Barring a last-minute Flaming Lips concert announcement, Of Montreal probably just put on the most visually overstimulating, over the top, batshit crazy fun concert to have hit D.C. this year. Nothing was too sacred for Of Montreal, as dancing Buddhas wore gold lamé, Greek statues shook their genitalia and John McCain's mug was pictured uttering the famous line "Here's Johnny!" from The Shining in large cartoonish letters. It's no wonder that the escapism of the......

Written and photographed by Martin Locraft When listening to Matt Nathanson's studio albums, one might assume that his live show is typical singer-songwriter - guy with a guitar, a backup musician or two, relatively mellow – but last night's crowd at the sold-out Sixth and I Historic Synagogue quickly learned that this certainly isn't the case. The San Francisco native resident, known for maintaining a Storytellers-esque vibe on stage, revealed throughout the evening that he's......

This was the wrong show to have forgotten to bring earplugs. Scotland's newest highly hyped export, Glasvegas, are not afraid to be very, very loud. They've got fuzzy shoegaze guitar riffs that would make their countrymen in The Jesus and Mary Chain proud, and the audience-filling charm that would make bands like the amazing but overlooked Twilight Sad jealous. Even those of us with throbbing eardrums found the band magnetic enough to overlook the pain......

When a restless audience opens a sold out show with chants of, "Oh Ee Oh, Chromeo," you know you're probably in for a treat. And at their first ever show in D.C., Chromeo killed it. Chromeo is Patrick Gemayel and David Macklovitch, boyhood friends who describe themselves as, "the only successful Arab/Jewish collaboration since the beginning of time." In addition to their ethnic differences, the pair is also visually... distinct. Macklovitch, the lead singer,......

When we last saw Jacksonville's Black Kids, they were priming the Black Cat mainstage crowd for Aussie electro-pop sensation Cut Copy. This time, they sold out the Black Cat in their own right, despite their former tourmates playing a larger venue just down the street. If there were any questions as to whether the Black Cat crowd merely contained dance-hungry kids who couldn't get into the 9:30 Club show, they were warranted as even Black......

"This is the song that’s made us whatever we are today," said Oxford Collapse singer/guitarist Michael Pace upon introducing "Please Visit Our National Parks." He then added, "I have no idea what that is." This sense of confusion over the Brooklyn trio's place in the indie rock paradigm is understandable. On the one hand, the band has a contract with "underground" behemoth Subpop Records and has played to sizable crowds, such as during the 2007......

It was an Australian electronic spectacular on Friday at the 9:30 Club, with Melbourne's Cut Copy and Sydney's The Presets taking the stage, along with Heartbreak from London. The crowd was sold out and in a dancing mood, and the bands served them well. The Presets, a duo, had probably the best sound set-up we've ever experienced, with crisp vocals, loud instruments and samples, and booming bass that could make your hair shake even when......

The Broken West Back in 2007, L.A.'s The Broken West seemed to make a point of stopping through D.C. on a weekly basis. In the space of a few months, they opened for The Walkmen, The Long Winters, and shared a bill with The Whigs. Each time I caught them they were pretty good -- never great -- but didn't quite live up to the tried-and-true California power pop of their proper debut, I......

Fresh from a stay in the Catskills playing this year’s New York installment of All Tomorrow’s Parties, Built To Spill came to town last night with just one album in its repertoire for the evening. The trend of playing classic albums in their entirety continues to grow, particularly with ATP’s Don’t Look Back series initiating so many such shows for their festivals. And if you’re going to spend time rehearsing the whole record, might as......

Written by DCist contributor Spencer Ackerman Courtney Taylor-Taylor promised he wouldn't talk about politics. As it turned out, he kept about 75 percent of his word. "Do we want an intellectual," asked the Dandy Warhols frontman last night, "or do we want someone who appeals to dumb?" The band let the question hang before opening its 9:30 Club set with "Mohammed," a drony number from its breakthrough album, 2000's Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia. Longtime......

Mos Def, photo by Terrence Jennings, Jill Newman Productions The projection screen at the back of the stage flickered to life with a giant from the District's past, when it truly was Chocolate City. The clip featured Petey Green, the legendary talk show host, who gave the audience his own inimitable thoughts on the proper way to eat a watermelon. Thus began Amino Alkaline--The Watermelon Syndicate, Mos Def's new concert production that teams the......

Guess all that time spent on the road did David Berman some good, eh? Despite his reputation as a hermetic, troubled intellectual, Berman was in rare form when he performed with his Silver Jews at the Black Cat on Wednesday night. Sure, Berman might have had the stage presence of an English professor--what did you expect?--but he genuinely seemed to be enjoying himself up there as he paced up and down the stage, dryly singing......

"Revolution girl style now!" Most of the girls who took the stage at the 9:30 Club early in the day on Saturday weren't yet born 17 years ago when that rallying cry kicked off the International Pop Underground Festival and gave a name to Bikini Kill's first record. But if the exuberance onstage and in the crowd was any indication, the spirit of that revolution is still going strong. Saturday's showcase was the culminating event......

Rock 'n' roll has always been lousy with dudes who dance like women, but Craig Finn — the high-school-math-teacher-lookin' frontman of The Hold Steady, as if you didn’t know by now — is possibly the only guy in the game who dances like a five-year-old girl: Elbows in. Forearms out. Knees high. Eyes squinted shut. Beatific grin. Jazz hands all over the place. Most of us are only capable of executing moves like that......

U-who? We're not too high-minded to praise Coldplay's performance at Verizon Center last night as "Ballsy." One strives to avoid the wholly predictable, but sometimes you just can't stave off the obvious lede that fate fairly dangles above your head: Coldplay grow some balls. Coldplay deliver ballsy performance. Coldplay counter critics with raw ballin.’ Meaty, Beaty, Big and Pricey: Coldplay's Balls of Technicolour Fire. Viva la Balls, or Death and All His Balls. (Okay,......

If Bon Iver's album, For Emma, Forever Ago, is the product of one man's introspective exile from human contact and civilization, the band's live music is something completely different. The songs now take on the hopeful timbre of a man who has digested and embraced the series of sad circumstances that sent him fleeing to a cabin in the cold Wisconsin wilderness. After ending two serious relationships, one personal and the other with his former......

If there's a singular take-away point from Sunday's Rock the Bells show, it's that hip-hop has built up enough cache over the years to warrant a day-long concert attended by folks ranging from their teens to those with gray hairs in their goatees, at near capacity levels. That's impressive. Even more impressive might've been the main stage's power lineup: Rakim, De La Soul, Mos Def, The Pharcyde, Nas, Method Man & Redman, Raekwon & Ghostface,......

Some bands are just better than others at reducing the barrier between band and audience. Sometimes it’s by engaging specific audience members in conversation, like Ted Leo, or actually playing in the middle of the floor, like Dan Deacon and a couple of his other F Yeah compatriots. The Mae Shi, who actually played alongside Dan Deacon for Whartscape Festival this past weekend, share that same philosophy of engaging the audience by moving amongst them.......

A blaring fire alarm across the street, loss of power, and brief visit from MPD all preceded Kissey Asplund's performance at the newly opened Columbia Heights art/community space, BloomBars, Saturday night. Despite these potential setbacks, in addition to high humidity, Asplund held her own during her short set, where she was aided by DJ Apex and visual artist Shantell Martin. Having recently released her debut album, Plethora, Asplund has garnered the attention of many critics......

There's something endearing about gratitude, and Seattle's Fleet Foxes were nothing if not grateful on Monday night. They were grateful to NPR for broadcasting their show, they were grateful to the perennially overlooked Black Cat sound technicians and they were especially grateful that singer Robin Pecknold's health had taken an upward turn. Apparently the singer had been truly sick for the previous five shows or so, saying that ever since L.A. the shows had been......

One thing to be said for constant touring is that it's a very effective way to learn exactly what one's fanbase wants. When Delta Spirit started touring over a year ago in support of the Cold War Kids, they had an admirably high energy level and some fun percussion, but no songs that seemed particularly memorable. A year later, their gimmicks complement the songs rather than outshine them, and although Delta Spirit still falls into......

If you made it out to Mission of Burma's show at the Black Cat on Saturday night, it's likely you're still hearing those songs running through your head. If that's the case, it's probably because you can hear little else. The band may now be firmly entrenched in middle age, but don't tell them that there's a mellowing process that's supposed to go along with reaching your 50s. Saturday's show was quite possibly the loudest......

What is it about Bergen, Norway? The city of 250,000 is the home to numerous bands, including Kings of Convenience, Annie, Röyksopp, Sondre Lerche, and Datarock. The latter, a group of red jumpsuited goofballs, played Saturday at the Rock and Roll Hotel and did not disappoint. Half electronic, half guitar, the duo (which expands to a quartet on tour) lifts from ecclectic places, like the musical Grease ("Computer Camp Love"), Factory Records' funkier stuff ("Fa......

In the song "Elderly Women Behind The Counter In A Small Town", Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder sings, "I changed by not changing at all," a statement that also holds true for his band. Pearl Jam has made a career out of non-conformity, innovation and being one of the best live bands on the planet, and last night's show at the Verizon Center offered further proof that the band's endless summer shows no signs of slowing......

When a band is finishing up their tour, one of two things tend to happen. The band will either completely cash in the performance due to exhaustion or really give the audience a set to remember. Honestly, Brooklyn's White Rabbits probably could've phoned in the performance and due to the strength of the material on last year's breakout album Fort Nightly and nobody would've been able to tell. However, when they started the set with......

During "I Made a Resolution", Sea Wolf songwriter Alex Church promises that he's never going to sing a sad song again. But considering that Sea Wolf's set at the Rock and Roll Hotel on Sunday had been half downtrodden weary balladry and half more uptempo yet equally gloomy chamber-pop, this resolution will likely go the way of the standard "I'm going to quit smoking," "I'm going to lose weight" and "I'm going to stop drinking."......

The first time I saw Nick Thorburn perform he was wearing a pink tuxedo, and with good reason: although his group, the Unicorns, sang songs about things like death, ghosts and nautical catastrophe, they did so with the youthful exuberance of mischievous teenagers headed to prom. Thorburn and his bandmates took to the stage, then the rafters, then the outstretched hands of an audience full of newly-minted fans. The Unicorns blew up, burned out and......

Some joyful men the likes of The Hold Steady's Craig Finn and Jens Lekman have graced D.C.’s stages over the past year, but all pale in comparison to the utter excitement exuded by Pela’s Bill McCarthy. Since their performance at DAM! Fest in October, Pela has had a rough couple of months. In addition to McCarthy’s 45 stitches in his hand, there was an allusion to a band member who went into the wilderness......

On the list of the most widely circulated myths about Washington, sandwiched in between "they all work for the government" and "it's such a transient city" is this little mistruth: "no one in D.C. knows how to have a good time". Now, we could (and probably will) spend all week arguing this point in the comments, but at the end of the day, that surely isn't going to convince anyone outside of D.C. that we......

Seeing a band scheduled for two consecutive nights can be nirvana for die hard fans, but for those without that sort of disposable income, it can also pose the question of which night will yield the better show. Granted, many concert goers are also at the mercy of their daily schedules, but trying to figure out whether a band is a better band the first night or the second night, even without factors like a......