WEDNESDAY: Blind Pilot navigate a folk-pop territory that is less grandiose than that of Fleet Foxes and less potentially annoying than Conor Oberst. The band's stripped-down "3 Rounds and a Sound" CD is Iron & Wine-esque porch-sitting music, but it's not for warm summer days: Blind Pilot is perfect for the fall, when the darkness comes early and there's a wistful chill in the air.
After the Jump: Download three free MP3s after the jump and watch five performance videos from Blind Pilot.
» RELATED: Read our interview with show openers The Low Anthem
» Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW; with The Low Anthem, Mimicking Birds, Wed., Nov. 11, 8 p.m., $15; 202-667-4490. (U St.-Cardozo)
Photo by Jay Blakesberg
THURSDAY: Variously described as a "romantic urban wastrel poet," "both relaxed and full of life" and the "ghost of Springsteen and Seger," guitarist and singer Kurt Vile has steadily built a loyal following over the last 12 years via relentless touring.
Although his first name, subject matter and use of reverb may remind you of another tortured songwriter, the comparisons end there. The folk-y electric guitar and quiet vocals are all his.
He arrives in town this week in support of his critically acclaimed new album, "Childish Prodigy" — and he's backed by a new band, the Violators.
» Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW; Thu., Nov. 5, 8:30 p.m., $10; 202-667-4490. (U St.-Cardozo)
Written by Express' Anne Polsky
Photo courtesy Kurt Vile/Sarah McKay
MAYBE THERE'S SOMETHING to be said for suburban boredom and displacement.
Growing up in Falls Church, Thao Nguyen never saw live bands at any D.C. clubs and wasn't part of any local music scene. So she couldn't help but become introspective when she began composing songs as a teenager in the solitude of her bedroom.
Isolation served her well. Nguyen's deeply personal songs such as "Bag of Hammers" and "Swimming Pools" found an almost instant audience when she formed Thao With the Get Down Stay Down. The group just released its second full-length CD, "Know Better Learn Faster," and will play at the Black Cat on Friday.
"For the most part, I stuck around at home," says the 25-year-old singer-songwriter by phone during a tour stop in Minnesota. "I'm sure there were things going on, but I led a very uneventful, insulated life, and I didn't really go out to see much live music. As far as going into [the District], I tried to go to blues clubs sometimes, but I was very underage."
Nguyen did, however, get to frequent the open-mic nights held at coffeehouses in her area. That's where she cut her musical teeth and got to test out new songs and develop her somber vocal style.
Continue Reading "The Thao of Introspection: Thao With the Get Down Stay Down" »
NO MATTER HOW beautifully Amy Millan sings, she can't stop anyone from dying.
When the dark-haired, tentative-voiced Toronto singer isn't onstage as a member of indie icons Broken Social Scene, pop-rockers Stars or with her own band, she thinks about hard subjects.
"What I wrestle with is that everyone I love is going to die," said Millan. "I don't really need to be breaking up with people in order to find this sad undercurrent to life. It's a static energy that's constantly surrounding me, the idea that we'll die."
The fretting started after losing her father in a car accident, and the musician remains haunted.
"I feel for the state of the human condition," said Millan. "We're all flopping around, trying to ... do all the things that are 'normal,' but we all know that people get sick and accidents happen and these terrible things happen and in order to continue every day with hope, we have to repress so many things that are horrifying."
EL PERRO DEL MAR is Sarah Assbring, alone. While Rasmus Hagg is the incredibly important co-producer behind the Swedish singer-songwriter's latest, "Love Is Not Pop" (The Control Group), the lyrics, emotions and blood are Assbring's in solitary.
Yet, she feels comfortable opening up about the subject matter to a complete stranger.
"I just feel like my music is extremely close to, and parallel to, what's happening in my life," she said. "My music always goes along with what's happening in my life, so in that sense I don't feel like I have to be nothing else but open about what my music is about. It's another scope of me ... it all goes together."
The devastating words she sings on "Love Is Not Pop" leave little doubt that it's a breakup record, and the man who inspired the record knows it's all about him.
Continue Reading "Blood on the Tracks: El Perro del Mar, 'Love Is Not Pop'" »
CHRISTOPHER OWENS IS PERHAPS the least likely pop star of 2009.
He arrives with an oft-repeated and truly harrowing back story in which he is born and raised in a cult and risks his life to escape. More crucial, however, is the enthusiasm with which he threw himself into songwriting, a trade he picked up following a bad break-up in a city that seemed to turn on him.
The fruits of Owens' first burst of inspiration resulted in the formation of the band Girls with friend and producer Chet "JR" White and their debut album, simply titled "Album." Released in September, it has been widely and intensely praised for combining a range of influences — Elvises Presley and Costello, Buddy Holly, early not late Beach Boys, Spiritualized, My Bloody Valentine — into a cohesive work that sounds somehow original and completely unique. Owens took Express on a roundabout tour through "Album," filling the details about the songs — real-life subjects and his own infatuation with songwriting.
"Lust for Life"
» EXPRESS: Is the title a reference to the Iggy Pop song?
» OWENS: It's not, actually. The only reference is that after I'd written the song, I was thinking about what the song is about. I don't know how those words stuck in my head, but it just seemed like the perfect title, and I didn't really care that it was someone else's song. It's like this is my version of "Lust for Life."
THE VERY BEST burst onto the blogosphere last year with a free mixtape titled simply "Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit Are The Very Best." It was a bold statement from an unknown Malwaian singer and a British DJ duo who were best known for remixing pop songs.
But the combination of Mwamwaya's infectious voice — mostly in his native Chichewa — over Radioclit's Afro-pop treatment of popular songs, such as Vampire Weekend's "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa," M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" and Michael Jackson's "Free Willy" theme, "Will You Be There," was undeniably joyful.
Since the mixtape's release last fall, the group has charted more than 200,000 free downloads, and — as part of its first U.S. tour — headlined a stage at Chicago's Pitchfork Music Festival in July.
In September, The Very Best released its first album, "Warm Heart of Africa" (Green Owl), a recording that actually predates the mixtape. M.I.A. ("Rain Dance") and Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koening ("Warm Heart of Africa") guest on the 13-track set of (mostly) original songs. If anything, "Warm Heart of Africa" affirms that The Very Best's dance-ready, Afro-and-electronic-steeped sound works just as well on original tracks as the sampled and remixed cuts.
Through e-mail, Express asked Johan Karlberg about how the group got together, recording with M.I.A. and Koening, and The Very Best's live show, which hits Washington for the first time at DC9 on Nov. 2.
Continue Reading "Afro-Beats & Mixtape Treats: The Very Best" »
TUESDAY: The Get Up Kids recently apologized for causing modern-style emo, but the band has nothing to be sorry about. All genres (and subgenres) have good and bad music, and it just so happens that The Get Up Kids are one of the best from the introspective melodic-punk camp. The band reunited recently to tour behind the release of "Something to Write Home About: 10th Anniversary Special Edition," but there are strong hints that a new album is in the Kids' future.
» Click here to see six live clips from the band's first reunion concert.
» 9:30 Club, 815 V St. NW; with Kevin Devine, The Life & Times, Tue., Nov. 3, 6:30 p.m., $21; 202-265-0930, 930.com. (U St.-Cardozo)
Photo courtesy Vagrant Records
FRIDAY: Not every talent is ripe for public display, like that thing Uncle Robert used to do with his trick knee. But if you've got a flair for something palatable, bring it to Busboys & Poets Live!, a new talent show hosted by Ne'a Posey, a local R&B singer, and held the first Friday of every month at the shop's 14th Street location.
Whether you're a dancer, musician, comedian or mime, you're welcome at the open mic, which starts at 11 p.m. Not that mimes need mics. Well, maybe really bad mimes.
» Busboys & Poets, 2021 14th St. NW; begins Nov. 6, 11 p.m., free; 202-387-7638. (U St.-Cardozo)
Written by Express' Sarah Mimms
Photo by Susan Biddle/The Washington Post
ONE OF THE MOST ORIGINAL and perplexing songwriters to rise out of the South in the last 20 years, ornery Georgian Vic Chesnutt has made 16 distinctive albums, all of them with different musicians including Widespread Panic, Michael Stipe and Van Dyke Parks.
Still, he insists that these collaborations don't reflect a conscious effort: "I never had a big plan for my career. I'm absolutely the worst planner there is. I just fall into things. That's what's happened my whole career. I went flitting willy-nilly from thing to thing."
Chesnutt continues to flit this fall, releasing not one but two albums with different
personnel.
One of them, "a pretty raw little record" called "Skitter on Take-off," was produced by Jonathan Richman live in the studio. The other, "At the Cut," was recorded with D.C. hardcore legend Guy Picciotto and members of the Toronto post-rock ensemble Thee Silver Mt. Zion, who worked with him on "North Star Deserter" in 2007.
Continue Reading "A Willy-Nilly Life: Singer Vic Chesnutt" »
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