Results tagged “nekocase”

DCist unfortunately didn't have a critic there, but by all accounts Secretary of Education Arne Duncan made an onstage appearance at last night's Neko Case concert at the 9:30 Club.

... Arne made a special appeal to the college-aged crowd to consider careers in teaching. "We have a chance to change the country," he said. "We want to make sure every child has a great, great teacher. So I want to encourage you….Those of you who love music, love art, love math….We need that next generation of teachers coming in."

So, OK. Yes, encouraging young people to go into teaching is a fine message. But am I the only one who isn't particularly pleased about the idea of actual administration officials, in this case an honest to god cabinet member, interrupting our concert going experiences? It was one thing when we had band after band getting up on their soapboxes about the evils of the Bush Administration during the 2008 presidential campaign. But these are now the people in charge. It just seems, I dunno, not very rock 'n' roll. I certainly wouldn't want to see Tim Geithner on stage at the Black Cat, trying to convince me that rescuing banks is the only way to save the U.S. economy.

Yesterday, when putting together our daily "About Tonight" feature, I scanned several recent concert reviews, looking for signs about whether or not enigmatic singer Neko Case would be performing with the New Pornographers at the 9:30 Club. It was a question anyone with tickets to last night's show (or tonight's), including myself, was asking, because Case, often busy with her solo career, has been known to skip out on New Pornographers tours before. Dan Bejar, off touring with his own band, Destroyer, was already confirmed not to be on this tour, but Case was supposed to be making the journey this time around.

Rock 'n' Roll has been around long enough for there to be a number of iron-clad certainties associated with it. Sgt. Pepper will likely top every critic's list from here until the end of time. The good will die young. Keith Richards, on the other hand, will never die, period. And, as was proved once again last night at the 9:30 Club, during the period of time between Neko Case's entrance onto a stage and the sound of the first chord, someone in the audience will yell, "I love you, Neko!!!!" Because everybody loves Neko, and no one is shy about letting the world know. Last night, Case proved once again why such feelings are never misplaced.

>> Sigh. It's the last night of Fort Reno, which means summer is officially ending soon. Hopefully it'll dry out in time to make this a great final concert -- scheduled to play are drag-rocker Edie Sedgwick, Sentai, and the adorable Eyeball Skeleton, a Maryland band featuring brothers age 8 and 10 (plus their dad) who are known to sing the lyric "eyeball skeleton" over and over again in what sound almost like fake...

Torontoist immediately wins our heart by using the word "Jackass" in a headline. In fact, we love their use of it so much that we're going to use it as much as possible throughout this post. For example, it looks like there are Toronto-area jackasses besides those who misuse the sidewalk: look at the crap on sale on Toronto's craigslist. But it looks like Toronto doesn't contain the kind of jackasses who pee in public...

FRIDAY: >> Here at DCist we like to pimp scrappy locals and industrious indies who are charging hard against the establishment. When it comes to stand-up comedy however, sometimes we have to make an exception. This isn't to say you shouldn't support up-and-coming local comedic talent. You should. But we'd be the first to admit that there's something particularly distasteful about amateur stand-up done badly -- when a comic punts on stage, you just have...

The weekly Ist wrap-up is written by Seattlest editor Dan Gonsiorowski. Gothamist posts on the capture of a NYC perv thanks to Little Brother and a camera phone. They also scour the city for vodka martinis and Shamrock shakes and spot the friend from the Wonder Years at a city law firm. New York police think that Littlejohn is their man. Houstonist is no stranger to megachurches or stripmalls or mega-strip-churchmalls. The children of Houston...

For the past two days, Washington DC’s 9:30 club has played host to two of indie rock’s most well regarded bands—The New Pornographers and Belle and Sebastian. While you’d never mistake one band for the other, the common traits of both acts on this nominally co-headliner tour are their highly inventive songwriting and dextrous musical arrangements. Over the past two days, fans of both bands came out in force, but it was clear after two days that the Belle and Sebastian partisans caught the better end of the deal. Hampered by an illness to a critical band member, the New Pornographers struggled to match the high-flying pyrotechnics of their most recent studio album, Twin Cinema. DCist came out to cover the show on its second night. This brief review of the New Pornographers’ truncated and star-crossed performance will be followed tomorrow with a review of Belle and Sebastian’s appearance.

Tour News So, you're bummed that Arctic Monkeys tickets sold out. So are we. Nobody's gonna have any idea how we look on the dance floor, and we find that upsetting. But we're picking ourselves up and dusting ourselves off, because one monolith of an indie tour, two much anticipated bands and a couple other cool shows are coming to a venue nearby. The big tour announcement of the week goes to the power-bill of...

On Saturday DCist headed to the 9:30 club to catch the New Pornographers, who are touring in support of their excellent third album, Twin Cinema. The sold-out club seemed even more tightly packed with bodies than usual, all of them anxious to hear the band's tightly constructed pop.

The 9:30 club's recent price "adjustment" led us to spend more time than normal at our favorite pre-show watering hole. So by the time we made it into the packed club, Destroyer had nearly finished their set (we completely missed Immaculate Machine).

To be honest, we mostly know Dan Bejar's band from name-checks in articles about the New Pornographers. But the few Destroyer songs we heard were a pleasant surprise. This DCist has always found Bejar's percussive, nasal vocals to be the low point of most New Pornographers releases. But Destroyer's sound was more melodic and Bejar's singing less grating than his NP work had led us to expect.

The New Pornographers took the stage around 11:30, launching into Twin Cinema's title track. Their sound was tight and precise, particularly considering the seven band members that were contributing to it (a slightly unsteady-looking Bejar only joined the band for two songs). Our drum-playing companion thought that Kurt Dahle's kit was somewhat anemic relative to what's heard on the albums. It's true that there was more emphasis on stick-twirling than we would usually consider to be a good sign, but a propulsive bass drum kept songs like "Electric Version" surging forward.

The setlist drew fairly evenly from the band's three albums, providing a nice mix that managed to include almost all of the requests shouted from the crowd. But like the rest of the performance, this accomodation wasn't spontaneous. Frontman Carl Newman made it clear that the setlist was, well, set. We can't fault him for ignoring the sort of dopes who scream for "Freebird," but a little more ingenuity within the songs themselves would have been nice. Instead, the arrangements mirrored those on the album — which was a bit surprising considering that the band has been playing some of them for six years.

Maybe that was their author's doing. As the New Pornographers' history has unfolded, it seems like the dominant theme has been Carl Newman's increasing assertion of himself as the creative force behind what was initially billed as an indie rock supercollaboration of equal partners. You only have to read the band's bio to see that Newman has essentially claimed ownership of the group. That doesn't just result in egomaniacal press; it also means less prominent vocal parts for the rest of the band's singers. It's true that Newman is responsible for the band's impeccable pop clockwork, but let's face it — The Slow Wonder was just okay. There are reasons people come to a New Pornographers show that have nothing to do with Newman's songwriting.

Which brings us to Neko Case. Ah, Neko. It's not just that she was voted the sexiest woman in indie rock (in fact, she looked a little haggard on Saturday night). It's that voice. The one that can be described as "belting" even when it's a whisper; the one with a slight bend, like she's got a vocoder hidden in her throat; the one that nails every note. The rest of the band performed good but basically unremarkable renditions of the albums' arrangements. It was only the songs prominently featuring Case that stood out. "The Bleeding Heart Show" and "Mass Romantic" were particularly good.

The band began to get a bit sloppy near the end of their short first set, playing a messy version of "Sing Me Spanish Techno" and beginning their first encore in a somewhat disjointed fashion. But by the start of the second encore they had returned to form. The twentieth and final song was "Letter From An Occupant." With Case on vocals, the band in sync and that urgent melody ringing through the club, it was hard to wish for anything more.

As rumored on their chat last week, the Post's Going Out Gurus started their own blog today. Along with the Achenblog, the Post now has two active blogs running. It's great to see the Post get into the blogging community with a group blog that has comment features, especially considering their stated dissatisfaction with local music blogs:

The one problem I have with many of the local music blogs I've read ... is the obsession with indie rock...and only indie rock. Gets boring pretty quickly..