Sunflower Bean at Flamingo Cantina in Austin for SXSW 3-16-16 & coming to House Of Vans as part of the annual Brooklyn hootenanny known as the Northside Festival on Thursday 6-9-16

Love the Bean!

The Wednesday afternoon performance that you get a taste of in the accompanying video was a highlight of this year’s extremely fertile SXSW festival crop. Nick, Julia, and Jake indulged me with an interview behind the venue and then matter of factly got down to the on stage business. The influences are great ones as evidenced by Julia’s Marc Bolan tattoo and they’ve got all the tools – chops, song craft, and presence – to be the most exciting New York City export to the rock world in a long time.

The guys hail from Long Island while Julia grew up on the edge of Alphabet City in the East Village. Jake has since found some digs in Bushwick while, unless he made a recent leap, Nick was still living with the ‘rents!

I was introduced to this trio‘s music at WFUV where they recorded a session earlier this year in our Bronx studios. My radio compadres are also knocked out by the Bean and they were enthusiastically invited to perform at FUV’s Highline Bash at Milk Studios in Chelsea just a few weeks ago. I was thinking it was a treat to see them in such an intimate space as bigger stages in bigger venues can’t be far off. They revealed they are brewing up a headlining show in November atop the free show at House Of Vans coming a week from Thursday. That show is part of the Northside Festival, 6/9 through 6/12 that boasts an impressive lineup including Conor Oberst, Frankie Cosmos, Wolf Parade and Brian Wilson! The House of Vans stage is on the water in Greenpoint just blocks from where Sunflower Bean recorded Human Ceremony in the studios at Thump. The event the Bean will play at will be headlined by another crack local outfit Diiv and includes Torontonians BadBadNotGood and Los Angeles quartet The Paranoyds.

A parting shot –

Bloc Party at Bangers in Austin on 3-17-16 during SXSW & at Governors Ball this Friday, 6-3-16.

Bloc Party is one of the more interesting rock bands in the world. They are nothing but flavorful and modern; unpredictable from minute to minute within songs, from tune to tune on albums, and from album to album.

When frontman Kele Okereke and Russell Lissack began hatching an embryonic group in 1999, Okereke’s love for electronic music was not a secret. It’s part of their secret sauce that propelled the quartet through four studio albums from 2005 to 2012. Four ended up being the final album featuring original rhythm section of Gordon Moakes on bass and Matt Tong on drums. The dreaded phrase ‘indefinite hiatus’ was heard and the safe money was on no more Bloc Party as Okereke has been DJ’ing a lot more and producing tracks over the past five years. His last solo album, Trick, was the culmination of a lot of his ideas that drew from house and techno.

So…the new album Hymns is Bloc Party Mach II – or maybe that is Mark II – with Louise Bartle on drums and Justin Harris on bass. Bartle (born in 94) is a fresh face who has gigs with Selena Gomez and Eliza Doolittle. Harris is half of the duo Menomena and has roots in East Northport, Long Island. “Making music by myself is great but I’m excited about making music with other people,” said Okereke and pointed to the beauty of getting to other worlds glimpsed only by collaboration. Harris described the recording process as being quick and seamless.

Bloc Party is slated for Friday night at 8 on Randall’s Island. Governors Ball ’16 also includes Kanye, Beck, The Strokes, Miike Snow, Fidlar, The Killers, and Courtney Barnett among other delights. Here are all the set times for the 3 day romp.

PINS Set To Drop In On NYC

As a fan of PINS, having been exposed to their first record Girls Like Us as well as the follow up Wild Nights released last summer, I was determined to seek them out in Austin. Even though it wasn’t especially convenient to hop a cab out to the Salvage Vanguard Theater which was a little outside the downtown action, I set forth in its direction on the day I arrived in Bat City (Tuesday March 15, 2016) before the SXSW tornado could engulf me. It was a good call. A cool space including beanbags on the floor (say no more) and a lot of creative and talented women on stage participating in an all-day hootenanny dubbed Babes Fest.

Before the set, I had a chance to say hi to all five PINS: Faith Holgate, Lois McDonald, Anna Donigan, Sophie Galpin, and newest member Kyoko Swan. Faith and Sophie joined me for a quick on-camera chat and they duly headed to the stage to tear it up. PINS is part of an appealing triple bill with The Subways and Born Cages at the studio at Webster Hall this Saturday: April 16th, 2016 (The studio is a more intimate space than Webster Hall’s Grand Ballroom.)

PINS will also be unleashing a piece of wax, red wax no less, for Record Store Day on Saturday. It’s a new tune called Trouble which was a highlight of the Austin set as it features (as Faith reportedly said) Lois playing a Cramps-esque guitar part.

Basia Bulat, The Kills Impress At SXSW – On Way To NYC

I’m a relative rookie when it comes to Basia Bulat but got turned on to her not so long ago by hearing her stuff on WFUV and began to fall under her spell. I saw BB when she was in town just last month for the Tibet House Show at Carnegie Hall. She was mesmerizing playing the auto-harp and singing unaccompanied so I was on the case when she turned up in Austin this month for South by Southwest. Parish was the venue on the 16th where she was in excellent form as you can see. Jim James produced her fourth and most recent album. Bowery Ballroom will be her home on Friday. You could go –

The Kills shows in New York have always been good and vibey. I witnessed a couple over a handful of years and catching them in the act at a solid little Austin joint was a highlight of the festival. (Banger’s Sausage House and Beer Garden on Rainey Street was the place and it was an obvious St. Patrick’s night call.) A new record, their 5th since ’03, hits in June. Hince, by the way, has split with Kate Moss and he’s had repeated surgery on his hand. (Possibly hands…and I can’t tell you the cause.) This report says he had to relearn how to play. Catch em at Warsaw if you can but that’s a tough ticket.

Peaches told me she had promised herself she’d never play the South by Southwest music festival again. She turned up in Austin for the shebang a decade ago and wasn’t sure she needed to do it twice. Fortunately the inimitable Canadian/Berliner/Los Angeleno decided to break that promise and put on three shows which were among the most difficult to get into and most remarked upon of this year’s madness. Along with the show at Maggie Mae’s Rooftop on Tuesday 3-15-16, sharing some tequila and getting a chat with the omnivorous artist was a memorable highlight that future SXSW encounters will be measured against…

Peaches’ first album in six years Rub came out in September. It features appearances from Kim Gordon and Feist and may be her peachiest work yet. That is, after starting out making music herself using a groovebox…as she explained…she explored live instruments and having a band. Now, she’s back to doing it herself. Sometimes you have to go away so you can come back. In the interval between 2009’s I Feel Cream and Rub, she ‘got her ya-yas out’ by, for starters, performing a one-woman show version of Jesus Christ Superstar with the delicious title of Peaches Christ Superstar. She also took half a year to become fluent in phonetic Italian so she could sing the lead, surrounded by opera singers, in a production of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo. Peaches Does Herself – another genius title – was an ‘anti-jukebox musical’ meaning it was based on her contemporary work as opposed to reviving music of yesteryear. It started out as a live show and evolved into a film that played about 70 festivals around the world. Not enough for you? How about a book of photographs by Peaches’ photographer Holger Talinski that captures her performing as well as just living while giving a sense for her remarkable costumes and visual aesthetic. When I asked her if those projects seeped into the latest record or what she’s doing on stage now, she said to my surprise, absolutely not. Perhaps going outside her primary persona helped focus and re-define exactly what Peaches is.

SXSW 2016: Iggy Pop To Loretta Lynn To ASAP Ferg To Infinity And Beyond 3-15 through 3-20-2016

I’ve never seen a more exciting performer on stage than Iggy Pop. Therefore, my top priority in Austin was connecting with Ig along with his recently minted group spearheaded by his new mainman Josh Homme of Queens Of The Stone Age, Kyuss, Eagles of Death Metal, and Them Crooked Vultures fame. This pair was complemented by Dean Fertita (also QOTSA and Dead Weather), Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders and multi-instrumentalist Troy Van Leeuwen (QOTSA) and guitarist/bassist Matt Sweeney whose worked with a slew of artists from Bonnie Prince Billy to Neil Diamond. The Post Pop Depression album that came out this week and was recorded as a quartet of Ig, Josh, Dean, and Matt – is very much in the vein of The Idiot and Lust For Life. Those were the two albums, both released in 1977, that Iggy recorded with David Bowie in Berlin. If The Stooges with the throttle open was Iggy’s fastball then the sound sculpted at Hansa Studio by the wall was his devastating curve. Wednesday night on the ACL Live at the Moody Theater stage, the band exuded that vibe with the Post Pop Depression material and upped the ante by including the most essential songs from the Berlin deuce: Lust For Life (the opener no less), Sister Moonlight, The Passenger, and the showstopper served up with three guitars China Girl. It was glorious.

As this period in Iggy’s career was so strongly invoked, it’s likely blogger types will cast Josh Homme in the role that David Bowie played in Berlin: the co-writer and trusted second pair of ears who makes his own musical contributions and elevates the project. Such a comparison is apt but Iggy, as much of a deity as he is, is still underrated. Any hails of a ‘return to form’ would be made only by those who haven’t been paying attention to the outstanding albums he’s made in the last thirty years. See the Iggy-oozing charm of Naughty Little Doggy from 96, the criminally underrated Avenue B of 99, and – returning to the baseball pitcher metaphor, the delightful knuckleball of Preliminaires from 2009.

Peaches teamed up with Iggy on her 2004 song Kick It and when I spoke to her on Tuesday night, she mentioned she saw the man in Austin and he offered her kind words to the effect of ‘You’ll be ten feet tall on stage.’ That was pretty much the case as she easily stood out from the SXSW din. Full Peaches post coming tomorrow. Please also return here for upcoming reports featuring performance video and interviews with Thao of Thao and The Get Down Stay Down, Sunflower Bean, Bloc Party, Ra Ra Riot, and PINS. Enjoy the excellent work of my cohorts at WFUV too who covered scads of other worthy artists.

SXSW always offers choices. Too many choices. Sometimes you stay too long at one place and get shut out of another. I showed up at two separate hip hop showcases only to be turned away at the door so I missed Nas (oof!) plus Khaled, Just Blaze, and Pusha T as well as French Montana. At least I captured Harlem’s own ASAP Ferg on vid along with Marty Baller. His new album Always Strive and Prosper came out today. The accompanying video offers brief peeks Ferg along with The First Lady of Country Loretta Lynn, dynamite Brooklyn trio Sunflower Bean, and Baltimore’s intoxicating Lower Dens.

Public Enemy’s Chuck D coming over to say hi to Madisen Ward And The Mama Bear at SXSW in Austin was indicative of the kind of magnetism this mom and son folk duo have.  Their songs exist outside any specific time or place and they deliver them with affection and aplomb… The new record is called Skeleton Crew.

Before heading to Brooklyn for a Northside Festival show, rock duo Best Coast dropped by WFUV radio for a session.

Their gig (with 3 additional touring members) is this Saturday June the 13th; the multi-faceted event runs June 8 – 14 2015.

Prepare for the show by enjoying 2 interviews with the super fab Bethany Cosentino!

The new Best Coast album, California Nights, is immaculately produced pop that draws from, as Beth explains, an eclectic group of artists.  I spoke with Cosentino and her partner Bobb Bruno first in Austin during SXSW then again in The Bronx at WFUV.  HERE is a link to the substantial radio interview with in-studio performance in addition to the above 2 minute clip in the NY1 Sound Advice style…

London based rock quartet The Vaccines just unleashed their third album English Graffiti.  As the record wasn’t out yet when I saw them at SXSW, I was hearing songs like Dream Lover for the first time – and thinking they sounded great next to older material like Bad Mood.  Those two songs are featured here, shot on 2 cameras no less; thanks to KD at NY1 for the second!

When we spoke after the SXSW set in the Austin night, front man Justin Young spoke about recording the album in upstate New York with Dave Fridmann at Tarbox Studios…

Courtney Barnett was the ‘it’ girl at SXSW this year… everyone wanted to see her.  After I saw her, I wanted to see her again…and again!  Here are my favorite moments that will give you a good flavor for the indie rock singer-songwriter from Melbourne, Australia who will visit New York next week for 3 already sold out shows at the The Bowery Ballroom, showcasing her debut album Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit.