Summer Recap

Hey there!

I hope you’re settling into your fall routines nicely! I know I definitely love the fact that I have an organized schedule come every September;  however, I’m sure that you, like me, miss the indefiniteness of the summer a whole lot once the school year starts.  Since finals last May, I pretty much crammed my days full of as many live shows as possible…so today, to pay homage to the lovely (and sadly gone) days of summer, I’m just going to post some samplings of who I heard and saw over the past four months.

NEWPORT FOLK FESTIVAL

This just needs to be here.  It’s not like I sat in the audience with my jaw hanging open not breathing or anything. No, but really. These kids are not even in high school. What. (PS22 Chorus performs Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep”)

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Middle Brother (composed of the frontmen of Deer Tick, Dawes, and Delta Spirit) performed quite the set at NFF…basically, their entire repertoire. iPhone Dan thinks I should post different songs, but I like this one.  Really, they were all great, and they have an awesome range of mellow to upbeat, so if you’re interested, check out their page. (Middle Brother, “Million Dollar Bill”)

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VIKESH KAPOOR FEAT. MR. SISTER (LILYPAD LOUNGE)

Vikesh Kapoor, a BU grad (COM ’09), is pretty popular in the Boston area.  He’s been written up in BU Today and the Phoenix, and in 2010 he was nominated as one of Boston’s Best Folk Artists.  ”Willy Robbins” is one of those great story-telling songs, where you’re listening as much to the music as you are to the lyrics.

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You’ve heard me gush about Mr. Sister (Amelia Emmet) before, and I was lucky enough to see her again in August.  This is my favorite song of hers, from her album O, Sinister Force: “Hard Love”. So. Good.

That’s all for now, I think.  Next week: …we’ll see.  I had a plan, and then I realized my next show isn’t until next Thursday.  It’ll be a surprise.  Happy Tuesday!

Reese

A Re-cap and a Pre-cap

Hello blog readers!

Happy Wednesday! I’m super excited to be back–break was good, but it’s awesome to be posting again! So let’s get right to it:

Re-cap:
I have this one friend who knows the Boston music scene pretty well, and I get new music from him pretty consistently.  Over vacation, we saw Mr. Sister at the Middle East [Upstairs].  If you’ve never been, they have some awesome events coming up–it’s a really great venue, and it’s kind of behind/in? this restaurant, so you can grab a relatively cheap dinner and then go see a show. Anyways, Mr. Sister is great.  At their album release earlier this year, the lead singer (Amelia Emmet) gave out hand-embroidered ties! So cool, right? They also played with Spirit Family Reunion right before Christmas (SFR was here at BUC in November).  The show at the Middle East was technically another band’s CD release, but let’s be honest–I’m sure I wasn’t the only one there just to see Mr. Sister.  Said friend is kind enough to allow me to shoot videos of all the concerts we go to on his iPhone (see the Mumford post for more of those!), so here’s Mr. Sister at the Middle East:

Okay, so I’m also posting for you a lovely almost-20-minute audio clip.  It’s basically the entire show that isn’t on that video.  If you don’t have 20 minutes, might I suggest a skip to the end, around 17:10?  The finale was just Amelia and one of her bandmates, and it was pretty mind-blowing.

Thus concludes the Re-cap.  Oh yeah, sorry most of the video is sideways.  I’ll try to do better next time.  Next time is Friday, by the way.  See below.

Pre-cap:
Friday is the Decemberists! At the House of Blues! I think I’ve mentioned before that the Decemberists were introduced into (and subsequently rocked) my world a couple years ago by some roommates.  Well, these roommates of mine went to see the Decemberists that winter.  And I was very jealous.  Especially because I was the only one with a car and they had me pick them up afterwards.  Anyways, my grudge ends here, because they’re playing the House of Blues! Yay!

They released “Down By the Water”, a track from their new album The King is Dead, on NPRMusic a few weeks ago (it’s in a previous blog post). Now that the album is out, I can post a few more today; next Wednesday if I have videos, I’ll post those you.  It might be January, but we’re all over the Decemberists.  I know, terrible, terrible joke. Anyways:

Appropriately (especially in light of my bad joke), here’s “January Hymn”.  It talks about winter.  Which is fitting because we’re supposed to get another foot of snow tonight! It’s pretty mellow, but much more of their style than “All Arise!” (see below). And I’m pretty impressed with Colin Meloy’s vocals here.  Not unusual, he’s generally impressive, but still:

“All Arise!” is definitely much more down-homey than most of their other tracks, but the instrumentals are smooth and solid and Mr. Meloy, as always, comes through with the lyrics:

And last–for now at least–”Calamity Song”.  I just like it. Pretty standard Decemberists fare, but to be honest, they’re just kind of really awesome at what they do.

Okay, and finally, here’s Wye Oak–they’re opening the show Friday night.

I’m pretty excited.  Can you tell?

UPDATE: The King is Dead is #1 on the Billboard 200 with over 93,500 copies.  Yep.

Have a great rest of the week! Make sure to check back next Wednesday for video and audio from the show (and if I’m really lucky, a picture of me and Colin Meloy.  We’ll see.)

Reese