THIS WEEK IN SHOWS

At first I was thinking that this week would be a real bust for shows, but the few I’m looking forward to look like they’ll be all-consuming events. Chinese indie rock marathon, electronic music gods, and a ramshackle rock ’n roll supergroup? Perhaps we haven’t hit a post-CMJ, post-Halloween slump after all!

THURS, NOV. 5

Fucked Up, Andrew W.K. (keyboards), Vivian Girls (backup vocals), Titus Andronicus, Katie Stelmanis
Brooklyn Masonic Temple
7:00 PM, $18, All Ages
Toronto hardcore band Fucked Up performs their 2008 album The Chemistry Of Common Life with Andrew W.K. and Vivian Girls as their backing band. Sounds noisy and weird, and sounds like a party

FRI, NOV.  6

The Chinese Underground Invasion Tour:
BEIJING vs. BROOKLYN edition
These Are Powers, Soft Circle, Carsick Cars, PK 14, Xiao He, & DJ Zachary Mexico
Glasslands
9:00 PM, $TBD, 21+
Honestly, I don’t know anything about the Beijing indie scene. I first thought to list this because the concept – a couple of Brooklyn bands playing with a bunch of indie bands from Beijing –  sounded cool. I figured that These Are Powers might’ve played with these bands on their recent trip to China, and if These Are Powers approves, I’m game. After listening to these bands further, I’ve decided I have to see this show. This’ll be a great opportunity to hear some sounds that could never come out of Brooklyn. From the more mainstream P.K. 14, whose immodest Myspace bio reads: “P.K.14 occupies a space in Chinese music that might be analogous to that of Talking Heads or Television in the New York of the 1970s” – pretty lofty statement, but you can hear the influence anyway – to Xiao He, whose songs range from the sweet, unusually instrumented indie rocker “mama,” to the airy 49-second minimalist “Rain” to the ten-minute long “macerata,” which sounds like the score to a barnyard spy-movie, complete with torture scene.
More on This Week In Shows

IN THE TUBE
Brooklyn’s own These Are Powers plays primitive, percussion-based punk sex-jams. This sounds confusing, so just for the sake of a genre, let’s call it “electro-sex” or “fucklectro.” Every beat teems with raw, harsh insensitivity – this may not sound like the most fun listen, but the trio of frontwoman Anna Barie, Pat Noecker, and Bill Salas, have turned These Are Powers into something of a Brooklyn staple. Along with bands like Pterodactyl, I feel like These Are Powers plays NYC nearly every weekend, always to an excited (read: sweaty and nearly naked) crowd.

A couple days ago, TAP released a video for an unreleased song “Candy Man,” and it couldn’t be further from other “candy” based songs. Case in point: whereas Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons’ hit “Candy Girl” focuses on his “candy girl” filling his world with “hugging and kissing,” Barie wants a “a man won’t melt in my hand but in my…” (fill in the blank – I know, kind of gross). The Archies’ “Sugar Sugar” takes the sexuality just a step further than Frankie Valli, in disbelief of the “loveliness of loving” his candy girl and how “sweet” his life is with her – Barie wants to be her candy man’s “salty girl” while she crawls like a lioness, nearly humping a table, as a bunch of men ecstatically satiate their faces with sugary white goo. The Chordettes’ “Lollipop” asserts that “his kisses are sweet than apple pie;” Barie spends a fair portion of the song just orgasmically moaning.

By the end, everyone in the video is so full of goblets of sugar and sweet white goo (ew), that they pass out (including TV on the Radio frontman Tunde Adibimpe – don’t know why he’s here, but even he didn’t have the energy to satisfy Barie’s needs in her “candy man”). The video is all in good fun, and ultimately provides a perfect visual for what These Are Powers shoots for: sex, raw, sugary, harsh, sweet.

by Max Sebela

Hey Everyone!

We won’t be posting much this week because we are giving ourselves a little makeover, but we’ll be back in full force next Monday.

But hey, take this as an opportunity to get away from that computer screen today. We can’t decide which free show we’d rather check out: Golden Triangle and friends at the Monster Island Block Party, or the These Are Powers show Under The Tracks. The last P.S.1 Warm Up is today too, but it’ll cost you ten dollars if you don’t live in L.I.C. and you might want to save that cash for The Maze at Death By Audio that opens this Thursday. Hmm…

DAILY NEWS PICKS

Rivers Cuomo Explains Crappy Name For New Weezer Album, Ratitude: His Friend Came Up With It! Swear! [SPIN]

Hitch A Ride To Rock Rock Rockaway Beach Tomorrow For A Whole Lotta Music and Art [The Tripwire] 

Dead Man’s Bones (Ryan Gosling and Zach Shields) Announce First Tour. Better Start Rehearsing: Each Opening Act Will Be A Talent Show! [Pitchfork] 

Watch New Dan Deacon Video, “Paddling Ghost.” The Finger Puppet Ghost Is Cute, But The Finger Puppet Dan Deacon Is Even Better [Stereogum]

Ooh Ooh! This Just In, New Yorkers: Insound’s Tenth Anniversary Party Tonight At Brooklyn Bowl Featuring The Drums, These Are Powers, Cymbals Eat Guitars, And Real Estate. Hot Damn, The Week Is Lookin’ Up [FREEWilliamsburg] 

Jimi Hendrix Biopic In The Works [Prefix] 

What With Inglorious Basterds Opening Today, Why Not Read What Tarantino Has To Say About Some Of His Career’s Key Soundtrack Picks? [Rolling Stone]

Willie Nelson Stayin’ Busy With Myspace Show and New Album of Jazz Standards, American Classic, Out On Aug. 25, Available To Stream Via Myspace Tomorrow [The Tripwire] 

Harlem, Yeasayer, Kid Sister Added to Fun Fun Fun Fest Lineup [Gorilla vs. Bear] 

Bon Iver Just Got Way Cooler In My Eyes. Why? Oh, Just A Little Show He’s Gonna Play At Sunrise. In A CEMETERY! [The Tripwire]

compiled by Erin Sheehy

LIVE JOURNAL
JezebelMusic.com @ Whitney Museum of American Art
July 24, 2009 | Woods, Yellow Fever

photo by Hanly Banks

The Friday night summer concert series at The Whitney is one of those delightful, impossibly free perks of our burgeoning metropolis not to be missed. The rare occasion of strolling past The Carlyle and Christian Louboutin boutique on your way to a show is reason alone to check it out. Entering from Madison Avenue at dusk, one is immediately enveloped in Marcel Breuer’s beveled stone architecture, whose acoustics prove to be, unsurprisingly, ideal. The playing area is on the ground floor, haphazardly set between the cafe and street, awash in fluorescents. The audience peers from above, sits Indian-style in the round, dances, or remains aloof, smoking in the outdoor cafe behind the gargantuan bay windows. It’s a chance for underage Pitchfork nerds to mingle with the undying dregs of Warhol’s Factory. For the band members, being “on stage” means crowding into a theater-in-the-round, which is essentially where the treasure chest would be in the bottom of a fish bowl. And for a band like Woods, where the sources of their sound are just as fascinating as is the sound itself, the visual performance, the space, and the audience were as integral as the bass guitar. Accompanied by Yellow Fever, from Austin, TX, Woods played as part of Dan Graham’s Beyond exhibit, ongoing through October 11th.

Woods is sweet, raw, and trippy. Utilizing retro microphones, pedals, and the constant diligent fussing of a mixing board, the sound morphs between underwater muppet babies (in a giddy, positive way), and acid induced psych-rock. The seamless meeting of a male soprano, distorted dissonant lead guitar, and untarnished loose snare is utterly fascinating.  The songs work in three layers: country ballad melodies, Syd Barrett-era sheen, and the fun-loving rhythm of Os Mutantes. Most importantly, Woods operates on your subconscious in a way only the best beach psychedelia can; upon listening, you are transported inward, either to a place in your own memory or one of collective American nostalgia. They are so consistent in feel, so acute in diffusion that, duh, they landed a tour with Dungen. If you’re anything like me, you’ll probably want to buy Woods’ latest album, Songs of Shame, and listen to it on a long train ride.

The last Friday show at the Whitney is this Friday July, 31st featuring Vivian Girls and These Are Powers.

by Drew Citron

LIVE JOURNAL
JezebelMusic.com @ The Northside Festival
June 20 - 21, 2009 | These Are Powers, Tiger! Tiger!, K Holes, The Coathangers

Photo by Erin Sheehy

By the time Sunday night stumbled into Monday morning at the close of The L Magazine’s Northside Festival, I’d developed the symptoms of a successful festival weekend: my neck was stiff, my sweat was viscous, and my only regret was that I hadn’t been rocking out in a band of my own. That “wish I could be onstage” feeling was especially strong because I’d checked out a gang of bands fronted by compelling female performers who made their positions look extra enticing.

It wasn’t just the bone-rattling, bottom-heavy sound system at Death By Audio or the clackity clack beats of These Are Powers that worked the jam-packed crowd into a frenzy on Friday night. Frontwoman Anna Barie, sequin-clad and vibrant, certainly did her part to lure the audience into the fray of the stormy dance party. “Take off your clothes!” she yelled, and the guy in front of me immediately ripped off his t-shirt and threw it onstage. These Are Powers is the kind of band that you don’t have to see to enjoy: I could have just put my head down and let the careening noise jerk my limbs around. But it was fun to watch Barie, smirking as she squawked and bopped around the stage. She seemed well-aware that these party-starting shrieks and snarls are her powers.
More on Northside Ladies: JezebelMusic.com @ the Northside Festival

DAILY NEWS PICKS

Paul McCartney Scoring Soundtrack to Film Based on Children’s Book [NME]

New Air Album in October, Single Drops in July [SPIN]

Beck to Cover Classic Albums with “Record Club” [Rolling Stone]

New Concert Series at the Guggenheim featuring Grizzly Bear, High Places, The Walkmen [Brooklyn Vegan]

Watch New These Are Powers Video, “Easy Answers” [Stereogum]

Book About Merge Records to be Released September 15 [Tiny Mix Tapes]

Record Store Day Presents First Ever “Vinyl Saturday” this Weekend [Record Store Day]

Os Mutantes To Release First Album in 35 Years [NME]

Klaxons Album Now Due Next Decade [Prefix]

Woods To Tour With Dungen [Pitchfork]

compiled by Erin Sheehy