Ever wonder what will happen during the last five minutes of late-night TV talk shows? Here are tonight’s notable performers:
Late Night With Jimmy Fallon (NBC): Keane
Rerun from May 26.
Jimmy Kimmel Live! (ABC): Bat For Lashes
Rerun from June 24.
Moby is the artist who wasn’t there—but only because he’s always in motion. From hardcore punk to techno to film scores to mainstream rock to the sampladelic commercial phenomenon that was 1999’s Play, Moby’s career can appear as a blur of forever-changing sounds, vocalists and moods. His palette has shifted to twilight blue on the home-recorded Wait For Me (out this week on Little Idiot/Mute), with noir, shapeshifting pocket symphonies such as “Shot In The Back Of The Head” and its David Lynch-created video. Moby will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com this week. Read our Q&A with him.
Moby: Have you ever seen Gwar live? No? Rectify this immediately. The best live band ever. Really. Live video after the jump.
An Horse began in the back of a Brisbane, Australia, record shop in 2007. The pop/punk duo of Kate Cooper and Damon Cox quickly managed to score a tour with Tegan And Sara even before the release of An Horse’s debut album, Rearrange Beds (Mom & Pop). Cooper and Cox are fully aware that their band name isn’t gramatically correct: A friend gave Cooper a sweater with “An Horse” written on it, and she instantly had her band’s moniker. She still wears the sweater.
“Camp Out” (download):
Moby is the artist who wasn’t there—but only because he’s always in motion. From hardcore punk to techno to film scores to mainstream rock to the sampladelic commercial phenomenon that was 1999’s Play, Moby’s career can appear as a blur of forever-changing sounds, vocalists and moods. His palette has shifted to twilight blue on the home-recorded Wait For Me (out this week on Little Idiot/Mute), with noir, shapeshifting pocket symphonies such as “Shot In The Back Of The Head” and its David Lynch-created video. Moby will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com this week. Read our Q&A with him.
Moby: My friend Amelia (she sings on “Pale Horses” on my new album) has an amazing burlesque show called Lady Rizo And The Assettes. It’s 80-percent funny/20-percent sexy. Video after the jump.
With this week’s release of Wilco (The Album), there’s no better time to reconsider Wilco’s steady progression from scrappy alt-country forebears to kings of the AAA charts. Since each of Wilco’s studio albums has been pored over, criticized and deconstructed countless times, MAGNET’s Matt Siblo looked toward the band’s output on film. Watch as Jeff Tweedy can’t afford to buy Wendy’s for his hungry child! Marvel at guitarist Nels Cline’s inability to wear pants that cover his socks! See the Tweedy household and all of its bric-a-brac! And wonder at who’s been supplying this band with such awful beanies for the past decade. Today’s feature: 2009’s Ashes Of American Flags.
Yet another tourlogue, this one following the band through its 2008 off-beat club tour, Ashes Of American Flags’ existence calls into question whether Wilco has played any shows in the past two years without a camera crew present. Although the descriptor refers to its newly acquired horn section, Ashes finds the band looking and sounding like Total Pros, a far cry from the psychogenic vomiting and extended snoozy jam sessions of its past. Considering Wilco’s transformation into a well-adjusted, well-oiled unit a few years back (well-documented on the excellent Kicking Television), the band’s measured performances here are mostly for the benefit of giving its Sky Blue Sky material the mettle it lacked on Shake It Off. Like the congruity found in I Am Trying To Break Your Heart’s gritty footage and the dissolution of Wilco 2.0, the cinematography on Ashes is rich and expansive, exploring not only the nimble poetry of its desolate landscape but also the wistful undercurrent of its most recent material. Directors Brendan Canty and Christoph Green’s richest images come from their stark shots of the decay and abandonment of small-town America in the wake of corporate development and expansion. Noticeably less eloquent are the explanations from the band, though bassist John Stirratt’s bold assertion that many people seem to have taken the corporate encroachment lying down is nothing if not provocative.
While much of this film will placate die-hards’ desire to get any taste of the band, the necessity for yet another live release is dubious. A great deal of Ashes features Tweedy singing the praises of his fellow bandmates, a welcome counterpoint to the neurotic uncertainty of his Yankee days but decidedly less entertaining. (And the footage veers toward an extended feel-good Real World confessional. Oh, that Nels sure is swell! And those solos!) The band’s presence here has an air of the willing elder statesmen shown in Tweedy’s increasingly confident use of the Nudie suit, Glenn Kotche’s library of baby books and Nels Cline’s copping to nights of self-induced whiplash. But behind all the middle-aged goodwill, Tweedy offers a flicker of realism when he admits that while “he’d like to think this lineup will be the last, things have changed in the past.” Pausing, he finishes, “As long as it involves John.”
1999’s Man In The Sand
2002’s I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
2006’s Sunken Treasure: Live In The Pacific Northwest
2007’s Shake It Off
What is your favorite Wilco album? Vote here.
Moby is the artist who wasn’t there—but only because he’s always in motion. From hardcore punk to techno to film scores to mainstream rock to the sampladelic commercial phenomenon that was 1999’s Play, Moby’s career can appear as a blur of forever-changing sounds, vocalists and moods. His palette has shifted to twilight blue on the home-recorded Wait For Me (out this week on Little Idiot/Mute), with noir, shapeshifting pocket symphonies such as “Shot In The Back Of The Head” and its David Lynch-created video. Moby will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com this week. Read our Q&A with him.
Moby: My friend Erin started a pop/punk called the Hotcakes, and they’re really, really good. She’s beautiful, and the songs are amazing. Live video after the jump.
It’s the 30th annual Festival International de Jazz de Montréal. MAGNET’s Mitch Myers translates the action.
The Montreal International Jazz Festival is a large, amazing beast spanning 13 nights and showcasing talented artists from all parts of the globe. With loads of world music, soul, funk and rock ‘n’ roll as well as top-notch jazz, the festival is impressive for the huge number of free outdoor events that are geared to satisfy the Canadian public while hardcore jazzbos scurry from one indoor gig to another. I missed the opening night’s concert with Stevie Wonder, but well more than 200,000 people braved the rain to see Wonder’s show, which was chock full of jazz charts, old Motown favorites, a Beatles tune and a loving tribute to Michael Jackson. Rumor has it that Wonder got paid a half-million dollars for the gig—not bad for a night’s work.
Easing into the cosmopolitan scene, I went to Club Soda and caught a set of duets by Brazilian vocalist Luciana Souza (pictured) and acoustic guitarist Romero Lubambo. The intimacy between Souza and Lubambo was impressive and should lead many to Souza’s wonderful duet CDs. Singing in Portuguese and English, Souza embraced the songbook of Antonio Carlos Jobim, Pablo Neruda’s poetry and a couple of jazz standards. Lubambo, who lives in the United States, is probably the most in-demand Brazilian guitarist working today—his jazzy arpeggios were delicate and sometimes reminiscent of guitarist Joe Pass, but his sound is still distinctly Brazilian and uniformly excellent. Souza and Lubambo played in perfect tandem, mirroring each other with romantic grace.
I also enjoyed a late-night set at the wonderful Gesù Theatre, featuring French pianist Baptiste Trotignon with an American band that included sensational saxophonist Mark Turner, trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, bassist Matt Penman and drummer Greg Hutchinson. While Trotignon’s style is a little too passive for my tastes, the improvisational strength of his group elevated the ensemble performance to a serious art form. Turner, who’s still recovering from a very serious injury to one of his hands, played remarkably, as did Pelt. This group of young all-stars is going to be around, individually if not collectively, so keep your eyes on them and watch the future of jazz unfold.
Much more from Montreal in the days to come—au revoir!
We’re only posting this because we’re amused by the name Care Bears On Fire. These angsty teenage girls proclaim that they “don’t wanna be like everybody else” on the single “Everybody Else.” And yet they get their style from the shelves of Hot Topic and their attitude from Avril Lavigne.
“I love when people tell me I look like a monster!” squealed Athena Onatopp before taking the stage, squeezed into a creamy latex dress dotted with black tassels. Onatopp, the MC for the Sinner’s Salvation burlesque/rock/sideshow event at Fishtown venue Kung Fu Necktie, kept the crowd screaming for more as Olde City Sideshow shocked and made even the strongest stomachs shiver with its display of pain-inducing instruments. Danny Borneo (a.k.a. the Human Blockhead) pounded a rusty nail—the tamest of the various instruments of torture used—into his nasal cavities while Reggie Bugmuncher swallowed swimming goldfish with a smile. The Hellcat Girls stepped in to bring the color back to the audience members’ pallid faces with a blend of Vaudeville comedy, burlesque glamour and ‘60s grindhouse. From new-mom bombshell Candy to fresh-meat burlesquer Rose, the gals entertained the crowd before Olde City Sideshow re-emerged for another performance involving eyelids and an iron (“instrument of domestic torture!” screeched Athena) and a handmade contraption dubbed “the barbed-wire bunk beds.” “We do believe in unicorns and rainbows, but nothing you see here tonight is magic or gimmick,” Athena assured us. Next to take the stage were rockabilly freaks Sasquatch And The Sickabillys, with frontman David “Sasquatch” Caetano channeling a mean Johnny Cash melded with hardcore metal. The high-energy, grizzled trio toe-taps to Cash’s “Jackson” one minute and then blows the drink out of your hand with a Metallica cover that leads into a 30-second bit of semi-silence during which Sasquatch repeatedly smacks himself in the face and mutters obscenities before busting out of the post-lobotomy stupor with hardcore thrashing. Caetano elegantly described it as “Filthadelphia rock.” Just your average Tuesday night in Fishtown.
—Cristina Perachio
Ever wonder what will happen during the last five minutes of late-night TV talk shows? Here are tonight’s notable performers:
Late Show With David Letterman (CBS): PJ Harvey With John Parish
Rerun from June 12.
The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien (NBC): Neko Case
Rerun from June 11.
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