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Author: zwirnm
Date: 03-20-12 22:37
Please answer this all-important question: Does JF use a definite article "the" before their name? Or is it a "The Name of this Band is Talking Heads" kind of thing?
Seeing them on Monday...
Post Edited (03-30-12 16:36)
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Author: Philippe
Date: 03-22-12 10:28
Holy crap ! BHL is frequenting this board ever more frequently. His musings about TP era bands will likely make up a large part of his next treatise on the crisis of European solipsism.
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Author: HollowbodyKay
Date: 03-22-12 10:40
Quote:
Holy crap ! BHL is frequenting this board ever more frequently. His musings about TP era bands will likely make up a large part of his next treatise on the crisis of European solipsism.
Just you wait. Perhaps one of these days he'll end up citing Spinal Tap in a record review as is they were an actual band.
A jaded, world-weary record review ... laced with ... ennui.
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Author: erikalbany
Date: 03-22-12 18:19
Y'know someone was talking to me about Bernard-Henri Lévy the other day and. . . . . . . zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Oops, sorry, I dozed off there for a bit. ANYWAY, he was saying how Lévy's. . . zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Nope, can't fight it. G'night.
[Proud Philistine since 1969]
Post Edited (03-22-12 18:20)
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Author: HollowbodyKay
Date: 03-23-12 10:41
Sorry. BHL is my idea of the ... how you say? "Soulagement comique?"
I just loved the idea of a quack philosopher having an opinion on a (ahem) learnéd discussion of Gilligan's Island.
It's also set me to singing punk tunes with a loungy French accent all week. Especially while washing the dishes or scrubbing the kitchen fl-- Zzzzzzzzzzzz.
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Author: breno
Date: 03-23-12 14:37
Skipper: "Who dropped this napkin?"
Gilligan: "Maybe it was a gorilla!"
Skipper: "Would a gorilla use a napkin?!?!?!?!?"
Gilligan: "If he's neat."
My friends, there is more practical wisdom to be gleaned from Gilligan than from any so-called "philosopher," be he quack or otherwise.
But damn, back to the topic at hand! Ritzy and the boys formidable were in StL last night, with A Place to Bury Strangers opening! and somehow I was completely unaware of it until this morning. I would've thought my spider sense would tingle any time that little Welsh pixie got within 300 miles of me, but apparently not.
Oh well. It was a Community night anyway.
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Author: erikalbany
Date: 03-23-12 15:44
"I would've thought my spider sense would tingle any time that little Welsh pixie got within 300 miles of me, but apparently not."
That's not a tingle, Brad; that's the restraining order radius kicking in ; )
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Author: Delvin
Date: 03-23-12 17:44
I had to miss TJF's Denver gig last weekend, but my wife went, and said the group definitely measured up to the show we saw last fall. Sound quality was poor, but she & her friends were standing way over to one side, so that may have factored into it.
Also going to miss the Kaiser Chiefs show in Seattle tonight. (Darn cold ...)
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Author: zwirnm
Date: 03-30-12 16:34
Writeup ..... any resemblance to journalism is completely unintended:
I became aware of the Joy Formidable almost exactly one year ago when NPR's All Songs Considered starting featuring them, including a live set at SXSW. The Joy Formidable hit a lot of sweet spots for alt-rock listeners who grew up in the 1990s - spiky and propulsive pop smarts, shoegaze drone, quiet-loud dynamism, and Ritzy Bryan, a charismatic frontwoman and guitarist who draws on the lineage going from Chrissie Hynde to Elastica. The well-titled full-length debut The Big Roar also was unabashedly from the same outer-British-Isles "big music" tradition of Simple Minds, the Waterboys, and U2. The band sounded from the outset like it belonged in front of massive audiences, on the basis of sheer sonic propulsion alone.
They were at the 9:30 Club on Monday, in their first headlining tour through DC since they had built an expanded audience touring with Foo Fighters. The stage was set with a pronounced maritime theme - fishing nets, waves projected on the back wall, and even a miniature lighthouse with rotating pulsing lights. It could have been a chintzy Red Lobster appearance but it actually made sense. They have been just been recording their second album in Maine, and course North Wales is similarly a rough, oceangoing rural region on the North Atlantic.
With a limited repertoire - the band has only one full-length album, plus a debut EP and a slew of remixes - there wasn't room for a lot of variety. They performed almost all of The Big Roar, including their single "Whirring" twice (once in the main set, once in the encore). "Heavy Abacus" opened the set, and the audience sang along to most of the chorus. "The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie" and the Twilight soundtrack contribution "Endtapes" had them more in slow-burn mode. The drumming was impressive, and for a three-piece, the Joy Formidable do make a staggering amount of noise. They do something that Public Enemy was the first to do - make a siren wail the base structure of a riff, which makes "Abacus" and "The Greatest Light is the Greatest Shade" so naggingly insistent.
As you might guess, this is not a band that can smoothly move into a lower gear. The Big Roar is bracing and gripping, but it's not exactly subtle. That said, during the encore they demonstrated a wildly different strength, with an acoustic ballad called "Silent Treatment" that was one of the highlights of the show, and will be featured on their next album. But of course, this is a band unafraid of excess, whether that's a harp on stage - used only once for a thirty-second introduction? - or a gong which Ritzy Bryan pounded gleefully in the encore.
I have scarcely ever disliked an opening act more than A Place to Bury Strangers. First off it was one of the most painfully loud sets I've ever heard (the loudest? Bob Mould. Acoustic.). The strobe lights were equally painful and might've induced seizures in vulnerable concertgoers. More than that, they were like the Explosions in the Sky instrumental rock ethos transported to an entire set composed only of the closing drum and guitar solos from the final moments of a headlining show. There is a reason why people listen to this stuff for only a moment or two at a time. More than that is painful.
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