IFC

​Portlandia: The Tour
Music Hall of Williamsburg
Friday, January 20

Better than: Watching television (but who has one anyway?).

In the middle of a nearly two-hour set of live sketches, improv riffing, and unseen clips, Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, the stars of IFC's Portlandia, strapped on guitars and played the song that served as the show's much-emailed teaser. "Do you remember when people were content to be unambitious, sleep 'til 11 and hang out with their friends? And they had no occupations whatsoever?" Fred asks. "When people were singing about saving the planet, forming bands?... When they encouraged you to be weird?" That dream, the dream of '90s, he explains to Carrie, is alive in Portland.

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Torche w/ Big Business, Helms Alee
Music Hall of Williamsburg
Wednesday, July 20

Better than: I would say any other metal show, but apparently there were a few other good ones.

Last afternoon, with the e-mercury that I assume powers our digital thermometers refusing to recede, the Torche/Big Business/Helms Alee triple-header that would be closing my day and marking roughly the halfway point in my ongoing heatwave promised to be a big, sweaty mess. Torche's music is sometimes called "thunder pop"; maybe they'd play a show humid enough to generate some extreme weather patterns right in front of the stage.

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Robert E. Holley

​When asked if he had already picked out his set prior to the March installment of his Grits & Biscuits party at Southpaw, DJ Square Biz--a.k.a. Maurice Slade--feigned incredulity. It was 10:15 p.m. Young women in heels trickled onto the dance floor, bobbing their heads and two-stepping with vodka drinks. Twenty-five with a full beard and wearing a retro Houston Rockets cap, Slade scanned the small crowd. His wide smile made him appear both amused and disturbed by the question. "Man, I hate when DJs be doing that," he drawled, stepping back from his equipment as if he was about to deliver a sermon. The most fun parties, he said, are spontaneous, devoid of any master plan (although he does have suggestions for first-time attendees).

Grits started as the brainchild of Maurice Slade and his brother Alzo, along with business partner/friend Erika Lewis; collectively the trio is known as E.Z.Mo Breezy. Southern crunk music has never been shy about its ass-shaking imperative and neither have they. "We're all, I think, trying to change the world," Alzo Slade said of the people that come to Grits. "But there ain't nothing wrong with shaking your ass at the same time."

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He just turned 40, but the Dears' frontman Murray Lightburn isn't planning on hanging up the microphone any time soon. In fact, after a U.S. label change (from Arts & Crafts to Dangerbird Records) and some line-up tinkering that saw bassist Roberto Arquilla and guitar players Patrick Krief and Rob Benvie leave the band at various times only to return in 2008, Lightburn says that the Montreal orchestral pop rock band, whose 2003 release No Cities Left earned it the title of "probably the best new band in the world" from NME, feels like it's been born again. After the release of this past February's Degeneration Street, the band's fifth studio album, the Dears took off on a whirlwind tour of the West Coast before wrapping up at South by Southwest in Austin with six shows in three days.

The Voice checked in with Lightburn before the Dears head back out to the Atlantic coast, including tonight's stop at Music Hall of Williamsburg. The husband, father, and preacher's son schooled us on cheese-making, Louis C.K., and the art of aging gracefully.

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​Should you desire a fairly soothing, meditative, softly fuzz-toned way to ease into this coming weekend, we humbly suggest you drop by Music Hall of Williamsburg Friday night for the splendid, lo-fi-pop-centric double bill of Baltimore's Lower Dens (that's them above) and Jersey's own Ducktails, the former the toast of this most recent CMJ bacchanal, the latter responsible for the amiably meandering Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics, quietly one of the better records of 2011 thus far. We are proud to offer a pair of tix to this historic summit -- first person to email me at rharvilla@villagevoice.com gets them. Below, please find Lower Dens doing one of those NPR Tiny Desk Concerts; Friday will be a lot like that, just with more, you know, elbow room. Good luck.

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"I woke up this morning and I had this weird feeling," Craig Finn told an unsuspecting audience on Monday night at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, toward the end of the second of the Hold Steady's two shows there. "I hadn't really realized this until today, but our first show ever was on January 31st, 2003, eight years to this day. And it happened in the same room, when it was North Six. It was totally an accident, but it's a beautiful coincidence." And then they played "Positive Jam," the Almost Killed Me mission statement and unofficial Hold Steady theme song. We missed it, sadly (though the show we saw on Sunday night was pretty great, too); luckily, the intrepid and tireless NYC Taper was there to bail us out.

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​Merrill Garbus, a/k/a the ukulele-strumming/drum-pounding/beatboxing/growling dervish known as tUnE-yArDs, is one of the best live acts going right now, a riot of energy, color, and (most importantly) volume, a loop-building and tonsil-flaring spectacle so joyous we're willing to tolerate the fact that her first record was titled BiRd-BrAiNs, and the follow-up, announced today and out April 19, has been christened w h o k i l l. It takes real charisma to convince people to fuck around with typography. As she explains to Pitchfork, this record will (slightly) more closely resemble her live show, but her live show will most probably remain the best way to take her in: Fortunately, she's also announced a full U.S. tour, including a stop at Music Hall of Williamsburg May 21. All shows are below, along with video evidence that'd you better make it to one:

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This photo (by Rob Trucks) was actually not taken last night, though he was wearing the same shirt and everything.

​The Hold Steady
Music Hall of Williamsburg
Sunday, January 30

Better Than: Watching the SAG Awards, whatever they are.

"It's Sunday night," Hold Steady frontman Craig Finn says, about seven songs in. "Hope you went to church today, because we're gonna get nasty tonight." Only one night a week you can use that one. And so it is Sunday night, our first glimpse in 2011 of a usually ubiquitous New York band, slumming it at the Music Hall of Williamsburg for two shows before jetting off to the UK and then Australia, finally setting back down here in April, where they'll play to two or three times as many people at Terminal 5. They are touring, I think, behind last year's Heaven Is Whenever, their fifth and most languorous record--not that you would know it from the set list, where "Rock Problems" and "Hurricane J" and "We Can Get Together" sound like "Stuck Between Stations" and "Southtown Girls" and pretty much every other song they play tonight, one long stretch of highly proficient and rousing bar rock, now keyboard-less but as expansive and overjoyed as ever.

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​Butthole Surfers
Music Hall of Williamsburg
Friday, December 31, 2010

Better Than: Sharing a flask of warm champagne and a handful of stale gorp at the Phish show.

Upon getting jostled and stage-squished for about the seventh time, my friend turns to me and says, "After midnight, everyone's IQ dropped about 40 points." It was New Year's Eve in the year of Four Loko. It was the Butthole Surfers, a band whose idea of "improv" is extending the farrrrrrrt in "Lady Sniff." There were so, so many balloons. No one needed an excuse to get stupid.

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Apparently it was a good time. Pics by Jeff Meltz/THECULTUREOFME, more below.

​Brooklyn Electronic Music Festival
Music Hall of Williamsburg/Public Assembly
Saturday, December 18

Better than: Last year's. (Seriously.)

A beer exploded on Public Assembly's stage Saturday night. It was a party trick in this case --- a direct result of "Samir's Theme" booming through the speakers of the club's grimy back room and one girl's resulting need to spastically jump around while holding her half-opened beverage. Three people were caught in the foamy downpour, though the only one who noticed cheered while shaking her hair dry; Star Eyes, the DJ and instigator of it all, likewise remained totally clueless behind her turntables. Multiply that by a couple hundred and you've got this year's Brooklyn Electronic Music Festival.

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