummer Charlie Blevins—forged an instant connection with their small but equally feisty audience.

Frontman Robeen managed to come off lovably despite the bro-two punch of popped collar and Wayfarers-at-night, an impressive feat in and of itself, as he unabashedly Auto-Tuned his voice into a metallic wail that jutted against Lafley’s deft guitar work and Blevins' ferocious live percussion. Noted and appreciated: the drum kit's refreshing placement at the front left corner of the stage rather than hidden in the back as it usually [unfairly] is.

Last Aurora traverses rocky territory with the quick-footed resilience of a young band just starting to get comfortable in a newfound niche. Their sound ricochets between trance, rock, post-grunge, and whatever genre Chromeo is in, but finds cohesion in its consistently compelling delivery, particularly strong on tracks like “List of Men” and “Waiting a Long Time.” The result is a highly enjoyable wash of sound and light that draws you in, wraps you up, and makes you realize that being drenched in processed audio isn’t nearly as offensive as you thought it would be.  In fact, it rocks.

The offensive part of the evening didn’t come until a group of trust-funded ass clowns in tight pants and chemically straightened hair mounted the stage and punished us with a rain cloud of regurgitated pop-punk that pretty much summed up everything I dislike about music. And while I’m at it, I might as well finish my tirade by stating the fact that Hollywood Heartthrob (I know, right) bought all the tickets to their own show in order to tout it as sold-out. Boom. Outed. Cut to me throwing a glowstick at the frontman’s face and finishing my Bud Lite on the sidewalk.

Needless to say, Last Aurora should have been the last performance of the evening.

Download their EP at https://www.mavaru.com/artists/last-aurora/, a pay-what-you-want online music retailer created by Last Aurora’s own Alex Lafley!

Review and Photos by Hilary Cadigan

CocoRosie at Variety Playhouse (Atlanta, 9/21/10)

Part Anthropologie catalogue, part Exploding Plastic Inevitable, a dash of Puccini and a splash of Charlie Chaplin. Throw in some CrazySexyCool-era TLC for good measure and you might have some idea of what a CocoRosie concert feels like.

Yeah, they're pretty easy to hate upon for their whole prodigal émigré shtick, but on Tuesday at the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta, CocoRosie was totally captivating, providing a full-sensory experience of shifting sounds and enchanting visuals that truly blew me away.

In the center of the stage sat an old wooden crib with a slightly sinister-looking baby painted on the side, innovatively converted into a drum kit and flanked by a grand piano, a bright blue harp, a lopsided keyboard, and a table covered in a clutter of battery-operated children’s toys that would later be used as instruments. The place looked more like a pimped-out nursery than a music stage, and Bianca "Coco" and Sierra "Rosie" Casady matched their surroundings well, dressed up like little girls who just raided a fashionable mother’s decade-spanning closet.

Live, the freak-folky sister act succeeds where their recordings fall short, managing to draw listeners fully into the strange, carefully crafted little world they so clearly live in. Heady, uncanny, and slightly cloying, this place is a cosseted fantasy land of lovingly crayoned rainbows and expensive vials of Parisian patchouli. There are plenty of vintage costumes to try on. Come on in.

There’s something a little Flowers in the Attic about the whole affair, but from the floor of the Variety—where throngs of decked out, boozed up cult fans screeched their praises and even, in rare moments of composure, tossed flowers—CocoRosie seemed nothing short of fabulous. As did the truly fantastic beatboxing of lovable Vanilla Ice doppelganger Tez, who wore sweet flip-up sunglasses and possessed some serious skillz on the mic. His 10-minute solo during an intermission was one of the coolest parts of the whole show. 

Also worth mentioning, the stupid fake mustaches that Coco and Rosie have been shoving down our throats lately (gender-bending sensibility: thoroughly noted) were, happily, nowhere to be seen.

The Casady sisters have certainly retained the bond they nurtured back in Paris while recording their first album together, the appropriately titled La Maison de Mon Rêve (The House of My Dreams). Their most recent album, 2010’s Grey Oceans, has a similarly enchanting feel to it. Sierra’s classically-trained soprano bubbles up against Bianca’s grating warble, which kind of sounds like the voice of Danny Torrance’s finger in The Shining (“Red rum, red rum, red ruuummm…” You remember).

In Grey Oceans, the sisters toy with a widened range of influences, all spliced up and pasted together, with results ranging from the intricate beauty of medieval mosaics to the tawdry, gluey messes of overwrought decoupage.

The concert showcased this bold blending at its best. The lovely Judy Garland-esque chorus sandwiched between the mournful vocals, slow-jam percussion, and delicious brass accents of “Lemonade.” The lindy hop patty-cake cameo of “Hopscotch.” The gorgeously danceable “Fairy Paradise,” where smiling Sierra’s haunting coloratura sidles alongside a particularly delightful stretch of stoic Bianca-style lyricism in which “trance music makes the fairies dance.”

CocoRosie is what Tegan & Sara might become if they went to Devendra Banhart’s house, took a whole bunch of acid, and started believing in fairies. “Welcome to New Weird America,” the fairies would say. “You’ll like it here.”

Review & Photos by Hilary Cadigan

Crystal Castles at Masquerade (Atlanta, 9/8/10)

In May, indie-electro duo Alice Glass and Ethan Kath, aka Crystal Castles, released their second LP. It was named, in a typical show of studied apathy, Crystal Castles (II).

I loved it less that Crystal Castles (I), but not very much less. Ultimately, the album proved, like most successful sophomore efforts, unafraid to grow away from the greatness of its predecessor, with that natural ease toward tranquility that tends to come with age. Here, while the happy mix of distortions and syncopations remain, the jagged Atari sounds of their earlier material give way to a new kind of intricate yet hypnotic layering. See: "I Am Made of Chalk," which closes out the album by distilling all the noise into a strange and haunting lullaby of electronic cooing noises reminiscent of baby animals communing with mom animals on Planet Earth. Which is nice.

But, as suggested by the above photograph, at a Crystal Castles concert we do not have these moments of stillness—not once, from opener “Fainting Spells” to second encore “Yes No,” a B-side followed by Glass stalking off stage, as she always does. Don't worry, Alice hasn't grown up. Or if she has, she's not letting on. There was, in fact, a notable sameness between this and pre-2010 shows—they actually played more old stuff than new, but it didn't feel stale.

There's something boldly satisfying in the way CC forces us to work through their electric blankets of curdled noise to get inside the delicious beats underneath. The flailing limbs flailed on through “Courtship Dating” and the spastic shrieks of “Insectica” (featuring a rare moment in which Ethan stepped out from behind his turntable to rock out on the guitar), before accelerating into the double-time, double- spastic wilderness of “Doe Deer,” the ironically-titled sonic translation of a rabid monkey gang-bang.

And while I remain decidedly un-thrilled by the synthy, syrupy futurepop of inexplicable single “Celestica,” it did function better live—providing slight reprieve from the pounding without breaking anyone’s momentum. But "Celestica" pales in comparison to a song like “Baptism” (which I'd like to label the shoulda-been single of Crystal Castles [II]), when the itchy noise blanket is suddenly stripped away to reveal a deliciously clean and catchy techno beat that feels at once classic, rare, and totally rewarding. This, my friends, is something to shake your shit to.

The middle of the show was one big delicious soup of popular favorites from 2008, including “Crimewave,” “Untrust Us,” and of course, “Alice Practice, ” proving perhaps that ultimately, for all their ‘tude and grandeur, Crystal Castles is here to give us exactly what we want. Ethan stoically pumps out the jams in his hoodie while Alice, with kohl-rimmed cat eyes and an entirely black ensemble, shrieks and thrashes amidst an epileptic wash of strobe lights, repeatedly stage-diving into the sweaty sea of limbs below.

As the tired-looking security guards snatched up less-famous crowd-surfers washing up from the aforementioned sea, we on the floor bounced in unison until those achy old floorboards felt like they'd cave in. We watched transfixed as Alice danced atop the drum set and slugged down what I’m pretty sure was a bottle of whiskey onstage. And it’s not like we didn’t know she’d do these things, but we really do love the way she does them. Yeah, she can be a bit of a turd sometimes—from snubbing Texans to pirating blog art to punching Spanish security guards in the face—but for some reason the lady remains, in my eyes, utterly forgivable and totally bad-ass. 

Maybe it’s because she’s Canadian.

Review and Photos by Hilary Cadigan

The Black Keys - Brothers (5/18/10)

I drove around in my car listening to the Black Keys’ Brothers for weeks before I even started trying to nail down exactly what about it makes me feel so good. I played it for all my friends and even sat down with them for an unprecedented length of highly-focused discussion. Not one person could find anything negative to say about this album. As one friend declared, “listening to these songs makes me feel cooler than I actually am.” I probably can’t sum it up much better than that, but I’ll give it a try.

Unlike a lot of bands that start out rock and end up pop, the Black Keys remain loyal to their sound, sculpting it into a masterpiece just as alluring as it is timeless. Brothers is a progression rather than a departure from Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney’s rock-solid trajectory. Deeply textured by the vast sum of knowledge and ability they possess, the duo harvests divergent genres with the greatest of ease. Here we have quintessential rock and roll effortlessly adorned with the woeful slide of blues, the layered distortions of psychedelia, the raw intensity of punk and even the hard-hitting groove of funk.

From the very first listen I fell into this album like a featherbed, lulled into a contented state of sonic bliss usually reserved for the kinds of bands distinguished enough to require only single word identification (Stones, Dead, Zeppelin…you get the idea). Yet the more I listened, the more I realized how brightly each individual track shines. The quality of this album as a whole is a result of its excellent parts.

The brilliance begins with “Everlasting Light,” the coolest straight-up love song I have ever heard, layering Auerbach’s scratchy falsetto and just a touch of tambourine over the kind of immortal strut that makes it impossible not to bob your head. But then, just when you are feeling all warm and fuzzy inside, here comes “Next Girl” with the bitten declaration “my next girl/will be nothing like my ex-girl/I made mistakes back then/I’ll never do it again.” It seems, somewhere in the space between tracks, the everlasting light has gone out. For Auerbach, we come to learn, love is not everlasting; it is messy and unfair and destructive and cruel. He is “bound to fall,” as he laments in the album’s winning single “Tighten Up” amidst sexy guitar riffs and a deliciously breezy backbeat. And fall he does.

Here is the human experience, from the yearning of “Howlin’ For You” to the loss of “She’s Long Gone” to the haunting realization of “Too Afraid to Love You,” in which Auerbach sings “I wish loneliness would leave me/but I think its here to stay” as soulfully as Roy Orbison might. Brothers progresses in fits and bursts, sailing over this rocky terrain with sweltering passion and relentless lucidity, sucking you into its jagged dimensions as they shift and shrink and swell.

Sometimes the demon, sometimes the victim, sometimes the frightened child, Auerbach covers a full range of emotions in a way both decidedly masculine and insistently nonexclusive. He understands the flawed and maddening cycle of the human condition, the mistakes we recognize and learn from but can’t stop making no matter how determined or self-assured we may be. “I am the bluest of blues/Every day a different way to lose,” he howls in “The Go Getter,” a rueful lament bringing to mind not only the classic blues of Muddy Waters but also, more specifically, the desolate languor of Steppenwolf’s “The Pusher.”

“Never Give You Up,” functions as the penultimate love song for the undeserving lover, paired with a sweet-as-sugar guitar riff that sounds almost wedding-like, and provides a worthy transition into the album’s final track, a ballad that reaches no real resolution but finds a kind of deprecatory sense of peace in acceptance. In essence, what it’s like to be human. “These Days” is not another cover of the inveterate Jackson Browne/Nico song of the same title, but its tone resembles the original’s melancholy self-reflection and provides a final tip of the hat to all the influential predecessors that made Brothers possible.

Clearly, to say I am obsessed with this album would be an understatement, but I’ve waxed poetic enough for one review, so I’ll wrap things up with one final analogy. Ready? Okay. Like a classic car with a brand new engine, the Black Keys are nostalgic, functional, and utterly badass. And they have the power to move you.

By Hilary Cadigan

Yeasayer (Masquerade, Atlanta 4/6/10)

At Masquerade on Tuesday, Brooklyn-based indie-rockers Yeasayer propelled their already fantastic repertoire into something even greater, striking a fine balance between earnest sincerity and playful gratification. With both vocalists dressed in jumpsuits—Chris Keating in monochrome, Anand Wilder in multicolor—and a backdrop of large vividly colored cubes of ever-shifting light, the band’s fun-filled vibes had the sold-out crowd keyed up and eating out of the palms of their hands throughout their short but powerful set. Case in point: the guy next to me who kept chanting, “this is THE BEST show I’ve EVER SEEN.” There was more than one moment when the floor was literally shaking so hard I thought it was going to cave in, and I probably would have gone down cheering if it had. 

With a particularly funkified rendition of murky opener “The Children,” Yeasayer quickly set into motion an energetic sequence of feel-good sonic confection, including upbeat and unsinkable crowd favorite “Ambling Alp” (word of wisdom: check out the music video, it’s insane and filled with nudity).   The guys played the entirety of 2010’s synth-heavy, dance-friendly sophomore gem Odd Blood, smoothly interspersed with hits from their first album, the gorgeous, genre-bending masterpiece All Hour Cymbals, as well as winning Dark Was the Night contribution “Tightrope.”

Photo Credit: Guy Aroch

Yeasayer reached that utopian middle-ground that few live acts master, staying faithful to their quirky recordings while bringing a special kind of freshness to the show that makes concertgoers feel like their experience is unique.  There was nothing contrived in each band member’s motley form of infectious enthusiasm—Keating jolted and swayed and smiled and closed his eyes as he crooned into the mic; Luke Fasano seemed ready to get up and dance as he beat away at the drum set; Wilder and bassist Ira Wolf Tuton played their instruments like extensions of themselves, completely focused and completely at ease in the stratifications of sound they were producing.  The guys didn’t need to resort to any kind of gimmicks or over-the-top stage antics—they had nothing to prove but everything to show why they’re a band worth following.

The set concluded with a short and sweet encore twofer that featured buoyant, synth-drenched Odd Blood closer “Grizelda” followed by the haunting percolations of All Hour Cymbals’ more organic-sounding “Sunrise.”  These two tracks stood well together, both layering sinuous vocally-driven melodies over snappy polyrhythmic syncopations. 

Like that of many bands, Yeasayer’s compositions have evolved into a decidedly more synthesized realm—sometimes to the point where you miss their more tribally-minded beginnings—and yet the artful progression and sheer exuberance of the band’s live performance proved to me that they are not only aware but in control of their own transitions, and far from selling out.  The passion exhibited by every individual onstage coalesced nicely into an overall sense of mutual respect, both between band members and between band and audience.  Further proving their down-to-earth charm, the guys actually came down and hung out with fans at Masquerade’s modest little bar after the show.

Continually compared to more well-known indie-rocking peers MGMT, perhaps due in part to the timing of their respective 2007 debuts, Yeasayer outshined the latter by a long-shot, cutting the patronizing bullshit and inexplicable resentment that MGMT tends to bring to their own lackluster performances and replacing it with hard work, humility, and a whole lot of enthusiasm.  In other words, whereas MGMT makes you kind of hate them after seeing them live, an encounter with Yeasayer just piles on more reasons for unconditional love. 

Review by Hilary Cadigan

Ultra Music Festival 2010 Review

Ultra Music Festival: a two-day extravaganza made up almost entirely of Electronic Dance Music.  Take a moment and think about that, two days—20 hours total—of dancing. And I’m not talking about your grandma’s foxtrot here, people, nor am I referring to the typical head-bobbing concert fare of yore.  I speak of sweaty, fist-pumping, hip-shaking, foot-stomping, neck-dislocating, all-out absurdity.  To be sure, one does not and should not come to Ultra unless they are ready to get extreme.

Unlike more typical music festivals (and I use the word typical very loosely here), the Ultra lineup does not cater to the general music-loving public.  Rather, it is very specific in its aim, and that aim is EDM. Ultra-goers came in all kinds of kooky outfits, from rainbow tutus to Green-Man-inspired bodysuits to banana costumes.   Anything neon or glowing was the norm.  The clientele bore a refreshing lack of pretension—there were the usual groups of friendly festie folks, crunchy kids, electro nuts, clubbers, ravers, rollers, and even a ferociously fist-pumping but otherwise harmless faction of guidos, but everyone seemed strangely at peace with each other.  Such is the magic of truly successful festivals, which Ultra certainly embodied, despite the lack of onsite camping.  I used to think that only living together as a temporary community could establish the kind of widespread camaraderie I found at festivals like Bonnaroo and Echo Project, but Ultra proved me wrong.  Sure we all went home to our respective homes, hotels, motels, couches or cars at the end of the day, but while we were there, it was all about the music and the sense of social cohesion it brings. No matter who we might’ve been individually, together we were all the kind of people who’d actually pay to subject ourselves to a 2-day marathon of nonstop bass lines and booty shaking, and there’s definitely a sense of solidarity in that.  Here’s my attempt at sharing that solidarity with you: a play-by-play account of my Ultra 2010 Experience.

FRIDAY:

Due to the combined forces of rush hour gridlock, a long wait at the press tent, an inexplicably early set time, and the potentially ill-advised decision to run all the way back up ten flights of hotel stairs to retrieve my collection of glowsticks, I tragically and shamefully missed the show I was most looking forward to: Pretty Lights.  As such, my Ultra arrival was slightly marred by frustration, but as I crossed into Bicentennial’s electronic wonderland of sound, I was able to recover pretty quickly and start focusing on what was yet to come. Entering to the right of the main stage, my friend and I were immediately enveloped in Passion Pit’s giddy crowd-pleaser “Better Things,” but determined to check out the scene, we managed to tear ourselves away from Michael Angelakos’ dizzying falsetto to take a look around. 

Directly in front of the rather sparsely populated main stage, the Ibiza Arena was already packed to the brim with punctual festivalgoers pumping along to the pulsations of DJ Laidback Luke.  It was overwhelming at first.  We dithered from one stage to the other, trying to assemble our troops (already scattered throughout the festival due to the separate entrances for general admission, will call, and press) and unsure of where or how to start our musical voyage before finally plunging into the Ibiza tent as Black Eyed Peas rapper Will.i.am took the stage. 

Let me be clear: I despise the Black Eyed Peas.  Just looking at Fergie makes me want to punch a baby in the face. However, due to the welcome exclusion of Peas abominations like “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” Will.i.am’s set quickly developed into a high-energy albeit rather typical affair of samples and remixes, including a “Don’t Stop Believing”/“Sweet Child O’ Mine”/“Thriller” sequence that got the crowd riled up enough to start climbing the suspension poles.  Pole-climbing became a common occurrence throughout the festival, and as each daring idiot clambered up and beamed down at the crowd as though he were the first person in history to reach such clever heights, I was actually reminded of how much I appreciate the lasseiz-faire nature of these types of events.  At Ultra, you don’t get punished for doing something stupid like climbing up a pole. If you fall, it’s your own damn fault.  The same goes for drugs; yes, drug-culture thrives at Ultra, but it’s by no means unavoidable or even all that perceptible for those who aren’t interested in it. Ultimately the choice of whether or not to take part is completely up to the individual—at Ultra, and other events like it, you can do and be whatever and whoever and however you want to be amidst a community virtually void of judgment.  It carves out a unique time and place of jubilant anarchy, where the typical and often arbitrary rules and taboos of society go out the window, and the crazy kids get to come out and play without fear, rediscovering a rare sense of human continuity all but lost in the tightly controlled system we live in today.

Anyway, my friends and I ducked out of Will.i.am’s set early to grab some soggy/overpriced festival food and then headed over to London dance duo Groove Armada’s scheduled live performance on the Main Stage.  But wait, this isn’t… who is this?  It was LMFAO, inexplicably coming on early and punishing our ears with a worse-than-usual rendition of “I’m In Miami Bitch” (this phrase became a kind of all-too-obvious theme for the festival, sampled in several other sets and plastered in Day-Glo on what appears to be this year’s most popular tourist t-shirt). The performance carried on exactly as you might expect from the people responsible for the Jersey Shore theme song as well as every other miserably catchy vocal hook on the frat party circuit these days (personal favorite: “SHOTS! SHOTS! SHOTS! SHA-SHA-SHA-SHOTS!”).

When they finally emerged, electro-pop outfit Groove Armada provided a welcome reprieve from the off-key assclownery and a healthy dose of estrogen amidst all the male energy dominating Ultra’s stages.  While Tom Findlay and Andy Cato have been grooving since the mid-90s, their most recent album, this year’s Black Light, debuted fearless female vocalist Saintsaviour, who carried the performance, marching onto the stage in a suit of sparkly armor and rocking out like some kind of alien empress.

We left Armada heading vaguely in the direction of Infected Mushroom, until I suddenly heard some seriously sick beats coming from the direction of what would soon prove to be my favorite area of the festival—the comparatively small but ideally situated Biscayne Stage, stationed in the very corner of the park and framed by a cluster of skyscrapers and what appeared to be Miami’s mini monorail track.  Plunging into the smallish crowd gathered in front of the stage, we were immediately sucked into the spellbinding throb of a DJ none of us had ever heard of before—Fake Blood aka DJ Touché. Remixing samples from Little Boots’ “Stuck on Repeat” and The Kills’ “Cheap and Cheerful,” along with original tracks such as “I Think I Like It,” Fake Blood expertly blended fidgety synth stabs and pitched-up vocal bits built to the brink of torment before surrendering to pounding baselines that got the whole crowd jumping.  It turned out to be one of my favorite sets of the weekend.

Due to the utter overabundance of Ultra’s lineup (given the chance I’d see every single act individually, but that would take months), we’d typically stick around for a few songs of each set and then look at our tattered pamphlets and sprint over to the next stage to check out a new scene.  We spent the 9:00-10:00 slot flip-flopping between two masters of house music: David Guetta and Kaskade.  French DJ Guetta is a perennial favorite of the club scene with boatloads of mainstream appeal, probably due to collaborations with radio rappers Kid Cudi, Akon, and Will.i.am (the latter, not unexpectedly, stuck around for a guest appearance on Guetta’s stage).  Guetta put on a show that revolved just as much if not more around visual spectacle as it did around music: the first in a series of late-night Main Stage headliners featuring mind-blowing collaborations of colored lights, long-range lasers, multi-screen visuals, and massive flame-throwers that sent waves of heat all the way to the very back of the crowd.  Kaskade, on the other hand, while certainly not lacking in the lights and lasers department, spun out dreamy pulsations that could’ve retained their allure in a cement prison cell. 

After working up a sweat in Kaskade’s tent, my crew and I decided to settle down for a welcome period of relaxed listening on a grassy hill next to one of the majestic white Heineken domes in the center of the park.  From there we watched as the masses gathered around Main Stage for the highly anticipated Tiësto set that would close out the evening. While just as danceable as that of Guetta or Kaskade, Netherlands-born DJ Tiësto’s music is rooted in trance, and despite the progressive nature of his eclectic samplings and collaborations, his mesmerizing ability to put audiences into a mobile yet trance-like state is worth mentioning.  Tiësto’s set got better as it went on, and eventually had us off the grass and into the fray, dancing wildly to the symphonic percolations of “Adagio For Strings” and the chill-inducing splendor of tranced-out Tegan and Sara collaboration “Feel It In My Bones.”  The two guys gallivanting around the stage in stilts and full-body light-up suits with guns that emitted billowing clouds of fog just added to the surrealism of the whole affair. 

SATURDAY:

Day 2 began at noon, another sunny portrait of meteorological perfection.  We arrived at Bicentennial to find a sold-out venue—apparently the 100,000-person capacity had actually been reached.  Scalpers were selling Saturday-only tickets for up to $400 (originally a 2-day pass cost only $140). Planning ahead never felt so good.

Our first stop of the day was Diplo at the Bayfront Live Stage.  One half of Major Lazer, which had a separate set later in the day, Diplo aka Wesley Pentz is clearly a man who knows his craft.  Dressed in a Major Lazer t-shirt, the unflappable Pentz mixed and mashed a variety of different samples and syncopations, including the absurdly infectious hook from Lazer’s “Pon de Floor,” while infusing it all with his characteristically bouncy Floridian vibes. 

Post-Diplo, in the process of mobilizing for the Damian Marley/Nas set over at Main Stage, I was suddenly struck motionless as the opening vocals of a very special song came blaring over DJ Steve Aoki’s speakers: it was “Circle of Life,” as in that marvelous opening song from The Lion King where Rafiki holds baby Simba up in the sky at the tip of Pride Rock and all the lions cheer (I was thus inspired to look up the lyrics—apparently they are “Nants ingonyama bagithi baba, sithi uhhmm ingonyama” which means “There comes a lion, oh yes, it’s a lion.” You learn something new every day). The Circle continued with a charming remix stratified with jungle beats that had the crowd going wild, but my troops were on a Marley mission, so I had to bid farewell just as the Kid Millionaire was launching into a spontaneous head-banging dance and screaming in a sinister way over what must have been a pre-mixed track.  Ah well, a good time to move on.

At the Marley/Nas show, I was most delighted to find that the unrelenting flag-waver I remembered from Damian’s concert circa 2007 was still waving in full force.  If you’ve ever seen a Damian Marley performance, you know what I’m talking about, and if not, you should, because it is awesome. Marley’s affable mix of Jamaican charm and scintillating rhymes effortlessly arranged over reggae/hip-hop harmonies is the perfect soundtrack for a sunny day in Miami.  Nas’ hard-hitting urban eloquence adds another pleasing layer to the Marley marvel—the comrades’ musical and cultural solidarity shined brightly throughout their performance, inciting further anticipation for their long-awaited collaborative album Distant Relatives, due for release later this month.

The next stop of our meandering musical journey was the tiny Day-Glo Arena, which advertised the world’s largest paint party.  Clearly, I needed to get involved.  We spent the next half hour dancing madly to the house beats of various smaller-name DJs as armed performers in plasticine suits sprayed us with neon paint.  It doesn’t get much better than that.

Once we were thoroughly doused in Day-Glo, we headed back over to the main stage to check out neo-electro dance DJ Benny Benassi, where it was easy to see why Benassi is such a sensation.  The epileptic revelry of throbbing beats and screeching synthesizers—particularly in hit single “Satisfaction,” with its “Fitter Happier”-inspired computer voiceovers—really epitomized Ultra’s overall atmosphere.

I spent the next few hours over at my beloved Biscayne stage, where a series of back-to-back dubstep sets was already in full-force. A London-based offshoot of U.K. garage that employs elements of drum'n'bass, techno, and dub, dubstep has a kind of dark but thrilling intensity that really cuts to the heart of EDM greatness.  The line-up progressed from Benga to Caspa to Glitch Mob to Skream! to Rusko, and while I tended to drift in and out of these performances, there was something special about the cohesion of the crowds that gathered for these sets.  From the hill next to the stage, I had a perfect view of all the tightly packed bodies jumping in unison with their hands in the air as the Miami sun began to set, flooding the sky with rose gold. 

Next on the Main Stage was progressive trance DJ Armin Van Buuren, another Netherlands native with worldwide acclaim whose sprawling compositions and breathtaking lightshow seamlessly carried the frenzied masses from day to night.  Van Buuren and Tiësto share a number of similarities, and collaborated in the past with the hit “Eternity.”

Soon it was back to Biscayne for more back-to-back goodness.  First up, Bassnectar, self-described as “A free-form project that merges music, art, new media, social involvement, and community values; dedicated to a constantly evolving ethos of collaborative creation, self reinvention, and boundary-pushing experimentation."  That statement may contain some bullshit, but with his trademark waist-length dreads and exuberant head bobbing, Bassnectar is a force to be reckoned with and a personal favorite of mine.  His quirky mix of tripped-out ambience and hard-rocking techno beats stands out even in this sea of other talented electronic music-makers.

Ultra’s quick turnaround between artists was both consistent and admirable. Accordingly, as soon as Bassnectar shuffled off the stage, a bunch of new people jumped on.  This motley crew of costumed dancers came to start the all-out dance party featured on Major Lazer’s set.  This newly established digital reggae/dancehall project has received much critical acclaim and indie cred since the Summer 2009 release of Guns Don’t Kill People… Lazers Do.  The innovation of DJs Diplo and Switch, Major Lazer features Gorillaz-esque cartoon characters complete with an absurd back-story (something involving limbs lost in the secret Zombie War of 1984), and mixes a range of Jamaican musical elements with tight beats, catchy refrains, and a slew of guest vocalists, from Santigold to Mr. Lexxx.  Their set was a paradigm of pure fun, with vocalist Skerrit Bwoy and a troop of female dancers infusing an extra layer of personality. Oh, and the snappy hook featured in “Pon de Floor” is still stuck in my head.

Finally, yet all too soon, we entered Ultra’s final hour: Deadmau5, Paul Oakenfold, Ghostland Observatory, and Carl Cox were all performing at the same time on different stages.  Tough decisions had to be made.  I started out with Deadmau5 on Main Stage, where the entire area was so packed that oxygen seemed like a luxury.  So, I took the lack of oxygen and the Mau5’s underwhelming intro as an excuse to round out my trifecta of Ghostland Observatory experiences and headed over to the far more breathable Bayfront Live Stage at the other end of the park.

Ghostland did not disappoint.  While their set seemed suspiciously brief (no sign of “Silver City,” a personal favorite), roguish frontman Aaron Behrens lived up to his Freddy Mercury/Prince associations as he shrieked and gyrated amidst the smoky technicolor of a laser light show spectacular enough to rival those featured on much larger and infinitely more populated stages.  The layered perfection of thumping bass, crunchy guitar riffs, and silky synth hooks featured in “Midnight Voyage” extended into a full-on electro-jam session, held down by producer/drummer/synther Thomas Turner in his requisite floor-length cape ensemble.  Ghostland’s vivacious performance was a perfect amalgamation of all the various subgenres that Ultra promotes, and a preview of the places EDM can and will go as it continues to develop.  In other words, a perfect way to end an incredible weekend.

Review & Photos by Hilary Cadigan

YACHT (The Drunken Unicorn, Atlanta 3/16/10)

The brainchild of musician and multimedia performance artist Jona Bechtolt, YACHT prevails more as an experience than a band.  In fact, as their website’s official mission statement declares, YACHT is “a Band, a Belief System and a Business.”  In concert, it quickly becomes clear that performance, for YACHT, derives from art, but not in the annoying, pretentious, or esoteric sense. Think Banksy, light on the politics. While there remains something obviously tongue-in-cheek about the whole endeavor, Bechtolt clearly feels very passionate about what he has created, and wants nothing more than to share it. 

Backed by two-man opening act Bobby Birdman on bass and drums, YACHT’s performance struck gold with a combination of serious eccentricities, quirky exuberance, and faithful interpretation of 2009’s critically acclaimed See Mystery Lights, the first album to feature Claire Evans as an official band member.

As the other half of Team YACHT, Evans truly nails her role as Bechtolt’s female counterpart. Imagine if Karen O and Siouxsie Sioux somehow conceived a child that came out looking like Annie Lennox from Eurythmics.  With a blonde bob, ruby red lips, and skintight black dress, the heron-like Evans is a gothified diva who bounced around the stage like a curious puppy, tapping on everyone else’s instruments, tipping over microphone stands and tangling herself up in wires. 

Compared to their studio work, nearly everything YACHT played sounded better live, from the jaunty, rattling anthem “The Afterlife” to the T-Pain-spoofing  auto-tune of “I’m In Love with a Ripper.”  Evans breathed unprecedented life into “It’s Boring/You Can Live Anywhere You Want,” a double-track that felt a little, well, boring in its 9-minute studio cut.  In addition, Bechtolt led a rollicking, electrified cover of L.A. band X’s garage-punk oldie “Nausea.”

Then there was near-flawless feel-good masterpiece “Psychic City,” the buoyant and bubbling little gem that proffers the delightful idea of a “voodoo city/where every little thing has its own secret life.” I must mention that this is one of my personal favorite songs—which is probably the only reason I noticed that Evans messed up the lyrics of the first verse—but other than that I was very pleased with the performance. They got all the “HUH!”s just right.

Never even needing to look at each other, the chemistry between Bechtolt and Evans thrives on the power of minimalism.  The two are clearly on the same wavelength, shining in small moments of almost familial synchronicity, such as their pokerfaced Macarena entrance, performed to the twittering pulsations of “Ring the Bell,” which provocatively chants “Will we go to heaven/Or will we go to hell/It’s my understanding/That neither are real” before dissolving into Three 6 Mafia-esque stutter effects. With Bechtolt in a white suit and white sneakers and Evans in head-to-toe black, a kind of yin/yang duality comes into play: together, they form a perfectly balanced whole and prove that on YACHT’s stage, there is room for two divas.

Unafraid to ham it up or break into spastic little dances, Bechtolt kept the energy high throughout the performance, basking in various forms of audience interaction.  There was a Q&A session, introduced with the promise, “We’ll answer anything!” (Q: “Why are you awesome?” A: “Why am I a mirror reflecting your awesomeness?”), and even a “guided meditation” in which he came down into the crowd on bended knee; “the world may end in my lifetime but my energy will continue,” Bechtolt intoned, “I will love. I will not attack.”

As the band’s website proclaims, “All people are welcome to become members of YACHT.  Accordingly YACHT is and always will be what YACHT is when YACHT is standing before you.”  So what is YACHT when YACHT is standing before you?  To put it simply: a damn good time.

Review by Hilary Cadigan 

Vetiver & The Clientele (The Earl, Atlanta 2/25/10)

In a gray fedora, button-down shirt, and jeans, Vetiver frontman Andy Cabic stands as a portrait of classic cool, but he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would brag about it. Vetiver, a band often characterized by their association with Devendra Banhart and the rather contentious “freak folk” label, surpasses pigeonholing with a unique style that is simpler, yet more nuanced than any one particular genre. In concert, however, the band outdid even their own skillful recordings, extending delicate melodic structures into rollicking jam sessions without batting an eye. Much to the delight of an affably bearded crowd, Vetiver at times came across as a scaled-down reincarnation of the Grateful Dead, except with less hair and more synthesizers.

To remove any doubt (and effectively supersede my comparison), the band ended their performance with a nimbly-rendered cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Don’t Ease Me In.” But don’t write them off as just another bunch of Deadheads. Even their most Garcia-tinged tracks, such as the countrified B-side “Wishing Well,” were inculcated with small yet defining details—an electric organ opener, a mournful harmonica solo, the gentle caress of synthesized piano—setting them apart from their predecessors. Tracks like the infectious “Another Reason to Go,” a classic drifter’s anthem, featured an unexpected combination of rocksteady beats and blistering synth-horns that illustrated the band’s dexterity.

Vetiver provided their successors, The Clientele, with a very tough act to follow. Both bands began with correspondingly mellow vibes, but Vetiver’s performance set up expectations of escalation, starting off slow and spiraling into full-on rock-out, while The Clientele proved unable to fulfill these expectations.

The Clientele’s new album Bonfires on the Heath constructs a painstakingly maintained atmosphere of slow-motion reverie. Exemplified with the cooing undulations and smoothly enhanced xylophone of their title track and the tender vocal repetitions of the swooning, wedding-ready serenade “Never Anyone But You;” the power of the album lies in its ability to sustain this atmosphere, cradling listeners within it like a room full of pillows.

Somehow, this power did not translate into the live show. Despite the lovably British temperament of frontman Alasdair MacLean and the Alice in Wonderland languor of gorgeous keyboardist/violinist/percussionist Mel Draisey, The Clientele’s portion of the concert fell curiously flat, sounding like what Bob Dylan might resort to if influenced by Coldplay and consigned to adult contemporary. Plagued by technical difficulties, including a squealing mic that kept disrupting what should have been a dream-like flow, the band seemed somewhat deflated from the get-go. This deflation escalated into a sense of mutual boredom for the band and the audience, transforming hypnotic ambience into the monotonous chore of trying to stay on one’s feet.

I probably would have enjoyed this music a whole lot more if I was sitting down, maybe in a grassy field on a sunny afternoon, maybe in a room full of pillows, maybe tripping on acid, but the Earl just didn’t feel like the right venue to fully appreciate what the band has to offer. Moreover, perhaps because of the contradictory crowd-pleasers they had to follow, it seemed like The Clientele had grown too disenchanted with their own work, or at least this particular presentation of it, to garner the confidence they needed to pull it off, setting themselves up for what can only be described as a self-fulfilling prophecy of mediocrity.

Review & Photos by Hilary Cadigan

Tegan & Sara (Variety Playhouse, Atlanta 2/23/10)

When Tegan and Sara first stepped out onto Variety Playhouse’s vividly lit stage Tuesday evening, I was reminded of that iconic Diane Arbus shot of those creepy little twins standing side by side. With matching oversized gray button-downs, skinny black jeans, and brown pixie-mullets, the duo initially seemed somewhat mechanical, if not a little gimmicky. In an, “ah, the lesbian twins from Canada have arrived” kind of way. Nevertheless, the crowd—picture Lillith Fair gone hipster, with a sprinkling of enlightened teenyboppers and middle-aged Grey’s Anatomy fans—went wild. I, on the other hand, sandwiched between a particularly boisterous Lillith contingent and what appeared to be some kind of specially designated area for couples to make out, was alone, sleep-deprived, and slightly grumpy.


So there I stood, a lone sourpuss in a sea of amped-up superfans, wishing the individual behind me would aim her catcalling slightly away from my eardrum, when Tegan and Sarah strapped on their guitars and suddenly launched into an eclectic series of vibrant tracks from their new album Sainthood. Between the sparkly synth-driven electro-pop of “Alligator,” the pre-Blitz Yeah Yeah Yeahs vigor of “Northshore” and the delightfully volatile lyricism of “Sentimental Tune” (“Hard-hearted, don't worry, I'm ready for a fight/Unnerved, the nerve, you're nervous/Nervous that I'm right”), the new tracks were well-received and got the show off to a lively start. The band then moved into a stretch of older favorites, such as “Walking with a Ghost,” “I Bet It Stung,” and their biggest hit, “Where Does the Good Go,” inciting a surprisingly melodic audience sing-a-long that demonstrated the ardor of Tegan and Sara’s loyal fan base without alienating any of their more cursory supporters.

Tegan and Sara keep their songs short and sweet—nothing on Sainthood lasts more than 3½ minutes—allowing them to power through quite a few tracks in their 2-odd hours of stage time. Then again, a good chunk of that time transpired in their supposedly notorious banter. While the initial between-track comedy routines were of the lame “So this is Hotlanta? Feels more like COLD-lanta” variety, they eventually established with the audience a sense of mutual appreciation and affection deep enough to make the spacious venue feel intimate. The sisters took turns sharing youthful anecdotes and cultural musings, from stories about adolescent relationships (“a slippery slope to gaydom”) to anti-middle school tirades (“my best friend became a middle school teacher, and I asked her, ‘are you out of your fucking mind?’”) to ruminations on the apparent extinction of the slow dance (“now all the kids just want to, like… grind up on it”).


Like their repartee, Tegan and Sara’s sound remained highly accessible and all about blending, whether through their incongruent mix of crunchy guitar riffs and bubbly synth hooks or the uniquely familial harmonies of their almost-but-not-quite-identical intonations. Likewise, their lyrics—which they write independently, each singing lead on her own songs—managed to sound at once beseeching and authoritative, heartbroken yet sensible, passionate yet guarded. They were constantly whipping out new instruments: a series of different guitars, keyboards, tambourines, even a maraca.

I’ll admit it, I was impressed; especially during their stripped-down encore set, when the duo managed to pull off a gorgeously layered, sans-Tiësto acoustic version of their deviant trance hit, “Feel It In My Bones.” In fact, Tegan and Sara kept me engaged enough to withstand not one, not two, but five near-tramplings via 300-lb security guard inexplicably hurling himself down the aisle, and that, my friends, is saying something.



Review & Photos by Hilary Cadigan

BONNAROO 2010 line-up revealed today!!

...with one new artist ceremoniously added every 6 minutes... Really Bonnaroo? This was the best way to do it?
http://www.myspace.com/bonnaroo

*Update: Chromeo playing with Daryl Hall from Hall & Oates? This could be epic...
Check it out:
http://www.livefromdarylshouse.com/index.php?page=ep10

**Update: initial line-up posted:
Dave Matthews Band Kings of Leon Stevie Wonder Jay-Z Tenacious D Weezer The Flaming Lips with Stardeath and White Dwarfs perform “Dark Side of the Moon” The Dead Weather Damian Marley and Nas Phoenix Norah Jones Michael Franti and Spearhead John Fogerty Regina Spektor Jimmy Cliff LCD Soundsystem The Avett Brothers Thievery Corporation Rise Against Tori Amos The National Zac Brown Band Les Claypool John Prine The Black Keys Steve Martin & the Steep Canyon Rangers Jeff Beck Dropkick Murphys She & Him Against Me! The Disco Biscuits Daryl Hall & Chromeo Jamey Johnson Clutch Bassnectar Kid Cudi Baaba Maal Kris Kristofferson Medeski Martin & Wood The xx GWAR Dan Deacon Ensemble Tinariwen Wale Deadmau5 The Melvins The Gaslight Anthem Miike Snow The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band Dr. Dog They Might Be Giants Punch Brothers Isis Blitzen Trapper Blues Traveler Miranda Lambert Calexico OK Go Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue Martin Sexton Lotus Baroness Dave Rawlings Machine Mayer Hawthorne and the County Japandroids Jay Electronica Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros Ingrid Michaelson The Dodos Manchester Orchestra The Temper Trap Cross Canadian Ragweed Big Sam's Funky Nation Carolina Chocolate Drops NEEDTOBREATHE Tokyo Police Club The Entrance Band Local Natives Brandi Carlile Mumford & Sons Rebelution Diane Birch Monte Montgomery Julia Nunes The Postelles Lucero Here We Go Magic Hot Rize Neon Indian B.O.B More Artists to Be Announced!

This is solid so far (assuming more will be added in the upcoming weeks... slash more better be added in the upcoming weeks...) but wtf is Dave Matthews Band doing at the top??? And where is mmj??? Spoon?? Hot Chip?? Yeasayer?? They're all touring the southeast this spring and i was expecting that they'd all turn out for the Roo... Keeping my fingers crossed for at LEAST one or two of them...

Hot Chip - One Life Stand (2/9/10)

Hot Chip has always been a band with a deep-seated penchant for contrast. The most obvious example can be found in their 2005 album Coming On Strong, where the disparity between lyrics like “Give up all you suckers/We the tightest motherfuckers/And you never seen us talking shit before now” and the skinny white British guy in horn-rimmed glasses who sings them makes for a pretty amusing study in sarcasm. Newest album One Life Stand offers more proof of Hot Chip’s ability to find triumph in disparity, but it does so in a very different way.

Ultimately, One Life Stand prevails as a huge swirling musical embrace about love in all its various forms. With a notable shift toward a soulful house-influenced sound, the album blossoms with a slew of highly romantic dance-ballads that nimbly fuse the acoustic with the electronic. From the piano-driven live drums and techno-manipulations of “Hand Me Down Your Love,” to the majestic string arrangements and Kanye-worthy auto-tune of “I Feel Better,” nearly every song is a paradigm of brilliantly rendered contrast. Reigning supreme is lead singer Alexis Taylor’s chimerical falsetto, which soars lithely over everything, occasionally complemented by the cavernous undertones of co-vocalist Joe Goddard. These vocal collaborations are most notable in the songs that explore alternative figurations of love, such as the fraternal harmonizing of “Brothers” and the spindly little maternally-minded gem “Alley Cats”—a song about “when you're feeling something that you really love is coming to an end, and saying that's not really possible.”

The album hits its stride with the pulsating title track. "One Life Stand" opens with a ridiculously catchy beat and some ominous-sounding electronic noise. Lyrically, it evolves from rather trivializing opening verses (“Tell me what you're playing”) into an intensely heartfelt and downright cuddly chorus (“I only wanna be your one life stand/ Tell me do you stand by your whole man?”) that showcases the best of Taylor’s vocal abilities and encapsulates the album’s overarching theme. As Taylor explained in a November 2009 interview with Pitchfork, “I'm talking about turning a one night stand into someone's whole life…and I think that's quite a nice thing to say.” And he’s right; it is quite nice, and a refreshing sentiment in today’s cynical world. Like that now-infamous YouTube video of the wedding where everybody dances up the aisle in sunglasses, “One Life Stand” manages to sound simultaneously classic and fresh while still giving you that old warm fuzzy feeling.


The most dubious turn comes with “Slush,” in which This Heat drummer Charles Hayward plays and sings harmony. Taylor describes Hayward’s role as “one of the most special things about the album… because he's someone that I really look up to and love,” but the song drags and vacillates in its redundant lack of beats, becoming the kind of track that most will end up skipping after a listen or two. However, its ultimate value is revealed around the 4:30 mark with a belated transition into the profound repetition of “Don’t I know there is a God?” which serves to round out the album’s trifecta of love—romantic, familial, and divine.

In light of past endeavors, the unexpected seriousness of this album paired with the often-saccharine lyrics (“I only want one want night/ Together in our arms/ This is the longest night/ We’re meeting arms to arms”) may tempt some to write it off as simply Hot Chip’s latest bout of sarcasm. And yet, amidst such earnest delivery and luminous cohesion, doing so would feel just plain wrong. Rather, One Life Stand reveals how the band has mellowed out without selling out, matured without losing what makes them unique. There’s really something for everybody here, but the overall message seems to be that love is all around, even here, even now, and Hot Chip’s ability to express this sentiment without sounding completely lame stands as a testament to both their inherent coolness and their expectation-defying talent.

Grade: A-

Review by Hilary Cadigan