i hate the sound of guitars

Concluding my preview of Ladyfest Boston:
Playing Saturday night (in alphabetical order)
Daylight Robbery’s more recent tunes find the band growing in subtlety and the use of space. The tunes on their recent 3-way split with Foreign Objects and Defect Defect sound as influenced by New Model Army as by X (for better or worse, Christine Wolf [...]

[Read more →]

Hey, Ladyfest Boston!
Check out most of the artists with a free compilation at bandcamp.
Playing Friday (in alphabetical order)
Beautiful Weekend don’t make it easy to preview their music.
Foreign Objects play short, hard-hitting punk tunes that are often quite catchy despite weird chords and screechy vocals. Nothing against “Words of War” but if you check ‘em out [...]

[Read more →]

I bought tickets to this show assuming it would feature Tanya Donelly singing and playing guitar, which it did, and which would have been more than sufficient for me, but not necessarily assuming there would be anyone else involved. The actual cast of characters included, in alphabetical order:

Carrie Bradley, of Ed’s Redeeming Qualities, 100 Watt [...]

[Read more →]

I really wasn’t sure what to expect. Frankly, the circumstances sounded a bit suspicious: reclusive artist schedules a mid-size tour after a long artistic silence and immediately prior to a career-spanning archive release. But from the first few seconds of “Oh, Comely,” it was impossible for me to see anything disingenuous in Mangum’s performance; further, [...]

[Read more →]

The Lizard Lounge was crammed to the gills for the very welcome work-night friendly early set. Joe Pernice opened with a handful of solo songs, including the title track from Goodbye Killer and “Telescope,” a sneak peek at the in-progress Pernice Brothers album (he said it was mostly too rockin’ to translate well to an [...]

[Read more →]

The legendary Ed’s Basement shows were before my time as a New Englander, but I suspect their vibe was perfectly nailed based on my experience with house shows, loosely curated open mike nights, and underground clubs and art spaces. Last Saturday evening at TT’s felt like a Sunday afternoon or Tuesday night at one of [...]

[Read more →]

Friday’s performance was just the tonic for folks who’ve seen Robyn Hitchcock numerous times in the past. The setlist was primarily drawn from his magnificent first (mostly) acoustic album, 1984’s I Often Dream of Trains. He was accompanied by recent frequent accomplice Tim Keegan on guitar and vocals, and (former member of The [...]

[Read more →]

Back in April, I wrote this about Big Dipper:
But if they pull a “Mission of Burma”-style return to active duty (and I hope they do), I would love to see/hear them again when they have another few shows under their belt, hopefully in a better-sounding room, and when I’ve had a chance to rein in [...]

[Read more →]

Great Plains is the band that ruined my life. You might know their signature “Letter to a Fanzine” as the “Why do punk rock guys go out with new wave girls?” song. But I know it as the Song of the Big Lie:

You like everything that comes out on SST
You like everything that comes out [...]

[Read more →]

The first time I saw The Magnetic Fields was such a profoundly moving experience that even after several years, I have trouble distilling a coherent description of what was so magical about it. It was very warm and human, almost disquietingly intimate — perhaps a bit like eavesdropping on the quiet evening gathering of a [...]

[Read more →]