Welcome back! https://trouserpress.com/forum/index.php Sat, 30 May 2026 16:16:48 -0500 Phorum 5.2.23 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71353,71353#msg-71353 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71353,71353#msg-71353 "Connection" - Elastica (by request)
"Countdown to Shutdown" - The Hives (for singer Howlin' Pelle Almqvist's birthday)
"Radio Silence" - Thomas Dolby

"I Shouldn't Have Tried to Leave Without You" - The Speedways
"Ever Fallen in Love?" - Buzzcocks (by request)
"Space Is the Place" - Dolstad
"Pictures of Matchstick Men" - Status Quo (for guitarist Francis Rossi's birthday)

"Love Is Noise" - The Verve (for bassist Simon Jones' birthday)
"Moonshine" - L7
"Heart in Your Heartbreak" - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart (by request)
"In My Head" - Heavy Bloom

"Into Your Arms" - The Lemonheads (by request)
"White Light/White Heat" [BBC archive] - David Bowie
"The Shock of the Lightning" - Oasis (for Noel Gallagher's birthday)

"Generate the Ohno" - Y
"Spoilt Victorian Child" - The Fall (for bassist Greg Hanley's birthday)
"She's a River" - Simple Minds (for drummer Mel Gaynor's birthday)

"Dirty Martini" - Joe Jackson
"Breather" - Chapterhouse (by request)
"Maid in Heaven" - Be Bop Deluxe
"You Can't Turn Away" - Crow

"Your Kind of Love" - The Stems
"Think It Over" - The Neighborhoods
"Outside My Door" - Can (for keyboardist Irmin Schmidt's birthday)
"Twenty Flight Rock" - Robert Gordon and Link Wray

"What Difference Does It Make?" - The Smiths (by request)
"Lady Blue Eyes" - Micah & the Mirrors
"Too Many Creeps" - Bush Tetras
"Goodbye, Goodbye" - Oingo Boingo (for Danny Elfman's birthday)]]> Delvin Trouser Press Sat, 30 May 2026 09:27:03 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71351,71351#msg-71351 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71351,71351#msg-71351 this show!

Shiho Yabuki-“Autumn Leaves”
Seefeel-“Until Now”
Nesa Azidkhah-“We Don’t Share The Same Dream”
Bill Orcutt & Mabe Fratti-“Todo puede ser error”
Elina Duni & Rob Luft-“Yumeji’s Theme and Sleep Warm & Safe”
Magic Tuber Stringband-“Where The Place Becomes Forgetting”
Benny Bleu-“I’ve Endured”
Marisa Anderson-“Quodlibet”
Ted Lucas-“You’ve Got the Power”
Ed Askew featuring Sharon van Etten-“Gray Air-o-Plane”
Broselmaschine-“The Old Man’s Song”
Jacqueline and Lindsay-“Night Spinner”
Edwin Starr-“Ball of Confusion”
SLIFT-“A Storm Of Wings”
Fauna-“Frusen Mossa”
Gnoomes-“Foreign Agent”
Saint Just-“You Betta”
LinLin-“Blacc”
Tayna-“Vena”
Juana Rozas-“Botones”
Günier Künier-“Kes”
Soft Cou-“Mystical Flirtation”
Charli XCX-“SS26”
Sonny Rollins-“Alfie’s Theme”
Cecil Taylor-“Little Lees (Louise)”]]> steevee Trouser Press Sat, 30 May 2026 00:10:13 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71346,71346#msg-71346 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71346,71346#msg-71346
He's touring with the same band he's had since the Fast Forward Tour in 2016: Teddy Kumpel on guitar (dressed to kill in a purple double-breasted suit, dark turquoise fedora and bright orange shirt), Doug Yowell on drums (who dressed tastefully in a red brocade vest over a white shirt) and the one & only Graham Maby on bass (who, to be honest, looked rather slovenly by comparison). A fifth musician, Felipe Fournier, is on board this tour to play percussion and vibraphone. They played five songs from Hope and Fury, along with a few other selections from JJ's post-Eighties releases. They also threw in a Bowie cover during the encore. The rest of the set -- nine out of eighteen songs -- were taken from his more famous recordings.

The concert setting brought a lot of energy to the newer songs (which, honestly, sound a bit "closed-in" to my ears, in their studio versions). Not surprisingly, the bulk of the time he spent talking to the crowd, introducing the songs, was devoted to his later songs. He gave a rather long discussion about the song "The End of the Pier," framing how its lyrics are set in two separate eras -- first in the years after the first World War, when the music-hall acts would play at venues situated at the end of the pier in seaside towns, and then a century later, with the piers still there but the venues long since replaced with tourist shops and video arcades. Talking about those bygone days, Joe recited a list of music-hall stars, asserting that those were the finest entertainers of their era.

And as an aside, he joked, "I'm sure Max Champion drew quite a crowd too." It was a reference to his previous album, What a Racket! -- a collection of songs that Joe wrote in the music-hall style, alleging them to have been written by the fictitious character Max Champion. That album is kind of a weird twist on the whole "nostalgia act" concept. And the jokey reference got a pretty good laugh from the crowd.

SETLIST:
Is She Really Going Out with Him? (JJ solo)
It's Different for Girls (JJ and Graham)
Welcome to Burning-by-Sea
I'm Not Sorry
Another World
Fool
When You're Not Around
Fabulous People
Sunday Papers
The Face
Strange Land
Be My Number Two
Real Men
End of the Pier
Target

ENCORE:
Scary Monsters and Super Creeps
You Can't Get What You Want
Hometown (JJ solo)

No opening act.]]> Delvin Trouser Press Fri, 29 May 2026 15:13:13 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71345,71345#msg-71345 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71345,71345#msg-71345
This morning, I had a chat with a close friend, someone I've known since college. He's a fan from way back too, but he's given up paying to see Joe onstage in the past dozen years. His reason: he plays too much new stuff, tour after tour, and not enough of the fan favorites.

I told him that I can't blame JJ for wanting to keep writing & recording songs, and for wanting to play those songs when he goes on tour. To me, that's a big part of what's kept him interesting (and interested). It's a big reason why I've kept going to see him when he comes to town: he can be counted on to keep things fresh. If he didn't do that, he'd just be a nostalgia act.

My friend countered: "I understand the desire to make new music. What he has failed to understand, though, is that he IS a nostalgia act. He hasn't had a hit in this century. A lot of bands will play maybe three songs off their new album and then focus on making the crowd happy. He doesn't."

I didn't counter that, because I didn't have time to continue the discussion. But it was clear by then that my friend hasn't enjoyed Joe's later work as much as he still loves Look Sharp!, I'm the Man, Night and Day or Blaze of Glory. No denying that those albums are classics -- at least to Joe's fans -- but hey, I've found plenty to enjoy in his post-Eighties work. He's definitely not in the same league as, say, The B-52's. (I saw them last month, and I'm super-glad I did, but it's impossible to deny that they're treading the nostalgia circuit ... and doing it to increasingly diminishing returns.) And as for "making the crowd happy"? Well, I sure didn't hear anyone complaining about the show, on my way out of the venue or walking through the crowded Seattle sidewalks, or on the light rail heading back north.

Rush is another band that had been around for a long time, doing their best to produce new music that would measure up to their earlier fan favorites. Their best post-Seventies work may not have drawn huge cheers from the audience, and I have heard at least one longtime fan say, "Just for one night, I wish those guys would go totally retro." But their efforts kept them interested, as well as interesting. (And now, with Geddy and Alex going out on tour as Rush, with a new drummer but no new music? NOW they could be called a nostalgia act.)

So, does a band become a nostalgia act when they stop making the effort (or even going through the motions) to produce new music? Or does its audience decide the band's "fate," based on sheer popularity of their new music?]]> Delvin Trouser Press Fri, 29 May 2026 21:05:49 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71334,71334#msg-71334 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71334,71334#msg-71334
Devo - Now It Can Be Told: DEVO at the Palace 12/9/88
A three-sided live album recorded a few years after their early '80s peak. It opens with a mostly unplugged rendition of "Jocko Homo," recasting it as a folk song. From there, it goes into songs from Devo's prime era, alongside newer songs from their debut Enigma release Total Devo, and a dismal song called "It Doesn't Matter to Me," all played at drastically slower tempos with distinctly un-Devo-esque arrangements. I mean, forget about their lounge-lizard sets as "Dove, the Band of Love," or their E-Z Listening releases; everyone was in on the joke with those. The sluggish arrangements on Now It Can Be Told just come across as poor ideas. And the self-pitying stage patter doesn't help: "It's not easy to be a Devo fan these days ... A lot of people out there think Devo just isn't cool anymore." (When was that not true?) The spuds drop the mawkishness and pick up the tempos on Sides Two and Three, albeit with some irritating touches, like the false ending imparted to "Jerkin' Back 'n' Forth." (Maybe the sour aftertaste of Side One makes me less amenable to such feints.) And there's just no way for them to dress up the weak songs from Total Devo. Side Four has "Attention spuds! No groove! Do not play!" printed on the label, along with etched cartoons (purportedly) by the band members. The cover of my copy has a cut-out notch, so I couldn't have paid very much for it. Maybe it'll be a collector's item for someone else.

Joe Ely - Live Shots
From the juiced-up bar-room piano that opens "Fingernails" to the mournful climax of "Boxcars," this is much more like it for a live disc. The former Flatlander recorded this album with his band while they were opening for The Clash on a UK tour. (Joe, Mick and Topper appear in the gig photos on the inner sleeve.) The performances are consistently energetic and passionate. The audience's applause gets faded out after almost every track, but it sounds like Joe and his band received a warm response. Definitely a keeper.

French, Frith, Kaiser, Thompson - Live, Love, Larf & Loaf
The first collaborative effort between these four musicians has its weak points, mostly the songs fronted by Fred Frith's nearly tuneless voice. But musically, it's always entertaining and energetic. The whole thing has a Captain Beefheart vibe (not a big surprise, thanks to the participation of Magic Band alumnus John "Drumbo" French), which is something I always appreciate. Most of the selections fronted by Thompson's voice, like "Drowned Dog Black Night," Tir-Nan-Darag" and "A Blind Step Away," would've been standouts on his own albums of the time. And the goofy version of "Surfin' USA" is a hoot. Another keeper.

Face to Face
Face to Face - Confrontation
This Boston band's self-titled album came to me as a freebie from our local radio station; their other album has a cut-out notch in the cover, so I assume I got it at a discount. Not to be confused with the punk band of the same name -- this is an AOR-friendly quintet with a female singer named Laurie Sargent. She's not as consistently commanding a vocal presence as Pat Benatar, but she doesn't descend to the levels that Patty Smyth scraped in Scandal. (Sargent also is a fairly capable rapper on "Under the Gun.") And they add a lot of funky touches that make the overall results a notch more interesting than either. (Arthur Baker is listed as producer on two tracks on the debut, and on most of the second album.) The weakest tracks are the ones fronted by guitarist/singer Angelo Petraglia; he's a much less interesting vocalist. In the end, despite Baker's funky influence and Sargent's consistently impassioned performances, the band can't keep the stench of fake-rock from descending over the proceedings. (Just when I was about to say that it's not as consistently bad as Cutting Crew, a smarmy saxophone crops up to make the comparison more inevitable.)

54-40 - Show Me
Thanks to the geographic advantage, music fans here in Washington tend to be much more familiar with a wide range of Canadian artists than the music lovers further south of the 49th parallel. I don't remember ever hearing people in Colorado talk about Sloan, Metric, The Tragically Hip or 54-40 ... whereas those artists are a big deal here. The third album by this Vancouver quartet has a pretty big production, blending varying measures of heartland rock with U2-ish anthem rock. But it doesn't feel overwrought in that "execrable '80s way." (I thought I heard those cliched synthetic horns on one song, until I read the liner notes and realized one of the members does double on trumpet.) And the musicians know how to use dynamics, which is more than Cutting Crew or Face to Face can say. Yeah, my Washington friends know what they're talking about. Keeper.]]> Delvin Trouser Press Fri, 29 May 2026 08:44:16 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71333,71333#msg-71333 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71333,71333#msg-71333 Tougher Than Tough: The Story Of Jamaican Music box set which he compiled and wrote the liner notes for - he even supervised the mastering, in some cases providing rare records in his own collection as the mastering sources.]]> belfast Trouser Press Thu, 28 May 2026 14:22:24 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71330,71330#msg-71330 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71330,71330#msg-71330
Power To The People Festival: Bruce Springsteen, Foo Fighters, Dave Matthews, Tom Morello, Joan Baez, Jack Black, Dropkick Murphys, Cypress Hill, Killer Mike, Serj Tankian, Brittany Howard, The Linda Lindas, grandson, The Neighborhood Kids

I get the clear sense it won't be a "Springsteen show," but more of a Springsteen guesting with Tom etc. kinda show.]]> zwirnm Trouser Press Thu, 28 May 2026 10:50:58 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71323,71323#msg-71323 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71323,71323#msg-71323
Nor is the fact that Taylor Dayne is on the bill. Sure, her place in the musical food chain never amounted to much more than being a low-calorie Madonna substitute and her career for the last 35 years or so has mostly been filling the Nostalgia stage at Pridefests nationwide, but she doesn't feel out of place on a pseudo-Roxette 40th anniversary tour.

But the third artist announced to be on the tour is...Nick Lowe & Los Straitjackets???

How the heck did that come to be? Is it based on Roxette being named after a Dr. Feelgood song, giving them the most tangential connection possible to the pub rock scene that spawned Nick? That's the only possible explanation I can come up with, that apparent pub rock fan Per Gessle specifically invited pub rock's greatest living icon along for the ride. Otherwise, a lineup consisting of Roxette, Taylor Dayne and Nick Lowe is entirely inexplicable.]]> breno Trouser Press Thu, 28 May 2026 21:11:07 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71320,71320#msg-71320 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71320,71320#msg-71320
[stereogum.com]]]> zwirnm Trouser Press Fri, 29 May 2026 23:26:05 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71311,71311#msg-71311 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71311,71311#msg-71311
I had really nice original vinyl copies of ‘way out west’, ‘tenor madness’ and ‘saxophone colossus’.before sadly selling them. Any one of them is a nice starting point if he’s a blind spot for you.

Superb player and you could certainly do worse if looking for an alternative to Coltrane for a change. I always find jazz to be a nice change of pace when you need a break from the norm. So many good players (with fascinating stories).]]> Bip Trouser Press Thu, 28 May 2026 07:30:14 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71296,71296#msg-71296 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71296,71296#msg-71296 breno Trouser Press Sun, 24 May 2026 10:57:55 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71291,71291#msg-71291 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71291,71291#msg-71291
"Lost Control" - The Roxies
"Non-Stop Girls" - Radio Birdman
"When My Baby's Beside Me" - Big Star (by request)
"Gotta Get a Meal Ticket" - Elton John (for Bernie Taupin's birthday)

"Generals and Majors" - XTC (by request)
"Lager and Ale" - Kim Mitchell (by request)
"East West Highway" - Insect Surfers
"Have a Good Time (But Get Out Alive)" - Iron City Houserockers

"The Night Before" - The Beatles
"Last Nite" - The Strokes
"Tonight" - The Soft Boys
"Tomorrow Night" - Shoes

"Sick As a Dog" - Aerosmith
"He's a Whore" - Cheap Trick
"I'm Losing You" - John Lennon
"Muscle of Love" - Alice Cooper

"Walls" - Icehouse (for singer Iva Davies' birthday)
"Rat Race" - The Specials (for Jerry Dammers' birthday)
"Can't Get Enough of You Baby" - The Colour Field
"Life's a Bitch But I Like It So Much" - The Mysterines

"Pointy Shoes" - Cowboys International
"Space Truckin'" - Deep Purple
"Forget It" - Black Pearl

"Skintight" - The Donnas
"Underground" - Sparks
"They Got Me Covered" - Dirty Looks
"The Devil in His Youth" - Protomartyr

"Moonage Daydream" - David Bowie (by request)
"Prime Time" - The Tubes
"Moving in Stereo" - The Cars (by request)
"Into the Valley" - The Skids]]> Delvin Trouser Press Sat, 23 May 2026 12:29:16 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71289,71289#msg-71289 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71289,71289#msg-71289
The Best of Petula Clark
Neither of us remembers acquiring this record. It's a single-disc comp from 1969 on Pye Records. All lushly orchestrated stuff, all beautiful vocal performances, but none of it really left all that much of an impression on us. And really, what's a Petula Clark best-of without "Downtown"? This will hopefully be an ideal acquisition for someone else. (My wife said it's too bad that her mom can't handle a phonograph anymore; otherwise, it'd be in Media Mail on its way to her.)

The Del-Lords - Johnny Comes Marching Home
Enjoyable, no-frills rock 'n' roll, from the first track forward. Despite its NYC provenance, this band's music is closer to the "heartland" sound than to New Wave. Nothing particularly flashy here, but of course, that's what the heartland sound is all about, right? Neil Giraldo, Pat Benatar's husband and long-time creative partner, is the producer here. With his help, the quartet plays with a solid, muscular sound, and keeps the riffs and rhythms focused. Pretty good songs, too, although they seem to be stronger when they don't try making a statement: "Soldier's Home" isn't a bad tune, but its lyric seems a bit cliched. Overall, though, good stuff. Another keeper.

Howard Devoto - Jerky Versions of the Dream
Interesting to me that Howard Devoto (the original singer in the Buzzcocks) and Pete Shelley (the guy who took over that spot) both took their solo careers into more synth-pop explorations. But of course, that's the Eighties for ya. This album maintains some of the more arch qualities of Magazine's records, but with a lighter touch. It doesn't try to bowl the listener over, but draws them into its low-key arrangements of keyboards, lightly strummed rhythm guitar, synth-bass and drum machines, with occasional lounge-style piano and female backing vocals on a couple of tracks. In this audio environment, Devoto's voice carries kind of a lounge-lizard quality, to boot -- focusing more on his lower-register croon. I'm confident this one won't spend another ten years undisturbed on my shelf.

Dirty Looks
Much like The Del-Lords, this NYC trio makes its impression right from the first track. Unlike the aforementioned band, Dity Looks offers a tight new wave sound -- one with plenty of breathing room in the mix. Straight-ahead guitar-bass-drums, with organ adding color to a few songs and an earnest attempt at Police-style reggae-pop on "Disappearing" and rockabilly on "Drop That Tan." The singer, one of three clean-cut fellows on the cover, has a slightly whiny tone, but not so whiny that it distracts from the quality of the songs (although they do seem to stay stuck on the topic of girls who, in some way or another, are breaking their hearts). Not sure how this album ended up in my collection, but it's staying there for sure. (Caveat emptor: There's another band using this name, a second- or third-string glam-metal band from Erie PA.)

DMZ - Relics
A nine-song mini-album from a purportedly seminal* Boston garage-punk band, fronted by Jeff "Mono Man" Conolly, a singer/organist who would go on to more acclaim (if not more fortune) in the Lyres. That later band, as we all know from tales around the campfire, established itself in the garage/psych revival of the Eighties. This album comes from a similar righteous source, but it's more Stooges than Strawberry Alarm Clock, with Conolly's passion for wheezy organ riffs and barrel-house piano hammering matched by his no-holds-barred singing -- shifting from a guttural thuggish bass to a ceiling-tile-scraping high-end (think Jagger at the end of "Sympathy for the Devil," except not quite as good). Eight originals plus a 13th Floor Elevators cover. Overall, a cool rollicking ride.

---

*I wasn't there, so I'm taking someone else's word for it.]]> Delvin Trouser Press Wed, 27 May 2026 10:46:30 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71276,71276#msg-71276 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71276,71276#msg-71276 Blow Your Cool is severely warped. I looked on ebay today to shop for a replacement. There are a number of options that are reasonably priced, but there is also one for $3,399.00!!! It has to be some kind of mistake...it's just a standard item, nothing special about. Anyway, the listing allows for making an offer, so I submitted one for $8. We'll see how it goes.]]> zoo Trouser Press Thu, 21 May 2026 14:24:47 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71271,71271#msg-71271 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71271,71271#msg-71271
Cowboys International - The Original Sin
Methinks I grabbed this out of a used bin, thanks to an endorsement from somebody here on the board. (I'm not inclined to do any sort of search on the forum, to find out who recommended it. Come on, man, I'm too busy listening to records.) Great stuff that fits in with the sound of 1980, in all the best ways. A bit like the Boomtown Rats, with a hint (just a hint) of Springsteen on tracks like "Pointy Shoes." Really not a weak song on the whole album. Yeah, this one's definitely a keeper.

Cutting Crew - Broadcast
Frankly, I don't have any memory of ever hearing the whole album. I certainly remember "I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight," because adult contemporary radio has never let anyone forget it. I'm sure I married into this one. The band and its producer hewed faithfully to the audio template of the times. No drum sound is so big that it shouldn't be bigger; make sure the additional percussion tracks all sound unmistakably synthetic; if you have an effect for the guitar, then by all means, use it. If you have any effects left over that you didn't use on the guitar, be sure to use them on the singer's voice. Spray the whole thing with synthesizer polish and buff to a gleam. It all adds up to "that execrable '80s sound" that we've discussed on this board. (The producer, Terry Brown, made his name working with Rush on their first nine studio albums. In the Beyond the Lighted Stage documentary, one of the reasons Brown gives for parting ways with Rush is because the trio wanted to apply more synths to their music, and he just wasn't interested. Three years later, I guess he had bills to pay.) A few good songs manage to fight their way to the surface, but mostly, the production just smothers everything. The smarmy saxophone that colors a few of the songs on side two becomes the last straw. I didn't make it through the whole LP.

Dead Boys - Night of the Living Dead Boys
A German pressing of the legendary punk band performing at CBGB, or so the sleeve says. This is actually the first Dead Boys recording I purchased. Ira wrote the liner notes, but the printers included them in green ink on top of a very busy photo montage, making them damn near impossible to read. (I learned that Ira saw the Dead Boys only once. Sorry, Ira, but after the first sentence, it was just too much eye strain for me.) This one is a hit & miss affair, with very little bottom end (since they apparently didn't have a bassist at this point in their career) and a mix that veers between Stiv's blaring vocals and Cheetah and Zero's blaring guitars. The stage patter adds either entertainment value or a squirm factor, depending on your proclivities. (They greet the crowd with "We're the wonderful Dead Boys! Who wants to give us head?" The rest of their stage talk is less refined.) The TP review calls this "a punk documentary of some merit," but I think I'll stick to the two studio albums.

Dead or Alive - Youthquake
Another album that I'm sure I married into. (I do have some great memories of being on a dance floor with a beautiful girl -- an honest-to-goodness ballerina -- while "You Spin Me Right Round" was playing. But those memories still weren't great enough to compel me to buy the record.) "You Spin Me" still holds up, but taken as a whole, this album seems like an example of how to use the grooves and beats to pummel the listener. A few songs start off sounding a bit like New Order, and a few others start off sounding a little like Visage ... but on every track, the Stock-Aitken-Waterman team shows their determination to blow up those qualities to gargantuan size. (Motörhead may have coined the slogan "Everything louder than everything else," but in practice, S-A-W beat Lemmy & the guys to it.) I don't see myself wanting to listen to this one again in ten years.

De La Soul - 3 Feet High and Rising
This is one I bought after hearing some of its tracks played between sets at a Drivin' n' Cryin' concert in Birmingham. The music I heard charmed me enough to compel me to seek the record out the following week. And I guess I didn't play it all that many times after buying it, because the vinyl is still pretty darn shiny. This album remains one of hip-hop's most fun spot-the-sample playgrounds, and the raps have an unforced quality that keeps them more listenable than I tend to find in hip-hop. The overall groove, however, takes a while to get moving -- most of side one, in fact. Truthfully? I'm on the fence with this one. But hey, I was disappointed by Bouncing Off the Satellites, only to catch myself humming tunes from it the following day. So anything's possible.]]> Delvin Trouser Press Wed, 27 May 2026 18:07:42 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71263,71263#msg-71263 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71263,71263#msg-71263 The Joy Formidable
Miracle Theatre, Washington DC, May 16, 2026
(Rescheduled from March)

The two principals of the Welsh indie band The Joy Formidable, Rhiannon (Ritzy) Bryan and Rhydian Dafydd, have been pretty quiet for some years. They were really busy during the Obama administration (I saw them two times in 2012-2013) and immediately afterward, when their full-length 2011 debut The Big Roar was one of those rare, stomping rock albums of the 21st century that will absolutely hold up for listens well into the future. I loved that record unreservedly, and really liked 2013’s Wolf’s Law too, but they really seemed to skid a bit with AAARTH, their 2018 record, a challenging Welsh shoegaze-prog-thing that was decidedly short on hooks.

So I haven’t seen them in some years, but I love those early albums, and I’ve enjoyed some of their online releases, including Welsh-language versions of the early singles like “Chwyrlio,” the Welsh version of A Balloon Called Moaning and The Big Roar’s “Whirring” — the band has really leaned into its Welsh heritage.

This was a duo show in large part: Bryan and Dafydd playing acoustic and electric guitar over some prerecorded backing tracks. The band joked about the need to recruit a new drummer, “preferably one without a crim record,” according to Ritzy, but the songs held up very well in the format, which helped showcase Ritzy’s vocals and the band’s lyrics.

Their set opened with "The Everychanging Spectrum of a Lie” and “The Greatest Light Is the Greatest Shade,” two of the massive slow-burning ragers from The Big Roar. When I saw The Joy Formidable at their shows in the Obama administration, a lifetime ago, these shows were arena-scaled, lighting up the proverbial skyline like fireworks. They were not at this point a band that knew how to moderate its power or energy; everything was full throttle and heavily amplified. Since then, they've gotten older and they've also gotten better at modulating their sound.

There was still abundant energy and drive in the performance, mostly from the prerecorded beats and loops. But unlike the previous sets I’ve seen from The Joy Formidable, which were stomping arena-scale alternative rock of a sort not widely seen since the heyday of Smashing Pumpkins, this was a more contemplative affair.

The Miracle Theatre is blessedly a seated venue, as I had been very underslept and dealing with some medical issues. But despite the seated venue and the quieter setting, the show built a good sense of energy and momentum. But there was a casual sensibility of a couple bantering jokingly on stage, which led to several extended digressions and chatter amongst the band members, including a lengthy discussion about rescuing a cat the prior night, and Bryan’s apparent magnetic attraction for animals in need of rescue. (I saw their Instagram post; it is truly a really awesome looking cat whose name is Arno. I hope he finds a good home soon.)

In addition to Joy Formidable material, both Bryan and Dafydd have been doing their own solo work. Bryan did “Hugger,” the title track from a solo record, and Dafydd did “Make the Sign,” from one of his own records. One thing this set specifically did was showcase him as a composer and singer; in the electric band settings his prominence tends to fade behind Bryan as the frontwoman, but the work holds up well in the tradition of outer-British Isles songwriters like Glen Hansard, Gruff Rhys, and Damien Rice. He’s a fluid guitarist and a soulful lead singer as well.

The opening set from Bryan and Dafydd ended with a song I didn’t know, from Into the Blue, the 2022 record that kinda escaped me following their weird detour with AAARTH. With Dafydd on keyboards, they did “Interval,” a song that maybe foreshadowed the breakup of their band and departure of their drummer Matt Thomas, and the retreat from touring and albums that followed. I don’t really know Into the Blue but based on “Interval” and the title track, I should acquaint myself.

In the second set, Dafydd and Bryan were joined by a Utahn (but with Welsh ancestry!), Byron Owens, who contributed a hodgepodge of percussion and sound effects, including playing the musical saw and singing harmonies.

Surprisingly, they did Wolf’s Law’s “Maw Maw Song,” which I always found grating and clangorous, on the floor of the stage, purely acoustic and singing unamplified in campfire style with mandolin and acoustic guitar and tambourine. And you know, now I appreciate that song a lot more. Also from Wolf’s Law, “Little Blimp” was regrettably interrupted by Bryan’s coughing fit and a lengthy discussion of bodily fluids. They were never going to skip “Whirring,” their most popular song, or among their earliest hits, “Cradle,” in the set. But along with “The Leopard and the Lung,” the highlight of the second set was a surprisingly moving cover of the Kinks’ “Strangers,” from Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Pt. 1. I like the Kinks a lot — but I don’t listen to Lola often. So I had a moment of confusion, with the clear sense that I knew this song, before Dave Davies’ sweetly empathetic chorus answered the question.

T-shirts on display:
Bloc Party
Peter Hook and the Light
TJF x many, including some in Welsh
The Refused
Vampire Weekend
The Killers]]> zwirnm Trouser Press Mon, 18 May 2026 20:25:45 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71253,71253#msg-71253 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71253,71253#msg-71253
"Modern Times" - Code Blue
"Attitude" [live] - The Kinks
"Let Down" - Radiohead (by request)
"Gepetto" - Belly (by request)

"Alice's House" - The Psychedelic Furs
"Selling the Drama" - Live (by request)
"Unlearn This Hatred" - New Order (for bassist Tom Chapman's birthday)

"Switchboard Susan" - Nick Lowe (by request)
"Every Planet We Reach Is Dead" - Gorillaz (by request)
"Don't Take My Car Out Tonight" - The Hooters

"Virginia Plain" - Roxy Music
"The Three Sunrises" - U2
"The Heart's Filthy Lesson" - David Bowie
"Sat'day Night in the City of the Dead" - Ultravox

"Third Uncle" - Bauhaus
"America Is Waiting" - Brian Eno and David Byrne
"Space Junk" - Devo
"King's Lead Hat" - Brian Eno (by request)

"Words Fail Me" - The Sound
"Knife in the Marathon" - Breaking Circus
"Seeing Red" - Linda from Work (by request)
"Return the Gift" - Gang of Four

"Sweet Bird of Truth" - The The (by request)
"Good Intentions" - Toad the Wet Sprocket (by request)
"Stone Cold Sober" - Rod Stewart

"All I Did Was Dream of You" - Beabadoobee (by request)
"Wouldn't It Be Good" - Nik Kershaw (by request)
"Soho" - Brand X
"Tomorrow Never Knows" - Monsoon (by request)]]> Delvin Trouser Press Tue, 19 May 2026 14:41:22 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71252,71252#msg-71252 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71252,71252#msg-71252 a link to my latest episode, traversing indie pop/rock, rap and Cabaret Voltaire's one new song.

The Hobknobs-“Easier Listening”
Miaow-“When It All Comes Down”
The Tubs-“Fade To Black”
My Best Unbeaten Brother-“The Cracks and Creases and The Mistakes”
Paloma Morphy & EMJay-“qué ves en mi?”
Nwakke featuring Aloisius, Darkmarik & abi asia-“I Need U In A Positive Way”
Serebii featuring KAJJA-“Bends Not Breaks”
Miharu Koshi-“Santaman No Mori de”
Moderator-“Dark Art”
Isaiah Rashad-“Act Normal”
Kehlani featuring Clipse-“No Such Thing”
PS Hitsquad featuring Cristale-“Popeye”
Khmeii-“BPD (Best Pussy Disorder)”
Cypress Hill & Mellow Man Ace-“Campeones”
Leak Bros-“See Thru”
Fatboi Sharif & Child Actor-“How to Disinfect a Live Grenade”
Onna Kodomo-“Aoi Hata”
U. S. Steel Cello Ensemble-“Sound of Nothing”
Delphine Dora & Jerome Bouvet-“Montfarville V”
The Sea Plus-“Hawksbill Sea Turtle”
Boards of Canada-“Tape 05”
Alabaster De Plume-“Glass”
Vic Bang-“Curva”
Tyler Friedman-“Jlaljar”
Cabaret Voltaire-“Tinsley Viaduct (live)”
Mahavishnu Orchestra-“One Word”]]> steevee Trouser Press Sat, 16 May 2026 00:19:09 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71249,71249#msg-71249 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71249,71249#msg-71249 Heavenly
Black Cat, Washington, DC, April 16, 2026

Heavenly were a band that I always admired more than I loved, but there were certain moments that I did deeply love, most of which appeared on a single EP in the year 1993.

It's now 2026, and somehow, the band is not only returning to American audiences, but in some ways has an visibility that it never enjoyed back in the middle 1990s, when it was always very much a niche taste.

Heavenly is the band that was the textbook definition of twee, and twee was never cool. Twee was derided as sexless and childish and naïve, in an era where the prevailing trend in alternative rock was one of assertive masculinity or sultry femininity, cynicism, and worldliness. Heavenly’s weirdly wholesome alternative — vaguely androgynous boys and Amelia Fletcher in her winsome tomboy haircut, singing seemingly simple paeans to connections and friendships — seemed somehow punk in its naïveté. It was undeniably punk in its business models, for sure: friends and mutual admirers in places as far-flung as Cambridge, UK, Olympia, Washington, and Sydney, Australia somehow making a transnational microscene in the era of zines and tape trading and primitive Usenet groups. It wasn’t my scene, to be sure. I never had a scene, I am too square and detached and analytical, and boringly hetero. But I admired it.

The songs that I loved from Heavenly appeared mostly on a single five-song CD EP, which to my great dismay, I discarded at one point when it seemed like physical media were less needed once I put the songs on my iPod. The 1993 K Records EP not only had “P.U.N.K. Girl,” but the utterly unforgettable “Hearts and Crosses,” in which a teenage girl’s dream of romance and intimacy is cruelly crushed in a violent date-rape, all sung to an irresistibly sing-song melody. It also had the rippling early single, “Atta Girl,” among others. Man, I miss that little five-song CD with its smiling cover art badly.

Anyway, despite my love for that particular EP, I didn’t listen to other Heavenly music much; I owned Le Jardin de Heavenly and maybe another, but that was it. But over the course of some decades, I developed a weird, asynchronous, unrequited, parasocial fondness for Amelia Fletcher as I learned more about her, the sad fate that befell Heavenly with the suicide of her brother and bandmate Mathew, her prolific recording career, and her amazing alter-ego: She has one of the most fascinating resumes in indie music, an economics faculty member at University of Anglia, recognized as a Commander of the British Empire for her contributions to UK labor and public sector economics research. You have to read her interview in the Oxford Student about these two remarkable careers. Seriously, I have some weird crush at this point for a woman I’ve only spoken to in passing twice, at two of her own bands’ shows.

I actually have listened to a lot more of Fletcher’s non-Heavenly work in recent years: Her first band, Talulah Gosh, the great Marine Research one-off record from 1999, the pandemic-era Catenary Wires duo with husband Rob Pursey, and the brattily sardonic Swansea Sound project with Hue Williams of Pooh Sticks, which toured near DC in 2024. But I didn’t think I was ever going to get to see Heavenly in concert, until bizarrely, “P.UN.K. Girl” became a source of a TikTok microtrend a few years ago, which Fletcher and Rub Pursey’s daughter had to call to their attention. (As someone who literally has never used TikTok, I was actually fascinated just now to see how many people repurposed the song into everything from lesbian melodrama to Japanese anime to video game footage. There are thousands of these things. And then the same thing happened with “Me and My Madness,” from The Decline and Fall of Heavenly.)

So Heavenly is back! Or, in the British usage, I guess you would say that Heavenly are back. This year’s Highway to Heavenly (truly, a genius album title from a band with many good ones) has a lot of great, bittersweet songs; many of them are in their sing-songy twee style but looking at their lives as grown men and women in their sixties rather than precocious teens and twenty-somethings. “Portland Town” was their first single in decades and it’s about exactly what you’d think: their fondness for Portland, Oregon, as a city that cherished art and music and individuality in self-expression. If that sounds like a Portlandia episode that’s not wrong. I lived in Portland for five years in the early 2000s and saw many likeminded music acts there during those years, and the video is a rush of nostalgia.

At the Black Cat, the band started their set with “Portland Town,” in a show that was very heavy on new material — much of it very good! “Scene Stealer,” “Deflicted” (a made-up word, but a very good song), and their tribute to their own record label, “Skep Wax,” were all really fine songs — punchy pop with a lyrical bite that hits you like vodka in a syrupy mixed drink. Amelia Fletcher shared lead vocals with Cathy Rogers, also on keyboards. Fletcher (with her Ramones-themed guitar, with stickers spelling out HEY HO LET’S GO) clearly is the band frontwoman, but the dual-lead vocals added extra punch to the lyrics, especially on leads ing-ponging between the two women.

Despite the emphasis on new songs, one could sense the band’s audience was there to hear the older songs — and the audience was wild. There was an actual member of Bratmobile, wearing a Tallulah Gosh t-shirt. There were 50s riot grrl moms in tattoos with their teenage daughters holding handmade Heavenly posters. There were aging indie kids like me. I am pretty sure that several members of Fugazi and the old Dischord crowd were in attendance. Fletcher jokingly asked who had been in attendance at the old 9:30 Club on F Street when Heavenly last toured in the mid-1990s, and more than a few people shouted out their enthusiastic approval, but a lot of the audience wouldn’t have been born then.

(This is a throwback to the joke made by Swansea Sound’s Hue Williams when I saw the band in 2024: “This was clearly a Swansea Sound show, since at a Heavenly show all the audience members are 16.”)

Amidst the new material the crowd reacted in a big way to older material — “Hearts and Crosses” was amazing, as I would have guessed, and the audience also loved the sardonic “Sperm Meets Egg, So What?” (dedicated to a pregnant member of the audience) and “Me and My Madness.” I actually didn’t know a lot of the songs, and I never understood the appeal of “Space Manatee,” but people seemed to dig it. But there was no surprise that the energy of the show was building toward “P.U.N.K. Girl,” which closed the main set, and in the mini-encore, “Atta Girl” and “C is the Heavenly Option.”

“C is the Heavenly Option” is a truly odd song and I don’t really like it, but it was the closer. This is the song that cemented the weird Oxford-Olympia transatlantic twee alliance between Sarah Records and K Records, and it’s the one with Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening sharing the vocal in a weird quiz-game-format lyric. With no Calvin Johnson in attendance, Fletcher dueted with Stephen Stec, the male member of opening band, Lightheaded, who adopted a deliberately basso profundo voice to imitate Johnson’s vocal. It was fine, I guess, but I still prefer the stuff with just Fletcher and Rogers singing.

Full Heavenly setlist: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/heavenly/2026/black-cat-washington-dc-5b766bf8.html

Because it’s economical to have an opening band share labor with the headline act (and one member is indeed a labor economist), Swansea Sound did the first of two opening acts. Hue Williams of Pooh Sticks was in the fore and Fletcher seemed happy to stay more in the background for the Swansea Sound set, much of which was new material from when I saw their show in 2024. The Swansea Sound aesthetic and subject matter remains similar to what I witnessed a few years back: sardonic left-wing commentary on the music industry and economics of consumption and commoditization of art. Most of the Swansea Sound set was new material, about toxic tech bros, “Oasis versus Blur,” and commentary about the streaming economy.

Lightheaded, which was the middle act on the set, is almost purely a Sarah Records (and its ilk) tribute act, down to one of their song titles — “Me and Amelia Fletcher,” a track which they wrote years before they met Amelia Fletcher and toured with Heavenly. Their Bandcamp bio says it all; they’re “nj girls n boys power poppin their way through 8 toe tappers.” They’re on Slumberland Records, which has the home of the twee and indie-pop revival since 1989. Slumberland puts out a lot of fun records, most of them fairly slight and inconsequential but charming in their way. (Allo Darlin’ has their comeback album on Slumberland, for instance.) Lightheaded were pleasant-enough boy-girl pop, but there was just bit of a weird visual because Stephen Stec, the guy in Lightheaded, is a big dude, accompanied by some very small feminine women singing sweetly naïve indie songs. In an interview, the members of Lightheaded cite the Pastels, the Aislers Set, and similarly anachronistic pop exemplars as their inspirations, and I guess that’s the niche lineage in which they aim to establish themselves.]]> zwirnm Trouser Press Fri, 15 May 2026 15:46:04 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71246,71246#msg-71246 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71246,71246#msg-71246 zwirnm Trouser Press Sat, 30 May 2026 09:55:14 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71237,71237#msg-71237 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71237,71237#msg-71237 STEVE Trouser Press Fri, 15 May 2026 10:09:01 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71234,71234#msg-71234 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71234,71234#msg-71234 breno Trouser Press Thu, 14 May 2026 20:37:58 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71226,71226#msg-71226 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71226,71226#msg-71226 Snatching it Back: The Best of Clarence Carter is highly recommended.)]]> belfast Trouser Press Thu, 14 May 2026 14:09:46 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71225,71225#msg-71225 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71225,71225#msg-71225
FWIW the group plays pretty regularly in Chicago, which I didn't realize until recently.]]> belfast Trouser Press Sat, 16 May 2026 15:57:36 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71210,71210#msg-71210 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71210,71210#msg-71210
Black Pearl
I had heard this band's song "Forget It" on one of Rhino's single-LP Nuggets compilations. When I saw their album in the used bin, I decided to snap it up. A quick visit to Wikipedia says that Black Pearl was formed by three former members of The Barbarians (whom I knew from another album in the Rhino series, featuring their song "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl"). Most of this album is hard-driving rock 'n' roll with touches of soul and R&B, with a three-guitar attack and a Wall of Sound approach that you don't usually hear in garage bands. Bernie "B.B." Fieldings is often more of an exhorter than a singer, but he makes that work with the grooves here. (And that aforementioned Wikipedia page says that he was Janis Joplin's squeeze for a while, so perhaps she influenced his style.) For me, it all hits fine & true until the last song, "Reach Up," where they slow things down and apply more soft-loud dynamics to the sound. Nice to hear them changing things up a bit, until the singer goes into Reverend Bernie mode. Still, this album scored enough points with me to end up being returned to my shelf, instead of being consigned to the next used bin I encounter.

Brand X - X Trax
I must've married into this one. Honestly, I didn't remember having any Brand X in my collection. I know I've played them on my show in recent months, but I think I must've found downloads of a song or two. I don't usually get into prog, but this album hit the pleasure spots quite well for me. I'm also not usually into Phil Collins, but his vocal appearances on a few tracks worked well for me here too. Great sound quality, and the overall flow of the album was better than one usually anticipates for a single LP whose tracks are cherry-picked from eight different albums.

Breaking Circus - The Very Long Fuse
I think I bought this one as the result of a review that lumped this Minneapolis band together with Naked Raygun and a few other then-nascent punk bands in the Midwest. Their debut, a 12-inch with eight songs at 45 rpm, has plenty of hot guitar, some unusual chord progressions, but precious little melody across its eight songs. I like the back cover illustration, showing a percussion section of demon imps inside a rhythm machine. Still, I think this one is bound for the used bin. So sad, but there's just not enough to these tunes to sustain my interest for repeated listens.

Code Blue
I know I've played this band on my show in recent years, as part of a birthday tribute to bassist Gary Tibbs (who's also been in Roxy Music, The Vibrators, The Fixx, Adam & the Ants -- even mentioned by name in "Ant Rap"). But I'm sure I must've played a Code Blue song off a comp, as part of such a tribute ... because I simply can't believe I haven't played this LP more frequently. The TP review says the band had "some decent material," but IMO, that assessment falls way short. The album has plenty of great rockin' tunes in the power pop vein, and producer Nigel Gray brings a similar touch to the proceedings to the one he brought to The Police's first three albums (their best work, IMO). The instruments sound tight and crisp, and the overall production includes plenty of space for the instruments to move and grow and echo, rather than trying to fill every frequency. And the singer, Dean Chamberlain (formerly of The Motels), has a good voice. Definitely a keeper.

The Colour Field - Virgins and Philistines
I married into this band's debut EP, but apparently found this LP in a used bin and picked it up. (And looking at the price tag on the cover, I'm glad I got it at a good price, because this copy is pretty scuffed up.) As much as I've always loved The Specials, Terry Hall's voice was never my favorite element in that band. I think his voice is better suited to The Colour Field's more open-ended pop approach. Plenty of variety to this album, from the rollicking opener "Can't Get Enough of You Baby" and the rockin' "Pushing Up Daisies" to more pop- and even samba-oriented stylings. Not bad. Makes me wish I'd found a better copy.]]> Delvin Trouser Press Tue, 19 May 2026 19:32:20 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71209,71209#msg-71209 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71209,71209#msg-71209 Details.]]> Michael Toland Trouser Press Wed, 13 May 2026 16:04:27 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71199,71199#msg-71199 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71199,71199#msg-71199 lineup. Will we see John Lydon singing back up on 'Hot Girls in Love'? Or Peter Hook jammin' on 'Sister Christian'? The mind boggles. One interesting thing to note is that Plimsouls are billed with Peter Case. I didn't know he was going to start them up again.]]> Heff Trouser Press Mon, 18 May 2026 08:24:37 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71193,71193#msg-71193 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71193,71193#msg-71193 five crazy German post-punk ladies, and were a huge influence on European electronic and industrial music and by extension the American branches of those genres, but don't get the credit they deserve.

They kind of remind me of Polyrock, if Polyrock had lost their damn minds and were five hot West Berlin mädchen instead of buttoned-up New Yorkers.

[www.youtube.com]

[www.youtube.com]

[www.youtube.com]

Anyhow, in a better world, Bettina's passing would've been big enough news that I wouldn't just stumble across it almost two months late.]]> breno Trouser Press Sun, 10 May 2026 20:52:28 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71191,71191#msg-71191 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71191,71191#msg-71191
I was born in ‘66 so was too young for their heyday. I knew them from FM rock radio, and ‘who are you’ came when I was 12, but truthfully I knew Pete’s ‘empty glass’ much better… it was ‘mine’.

TP69 featured an imagined compilation of Who tracks, written by Ira. This article and the listed songs were my real gateway to The Who. I liked it because it didn’t just dwell on their big hits… it went deeper. I searched for these tracks in the vinyl bins!

I have a few songs I’d like to add to volume 2.

“Blue Red and Gray” and “Imagine a man”, both from ‘who by numbers’. Really nice introspective tracks. Better lp than I thought.

“I’m One” from Quadrophenia. Again, the whole album plays better than I remember. Songs like “the dirty jobs” surprisingly strong. Maybe my ears are maturing….

What Who tracks would you add?]]> Bip Trouser Press Tue, 12 May 2026 11:56:22 -0500 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71187,71187#msg-71187 https://trouserpress.com/forum/read.php?1,71187,71187#msg-71187 Sugar
Webster Hall, New York NY, May 4, 2026

When Bob Mould’s mid-1990s power trio Sugar announced its reunion tour, initially limited to shows in New York and London, I made the immediate decision to buy a ticket even before I knew that the shows would be extended to a full US reunion. I’m glad, too. Seeing Sugar in a venue the size of Webster Hall felt appropriate, but I fear their upcoming appearance at the Anthem in Washington DC will see their power and controlled vitriol sublimated into the cavernous atmosphere of venue, too large for most of its bands.

Sugar meant a great deal for me when I was in college, in Minnesota, close to Bob Mould‘s homebase, but never able to see the band in concert. I may even still own a folded Rykodisc poster of the Copper Blue album art. And while I’ve seen Bob Mould numerous times in the intervening decades, including performing many of the songs from Copper Blue, it seemed worthwhile to see the band in its original incarnation.

At Webster Hall, the crowd was thick with people who looked a lot like Bob Mould now does: balding white guys with beards and T-shirts, and a relative paucity of women in their 40s and 50s. Unlike some of the Mould shows I’ve seen, there seem to be fewer members of the bear community, but there were certainly some of them in attendance as well.

On night three of their residency at Webster Hall, there was no opening act, and they had celebrity DJs playing songs as the crowd gathered. On Monday, it was comedian and actor David Cross. (I was disappointed that I had missed Michael Azerrad on Saturday.) Cross played a mix of garage rock, 90s alt rock classics from the Beasties and Breeder and Public Enemy/Anthrax, and obscure psychedelic and punk tracks. But the audience was there to see the band, and given our ages and the band members’ ages, it’s a good thing that the show got off to a relatively prompt start.

I made a concerted effort not to look at the playlist from the first two nights, which apparently were replicated for every show. I wanted to be surprised. Sugar has one of the most impressive back catalogues of any band that existed for only two proper albums, plus an EP and an ambitious collection of b-sides. I could probably have thought offhand of 30 songs that I hoped to hear, and I did hear the vast majority of them, although there were always a few choice nuggets that went missing.

First things first, the band looks good. Bob Mould has carried off a transition into his stocky, bearded, sweating, avuncular self, and David Barbe is amazingly well preserved and equipped on both bass guitar and vocals. The only sign of the band’s age was drummer Malcolm Harris. Apparently, on the first night of the sets, he collapsed and fell backwards due to dehydration or exhaustion, but he seemed to hold up just fine for the show on Monday night.

Unsurprisingly, the set list hit most of the high points of Copper Blue, as well as File Under: Easy Listening, but there was an abundance of rarities, including B-sides, songs recorded only on their live album The Joke Is Always On Us, Sometimes, and a notable number of songs on which Barbe sang lead. It’s my understanding that the Sugar fanbase always had a strong sense of affection for his lead vocals, but he simply doesn’t have the charisma that Bob Mould brings to his lead vocals.

That said, the show was 90 minutes of almost unabating power pop amplified to a near-excruciating degree. Every Sugar album has hooks in abundance, with pummeling volume and an immense sense of Mould’s vindictive, self-abnegating, or desperate pleas for connection and affection. It was unsurprising that the crowd reacted with the greatest sense of excitement to the singles from Copper Blue, like “Hoover Dam,” and “A Good Idea”. But many of the b-sides and the tracks from FU:EL also got a ripping response. (They actually did more b-sides and Beaster tracks than they did from FU:EL.) I particularly was enthralled by how they did “After All the Roads Have Led to Nowhere” and “Where Diamonds Are Halos."

While this was a band show, and Barbe had a good number of lead vocals, there is no doubt that this is Mould’s band. He ravaged the stage, running back and forth and shredding on the guitar when not yelling himself hoarse on lead vocals. It was a fierce display and an exhausting one merely to witness.

I was up almost at the front of the stage, technically one line of people from the divider to protect the band and the photographers in the pit. And it was loud. As I have said before, one of the loudest shows I ever saw was Bob Mould at First Ave in Minneapolis, solo. The man likes volume. The sound was mostly good but the high whine of Mould’s guitar got painful after a time, and I bet the balance was better toward the middle or back of the audience.

There were three surprise guests on the final numbers: Patterson Hood, Craig Finn, and Jason Narducy. Hood absolutely ripped it up on Beaster’s “JC Auto” but I was a bit disappointed honestly by Craig Finn’s lead vocals on “Helpless” especially since he seemed to be reading the lyrics off a sheet. I’m also just not much of a fan of the Hold Steady. Narducy, whom I’ve seen play with Mould before, was fine on his performance of “If I Can’t Change Your Mind,” but it did cost the show a bit in terms of momentum to see Mould turn over the microphone to guests in what would otherwise be the big-finish encore. I think Hood/Finn/Narducy were there largely as devoted fans and admirers, but also to spare Bob Mould's vocal cords a bit — three nights of this kind of performance would risk shredding anyone’s throat, especially someone in his 60s like Mould. I think this also explains the surprising number of Barbe’s songs in the set.

The set was pure Sugar: no Hüsker Dü material, no solo Mould, and no covers (that meant no “Armenia City in the Sky”). Despite the substantial set, the show went by in a ninety minute blur, a blistering pace with barely any between-set banter, except when Mould introduced his guests and thanked the audience for sticking with him for so long.

A few of the songs I wish I had heard: “Needle Hits E,” “Changes,” “The Slick,” “Man on the Moon,” “Believe What You’re Saying …” wow, Sugar had a lot of great songs for such a brief discography.

Full setlist: Sugar Concert Setlist at Webster Hall, New York on May 4, 2026

In the audience I noted that lots of people seem to have come from DC, or Philly, or even flown in when this NY and London were only shows listed. I was next to folks who came up from the DC suburbs, and others (like me) who alluded to scheduling work trips around the show.

This was one of the best nights for t-shirts I’ve ever had. I guess if you’re attending a reunion tour of a 90s rock band, it’s your excuse to break out your collection of concert t-shirts. Here are a few I noticed:

Bangles
David Byrne
Bikini Kill
Sugar x many
Mould x 3
Hüsker Dü
Tori Amos (OK, that was me)
Marah
Social Distortion x 2
Shonen Knife
Nirvana x 4
Circle Jerks
ZZ Top
Voxtrot
Marty Stuart
The Clash
New Order x 2
Amy Rigby (not a shirt, an awesome tote bag)]]> zwirnm Trouser Press Sun, 10 May 2026 10:23:58 -0500