Bill Baird from {{Sunset}}

In 2006 I happily told anyone who would listen to me that Sound Team put out the best album of the year. I dragged friends to their shows. I made them listen to "Movie Monster" over and over. I forwarded their hilarious YouTube clip to everyone after Pitchfork gave them a measly 3.7 (.7!!!) out of 10, and vowed to never pay attention to them (Pitchfork) again. I'm a bombastic music fan and a big bully, what can I say? Sadly the band broke up last year, but the people I managed to convert still ask me if I know what happened to them... Well, folks, I do. Some of the band members re-convened to form {{Sunset}} and I'm thrilled to report that I have a new band to browbeat my friends with. If you're looking for something to do this weekend, go see them at Piano's on Sunday, or at Trash Bar in Williamsburg on Monday...they're also recording a show for NYU's radio station on Sunday afternoon.

 

Last night I stayed up way past my bedtime to go to a show at Arlene's Grocery, a club that hasn't booked anything I've wanted to see in at least 7 years. I'm an old curmudgeon-- more often than not I'll opt for bed rather than to put myself out -- so last night was unusual. For the right band, I'll make the effort, even if they're playing after midnight at a terrible venue. I had a nice dinner with a friend in the neighborhood (thanks for keeping me company, Catonia!), and a few drinks at the bar at the Living Room (thanks, Karen!), and finally I'd killed enough time to head over to the dreaded Arlene's. Unfortunately, my timing was off, and the band playing just before {{Sunset}} were no where near finished playing the worst kind of Bleecker street bar band music. I went outside to chain smoke and wait... Pretty soon, a group of guys with lots of gear, boxes of gadgets and lots of keyboards, cut a path through the boisterous Long Island crowd streaming out of Arlene's in satin shirts and Kenny G hair and a veritable forest of soul patches, and I thought, "AHA!"

Not your average Arlene's rockers, they wear glasses for goodness sake!

{{Sunset}} don't really sound anything like Sound Team, and yet at the same time they do. In a way, it's like the music was written by the way cooler older cousins of Sound Team...in 1979. Fronted by the energetic Bill Baird, the band produce a strange mix of psychedelic folk, mixed with Brian Eno getting high with the Beach Boys and curating a collection of found sounds. There's a lot of minimalist white noise from 3 organs with an underlying, rollicking drumline in some songs, and mysterious twinkly percussion in others. The vocals range from droning baritone to a reedy tenor, with nearly everyone in the 6-piece band adding a voice at some point...melodies that switch back and forth between sweet and pretty and completely tuneless.

"Watching their live show is like getting laid." - Jive Magazine

I don't need much more than that.

Boyskout is an all-female indie rock band based out of Brooklyn. They got their start in San Francisco, sharing stages with the likes of Gossip, Tegan and Sara, The Killers, Menomena, and Metric. Their 2006 album, Another Life (produced by David Schiffman--Red Hot Chili Peppers, hell yeah), is available at the LimeWire Store (we're just good like that). I bought it. I'd buy it again.

They were on the cover of Curve Magazine, and featured as a Deli Magazine Artist of the Month. From their press blurb, they are "five females with a sound that hints at riot grrrl punk and new wave with the sophistication of modern indie rock. With their unapologetic and politically charged themes, the girls match tight upbeat hooks with dark lush melodies while creating a non-stop dance party of eye-candy foreplay that is fiercely addictive." Now, I don't know what all of that means, but it sounds pretty sweet. I do know these ladies are rolling tight and rolling deep.

The best place for info is their Space (myspace.com/boyskout). Their latest single You Act Strange can be seen (with chicks dancing!) on their web site, boyskout.com.

Their next show is Tuesday (tomorrow) night at the glorious Knitting Factory with Girl in a Coma, and they'll also be playing Luna Lounge in my Burg on the 25th. Check them out before they blow up.

The first quarter of 2008 ends tomorrow and The Lady Tigra’s Please Mr. BoomBox tops my list of favorite releases. In the late ‘80s, Tigra was half of L’Trimm, the Miami-based girl duo that took bass music out of the streets and straight to the top of the charts with their pop-rap hit “Cars That Go Boom.” After the group was shanghaied by its producers, Tigra (aka Rachel de Rougemont) and partner-in-rhyme Bunny split and L’Trimm eventually faded away. Tigra moved back to New York City and got a job as a manager at trendy nightspot Plaid (which became Spa), and kept her head up. “I made a natural transition from making music and being around naturally creative people to working behind the scenes in nightclubs,” Tigra says. “As a manager I got to work with DJs and bands, and I got to always hear new music and watch bands develop. I was close to music, which has always been my first love, and I had no idea that I would return to music as a front person.”

It was only after moving back to Miami three years ago to help a friend’s clothing line take off did she begin to think about making tunes again. “It wasn’t planned,” she says. “After working in clubs, I went to work in fashion. My friend had started a high-end athletic wear clothing line in Miami, and I handled in-house marketing and promotions. When I was living there, sometimes I’d wind up hanging with my homies and end up making songs. I went from music to fashion and back to music.”

Those early days planted the seeds for Please Mr. Boombox, which she started working on with her friend Jacob “Berko” Bercovici while visiting him in LA. While staying at his house, the two started to make beats and craft songs “just to have fun and bug out.” Eventually, he decided to start a label, and because they had worked on a bunch of songs already that received the stamp of approval from their friends and family, they decided to release an EP, which led to the album, which includes a hot cameo from MC Lyte on “They Stole My Radio.”

While Tigra is focused on her future, which aside from DJing also includes writing jingles for the likes of Pinkberry, she doesn’t hold any obvious baggage from her past. Now 37, she gets a kick out of hearing the lyrics she wrote when she was 18. “Sometimes I’ll go back and listen to a B-side, and I will start cracking up because we were so young and it’s so obvious from our lyrics. The stuff we came up with was so creative that I’m sometimes even impressed.”

As Tigra sets her sights on , and —the area she jokingly calls her Golden Triangle—she’s counting her blessings that she didn’t end up as a casualty. She’s fallen in with a good crowd of cool friends (’s Mr. Hahn remixed “Bass on the Bottom”) with cool jobs, and she’s confident that happiness will continue to follow her. “I’m lucky that I am on an independent label that’s run by my friends, and I have a lot of creative leeway. We share the same style and go to the same parties. It’s cool that I get to work with homies. Yeah, I’m definitely in a good place. I guess I got lucky."

I never thought to combine "heavy metal" and "cello" but Helen Money is much smarter than I am. Last week, in front of a sparse but completely transfixed crowd at the Empty Bottle (Chicago), Helen hooked her acoustic cello up to a 4x12 guitar amp with a series of pedals and played a mind numbing show.

No lyrics, no eye contact, no between song babble, just forty minutes of bad ass, sometimes sweet but oftentimes dark, intense cello rock. She's a former member of Verbow and has recorded with musicians like Bob Mould, Disturbed, Archer Prewitt, and Mono.

Listen to "Dreaming."

It's not every day you discover a band you love, find out they have a new disc coming out on one of your favorite labels, and then get to book them to play at your party. But that's exactly what happened with us and The Low Lows.

The Low Lows' brand of psychedelic Americana sounds like a Raymond Carver tale baptized in the sweat of Galaxie 500 -- dirty, woozy, and beautiful. Get hooked on Fire on the Bright Side, then look forward to the follow-up out this spring on Misra Records. Hear some tracks from the new disc here.

Want to see the band live at the Lime Wire party during SXSW?

Win a chance to see The Low Lows along with Virginia Coalition, Golden Dogs, and Scissors for Lefty -- e-mail us for a chance to grab a spot on the guest list and a bag of Lime Wire swag: sxswparty@limewire.com.

1,500+ bands will flock to Austin Texas in March for the South by Southwest music festival. All month, we'll be profiling a few of the lesser known artists we're looking forward to seeing.

Back in November, we posted an mp3 from LoveLikeFire, a west coast foursome that has since found a special place in my iPod. By combining spacey, relaxed instrumentals with rich, haunting vocals, the band creates a powerful catalog. The passion and emotion instilled in their recordings has led critics to describe them as a female-fronted Arcade Fire. The band's music fell into the hands of Tom and Samara, a married couple who recently directed a phenomenal video for the band's track "I Will."

LoveLikeFire has already announced two SXSW dates: On January 13th, they'll be playing a 7:30 showcase for Giant Step Records at Beauty Bar. Two days later, they play Bourbon Rocks as part for the Talking House showcase.

It's that time of year in New York again. It gets dark early, it's always cold, and if you're lucky, you can even walk home from the subway during a "Wintry Mix" (srsly weather.com, I have yet to meet someone that knows what that means!)

Such is not a good climate to see live music. Tis the season to snuggle up with your Netflix queue rather than wait in line to see a band.

But there was one anomaly last December that made me want to brave whatever daunting weather conditions were threatening my extremities and trudge down to the Lower East Side to catch an amazing record release party. The band was The Depreciation Guild, the record is In Her Gentle Jaws, and their live show is one not to be missed.

Just a pair of dudes from Brooklyn, Kurt Feldman and Christoph Hochheim are the talented duo behind a large and intricate sound. Not so simply stated, The Depreciation Guild is an electronic induced, shoe-gaze inspired melodic concoction backed by a drum machine and an 8-bit 2A03 sound chip from your every day Nintendo Entertainment System.

They've drawn well-deserved and warranted comparisons to bands like My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins and are forward-thinking enough to make their first full-length album (the aforementioned In Her Gentle Jaws) available for * free download * at their website.

Recommended tracks are the sonically luscious "Butterfly Kisses" and the more euphoric "Sky Ghosts."

If that's not enough ear candy for you, go see them for yourself!

The Depreciation Guild play TONIGHT at the Mercury Lounge. If you don't go for the technically impressive live show, then do at least go for the eye candy (um have you looked at the above photo? Ladies, don't forget your anchors, these boys are dreamboats!)

Either way, this band will definitely make the trek out into the night's cold worth it.

What you need to know:

Depreciation Guild

Mercury Lounge

(Houston and Essex)

7pm $10

Akshay referred me to Sungha Jung's YouTube page, claiming he had stumbled on a child prodigy. The young musician has an arsenal of guitar videos in which he simultaneously plays both the vocal and guitar melodies of rock classics. Impressed by the playing, I looked for more information on the mini-Asian. Here's what I found out about Jung from his myspace page:

Hi, I'm Sungha Jung from South Korea. My dream is to become a professional acoustic fingerstyle guitarist. I had been watching my dad play the guitar for awhile before I finally jumped on it myself two years ago. I just turned eleven in September, 2007.

Eleven?!?! He's lying. I refuse to believe that this guitar playing is the work of a child. My cynicism led me to two theories. Theory #1: He's lip, er, finger-syncing Theory #2: Remember that movie Jack? He's the opposite - - a 44 year old man trapped in a little body. Head over to YouTube, and check out Jung's performances of songs from The Beatles, Van Halen and Bob Marley.

Last year, Perez Hilton of all people, was one of the first bloggers to let the cat out of the bag about one of Chicago’s best kept secrets: Skybox. He did so as eloquently as one would expect - - by saying that their "catchy as fuck" cabaret tune “Various Kitchen Utensils” was “one of the best songs about masturbation since the Violent Femmes' ‘Blister In The Sun.’”

Whether or not the song is actually about masturbation is up for debate, but it really is one of the best songs I’ve heard from a new band. Over the past two years, Skybox has toured relentlessly in support of their self released record Arco Iris, playing shows with bands like Man Man, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, French Kicks, Forward Russia, etc. and steadfastly gaining fans nationwide with their slaphappy, oddball pop.

With plans for new record underway (they are thinking early summer release) the band snuck two new tracks up on their myspace last night to give a rough preview of what’s in store.

Here’s the lowdown on the two new tracks:

"Trout" is the perfect example of why Skybox is a band that will never be nailed down to any sort of genre. Front man Tim Ellis picks up an acoustic guitar and delivers some surprisingly heavy lyrics (ex. "It’s a funny thing to die and feel just fine") which are thoughtfully laced with a stunning piano solo. Just when it seems the ballad has ended, the rest of the band sweeps in to carry the tune into the perfect sing-a-long chorus. Performed live, this would be the song where everyone pulls out their lighter and waves their arms in perfect harmony without feeling the least bit sheepish.

If you aren’t into ballads, check out "Beanstalk," which is equally good. It has this wild-west, dueling feel to it, with menacing guitar licks and gruff vocal harmonies that the band totally nails. With two wildly different tracks, it's tough to say how the rest of the record is going to sound, but rest assured, we like the way things are headed.

Saul Williams may be one of the few people on this planet who makes a living off poetry. Whether it be through his mind rattling books, his legendary slam poetry sessions back in the 90s or through his industrialized hip hop records, he really is one of the strongest voices of our generation.

That being said, it wasn’t much of a surprise when he followed Radiohead’s lead and released his latest record The Inevitable Rise And Liberation of Niggy Tardust on the internet, allowing listeners to name their own price.

Niggy Tardust (an album Saul refers to as the lovechild of himself and “big brother” tour mate Trent Reznor) already appears to be his most brilliant effort thus far. Now, it looks like Williams is planning an upcoming Tar Spangled Banner Tour.

Saul writes on his myspace:

The Niggytardust concept sets me free to do more on stage with costume, etc. than one might expect from a regular Saul Williams show. It allows me to put my theatre training to use. I’ve also thought long and hard about all the discussion surrounding racial epithets etc. and chose this title as a means of furthering the dialogue while also showing how creativity will outlive and outshine hatred of any kind.

I’m also collaborating with visual artists and designers as part of the whole NiggyTardust concept and presentation. Melody Ehsani designed Tardust jewelry, bracelets, rings. necklaces, etc. and also did the cover layout. Angelbert Metoyer has contributed greatly to the visual aesthetic with paintings and soon to be finished set design for the shows.

Stage costumes and set designs? The man on his own with just a mic and a couple of outrageous metaphors is mind blowing-- so this tour undoubtedly is going be cool as hell. And it just may be the last time you’ll see him at a small venue.

New dates just announced:

MARCH
12 SXSW, Austin, TX
13 SXSW, Austin, TX
17 Plaza Club, Vancouver BC
18 Aladdin, Portland, OR
19 Neumo's, Seattle WA
21 Slims, San Francisco, CA
22 Club Mercy, Santa Barbara, CA
24 Casbah, San Diego, CA
25 Troubadour, Los Angeles, CA
26 Clubhouse, Tempe AZ
27 Chandler Gilbert Community College, Phoenix AZ **[spoken word]
28 Estrella Mountain Community College Phoenix AZ **[spoken word]
29 Launchpad, Albuquerque, NM
31 The Loft, Dallas TX

APRIL
01 Warehouse Live Studio, Houston TX
03 The Parish, New Orleans LA
04 The Loft, Atlanta GA
06 Ramshead, Annapolis MD
07 930 Club, Washington DC
08 Paradise, Boston MA
09 Irving Plaza, NY NY
11 Trocadero, Philadelphia PA
12 Iron Horse, Northampton, MA
13 La Tulipe, Montreal QC
14 Mod Club, Toronto ONT
16 Blind Pig, Ann Arbor MI
17 Grog Shop, Cleveland OH
18 Martyrs, Chicago IL
19 Varsity Theatre, Minneapolis MN
21 Fox Theatre, Boulder CO
22 Belly Up, Aspen CO
23 Kilby Court, Salt Lake City UT