Photo Credit: Gus Philippas.

New York based Indie Rock trio Sunflower Bean appeared at WFUV for an interview and live performance of 3 songs taken from their new album Mortal Primetime: “Nothing Romantic,” “Look What You’ve Done to Me,” and “Champagne Taste.”  Hear them along with the chat HERE.

The Bean is back!

New York’s own Sunflower Bean released their first new original music in almost two years last month – a single called I Was A Fool.  After wrapping up a tour with London’s Wolf Alice recently, they played a headlining show on Thursday night in Brooklyn.  Here’s how it looked…

That’s guitarist/vocalist Nick Kivlen wearing the Pete Townshend style coveralls, bassist/vocalist Julia Cumming resplendent in red, and drummer Jacob Faber who cut his hair since the last time I crossed his path at a WFUV bash in May.  Sunflower Bean released their first album Human Ceremony in February of 2016 on Fat Possum.  Their influences are impeccable!   The evidence is in their songs but also their choice of cover material.  On their four song EP From The Basement which followed their debut last September, they put their spin on Old World by The Modern Lovers, Harvest Moon by Neil Young, Shine A Light by Spiritualized, and Life’s A Gas by T. Rex  None of those made the setlist on Thursday but we did get a handful of promising new songs so I’m optimistic about a new album in 2018.

The venue was the 675 person capacity ‘Hall’ at Elsewhere in Bushwick which opened only a few weeks ago on Halloween night.  The Johnson Ave nook, a few blocks off the Jefferson stop on the L train, is also houses a more intimate 200 person capacity space called ‘Zone One’ and plans to open a 500 person capacity roof deck with Manhattan skyline views this spring.

Here’s the Andy DeLuca directed vid for the new single I Was A Fool.  Dig Nick’s head-spin!  

The trio formed in Brooklyn in 2013 but the fellas go back further than that, to Glen Head on Long Island…as Nick explains in the interview seen in the video below.  It features my chat with Sunflower Bean and a taste of their performance at Flamingo Cantina in Austin for the South by Southwest festival in March of last year.

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 –

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.