Weekend Docket: Philly

This is how we like to do it on the cheap. Took the 5pm Bolt Bus on a Friday to the most underrated city within a 2 hour driving radius, with enough time to catch some bistro fare at the bar on the Square then head to...Well, let's back up a bit here. If you've been keeping up with our National saga you'll know that amid the impossibility of getting tickets to the BAM Opera House (read below) we were forced to take our business to the new "Maxwell's" for good shows, the Electric Factory: a place to get away if you didn't feel like swinging hipster or preppy that day and you were maybe, also, feeling a little homesick for a San Fran-esque crowd without missing the Fliers kick some Blackhawks bum and knew you could get a running, albeit tipsy, tally from the band on stage. Although we thank The National for bookending our favorite songs, not everything we report is perfect. The sound guy must be a drummer, because the drums were the only thing that sounded close to record-perfect that night. Our ears are still ringing as we say good-bye to frequencies never to be heard again. Saved the cabfare and walked the 20 minutes back to the Hotel Palomar, our new favorite place to stay in Philly. We turned in. The only thing open late (read: 12:30am) was a bar, a club or greasy Pete's Diner. The next day we crossed the river to the Penn campus and ate at Jose Garces' answer to no-good-Mexican-west-of-Chitown, Distrito. Maybe it's because our prayers for good Mexican had already been eclipsed by last weekend's trip to Newport at Perros Salado (get the guac and the chilaquiles). With the exception of the carnitas and hamachi tacos, we could have taken it or left it. Ok, we would have taken the tres leches dessert along with the tacos. Enough whining. Since this is after all a blog about the things we love, we're here to declare our love for Philly- a love that's been in the making since we stepped foot off that first Chinatown bus five years ago- so much so, we're already planning our mid-summer retreat with Hotel Palomar as our home away from home.

The National do Brooklyn (again)

Shame on you. You don't read TLF unless it's Mad Men season. You especially don't read TLF when we so generously post the inside tip on the secret National shows that took place at The Bell House near the "blink and it's gentrified" Gowanus Canal in early March. So naturally you didn't go. And naturally you did not rub elbows with audience members such as Michael Stipe. So instead you get to read about it like it was some inaccessible, exclusive party to which you weren't invited like all the other followers of the Vanity Fair blog. Furthermore, the VF web-exclusive on the band might as well have been written by yours truly at TLF because not only does it include a well-deserved dripping description of our favorite of their haunting, "addictively sad" songs, Mistaken for Strangers, where the drums feel like they're going to burst inside your core, but also because, well, it actually mentions, deservedly so, the drums. If you're a BAM member then you're lucky, because you probably hold in your possession the magical (as in illusory, because we're still not sure they exist based on the last few days of gut-wrenching internet box office anxiety to which we were subjected) tickets to their upcoming BAM Opera House show on the 15th. Or you can take heed and get thee to the box office pronto stat. Of course you won't. Because you're not reading this. Right?


Photo by Justin Bishop

Mixtape: Dum Dum Girls

On Jail La La (our favorite song off the Dum Dum Girls Sub Pop debut I Will Be) front woman Dee Dee brings to mind the nostalgia of a reverbed Grace Slick mixed with the clarity of Petula Clark then worn thin with the jadedness of a dark, smoky room somewhere in Malibu, in the 70's. Hey, it's our fantasy, not yours. But it's that unexpected juxtaposition that has us excited for the first time in awhile. Apparently, wishes can also be granted in the form of dream producers. Dee Dee sent her recordings to music industry veteran Richard Gottehrer of Voidoids, Blondie and Go-Go's fame (and having most recently produced the Raveonettes, to which Nylon can't stop comparing them to the Dum Dum Girls), bringing him on as post-producer: "He used better versions of effects that he could tell I was going for and made it more grown-up," Dee Dee stated in the March issue of Nylon. They open for The Girls at Webster Hall in NYC this Saturday, April 3rd.

photo by Tamar Levine

Mixtape: Atoms for Peace

"It has been decided that we call ourselves Atoms For Peace. Hope you like it...It seemed bleedin' obvious," stated Thom Yorke on the Radiohead website a couple weeks ago. It's the band he's been having "too much fun" with, having performed The Eraser live at Coachella last year. And they're now taking that fun on the road to 5 cities, including New York, in early April. Bandmates include Flea (bassist for you know who), Joey Waronker (drummer for Beck, R.E.M, Smashing Pumpkins, etc.), Nigel Godrich (guitarist and Radiohead producer) and Mauro Refosco (Brazilian percussionist for Forro in the Dark). The band is named for track 6 off The Eraser as well as for the December 8th 1953 United Nations address President Eisenhower gave before the General Assembly, in which he referred to the "new language of atomic warfare" in the wake of the cold war.

Tickets went on sale for the two New York Roseland Ballroom shows yesterday at 10am. Craig's List and eBay have since been swarming with inventive ways for scalpers to sell the paperless tickets. Flying Lotus opens.

New York, Roseland Ballroom 4/5 & 4/6

Boston, Citi Wang Theater 4/8

Chicago, Aragon Ballroom 4/10 & 4/11

Oakland, Fox Theater 4/14 & 4/15

Santa Barbara Bowl 4/17

Secret Show Alert

It's only a matter of time before the faces of The National are gracing the cover of the New Music Express. After all, they did sell out their May date at the Royal Albert Hall in London. For those of you who missed getting your tickets to their sold out headlining gig at Radio City Music Hall in June, or if you're  just coming late to the party, there is hope in the form of two secret shows taking place at Brooklyn's Bell House next month.
March 11th & 12th
149 7th Street, Brooklyn

Mixtape: Surfer Blood

Our best friend gave us hundreds of soundbytes last weekend. Upon listen the cream immediately rose to the top, and it goes by the name of Surfer Blood, a Florida quartet seemingly too young to have spent their angst-years crammed in some older brother's 2-door nodding their heads to the kind of bands that permeates their 90-'s pop sensibility. Our break-out fave is Swim (to reach the end). They perform Sun 2/28 at Mercury Lounge, NYC.

Thrashin'

I grew up watching this movie, long after I started skating. You could call it the West Side Story of skateboarding movies (girl meets boy, girl's brother hates boy, drama ensues...) with a vintage gem/time capsule of the Red Hot Chili Peppers performing in Venice. Maybe this clip will bring back some long forgotten memories or remind you just how incredible were those soundtracks to 80's film trailers.

Julian Casablancas

We envy you lucky ones who'll be at any of the two back-to-back JC shows starting tomorrow night. We can't get the song 11th Dimension off Julian's debut solo album Phrazes for the Young out of our heads. Check out the video. It's a strange converging of Brazil-meets-Tron-meets-guy in a three-cornered hat? Dare comment if you can name all of the films. 
TIckets are still available for the Friday, Jan. 15th show @ Terminal 5, NYC

Mixtape: The Rural Alberta Challenge

If you haven't heard us wax rhapsodic on the virtues of all things Canadian then stick around long enough. We've mentioned this band before, but they bear mentioning again. I could not describe this band any better than they describe themselves:

The Rural Alberta Advantage play indie-rock folk songs about hometowns and heartbreak, born out of images from growing up in Central and Northern Alberta. They sing about summers in the Rockies and winters on the farm, ice breakups in the spring time and the oil boom’s charm, the mine workers on compressed, the equally depressed, the city’s slow growth and the country’s wild rose, but mostly the songs just try to embrace the advantage of growing up in Alberta.

They play two shows at the Mercury Lounge (same night): Saturday, January 9, 2010
 

Long Live Lemmy

We have a "two fer" here: Just the other day we overheard the unforgiving statement (amid the squealing guitar of Danger Zone) that "the only thing the 80's got right was the music." We beg to disagree. The 80's also had British sitcom The Young Ones, which debuted in the U.S. on MTV (although TLF was forced to make this discovery the hard way on VHS). The show also featured musical guest stars Madness and rock gods Motorhead, the latter shown here performing "Ace of Spades." Revel in this time capsule and the perfection of Lemmy's gravelly vocal.

Mixtape: Girls

They have an irreverent sense of humor. You know the kind of humor where the name of the LP is Album, they list more than ten people as members of their duo, their self-described sound is tropical/trash/goth, and their main influence was discovered in the rhyming dictionary (under "Girls"). Those are some of the few things we were able to dig up on this San Francisco band, behind our song of the moment "Lust for Life." There are quite a lot of different opinions on their sound, some of our favorites being that watching them live is like seeing a "David Lynch movie"; and their songs are "nostalgic for doo-wop," "gritty," and reminiscent of the "seductive glow of pharmaceutical counters." 


Not sure those descriptions do it for us. We thought they reminded us of something from our youth, back when shoe-gazing was cool, when Sofia Coppola still had long hair and was dating the guy from Red Kross, back when the Brit-pop sound held some stature on the American stages before Yankee grunge swept the airwaves clean of reverbed vocals and melodic pop sensibility. But we're oversimplifying way too much. They just can't be pigeon-holed. Have a listen and you'll figure it out.

Girls
November 6, 2009
@ Bowery Ballroom, NYC

Dead Man's Bones

Stemming from a love for noctural creatures and things that go bump in the night, Ryan Gosling and best friend Zach Shields (who first met while dating the McAdams sisters) enlist an untrained children's choir otherwise known as the Silver Lake Conservatory to sing along to their dark melodies, backed by their own raw and still developing musicality. Not that the latter should raise suspicion. The sum of all parts is incredible and just the right amount of ghoulishness. They embark on their tour next month.

October 15
Le Poisson Rouge, NYC