Sonic Youth w/Wild Flag, Kurt Vile
Williamsburg Waterfront
Friday, August 12

Better than: Listening to a playlist of the set on Spotify.

Just before Sonic Youth played "Starfield Road," from 1994's Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, at Friday night's Williamsburg Waterfront gig, singer-guitarist Thurston Moore held things up. "Mark, what's the chords?" he asked of bassist Mark Ibold, who had been playing in Pavement at the time that record came out. "We started rehearsing for this show two days ago," Moore said, explaining the pause. "We've decided to go back deep. It's been a while since we've played some of these. Mark was always in the audience, so he knows [the chords]." Then, as Ibold and fellow bassist Kim Gordon began pounding out actual notes, Moore made head-swirling feedback and noise with his guitar as he ranted and raved about dirty sex for two minutes. Proper chords, indeed.

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Death Cab for Cutie
Williamsburg Waterfront
Tuesday, August 2

Better than: New York's skyline at dusk.

"Everybody just take a second to turn around and check out how beautiful your city is right now," Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard says shortly into his band's set. "Take a picture, take some video. Now turn back around." From this side of the East River, the sun looks big and orange as it squeezes between Lower Manhattan's skyscrapers. It's the sort of thing that's easy to take for granted when you live here. But it's hard to right now, especially after the Washingtonian singer points out, "This is probably the most beautiful view we've played in front of." As they begin Codes and Keys' "Doors Unlocked and Open"—in which he sings about "seas of concrete" and a "blinding sun," but also California (blah)—concertgoers start turning around to snap pictures of New York's jagged horizon, and they continue to do so throughout the night.

Sometimes an amazing setting is all it takes to transform what could be a generic gig into something special for both an audience and a band. Clearly awed by New York's grandeur, the Seattle group put on an emotionally charged set that captivates even those concertgoers who are distracted by the Manhattan skyline.

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"Either you like my voice or you don't," Marianne Faithfull says in a deep, husky breath. "If people come to my music expecting my pretty voice, or anything pretty, they're going to be disappointed and they're going to hate it. It's much better to come to my work and say, 'This is going to be like Neil Young or Bob Dylan,' and then you'll have a good time."

As divisive as she makes it sound, though, Faithfull's voice is her strongest asset these days. The sensitive croon that defined her earliest hits—such as "As Tears Go By," a song she recorded at 17 and penned by the Rolling Stones' Keith Richards and her sometime lover, Mick Jagger—gave way to a hoarse tenor by the time she released her art-rock comeback Broken English in 1979. She had taken the results of years of substance abuse and turned it around into something positive, unique and mysterious.

Her latest (23rd!) album, Horses and High Heels (Naïve), might well be a showcase of just how she can make her voice work for her. Over the course of four originals and eight covers, Faithfull milks every possible form of expression from her tattered vocal cords. Beginning with her take on the Gutter Twins' "The Stations," she maintains a brooding and pensive tone throughout the song, which she says has earned the praise of one of that song's original singers, the brooding and pensive Greg Dulli. On her own autobiographical "Why Did We Have to Part," she sings with both sorrow and confidence in her voice as she parses the events leading up to what she calls her final romance. For Allen Toussaint's R&B album cut "Back in Baby's Arms," she belts out hopeful blues. And on tracks like the Shangri-La's non-hit "Past, Present and Future" and Dusty Springfield's schmaltzy hit "Goin' Back," her mature intonation gives the tunes a measured insight the original singers weren't old enough to have yet.

This perspective, of course, is what drives the ever-prolific Faithfull, age 64, these days. Leaning back in a chair outside the Standard Hotel on a sweltering July day, she sips iced coffee, looks out at the people passing by and drags away on Marlboro Lights. Dressed in a multicolored pastel blazer and futzing with her leopard shoes, she ponders just why she has been so busy in recent years, releasing albums with the aid of artists like Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Beck and Damon Albarn. (The new album features guests like Lou Reed, the MC5's Wayne Kramer, and samples of deceased Rolling Stone Brian Jones' recordings of Moroccan pipe music.) "There's nothing to block me," she says, in her noble-sounding London accent. "I'm not drinking. I'm not taking drugs. I'm not in love, which is also a block. I'm just ready for work. I like it."

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Cameron Wittig

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The debut album by Milagres almost never happened. The indie-rock group's singer and main songwriter Kyle Wilson had grown weary of his band and Brooklyn, so he traveled to rural British Columbia to rough it and contemplate his future. While rock climbing, he fell and suffered back injuries that would have him laid out for months. It was during this time that he felt the urge to return to Brooklyn and start recording the songs he was dreaming up in bed.

With a renewed sense of purpose, Milagres began working on rough mixes of new tunes that eventually turned into their debut Glowing Mouth (due September 13 on Kill Rock Stars). One such song was "Here to Stay," the second track on Glowing Mouth, posted below. Full of fluttery keyboards, sublime vocals and dreamy lyrics, the song reflects the group's light touch. "Here to Stay" begins with the line "I was restless," and judging from the stories Wilson tells below, it could well be the mantra of the group.

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Ooooh plus "Iron Man"

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary Celebration
Madison Square Garden
Friday, October 30

"When we were down, rock 'n' roll lifted us up," says Tom Hanks in his introductory remarks for the final night of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's benefit-concert extravaganza at Madison Square Garden. "Rock 'n' roll music was American," he later adds. "And it changed the world." Despite his use of the past tense, tonight is anything but a eulogy: Friday's slate features a wider palate of curators than the previous night, this time including Aretha Franklin, Jeff Beck, Metallica, and U2. The headliners' guests, a pop-music dream-team ranging from Ray Davies to Ozzy Osbourne to the Black Eyed Peas, also do a better job than last night's cavalcade of explaining how far rock has come.

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Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary Celebration
Madison Square Garden
Thursday, October 29

The first half of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's two-night benefit concert and 25th-anniversary celebration lasted six hours, ended at 1:30 a.m. and featuring star-studded sets by curators Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, and Crosby, Stills, and Nash, with guests ranging from Billy Joel to Tom Morello to doo-wop legends Little Anthony and the Imperials. All these artists showed a real humility and gratitude for the 60-odd-year-old genre: "Everybody's got their own Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their hearts," as Springsteen put it. And no matter what you think of the museum itself or the state of rock at the moment (the closest thing to a hard-line rock album in this week's Billboard Top 10 is the New Moon soundtrack), the evening proved what a great emancipator the music still is.

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