From BILLBOARD: Although CBGB officially closed its famed New York location in 2006, the shuttered club — founded by Hilly Kristal in 1973 — has lived on through CBGB fashions and radio. Now, the first ever CBGB festival will take place July 5-8 at venues across the city. The New York Times reports that the
It’s amazing how bands can be playing to crowds of 100 people (if they’re lucky) one month and massive theaters the next. This is exactly what happened with our best new band of 2011: Grouplove. I remember writing a show preview in January for the band’s free, month-long residency at Bootleg Theater. I had never
As a currency, nostalgia seems to be more valuable than ever. Thanks to the Internet, the neatly packaged annals of human history are available everywhere, at any time. People are now archivists of this information, with rediscovered art currents blooming in a scattered, but collective renaissance. I’ll admit this topic is well-trod ground, especially from
I wish I could simply write, “I don’t have words to describe what I saw and experienced last night at the U.S. Royalty show,” however, that would be a very boring way to sum up everything I saw from this great new band, so I am going to try to do them justice since I
West London’s The Vaccines are one of the hardest new bands to peg at times. On first listen, they’ve totally got one of those late ‘50s, early ‘60s pop revivalist things going, except with a little more reverb and maybe a pinch more aggression. But if you listen a bit more closely, the lines begin
Night Beats I walked into Music Hall of Williamsburg to music already playing, and I knew from the heavy-reverbed note bending that sounded like a portal straight back to Texas psych rock from the ’60s, that Night Beats was on stage. Singer D. Lee Blackwell split his time between growling and yelping into the mic
Adam Granduciel The War on Drugs show at Music Hall of Williamsburg was one of those shows where no one wanted to get close to the stage until the headliner started setting up. There was this strange divide, like an invisible barrier that no one wanted to cross until Ape School loaded off the stage.
I saw White Arrows perform live for the first time as the opening act for UMO at the Echoplex about a month ago and instantly fell in love with this new band. Led by visionary Mickey Church, the L.A.-based quintet wooed me with their creative songwriting and energetic performance. After a successful jaunt at SXSW,
When I see Dawes on a list of new bands to check out, I chuckle and have to remind myself that they haven’t been a band for all that long, even if they seem like they’ve been part of my life for years. I remember listening to their debut album, North Hills, on vinyl with
2011 was the year Anthony Gonzalez of M83 found himself. Or, better yet, the world finally found M83. The French musician’s ambitious double album, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming wasn’t a game-changer. It didn’t redefine sonic boundaries or place indie-synth pop in some new levels of artistic proportion – it was just a really fucking good