Bonnaroo 2009: Saturday & Sunday (Days 3 & 4): So Much To Roo, So Little Time

Saturday began with hot and sunny conditions, and after hanging at camp and doing some blogging, I went to go see Bon Iver. I arrived late so I couldn’t get inside the packed out This Tent, but listening to them from far away didn’t work out so well for me. The distance from a stage has a large affect on how one experiences a show, especially at a festival. Bon Iver has too many quiet parts for a huge, boisterous crowd and competing stages blasting bass, but the band did do a good set from what I could hear. He even did a Yo La Tengo cover, which was my favourite part of the show.


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Bonnaroo 2009: Friday (Day 2): Oh So Harmonious

Friday morning started with some nice cloud cover that made it easy to sleep in a little while. After hanging out at camp, I headed for the press area to work and sit through an orientation, and then I went to see some tunes. I caught the last half of Katzenjammer‘s set, and it was really good. The Norwegian 4-piece was comprised completely of ladies and they put on a damn good show. They would all be switching instruments between every song and had a striking sense of showmanship to match their musical prowess. At one point they did an a cappella number with everyone singing that was impressive, and this would seem to be the theme for most of the day: Stunning vocal harmonies.

After that I managed to get one person back from the front for Dirty Projectors on That Tent, and they totally brought it as per usual. I’m still blown away by the vocal tricks they employ. They opened with a slow jam in duet form, and then brought the rest of the band in for the second tune as they would continue changing their on-stage configuration for different sections of the show. They rocked some older jams this time in addition to all the best stuff from Bitte Orca. Pretty much everyone expected a David Byrne & Dirty Projectors team up on “Knotty Pine”, and when they closed with just that, the crowd went nuts.


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Live Show: TV On The Radio (1/24/09)

TV On The Radio
The Metro, Sydney, Australia
24th January, 2009
FM Broadcast

Setlist:

01. Young Liars
02. The Wrong Way
03. Dreams
04. Golden Age
05. Wolf Like Me
06. Dirtywhirl
07. Shout Me Out
08. Dancing Choose
09. Red Dress
10. DLZ
11. Let The Devil In
12. Staring At The Sun

Download Lossless Torrent Here

Festival Updates: Bonnaroo Additions, Lollapalooza Lineup, Coachella Happened

Bonnaroo

Bonnaroo has decided to jump into the “curating” game that All Tomorrow’s Parties has made so popular. The are letting David Byrne pick the lineup for one stage on the evening of Friday June 12. He has chosen the following acts to play it:

Santigold
Dirty Projectors
Ani Difranco
St. Vincent
Katzenjammer

Most of those acts were already on the lineup, but Dirty Projectors is an addition, and a pretty badass one at that. What is unclear to me right is what part of the “evening” these acts would play. They seem an unlikely group for late night, although that would be cool. Maybe Bonnaroo will actually have something else going on during the headliner spot. By the way we are only 50 days away from this, I’m starting to get excited.

Bonnaroo website

Lollapalooza

Lollapalooza has announced its lineup and it is looking very similar to Bonnaroo’s outside of the headliners. Check it out:

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A Random MP3 Trilogy


TV On The Radio


The new TV On The Radio album sees the band taking their sound in a more pop direction, but the departure is nowhere near as large as say, Modest Mouse‘s Good News For People Who Love Bad News. While the album is certainly a good one, it doesn’t seem as interesting as their previous work, and even the “hit” songs aren’t quite as good as the ones from Return To Cookie Mountain. Now don’t get me wrong, Dear Science is very enjoyable and I do recommend it, but in a year as great in music as 2008, it doesn’t quite measure up to the best and brightest of the year so far.

TV On The Radio : Love Dog

After catching Sunset Rubdown last week, Random Spirit Lover is back in my listening rotation. The true test of an album is being able to return to it later on and become re-obsessed. Considering they were trying out new material on tour, a new album can’t be far away. Also, an album from the other Spencer Krug project I heart, Swan Lake, is already done and awaitng release early next year, so I’m excited. Get on the bandwagon:

Sunset Rubdown : Trumpet, Trumpet, Toot! Toot!

Finally, I realized I hadn’t posted anything about Air France yet, and i couldn’t let this great EP fall through the cracks. This band does post-rave sort of chillout stuff that doesn’t fall into the cliches you would expect. No Way Down takes 23 minutes and makes them epic, again proving the capacity for the EP format to be truly great. Enjoy:

Air France : No Way Down

Friday Free-Style

Ok, to start off, I have two corrections to make. First, in the post “Atlanta Album Preview: Nomen Novum” I had listed what I believed to be a possible tracklisting to Nomen Novum‘s upcoming debut album, November, but I in fact gave you the possible tracklist Nomen Novum‘s second album comprised of songs they are performing live already. The tracklist for November looks like this:

intro / new coke
permanent makeup
I collect things/pow-pow
little witches
don’t look up
my face her body
parallel eyes
that’s a moray
precious moments
hand-me-downs

Expect it to be available in the month of which it is named, and another Nomen Novum to follow.

The other correction is from my last “What The Hell Am i Listening to?!?” post. I claimed Sorry No Ferrari‘s EP The Get Down Syndrome had been released “recently”, when in actuality it had been released back in 2006. I had incorrectly thought that it was the new record they are currently finishing up, but obviously it is not.

So, in both cases, there is more great music coming than I expected.

Broken Social Scene will be at The Variety Playhouse November 19th.

My Brightest Diamond will be in Atlanta December 7th.

Phosphorescent will be at the Drunken Unicorn November 7th.

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Live Show: TV On The Radio (4/4/2007)

TV On The Radio
Dallas, TX
Granada Theater
04 April 2007

[01] [01:06] Intro
[02] [06:36] Young Liars
[03] [03:29] The Wrong Way
[04] [05:43] Dreams
[05] [05:44] Province
[06] [04:08] Wolf Like Me
[07] [04:46] I Was A Lover
[08] [06:36] Blind
[09] [05:40] Dirtywhirl
[10] [05:32] Blues From Down Here
[11] [05:31] Wash The Day
[12] [04:39] Satellite
[13] [03:41] (encore break)
[14] [04:29] Method
[15] [06:38] Let The Devil In
[16] [04:01] Staring At The Sun

CMM-077 (Chris Milazzo Master)

Download Lossless Torrent Here

Sugarkane’s Top 50 Albums of 2006

2006 was a great year for me, and the main reasons are mostly related to music. I decided to do this list in December because i wanted to learn about as much music as possible, and what I thought would take a few days ended up taking almost 2 months, but it was extremely educational for me and i feel very good about this list. There were so many albums that I would like to give props to and cutting it down to 50 was hard. On a technical note, I went by U.S. release date with the exception of Laura’s Radio Swan Is Down (It was released in Australia over a year ago and has no U.S. release date). Feel free to blast it:

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