Better Than: Seeing Matt & Kim in any other city.

A fine line separates a regular live show from a searing explosion of fiery red sparks that emancipate themselves from every beat, chord, or sound a musician produces, making an entire room feel like it's about to cave in on itself at any given moment.

Matt & Kim not only cross that line, but they fist bump the flames in the process.

See Also:
- Live: Matt & Kim Get Interplanetary For One Step Beyond At The Museum of Natural History
- Live: Matt & Kim Bring Their Nuclear-Powered Cheerfulness To Webster Hall

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Rockafor

Snoop Dogg at Catalpa.

PHOTOS: Sunday at Catalpa

Catalpa NYC: Snoop Dogg, Black Keys, Matt & Kim, Matisyahu, A$AP Rocky, Hercules & Love Affair, TV On The Radio, Girl Talk, et al.
Randall's Island
Saturday and Sunday, July 28 and 29

Better than: Arguing over an iPod's shuffle function.

Music festivals without a historical following or a known brand identity can employ many strategies in their inaugural year, one of which is "Appeal to as many prospective demographics as possible." Catalpa NYC, which debuted this weekend at Randall's Island, decided to combat this problem by throwing together a bunch of popular-ish acts and some quirky attractions—art, fire, a chance to "elope" with a fellow Snoop Dogg fan.

Results were mixed; the lineup succeeded in having a broad appeal, but lacked a coherent musical aesthetic. Many of the non-musical attractions were spoiled by rain on Saturday and, faced with the prospect of surviving on its artists alone, Catalpa became a referendum on its performers' current positions within the musical landscape. Many attendees claimed to like "everything," so Catalpa became a chance to find out what the new "everything" is.

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@iamQuddus/Twitpic

Girl Talk/Matt & Kim
Terminal 5
Wednesday, August 24

Better than: Shuffling through Pandora while making spreadsheets.

Stories of Girl Talk's shows are legendary, passed down from one generation to another of college kids like Biblical messages from on high, hallelujah. They are the Bill Brasky of concerts, tall tales amplified in adjectives with each telling: onstage free-for-alls that recall a rave version of Plato's Retreat, a drug-fueled Technicolor Animal House, a life-changing balloon animal zoo with a Napster soundtrack. Feathers falling and glitter flying, sweat and drugs and rap and rock all smooshed into a Play-Doh container.

And so it's a shame that last night's Girl Talk show—my first—was as boring as it was. (It's my own fault for attending a heavily sponsored Girl Talk show, where the clientele arrived with shirts and lips buttoned; where a 45-year-old man in a blue plaid shirt stood in the middle of the hubbub and clapped so off-beat that after a while he was almost on-beat.) There were other problems: volume was low, as was attendance—the cavernous Terminal 5 has never felt so vast. The toilet paper, balloons, glitter bombs and inflatable pool toys thrown at us couldn't fix the lack of people, not even if we started molding them into trash snowmen.

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via Pitchfork

Here is a photo of party-god Andrew WK, Siren alums Matt & Kim, and Soulja Boy, taken in honor of the four of them collaborating on the sneaker-company-sponsored track "I'm A Goner." (The video has a zombies-uprising-in-the-morgue theme, which is why Soulja Boy looks like he just got Encino Manned and didn't brush off all the ice chippings. (R.I.P. Brendan Fraser's acting career.)) But it raises more questions. What did they talk about? Did Matt feel uncomfortable that Kim was in a WK-Soulja sandwich? Did Soulja worry that Kim might break his surprisingly small chain? You may have others. After the jump, we've created a key to understanding your mood based on what you first noticed when you looked at this photo. Consider it a pop-culture Rorschach test.

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At least they're enjoying themselves. Pics by Chris, more below.

One Step Beyond
Featuring Matt & Kim, Nacey, and AraabMuzik
American Museum of Natural History
Friday, January 14

Better Than: Night at the Museum

Astronomy: It's so hot right now, from the recent zodiac-sign hoax to the release of the largest-ever image of our galaxy (which, let's be real, resembles a flamboyant first-grade art project). And now we have the return of monthly party One Step Beyond in a planetarium. Because when you think of the science of space, you think of Matt & Kim.

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The year in music, circa 2010, started at the Cake Shop, with a shred-down to the New Year courtesy of Siren Festival MVP-to-be Marissa Paternoster and her band Screaming Females. After a tour through the NYE fetes of the Lower East Side and Williamsburg, that night ended amidst a marathon show at Bushwick's Shea Stadium, right around the time the Blastoids' drummer poured paint on his kit and started splattering away.

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ENTHUSIASM. Pics by Rob, more below.

Matt & Kim
Webster Hall
Wednesday, October 27

Better than: Most other "don't-worry-be-happy"-type situations.

"I'm going to refer to this Wednesday night as 'Friday night' from now on!" shouts Matt, as the young-and-pretty Webster Hall crowd roars and Kim beams exuberantly, because that's what Kim does -- smiles longer and harder and brighter than any human being on earth. You are powerless against the relentless, infectious, nuclear-scale cheerfulness of Matt & Kim, their keyboards-and-drums-and-yelping dance-punk jams good enough but almost beside the point, subsumed by just the nonstop enthusiasm radiating from everyone, onstage and off. The young-and-pretty crowd jumps up and down with such ferocity that I get really honestly concerned about the structural integrity of Webster Hall's floor.

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Stripes, sneakers, smiles

If we've let the incessant Matt & Kim updates lapse (They're naked! They're Siren Fest headliners! Matt's rapping R. Kelly! They ate too fast yesterday!), it's not for lack of enthusiasm, it's that we started to feel badly for constantly making all those babies jealous. (Hence the obsession with things that would not.) But now that Williamsburg's most endearing joy-rock couple have a new record coming out this fall, the SOTC cheerleading resumes.

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He then dedicates a song to "the shorties," mercifully clarifying that he means actual short people, which makes me feel a whole lot better about the whole thing. Cuteness, thankfully, overpowers all.

Paul Antonson

This year, we proudly celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Siren Festival. In the history of the our free Coney Island corndog bonanza, no band has ever played Siren twice. This was a conscious decision on behalf of our fearless festival founder and organizer (who we've kindly rewarded with her own SOTC category), who long ago decided that if this crazy all-ages, free show thing ever reached ten years, Siren would rehost some of its best performers.

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