Show Review: Plaid with John Tejada and Portable Sunsets at The Mezzanine, 11/25/2011

Plaid is the Welsh word for PARTY
Andy Turner and Ed Handley of Plaid

It’s never an easy task to put on a show in the middle of a holiday season, especially when the date of your performance falls on the oft-proclaimed “Biggest Shopping Day Of The Year”. How many people are going to be willing to stay out for many more late hours, dancing the night away and reveling in swirling shadows and heaving colors, when many of them have inevitably been up since the crack of dawn? It stands to reason that you should bring something special to your show, something that will keep the evening interesting for the full duration — acts and performances that are ready to shift at the drop of a hat, and keep your audience enthralled, but not so boggled that their desire to dance is interrupted. In short, you’ll need to throw a party — a slightly experimental one, in fact — and for the duo of Plaid, this is done with a combination of brilliantly crafted sonic creations and a host of openers that held the dance floor down solidly by themselves.

Continue reading “Show Review: Plaid with John Tejada and Portable Sunsets at The Mezzanine, 11/25/2011”

Show Review: Noah and the Whale with Nikki Lane at Great American Music Hall, 11/21/11

 

Noah and the Whale

 

When I walked in to The Great American Music Hall the energy was already strong.  It was one of those fanatic crowds where, even though it wasn’t sold out, everyone was pushed up against the front of the stage. I have seen Noah and the Whale twice before, but never had there been people so excited to see then like there was at this show.  The energy was immediately infections and I stood impatiently with the rest of the crowd, pressing as close as I could to the stage. Continue reading “Show Review: Noah and the Whale with Nikki Lane at Great American Music Hall, 11/21/11”

Show Review: Over the Rhine at Great American Music Hall, 11/15/11

San Francisco’s disproportionately large population of ex-Ohioans once again flocked to Great American Music Hall to see the Buckeye State’s finest cultural ambassadors – Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist of Over the Rhine – perform another exquisitely drowsy set of their infinitely soothing jazzy Americana.

Continue reading “Show Review: Over the Rhine at Great American Music Hall, 11/15/11”

Show Review: They Might Be Giants with Jonathan Coulton at The Fillmore, 11/12/11

John Linnell of They Might Be Giants

After an inexplicable ten years without seeing They Might Be Giants, I got to the Fillmore early to get that spot right up front just like I remembered.  What I wasn’t sure of was if I would still hear my favorite song and would the two John’s still rock it like crazy.  Lucky for me, and hopefully everyone else at the sold out show, everything I hoped for happened, plus even more. Continue reading “Show Review: They Might Be Giants with Jonathan Coulton at The Fillmore, 11/12/11”

Show Review: Brandt Brauer Frick with Psychic Friend and James & Evander at Rickshaw Stop, 11/11/2011

An age old argument in music is this: is this band better live or on record? Electronic music seems to be the ultimate fertile ground for this argument because essentially the live show is the record plus lights, isn’t it? Well, not if it’s done right.

Brandt Brauer Frick perform in two different varieties. There’s the Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble, an 11-piece combo that plays the material as written on composition paper. Then there’s the core trio, which leave the paper at home, and take chances on stage.  Is this electronic music done right? Continue reading “Show Review: Brandt Brauer Frick with Psychic Friend and James & Evander at Rickshaw Stop, 11/11/2011”

Two Evenings with Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman: The Brava Theater and the Palace of Fine Arts, 11/2/2011 and 11/4/2011

A moment of quiet passion
A moment of quiet passion

If there is one subject that art constantly draws its attention to, it is love. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, utterly perplexing and impossible to define or simplify, and poets, painters, writers and musicians the world over have attempted its expression for a long as human history can recall. It is a funny concept, because it often takes the joyful, numbing jitters one feels in moments of tender intimacy, and pairs them up with the glorious, whooping sensation of a fiery passion to run to rooftops and scream your newfound devotion to the world below. Artists who know and have felt these moments of indescribable sense have done their best to bring forth their craft and communicate both sides of that spectrum, and everything in between, in their chosen mediums. It stands to reason, therefore, that two artists, both experts at their craft and both devotedly, passionately in love with another, will craft some of the most fantastic, loud and rambunctious work, while also taking moments of elegant poise, and charmingly stumbling between the two along the way. Such a scene was set and displayed with jubilant wonder by the couple that graced San Francisco with their presence for two separate nights: literary and screen writer Neil Gaiman, author of American Gods, Stardust and Coraline; and his wife, mindbending songmistress Amanda Palmer, the frontwoman of The Dresden Dolls.

Continue reading “Two Evenings with Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman: The Brava Theater and the Palace of Fine Arts, 11/2/2011 and 11/4/2011”

Show Review: Mastodon with The Dillinger Escape Plan and Red Fang at The Warfield, 11/3/2011

The hunters
The hunters

With a musical movement like metal, being significant, staying relevant, and still having room to experiment while perfecting your craft is always a difficult combination of skills to possess. The genre calls for solid commitment to unyielding volume, viciously downtuned notes and hellish distortion, with vocals that span from the powerful to the deranged, and lyrics that cross a general spectrum of darkness, mayhem, and more-than-mild discontent. To introduce any additional elements into this equation makes a solution extremely difficult to arrive at, but for the Atlanta metal masterminds of Mastodon, experimentation is simply the bolt of lightning that breathes life into their compositions, which have not at all dwindled in their ferocity from album to album.

Continue reading “Show Review: Mastodon with The Dillinger Escape Plan and Red Fang at The Warfield, 11/3/2011”

Show Review: The Soft Moon with Led Er Est and Chelsea Wolfe at The Independent, 10/31/2011

Luiz Vasquez and Justin Anastasi of The Soft Moon
Luiz Vasquez and Justin Anastasi of The Soft Moon

One night a year, the darkest of spirits and the most mysterious of characters are summoned into the world at large to frighten, to amaze, to baffle, to worry, but definitely to excite the forces of peace that remain calm for the other 364 days. Rarely is there a better occasion for the spooky and the sibilant to make themselves known than on Halloween Night. In accordance with the popular holiday adage, however, it is always best to have some treats to go along with your tricks, and for the haunting act known as The Soft Moon, there was no better occasion to host their showcase of apocalyptic rhythms, droning dance pulses, and howling shrieks, all while bathed in a hellish display of strobing lights and unearthly projections. If ever there was a band better suited to usher in a new movement of smartly dark and morbidly interesting music, it would definitely be this San Francisco trio.

Continue reading “Show Review: The Soft Moon with Led Er Est and Chelsea Wolfe at The Independent, 10/31/2011”

Show Review: Anamanaguchi with Starscream, Knife City and Crash Faster at Slim’s, 10/30/2011

Returning to San Francisco to shake the OTHER venue on 11th Street
Returning to San Francisco to shake the OTHER venue on 11th Street

With access to thousands upon thousands of songs of every solidly-defined or unclassified musical archetype that exists on this great planet of ours, rock music has entered a new world of sonic exploration that was only experimented with in years past. The concept of “fusion” and the blending of genres has been a staple of pushing the envelope in music, but for many years it was still almost taboo to mix certain instruments, compositional methods, or even the fans that followed these musical movements. Today, with ancient horn sections bellowing their way into foggy punk rock and string sections going toe-to-toe with electronica, it isn’t hard to understand why the Brooklyn chiptune-punk quartet Anamanaguchi is successful enough to come to the Bay Area twice in one year and sell out two of the most popular clubs in the SoMa district of San Francisco.

Continue reading “Show Review: Anamanaguchi with Starscream, Knife City and Crash Faster at Slim’s, 10/30/2011”

Festival Diary: The 2011 Treasure Island Music Festival, Day 1

The glamtastic Saturday headliners

The details of the Treasure Island Music Festival are well known to Bay Area music regulars. I’ll go over them briefly.

The setting is beautiful, on an island in the middle of San Francisco Bay. There are only two stages that alternate acts, so there’s never any clashes. There are two days: Saturday leans toward dance music, and Sunday is for indie rock. It’s small so you can easily get close to the stage whenever you want, without having to park yourself in the front row all day long. Those are the basics — everything else changes year to year. In fact, the organizers — Noise Pop and Another Planet — intend to never repeat a band. So here’s a quick look at this year’s collection of talent.

Continue reading “Festival Diary: The 2011 Treasure Island Music Festival, Day 1”