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JOHN BALDWIN GOURLEY of the band Portugal. The Man never wanted to make a concept album, but some things just can't be skirted.
"It definitely became a concept record in itself, which I always wanted to avoid," Gourley said of the psych-pop group's fifth LP, "American Ghetto."
"I have this really, really bad habit of writing lyrics all at the same time, so the themes end up carrying through, which is good, I think. It's always great to have consistency in the albums. We never put focus on one track over another — we're all about making albums."
Continue Reading "A Journey to the 'Ghetto': Portugal. The Man" »
IN LATE 2006, Fruit Bats leader Eric D. Johnson's musical career took on a much higher profile when he was asked to join the indie institution the Shins, just before the band's tour for its big-selling "Wincing the Night Away" CD. Playing in two bands might seem like a daunting task, but to hear Johnson tell it, the career move actually made his life easier.
"I've had a ton of time because I haven't really had to go back to a real day job," the Seattle-based singer-guitarist says. "I had made money off of [the popular Fruit Bats song] 'When You Love Somebody,' but I still had to augment. I had my own catering company. It was a flexible job because I was my own boss, but I still had to do it."
FRIDAY: Those Black Lips — they are a mess. But deliberately so. The ferociously badly behaved garage-rock fuzzsters are known for indecent onstage behavior and nasty devil's music softened with trippy psychedelia.
» Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW; Fri., March 19, 9 p.m., $15; 202-667-4490. (U St.-Cardozo)
THE FAB DOCUMENTARY "Anvil! The Story of Anvil" shined a celluloid spotlight on this Canadian metal band, which had been toiling in obscurity for 30 years. The movie was praised to no end, and the group's proto-speed-metal sound was given props by the likes of Slayer and Slash.
That Anvil is now touring with an all-female Metallica-tribute band might make it seem like the group's good fortune has come to an end — and yet it's just goofy enough to make sense, especially if you've seen the "Anvil!" film. The band's only mainstays, guitarist-singer Steve "Lips" Kudlow and drummer Robb Reiner, are nothing if not funny — sometimes on purpose, though more often than not because of their lack of self-awareness. The duo is earnest almost to a fault, and you can almost hear them exclaim, "Hell, yeah!" when told they would be touring with Misstallica. (The tour hits 9:30 Club on March 20.)
The album "This Is Thirteen," which Anvil was recording during the documentary, was rereleased by VH1 last September, though in recent interviews the group has said it has 20 songs written for its next CD. But since Anvil is booked to tour through September, the band isn't sure when it will get to record the new tunes.
It's a problem Anvil has been dying to have since it began jamming in a Toronto garage in 1978.
After jump, a revisitation of our May 2009 interview with Lips Kudlow on the eve of the D.C. premiere of "Anvil! The Story of Anvil."
THE HIP-HOP duo Kidz in the Hall think the rise of the MP3 has changed hip-hop — in ways both good and bad.
The Kidz's Double O and Naledge think the easy availability of single-song downloads has given rise to the casual fan who won't invest the time to absorb an artist's full album or oeuvre. And for MC Naledge, this reaction is worse than any visceral one.
"When people are just in between and don't really give a shit about your music, that's kind of the worst thing that could happen," he said. "When I come to your town on tour, you're going to be like, 'Oh, Kidz are in town? ... Um, they had a couple records that I like, but I'm not going to go see them.'"
But according to DJ Double O, the benefits of having music mostly delivered via the free-for-all that is the Internet is that someone like Nas can be found only a few short clicks away from, say, Neil Young. This freedom helps create new associations and influences, which has caused the tone of hip-hop to shift.
Continue Reading "Age of Emotion: Kidz in the Hall, 'Land of Make Believe'" »
WEDNESDAY: Today is Saint Patrick's Day, in case you forgot, and its status as a Wednesday prevents you from celebrating. Probably. Hey, who knows where you work.
Anyway, you can honor the Irish more soberly with Irish Book Day, wherein volunteers stand at your Metro stop and hand you copies of Irish literature for free. For a list of the stops they'll be at, visit Solasnua.org.
WHEN THE MORNING BENDERS went into the studio to record their second album, the group had a game plan set.
"Everything from the number of days we recorded, to where we recorded it — everything was set up with this idea in mind that we were going to go into the studio and make an album that really summed up, or represented, a special space and sounded like the studio we recorded it in," singer and guitarist Chris Chu said. "Those songs [are] cut from this fabric that makes it so even though every song is different, they all have this thing connecting them, and they take place in this weird, special world that you go live in for 40 minutes."
And what a world they created.
"Big Echo," the San Francisco indie-rock band's dynamic follow-up to 2008's "Talking Through Tin Cans," is a lush, dense record, showing a group maturing and a singer finding his voice. Gone is the sometimes uncertain urgency of the group's debut, replaced by a laid-back confidence and an expanding range.
Continue Reading "Bouncing off the Walls: The Morning Benders" »
FOREIGN BORN LEAD singer Matt Popieluch and the rest of his band may share a roof - and all the problems that go along with that — but it's not cramping their style. In fact, the drama may even be helping it.
"We all moved in together and got on each other's nerves immediately," Popieluch said of the Los Angeles band's beginnings. "And, we made some good music."
That's not an overstatement: The group's folk sound meshes well with Afropop, vintage rock and floaty pop on its June 2009 album, "Person to Person," and that sound comes into DC9 on Sunday. Don't expect a crazy light show or anything, but count on an enjoyably energetic set, Popieluch said.
BEDROOM-ELECTRONICA UPSTART Ernest Greene, the artist known as Washed Out, had a great 2009. Amid the long arc of summer and the sweltering Georgia sun, the Peach State producer whipped up a batch of breezy "chillwave" tunes, posted it to the Web and waited for the fickle finger of fate to point his way.
And point it did. Swept up by the music's dense, underlying drones and fullness of sound, esoteric Brooklyn label Mexican Summer signed up Washed Out for a one-off mini-album. The resulting "Life of Leisure" launched Greene into a market clamoring for glamorous "glo-fi," or gauzy, atmospheric dance-pop, and landed on many critics' year-end lists.
"Things kind of magically fell into place," said Greene. "I never really had any ambition to do this sort of thing, but since the opportunities are there, they are hard to turn down."
Greene notes that his live show, which touches down at DC9 thursday, is a work in progress. However, he says his current tour mates, New York pop unit Small Black, will be backing his laptop, sampler and gadget-based performance for most of the set.
Continue Reading "Dreams of the Summer: Washed Out's Ernest Greene" »
ONGOING: Comedy, as is so often pointed out, is a serious matter. Things get real at Source Theatre as Washington Improv Theater stages the comedy bloodbath known as "Fighting Improv Smackdown Tournament," or "F.I.S.T."
You attend a hilarious improv show, enjoy the jokes and the comedy-gladiator sweat, then vote for your favorite three-person team in a brutal single-elimination tourney. The winner? Everyone in the audience.
» Source Theatre, 1835 14th St. NW; through April 19; $10; 202-204-7770.
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