Reviews of albums, films, concerts, and more from the Bay Area Music and Movie Nerds
One of the best parts of Noise Pop is when they come up with something especially unique. This collaboration might be one of the most surprising, if you don’t follow either Kimya Dawson or Aesop Rock on Twitter. But if you did, you would know that they’ve been recording together for several months now. To find out what happened at this show, you will have to follow the jump:
The well matched line up at The Independent on Thursday night was a reinvestment in soulful swagger of rock n’ roll. Even from the street, I could hear the wailing from the stage. As I stood impatiently in the rain, chomping at the bit to get inside, I realized that I was not the only one. My lovely neighbor in queue Erica, with her beautiful rainproof parasol, had just walked 13 blocks after looking for parking for an hour to see them. Continue reading “Noise Pop Show Review: The Stone Foxes, The Soft White Sixties, The Ferocious Few and Voxhaul Broadcast at The Indepdendent, 2/24/11”
It’s certainly nice when one is soaking wet from the heavy downpour outdoors to go underground in a warm and friendly place such as Cafe du Nord and find a cute-as-a-button folk singer crooning softly, trading an acoustic guitar with a harp (!) for good effect. It helps warm cold limbs anyhow.
This was my entrance to Thursday night’s Noise Pop offering with headliner Film School, a band that acknowledged having its own breakthrough at the 2004 instance of the indie-rock festival, opening for Cat Power then. They ended the evening with its members hugging onstage and telling us, “we wanted to come down and play a really good show because we wouldn’t be us without San Francisco.” Continue reading “Noise Pop Show Review: Film School with Apex Manor and Gregory & the Hawk at Cafe Du Nord, 2/24/11”
Best Coast and Wavves played the final night of their Summer is Forever tour as part of Noise Pop on Saturday night. It was a sold-out affair that proved to be one of the biggest draws of the festival. Some might say it was oversold. Others might agree, but are presumably still too high to form complete thoughts.
Last night was freezing, and the hot toddies at Café du Nord hit the sweet spot. The waft of warm whiskey, lemon and clove set a tone for the evening filled with intoxicating songs, indie style. Continue reading “Noise Pop Show Review: Versus with Telekinesis, The Love Language and The Burnt Ones at Cafe Du Nord, 2/23/2011”
At least for a couple hours, it’s Dan Deacon’s show and we just live in it. You know it right from the beginning; from before the show even, considering his reputation. The acts before him were pretty straightforward players (save for Ed Schrader’s Music Beat but more on that soon) but Deacon breaks it from the get-go: starts a piece that gets the crowd all riled up, plays just a few seconds and then abruptly stops “Okay that works,” he says. What a tease. Continue reading “Noise Pop Show Review: Dan Deacon with Altars, Oona and Ed Schrader’s Music Beat at The Independent, 2/22/2011”
As we all know, tackling a festival like Noise Pop can be tough… There’s a lot if different things to do, and you know that they are all awesome, but how do we know which events are most awesomest of all? Well, since I am of great personal taste, you should simply obey my guidelines, and then you can do no wrong.
Continue reading “Spinning Platters Guide To Noise Pop 2011”
Someone was tweeting something about cover songs, and I immediately went to work on twittering away the rules of cover songs. I got to rule #3, remembered that I’m the editor of a music blog, and went to work writing the other rules down. And now, I present to you, everything you need to know about cover songs. Is there anything I left out? Let me know below. But first, we’ll start with rule #1: Continue reading “The 7 Rules of the Best and Worst Cover Songs”
by The Spinning Platters Staff
Unlike last year, we spent more than a month at the Spinning Platters offices (our homes) passing albums around to try to determine a staff list of the Top abums of 2010. We were going for “Top 10 and ties,” and that ended up at exactly 10. There was a nomination step, a finalist selection step, a final voting step, and then we had a list. No list is perfect, but ours is not only pretty darned good, it also manages to represent the wide variety of musical tastes among our team here (i.e. some of us hate some of these albums). Now, read and enjoy our Top 10 for 2010. Continue reading “Spinning Platters Presents the Official List of the Top 10 Albums of 2010”
Okay, I promise you I’ll never consider pursuing a career as a copywriter with the headline above but I just can’t help myself; some of the premiere products and services in the music tech space are giving back to the community in a generous way this Holiday season and I’ve decided to round up some of the key promotions happening in cyberspace at the moment. ‘Tis better to give than receive, of course, but winning is still a whole lot of fun when prizes of this caliber are up for grabs.
Keep reading to find out how to win an unlimited subscription on Rdio for one year, a trip to the 53rd Annual GRAMMY Awards, and a $100 gift card from Threadless.
Continue reading “‘Tis the Season to be Winning: The Ultimate Holiday Giveaway Guide”