New York Music Blog

Here be monsters

​It seems that even people you'd think would hate that Monsters of Folk record warmed to it -- more monster, less folk, I guess. The M. Ward/Conor Oberst/Jim James/less famous dude partnership hits United Palace Theatre tonight and the Beacon Theatre Sunday.

Last night.

Say Anything
Highline Ballroom
Wednesday, November 4

A partial list of emphatic statements sung in joyous unison by the predominantly teenaged, surprisingly female-centric crowd at tonight's narcissistic mall-punk extravaganza:

​Most definitely tonight's big whoop is Fucked Up, a/k/a that "brisk punk band from Toronto, with an unpublishable name," who will regale Brooklyn Masonic Temple, a/k/a New York's best venue for massive hearing loss, with a painstaking track-by-track recreation of their 2008 album The Chemistry of Modern Life, a/k/a this is gonna be awesome. Andrew W.K. and the Vivian Girls are said to be involved. So.

Still the jam, right

It seems ludicrous that Evanescence has not yet appeared on a Twilight soundtrack, but there's two sequels to go, and Amy Lee's grandiosely maudlin goth-pop monolith seems to be revving up again after several lifetimes' worth of intra-band calamity. They're at the Grand Ballroom tonight. They will most probably play That Song.

​I'm afraid if I attempt to summarize what's happening at Santos' Party House tonight I'll screw it up somehow, so, let's just take them at their (very excitable) word: SHRED FOR YOUR LIFE GUITAR BATTLE: JUDGES DAVID CROSS AND JALEEL BUNTON (TVOTR), FEATURING BRAD TRAUX (JAH DIVISION), JOHN STANIER (BATTLES/HELMET) AND SPENCER SWEENEY. This doesn't seem like the sort of thing Andrew W.K. is going to be able to avoid.

​Intrepid Voice food guru Robert Sietsema sends us this visual dispatch from the emo kingpins' victory lap at the Music Hall of Williamsburg Sunday night; stay out of that pit if you don't want your ass kicked. Robert reports that the Kids only played two songs off 2002's On a Wire, which he describes as "their Pinkerton." That is a lot to absorb.

Rebecca Smeyne

Not the guy from Titus Andronicus. Also not fake blood.

​
We'll have more on this fete in a bit, but for right now, read every single word of this. "We are being choked and beaten and sexually assaulted, and all the while, my peers dance and snort cheap coke and photograph each other for the hundreth time."

​At Housing Works in Soho. Starring Greil Marcus, Jace Clayton, Carrie Brownstein, Josh Eels, Charles Taylor, Jace Clayton, Paul Ford, Nick Sylvester, Bill Hogeland, and Jesse Serwer. The dude who wrote that rad essay about being a schoolteacher in New Orleans and how much his students revered Lil Wayne won't be making it, but he's probably busy.

Might not be XXX or nothin' but, y'know, nudity.

Man, if you really wanna one-up all those chumps lucky enough to have tickets for Girls/Real Estate Friday night at Bowery Ballroom, you'd head out to see 'em at Maxwell's in Hoboken tonight, except that show is sold out too, so forget I said anything.

​During Game 1 of the World Series last night, Philadelphia Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins was graced with one of the more remarkable fun-fact infographics in TV-baseball history: "Appeared in several MC Hammer videos in the late '80s." Now that is a fun fact. Let's see if we can find him.