Reviews of albums, films, concerts, and more from the Bay Area Music and Movie Nerds
In a word, this show was evolutionary. Attendees were first treated to a newer duo. Next, an established trio played new songs and old favorites. And finally we had a four-piece playing its last show ever.
Continue reading “Show Review: The Bruises with the Hot Toddies and Bam!Bam! at Slim’s, 1/31/14”
Hi, this review isn’t Troy McClure. You may remember this EP from such Spinning Platters posts as “Individual Writers’ Lists: The Best Albums of 2013.” You’ll see there I made this my second-favorite record of 2013. And it’s an EP, so it is a breeze to listen to.
I have a … soft spot in my heart for Soft Cotton County. They’ve straddled the line between ambient and indie pop for about four years now. Some call it “dreampop.” I call it “cloudcore.” You can, too, but no one will know what you’re talking about. They’ve been firing out an EP roughly once per year, although a full-length may be in the works soon. We’ll see. Continue reading “Album Review: Soft Cotton County – The Man Who Walked on the Moon EP“
Book of Love topped my list of great synthpop acts that I would probably never get to see. (Yes, I really have such a list.) And when they played earlier this year for the first time since a one-off in 2009, I couldn’t help but wonder what might happen next.
“Next” was a show at Los Globos in Southern California last night. And tonight Book of Love graced San Francisco with its presence for the first time since 2001, providing 70 minutes of memories, plus one new song. Continue reading “Show Review: Book of Love at DNA Lounge, 10/9/2013”
The Julie Ruin will make existing Julie Ruin fans happy, as well as the younger siblings, nieces, and nephews of said fans. “Run Fast” is occasionally brilliant and rarely annoying. I had really high expectations, and they were almost met, with the tracks at the end of the album sounding about 20x better than the pre-release singles.
This paragraph is dedicated for some information fans may already know. Kathleen Hanna was a one-woman show using a pseudonym when she released the self-titled “Julie Ruin” in 1997. It was tremendous, but it was also the only release under that name. Fast forward 16 years, and Hanna leads a group called “the Julie Ruin,” who have released an album called “Run Fast.” Whether this has anything to do with Le Tigre’s “Let’s Run” is beyond me.
Bleached blew the doors off at the Blank Club, and luckily they weren’t DeLorean doors, because then people would have gotten decked for real, rather than that fake decking Floyd Mayweather gave Robert Guerrero earlier that evening. There’s more sports highlights herein. Buckle up.
It’s hard not to go overboard with the metaphors, but someone took diamond cutting tools and applied them to Mika Miko. The result? Bleached.
I always enjoyed Mika Miko, and seeing them at Nickel City was one of the better shows I’d attended, because there’s little better than playing NBA Jam while they’re yelling into telephones in the other room. So I was excited to hear what Jennifer and Jessica Clavin had been up to since then. It turns out they’ve been brought back from the experimental punked-up cliff, and are now best suited on a ticket with Brilliant Colors or the latest Go-Go’s reunion. Cheers.
In a previous life I was a KSCU DJ, and we’d received an advance of this EP, which had three of the five tracks. So the good news is I really know some of these songs. The bad news is that it still isn’t a full-length.
For those of you just joining us, the Hot Toddies are an Oakland band that continues the Bay Area’s history of girl group garage indie rock. I’ve been fortunate to see bands such as the Kirby Grips, Minipop, Brilliant Colors, She Mob, Run for Cover Lovers, the Reaction, Apogee Sound Club, Persephone’s Bees, … I’m just showing off now. That’s what people in their 30s do when speaking to people in their 20s. If I’m going to be older than you, I might as well be pretentious about it. Continue reading “Album Review: The Hot Toddies — Bottoms Up EP”
Chickfactor turned 20 this year, and several shows in California and London have been set up to commemorate 10 years each as a printed magazine and a webzine. This is the Chickfactor that Belle and Sebastian wrote the song about, so it is only fair that member Stevie Jackson headlined a show at the Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco. Continue reading “Show Review: Stevie Jackson, The Softies, Kim Baxter, Allen Clapp and Kurt Heasley at Rickshaw Stop, 9/22/2012”
Everyone’s favorite Spinning Platters backup writer, I was summoned to cover an event that had conveniently piqued my interest: Becoming Britney. A show written in the space between the tongue and the inner cheek, the only concern was whether it would collapse under the weight of being over the top. Nope.
Continue reading “Theatre Review: Becoming Britney at the Retro Dome, 3/2/2012”
Will Durst doesn’t shy away from political humor, and with 2012 bringing us one of the most entertaining lineups in Republican presidential primary history, it didn’t matter which one was chocolate and which one was peanut butter. Johnny Steele and four other comics made sure that both got all over each other.