|
|
Dashboard Confessional with Thrice, The Get Up Kids and Say Anything
Wednesday · Riverbend
Chris Carrabba’s lean, tattooed love Punk look would seem to be at odds with the gently insistent and brutally honest acoustic paeans he offers as the sensitive frontman of Dashboard Confessional. The south Floridian’s look was just right for his early membership in Hardcore shredders like the Vacant Andys and the Agency and ultimately Further Seems Forever, one of the genre’s most highly respected practitioners. Nearly five years ago, Carrabba began to rekindle an interest in the skeletal beginnings of his songs on acoustic guitar, throwbacks to his teenage years when he was learning to play and just beginning to write real songs. As an outlet for these decidedly non-Punk volumed odes, Carrabba formed the distinctly separate Dashboard Confessional and began putting equal energy into writing, recording and touring on his own. Within a year, he departed from Further Seems Forever to concentrate on DC. Although Carrabba’s early opening slots were exercises in nerves and patience, he soon won over the raging Punk crowds and even inspired them to merely stand and listen in some semblance of hushed reverence to his acoustic Punk anthems of love, loneliness and barely contained rage. After the 2000 release of A Swiss Army Romance, Carrabba was signed by Vagrant and, with the appearance of 2001’s Drowning and So Impossible EPs and the full length The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most, the public at large became aware and then enamored of the power and passion of Dashboard Confessional. “Screaming Infidelities” became a huge hit and Carrabba scored more high profile impact with his MTV Unplugged guest shot in 2002. Last year’s A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar served to cement Carrabba’s reputation as the quiet Punk with the shiveringly beautiful songs that resonate not in the ears but in the heart. (Brian Baker)
DJ Magda
Friday · Lava Lounge
Born in Poland before moving to Texas as child and raised in the pioneering Electronic/Dance scene of Detroit (before moving to New York City and, most recently, Berlin), DJ Magda’s globetrotting ways growing up were fitting practice for her future vocation as a world-class DJ.
With guidance and support from Detroit Techno pioneer Richie Hawtin (Plastikman), Magda is now an in-demand, jet-setting DJ who has played most of the major electronic festivals around the world. Lauded for her more experimental approach to DJ-ing, Magda takes influences from many different forms of Dance music, from Electro, House and Techno to more minimalist, ambient fare and some of the experimental Post-Punk/Electronic bands that have been growing out of the Brooklyn Art Rock scene. In interviews, Magda has said that, while she understands that when she does shows, she is there to move the people, she is feisty in her dedication to not pander to the crowd. Magda plays what she wants and it’s her “weirdness” (and her ability to give some soul to the machinery of Dance music) that has helped her stand apart from some of her more rote peers. Magda’s show at the Lava Lounge in Downtown this week is an extension of the club’s “Wish Wednesdays,” which showcases the more progressive side of DJ and Electronic music. Magda’s appearance is all too fitting. Her edgy, challenging approach helps put the “I” in “IDM.” (Mike Breen)
Kentucky Headhunters
Friday · Annie’s
By the time the Kentucky Headhunters first hit the national scene in 1989, they had already been together in some form or another for nearly two decades. Brothers Fred and Richard Young and their cousins Greg Martin and Anthony Kenney turned teenage Country jam sessions into a tangible band called the Itchy Brothers in the early ’70s and then spent over a decade playing regional shows in and around their central Kentucky homebase. The Itchys eventually disbanded but were resurrected in 1985 when Martin recruited two sets of brothers — his cousins and Doug and Ricky Lee Phelps — to join him in the newly christened Kentucky Headhunters. The Headhunters scored a deal with Mercury Records who released their debut, Pickin’ on Nashville, in 1989. The album was an immediate sensation. But when the Headhunters’ 1991 follow-up, Electric Barnyard, dropped with a thud, the Phelps brothers left to form their own band, Kenney and original Itchy Brother Mark Orr returned to the fold and the band began to drift more towards a Southern Blues/Rock approach. After the releases of the rockier Rave On! and That’ll Work in 1993, Doug Phelps also returned to the Headhunters for 1996’s Stompin’ Ground. In the past eight years, the Headhunters have only released two albums — 2000’s Songs from the Grass String Ranch and last year’s Soul — but they’ve continued to tour relentlessly, something they’ve done exceptionally well for almost 30 years. (BB)
In Flames with Killswitch Engage and As I Lay Dying
Tuesday · Bogart’s
The impact of In Flames in the contemporary world of Hard Rock music is immeasurable. For years they’ve consistently set the bar for excellence and innovation for any other Hardcore, Metal or even Alternative bands to reach due to their multi-faceted approach. This doesn’t come as a surprise if you chart their evolution. Forming in the early ’90s with what would become a revolving door of official members, they released Lunar Strain in 1994 which quickly became the new standard for quality modern Metal and the inauguration of Scandinavian Metal as the next big thing in the Hardcore Rock scene. And even though they’ve been the pioneers for introducing this genre of music throughout their seven studio albums (a staggering amount of releases when you consider that a good run for any Rock band in this day and age is three or four records) it’s pretty much impossible to hear this conquest over American radio. In Flames have their feet stomping on the distortion pedals and thrash at wild speeds with an air of actual depth and purpose emanating throughout their Metal roots. (Jacob Richardson)
Spookie Daly Pride
Tuesday · Top Cat’s
To say Boston-based five-piece Spookie Daly Pride is eclectic is kind of like saying the White House is white. So many sounds and styles are employed on the group’s debut album, Marshmallow Pie, that it would be a hodge-podge mess in lesser hands. But SDP (named after singer/keyboardist Spookie Daly) magically makes its genre-surfing seem organic. The Pride’s ecstatic, joyous amalgamation of genres on Pie takes a muddy, southern-fried R&B base and lathers slanted Rock, Hip Hop, Dixieland Jazz and Funk textures all over it. The press (and press agent propaganda) SDP has garnered so far has name-checked a wide variety of artists and, for perhaps the first time in the history of music, not one of those comparisons is off base. SDP’s diverse musical variety allows for valid comparisons to G. Love, Sublime, Dr. John, Randy Newman, Tom Waits, Frank Zappa and Soul Coughing, though, by craftily mixing them together with mad-chemist sensibilities, the group ends up with a pretty unique sound to call its own. The whole mélange is made cohesive by Daly’s hearty, scruffy vocal approach and an insistent sense of pure glee that pervades every nuance on Pie. You’ll be hard pressed to find a band that sounds like they’re having more fun than the members of SDP do on Marshmallow Pie. (MB)
This article appears in May 19-25, 2004.
