The audience at a Wakey Wakey concert is not what you would expect to see in the Bowery Ballroom for a Brooklyn based indie band. But this is not a coincidence. Wakey Wakey’s lead singer, Mike Grubbs, is somewhat of a cultural anomaly. After being seen performing in a Park Slope bar, by the executive producer of the CW’s One Tree Hill, Grubbs was approached to play a musician/bartender character named, coincidently enough- Grubbs, not a far stretch for this one time Schiller’s bartender.
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Jimmy LaValle has managed to do something that not just any brilliant creator can do. He has taken a static piece of artistry and made it living, breathing, and moving. At the sold-out Bowery Ballroom, LaValle’s decade-long career came to life, and not only was he able to accurately reproduce many of his blissfully ambient compositions, he was able to reproduce them on a larger scale, infusing each song with more emotion and meaning than can be found on any other musical medium. Continue reading »
There was a palpable anticipation as The Low Anthem took to the Bowery Ballroom stage Wednesday night. Entering a stage filled with instruments the now-four-piece appeared confident as they took to their first assignments. The group opened with “Ticket Taker” and from that point on the Bowery Ballroom transformed into what felt like a much smaller and more intimate venue. “We are going to play a lot of new songs for you” frontman Ben Knox Miller promised. As the night went on this came true and although the new songs were unfamiliar, they fit in to the rest of the set seamlessly, and offered a glimpse into what to expect from the band’s upcoming third studio album. Continue reading »
L-R Ben Little, and Hayden Thorpe of WILD BEASTS
If, this December, when you were tracking the annual lists of ‘best’ albums, you had the patience to scroll past the ubiquitous mentions of Merriweather Post Pavilion, you might have come across the bi-erotic image of two androgynous lovers. The disembodied lips on the cover of Wild Beasts’ Two Dancers, like the classic covers of Roxy Music, present a direct challenge to pop-music buyers: The sexual desires of the artist, and for that matter, the painful vulnerabilities that those desires expose, are ingrained in the music.
On Friday, Wild Beasts finally arrived in New York to support that album. On a bare stage, the band entered to a mash-up of Philip Glass and Sylvia Plath; referencing the contradictory nature of their staccato rhythm, and romantic voice. That’s the kind of cheeky, self-aware entrance you’d expect from an older Morrissey. But this was more like seeing The Smiths in their prime. The hush that frontman Hayden Thorpe commanded over a rowdy New York crowd represents the type of talent that would, in an era before American Idol, create a pop-superstar. Nuanced and expressive, his voice literally dominated the room. The other three members of Wild Beasts did more than hold their own. Based upon the crispness of each transition, it’s clear the band’s singular style was borne from unseen hours of rehearsal and revision.
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