Reviews of albums, films, concerts, and more from the Bay Area Music and Movie Nerds
In typical times, March would be the beginning of the music business’ “year.” Normally, there is a lull of news and new releases between December and February, and March usually starts with the Grammys, allowing everything to “wake up.” We would have a slew of festival line-ups coming through, and everyone looking to make a big year would be starting that cycle with SXSW. Continue reading “Single Review: “Pay Your Way In Pain” by St Vincent / “Leave The Door Open” by Silk Sonic”
This is the second single off Sleater-Kinney’s highly anticipated 9th studio album, The Center Won’t Hold. For those who felt the first single, “Hurry On Home” was a departure, it was merely the gateway to “The Future Is Here.” Kicking off with a simple, analog synth riff before some of the most subtle drumming of Janet Weiss’ career kicks in. Corin Tucker then comes in, singing in the lowest register I’ve ever heard her sing in. What this becomes is a beautiful, kind of gothy song that feels more like Siouxsie and The Banshees or The Cure than the driving psych rock or classic punk that we’ve grown used to from Sleater-Kinney.
It’s been 25 years since Sleater-Kinney first entered the world as a functioning unit. Since then they’ve continuously challenged themselves with every record, proving to have the most consistent and exciting discography in rock n roll. The Center Won’t Hold will be available in all of the usual places on August 16th, or you can preorder from the band here!
Tickets for their Fall US Tour went on sale this morning, and tickets to those shows can be found here! Presale begins on Monday for their Winter EU Tour, so don’t forget to join their mailing list at sleater-kinney.com for presale info!
STOP THE PRESSES!!!! Sleater-Kinney have dropped their first single in two years, and the first track to come off their upcoming, hotly anticipated follow up to 2015’s brilliant No Cities To Love. It’s a driving rock number that doesn’t sound like anything the band has ever done. Elements of industrial, no wave, and post punk color the song, with Carrie’s signature snarl taking center stage while Corin’s passionate yelp providing color and discord.
STOP THE PRESSES!!!! Sleater-Kinney have dropped their first single in two years, and the first track to come off their upcoming, hotly anticipated follow up to 2015’s brilliant No Cities To Love. It’s a driving rock number that doesn’t sound like anything the band has ever done. Elements of industrial, no wave, and post punk color the song, with Carrie’s signature snarl taking center stage while Corin’s passionate yelp providing color and discord.
The full length record, produced by Annie Clark of St Vincent fame, street date is still TBD. However, if this track is any sign of things to come, then Sleater-Kinney will have released 8 perfect records in their lengthy career. You can stream the single in all the usual places, or you can preorder the 7″ here! And the band will be on tour from Indigenous People’s Day to Thanksgiving, so make sure you book hotel rooms and get time off from work NOW so you can hit as many of these as possible. Or just go to the show in your hometown…
David Byrne’s American Utopia has been regarded as one the most ambitious stage shows in rock history; a performance that enables the entire band to move freely about the stage is rare. Spinning Platters recently had an opportunity to catch up with one of Byrne’s collaborators on this project, choreographer Annie-B Parsons, to discuss this show, her method, and music in general.
How did you end up syncing up with David Byrne? Continue reading “Spinning Platters Interview: Choreographer Annie-B Parsons”
I didn’t go to SXSW last year. And I, literally, spent all of 2013 being sad about it. SXSW is like live music Disneyland. Sadly, complete with the lines and the getting frustrated about all of the people with Fast Passes cutting ahead of you. However, if you play your cards right, you can see an obscene amount of live music. In four days, I got to enjoy 34 bands. And I didn’t even try that hard this year.
Continue reading “Spinning Platters SXSW 2014 Report: 34 Instant Band Reviews”
Rating: Gold
I don’t know who first used the modifier “angular” to describe a guitar style, but it’s been the most over used adjective for post punk guitar for at least 30 years now. Perhaps it means the sharp edges that you get from the syncopated and dissonant chord changes or maybe even the “stiff, awkward, and ungainly” feel the music gives you. Either way, the message that “angular” communicates is “inhuman” and “inhospitable.” From Marry Me to Actor to Strange Mercy and now St. Vincent, Annie Clark’s music has toed this line between human and inhuman, between hospitable and inhospitable, but inevitably has sided with the human. This has always been her great accomplishment as a songwriter. Her hair has gotten whiter, her clothing more plastic and her guitar playing more…angular, but she’s never lost touch with that humanity and with St. Vincent, Annie Clark is at her peak as a songwriter, guitarist and artist.
The term “supergroup” is often used to refer to a set of musicians who are best known in association with their respective bands — musicians who haven’t necessarily operated as solitary acts in their own right, and are culled together to see what their individual untapped energies will create when synthesized. By contrast, when speaking of a pair of artists that write and perform together, each possessing their own prolific solo careers, the relationship is usually defined — accurately, but less overtly bombastically — as a “collaboration” between them. It should be preemptively stated, therefore, that the “collaboration” between David Byrne, former founder and frontman of world-famous new-wave-art-rockers Talking Heads, and Annie Clark, better known as the gorgeously cacophonous St. Vincent, possesses all of the grandeur and might that the term “supergroup” conjures the image of. Backed by a seven-piece horn section, sampling engineer, and percussionist, Byrne and Clark have birthed one of the most unusual but compelling albums of 2012, a 45-minute opus titled Love This Giant, and the Orpheum Theatre, best known as a host of many musicals and plays from all eras and countries, offered its stage to the pair for the San Francisco stop on their tour.
Continue reading “Show Review: David Byrne & St. Vincent at the Orpheum Theatre, 10/15/2012”
