Bonnaroo 2009: The Female Festival

***Note From The Editor: Our newest guest contributor, Hannah Palmer, decided to do a little something experimental in her Bonnaroo experience this year and share it with us. If you are one our many Atlanta readers, I highly suggest checking out her blog Slumptown, Ga. Enjoy:

The Experiment:

I’m always whining about the lack of women performers included at big festivals. I attended Bonnaroo in 2007 and 2008 and I think the only chicks I saw onstage were Cat Power and Feist.

As soon as I saw the 2009 Bonnaroo lineup it occured to me: this could be an All Girl Bonnaroo. It seemed possible to curate my own personal Lilith Fair, in part thanks to David Byrne‘s practically “all estrogen” stage. As I planned a 4-day itinerary including as many girlie acts as possible, I wondered… would this be really lame? would it feel one-sided and sexist? what difference do female performers make anyways?

Field Observations:

So apparently there’s no more day parking on Thursday. I found this out the hard way and spent the first few precious hours of Bonnaroo driving around Manchester backroads and waiting in lines while Atlanta darling Janelle Monae took the stage. We got to Centeroo in time to catch Those Darlins (from Murfreesboro, TN) in the nicely upgraded Troo Music Lounge. My spirits lifted at the sight of 3 honky tonk babes taking turns doing punky covers of Wanda Jackson while spitting beer on the crowd. Then the tornado warning rain started pelting us and I missed Chairlift (with Solange Knowles??) while trying to track down one of those free XBox ponchos. So I had a sorry first night– whether that was bad planning or overplanning, I don’t know.


St. Vincent

Friday restored my faith in girls with guitars with back-to-back scary-good performances by Kaki King and St. Vincent. From there, I found myself torn between some killer women performers – sacrificing the Yeah Yeah Yeahs for Santigold, Ani DiFranco for Lucinda Williams. As my friends split to see Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear, I felt somewhat relieved to have my little assignment, otherwise the decisions would’ve been even tougher.

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My Favourite Songs of 2008: Ohmpark Mixtape #6

So here is a playlist comprised of many of my favourite songs from the year. Not all of my favs are here, but I think all of the essentials are in it. I tried my best to build this as a flowing playlist more than just a collection of songs, so the order and even some of the selections reflect that. I really need to do more mixtapes. Based on Hypemachine/elbow popularity, I know everyone loves that Fleet Foxes song, but I decided instead to treat you to a better song from one of the bands that FF is ripping off. Anyways, here is an hour and half of the best songs of 2008. Jam them hard while you can, because in about 3 days they aren’t hip anymore:

Islands : The Arm
Sigur Ros : Gobbledigook
Atlas Sound : Recent Bedroom
Kaki King : Life Being What it Is
MGMT : Weekend Wars
Department of Eagles : No One Does It Like You
Animal Collective : Water Curses
Antony And The Johnsons : Another World
Mount Eerie w/ Julie Doiron & Fred Squire : Voice In Headphones
My Morning Jacket : Touch Me I’m Going To Scream pt. 1
Beach House : Used To Be
Portishead : The Rip
Summerbirds In The Cellar : Now We Are Ugly Inside
Hot Chip : One Pure Thought
M83 : Kim & Jesse
Bon Iver : For Emma
Plants And Animals : Guru
Destroyer : Shooting Rockets (From The Desk Of Night’s Ape)
Deerhunter : Nothing Ever Happened
…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead : The Betrayal Of Roger Casement And The Irish Brigade

Live Show: Kaki King (10/14/08)


Kaki King @ SXSW 2008

Kaki King
2008-10-14
The Pabst Theater; Milwaukee, WI, US
Taped, Transferred, Tracked, and Edited By: Matt Krueger

Tracklist:
01 – Bone Chaos in the Castle
02 – Life Being What It Is
03 – So Much for so Little
04 – Pull Me Out Alive

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Humpday Randomnimity

Let’s start off with a Kaki King Daytrotter version of one of my favourite songs this year:

Kaki King : Life Being What It Is (Daytrotter version)

Get the rest of those tracks here.

Speaking of awesome chicks who play guitar, Marnie Stern‘s new album is coming out October 7th and is called This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That. I’m really looking forward to that and Zach Hill‘s solo album out August 26th.

Brendan Canning video:

Portishead are already talking new album.

Opeth, High On Fire, and Baroness will be at Center Stage October 22nd.

The Octopus Project will be at The Earl October 19th.

Best Buy is now selling vinyl.

New Dungen album coming in the fall.

New Of Montreal album coming in October.

Kissatlanta’s new post-DSC event, Eastern Bloc, starts this Friday night.

Sonic Youth‘s SYR8 album is coming soon featuring Jim O’Rourke and Merzbow.

My Morning Jacket‘s Jim James is working on an album with M. Ward and Conor Oberst.

The Sea And Cake‘s new upcoming record is going to be “more upbeat”. I just hope it doesn’t suck like their last one.

Atlas Sound bonus tracks will be on the Let The Blind… US vinyl release very soon..

And here is a youtube playlist of the hott new videos:

Videos Of The Day: Kaki King

I just don’t feel like she gets enough exposure on the web considering how awesome she is, so here’s some vids:

“Pull Me Out Alive”:

The Making Of Dreaming Of Revenge (part 1):


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What The Hell Am I Listening to?!?

SXSW Bands are invading my Ipod and CD players now that I am back. There are so many to look into, but a few albums from the bands I managed to catch have stood out as some of the best of 2008 so far:

Kaki King

Originally from Atlanta, Kaki King is singer/songwriter/guitar player Katherine Elizabeth King. Her guitar work is an interesting style that is very percussive using slaps and taps. Her newest album, Dreaming Of Revenge, has been in my heaviest of rotations since catching her in Austin. It is about half instrumental ethereal post-rocky stuff, half fascinating and alluring pop songs. This release seems to be a little under the radar right now in hype-land, but it is too good to stay that way for long:

Life Being What It Is

So Much For So Little

Buy Dreaming Of Revenge here

Kaki King Myspace

Plants And Animals


photo by: Caroline Desilets

While doing my 2007 year end research and digging, Plants And Animal‘s With/Avec EP was one of the best discoveries I came across. One of the things I love about this band is they attempt to make each and every song a monumental event. Their debut LP, Parc Avenue, takes everything great about their short release and expands it on this tremendous album.

Mercy

Good Friend

Buy Parc Avenue Here

Plants And Animals Myspace

Bon Iver

Since everyone on the Internet has rightfully fallen for this album and sung its praises for ages now, I won’t go on a tirade about, but just make sure to check it out if you haven’t because it lives up to the hype:

Flume

Lump Sum

Buy For Emma, Forever Ago here

Bon Iver Myspace

Photos: SXSW Day 1 – 3-12-08 in Austin, TX

Earlimart


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SXSW 2008 Day 3: Friday

I started out my Friday trying to catch Bon Iver again because my camera ran out of batteries the night before right after they started and I wanted to get some videos, but I arrived at Emo’s too late to get anywhere near the front, so i just enjoyed some more of their stuff and moved on to the next venue. I caught the end of another Kaki King set, wich was cool because I missed the very end of the set i caught Wednesday night.

After that it was time to catch Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin. One of the guitarists had broken his amp, so they played as a 3 piece instead, and it really sounded to me like something was missing, so I left after a few songs.

After getting a great steak and brie sandwich at some weird biker bar, I went to see Evangelicals again. It was hard to hear the vocals in the particular spot I was in the night before, plus I really love this album, so I was very happy to catch them do another stunning show. That is another cool thing about this festival; If I want to see a band I love multiple times, it is no problem. Here is some live videos:

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SXSW 2008 Day 1: Wednesday

The festival season is in full swing here at Ohmpark as we are now in the thick of South By Southwest. This is about the polar opposite of a fest as you can get from Langerado, and so far it has been an amazing experience. After spending many hours traveling yesterday, we finally arrived here in Austin, TX and headed downtown to pick up our passes. We were trying to catch the Akron/Family show at the convention center. We were only able to see the last few minutes, but they were an incredible couple of minutes. Hopefully I can catch them again sometime this weekend.

After that we walked around the city and grabbed some grub and some Fat Tire beers. The downtown scene sort of reminded me if you took Key West or New Orleans downtown and filled it with hipsters and rock stars. It certainly appealed to me. We went back to the convention center to catch Earlimart next. They were playing in some room that was decorated very fancily called the “Bat Bar” that I’m guessing was broadcasting their shows to some Direct TV channel. Everyone had to wait in line outside until they started, and then everyone ran in. They had professional video cameras everywhere and some dude telling us to cheer and stuff. I’m guessing it was similar to what a MTV live broadcast would be like. It felt really fake and weird, and even Earlimart was joking about it. The show was great though, as they played some new stuff from their next forthcoming album.

After some more walking around and taking in the atmosphere, we headed to Orange Twin party, but we got there too early and weren’t really digging what we heard. We decided to check out the Brooklyn Vegan party down the street. We caught the end of Deer Tick, who was pretty cool. We decided to get up close for the next act, Jeffrey Lewis and The Jitters, even though we had no clue what it was. It was a wise decision because i think it was the best show of the day and my first discovery of the fest. Jeffrey Lewis is a very unique singer/songwriter who is the epitome of an artist. In addition to performing awesome songs with extremely clever lyrics, he also had storybook comics he had drawn and to go with some of the songs. Check out these videos:

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