My colleague Jess already offered her take on Sleigh Bells, so I’ll cover last night’s headliner Yeasayer.  The last time I saw Yeasayer live was they opened for The National back in August 2008 at Central Park Summerstage.  The band has come a long way since then, filling out their sound and coming out with their decidedly more dance-pop album Odd Blood.  I was very excited to see how their live show had evolved over the last couple of years, and from the moment they took the stage and launched into the slow-burn groove of “The Children” (also Track 1 on the new album), they did not disappoint.

The packed crowd on the floor of Webster Hall was very amped up as they continued the set.  With two solid albums to work with, the night turned into a sing-a-long of hits, both from All Hour Cymbals and Odd Blood.  I was very pleased when they pulled out “2080,” which the song that originally got me into them and still brings me back to the summer of 2008 (while making me think about the impending apocalypse).

The vibe really picked up when the giant disco ball over head started spinning and the band started playing their newest, “danciest” single “O.N.E.”  Frontman Chris Keating prefaced the song with “This is a new one” but you could tell that there were some people in the crowd who were waiting for this song and really went crazy when it started. 

As the band mentioned several times during the show, they were back home in NYC after months on the road.  They took advantage of the hometown crowd love and put on a wholly satisfying show.  

-MW

Das Racist took the stage last night to a sparsely-filled Mercury Lounge. But those who were there to take in their set were amped up and didn’t quite know what to expect. Himanshu Suri, the enigmatic de facto leader of the group, spent the first song of the set going down the line at the front of the stage picking up people’s drinks and aggressively taking sips. He seemed disappointed that at least half of the first-rowers were drinking water.  

Energy remained high as the guys ran through songs from their new mixtape, Shut Up, Dude.  I would say that the biggest audience reaction came at the start of “You Oughta Know,”  They finished their too-short set without playing “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.”  I know some people in the audience must have been disappointed, but I’m not really sure how that song could work live anyway, so it didn’t bother me.

Seeing Das Racist live made me realize that they are as much a comedy group as they are a hip-hop group.  That’s not to put down their musical skills, which were exceptional throughout the show. I’m not the first to compare them to the Beastie Boys. They’ve done it themselves, multiple times. But they really do seem like the Beastie Boys of the “two thousand teens,” dropping sick rhymes and being hilarious at the same time. They fall somewhere in between Aziz Ansari’s Raaaaaaaandy and old-school Outkast and I’m looking forward to seeing what they do next.

All I’ll say about headliner Penguin Prison is that I’m not sure why Das Racist opened for them.

-MW

Jimi Hendrix - Valleys of Neptune //

I finally got a chance over the weekend to listen to the recent posthumous release from Jimi Hendrix.  In an article last month in The New York Times, Anthony DeCurtis set it up as the next logical step after Electric Ladyland. The album has some alternate versions of Hendrix classics like “Stone Free” and “Hear My Train A Comin.’”  But there are also never before heard gems, like the title track (which you can listen to above) and the devastatingly beautiful (almost) instrumental final track “Crying Blue Rain.”

There are a lot of bloated Hendrix collections out there, with rare outtakes and demos.  Valleys of Neptune is not another greatest hits collection.  It’s a full blown album that just might make you rediscover Hendrix and imagine what might have been had he lived beyond the age of 27.

-MW