Music Blogger

Sonic Reducer Overage: Bat for Lashes, Datarock, Limp Wrist, Constantines, and more

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Bat For Lashes – “Pearl’s Dream”

By Kimberly Chun

Color my world grey – you still yearn to romp and play, San Fran-frisky. So get outta the dog park and into the clubs and buy me a drink, hot pocket. Here are a few notable shimmy-shams where you might find me skulking.

Constantines and Crystal Antlers
The Toronto indie rockers venture out to “Islands in the Stream” and stretch their bones in a post-rock, minimalist mode. Meanwhile the LA psych-soul bros carouse in honor of their new Tentacles (Touch and Go). Thurs/11, 7:30 p.m., $14. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011.

Headboggle
One-man low-end grumble from the bowels of SF, presented as part of the gallery’s New Music Series. With Commode Minstrels in Bullface, Midmight, and Amphibious Gestures. Thurs/11, 8 p.m., $6. Luggage Store, 1007 Market, SF.

Not lost: More from Jason Lytle, uncovered in Montana

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By Kimberly Chun

Modesto, your Jason Lytle is truly a pleasure to chat with. Here’s more of an interview with the disarmingly honest, down-to-earth ex-Grandaddy songwriter, now touring with his first solo album, Yours Truly, the Commuter (for the rest of the talk, see this week’s Sonic Reducer). Lytle headlines at Café du Nord June 8 and opens for Neko Case at the Warfield June 9.

SFBG: So right now you’re multitasking, printing out flight info for your tour. Is flying an issue for you? I’m just looking at the crashed plane in the artwork for Yours Truly, the Commuter.

Jason Lytle: Ummm, I’m actually OK with flying – I’m a lot better with flying than a lot of people I know. I guess if you’re looking at the artwork – I do have a problem with airplanes landing in my front yard.

Underground fire shuts down Bowie Ball at Great American Music Hall

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By Kimberly Chun

This in from the folks at Great American Music Hall – so put those “Jean Genie” moves in the hopper till August. (And boy, I’m curious about how often these underground electrical vault fires happen! The answer: The last one was in 2005, according to the local CBS affiliate.)

“Unfortunately, tonight’s BOWIE BALL at GAMH has been CANCELLED due to an underground electrical vault fire on Polk & O’Farrell St. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience – bummer!!!

“HOWEVER, we are glad to report that the date is rescheduled for Friday, August 14 – original tickets will be honored (or refunds are available at place of purchase until 2pm on Aug. 14).

“This event will be super fun, so please come down on Aug. 14 and show your support! This is our chance to celebrate EVERYTHING Bowie. All in one night. (Tix at www.gamhtickets.com or in person at Slim’s or GAMH M-F 10:30-6.)”

Sonic Reducer Overage: BFD, Wale, Handsome Furs, Holy Fuck, and more

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The grey can stay – it is, after all, summer in fog city – but you know you gotta get out. Leave home and get an earful of inspiration at, hey, maybe these worthwhile shows.

Parson Red Heads
The cute-as-a-button LA combo polishes up Cali folk rock for every parson, be it the preacher or Gram. With Cotton Jones. Tues/2, 8 p.m., $10. Cafe Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016.

Rosewood Thieves
Going their way? The New York indie rockers are California dreaming and in love with the sun. With Mississippi Man and Lemon Sun. Wed/3, 9 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923.

‘Nero’ sandwich

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Danny Scheie, from left, and Kasey Mahaffy appear in the world premiere of You, Nero. Photo by Henry DiRocco.

By Kimberly Chun

After its extended production of The Lieutenant of Inishmore and now You, Nero, Berkeley Rep is starting to feel like your one-stop spot for chuckle-inducing high jinks. The latest offering aims a little lower, and loftier, than Martin McDonagh’s allegorical gore fest centered on Northern Ireland’s Troubles: Pulitzer-nominated local playwright and Stanford artist-in-residence (and San Francisco Chronicle movie critic Mick LaSalle’s spouse) Amy Freed trains her focus on one of the more notorious rulers of all time, Nero, a pint-sized sociopath who occasionally threatens to overrun Berkeley Rep’s intimate Thrust Stage with his whimsical mayhem and murder.

Danny Schiele brings a crazy-eyed, strutting, tummy-first egotism to his role as Nero as theatrical patron – a perspective that brings to mind that other dictator who fancied himself an artist, Adolf Hitler. We approach the meglomaniac through the prismatic gaze of hack playwright Scribonious (Jeff McCarthy), hired by the emperor to stage a spectacle in tribute to his decadent, violent rule. The catch: politics in imperial court are hell. First Nero’s smothering mistress Poppaea (Susannah Schulman) then his lover-like mother Agrippina (Lori Larsen) must have their say, before the compromised courtiers weigh in with an agenda of their own. Gladiatorial acts of empty but deadly combat morph into an all-too-familiar form of idol worship – **American Idol** style.

Freed’s lampoon of contemporary entertainment tends toward the Borscht Belt, often coming off as broad and brassy as centurion armor, yet she succeeds in drawing cringe-edged laughs with the jokes ala Nero’s ebullient “Another ottoman from the Ottoman Empire!” It helps to have a cast as adept and likeable as this one, with players like Kasey Mahaffy standing out as the cross-dressing castrati Fabiolo.

YOU, NERO
Through June 28.
Tues., 8 p.m.; Wed., 7 p.m.; Thurs. and Sat., 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 and 7 p.m.; $13.50-$71
Berkeley Repertory Theatre
Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berkeley
(510) 647-2949

Sonic Reducer Overage: St. Vincent, Thermals, Tiga, Sun Kil Moon, Jens Lekman, and more

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The sun is out – and so are you, capering and carousing at these musical shindigs, all so worthy yet unable to make it to print.

St. Vincent
Out of work? G’wan. Annie Clark is playing with ya on her hotly anticipated, Tin Pan Alley-inspired Actor (4AD). With Pattern Is Movement. Wed/27, 8 p.m., $16. Bimbo’s 365 Club, 1025 Columbus, SF. (415) 474-0365.

Tiga
“Beep Beep Beep” – make way for Montreal’s Ciao baby, With Jaimie Fanatic and DJ Omar. Thurs/28, 9 p.m., $18. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-1422.

Carnaval snaps: booty calls, capoeira falls at the annual Mission getdown

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Bump ‘n’ shine. All photos by Kimberly Chun.

By Kimberly Chun

Yeah, we were chillin’ at Carnaval Sunday, May 24 – so much so this little lady almost got a bad case of hypothermia. Overcast skies and cold winds – nothing could keep Carnaval SF’s booty-jiggling, thong-busting, synchronized-dancing, capoeira-kicking crews from taking to the streets. Props to the ladies flashing cheeks and chest against the wind blowing down Balmy alley. Judging from the crowd response, it was fun, fun, fun for all (loved the spartan float carrying six-plus synchronized vibraphonists and the perky-nippled, mincing contingent of rare Xolo hounds), but two hours in, my camera finger got a wee too frosty. I warmed it up with a roasted corn cob at the free Carnaval Festival on Harrison and 20th streets where folks were shooting hoops in the NBA compound and lining up for free stuff like San Francisco Gigantes T’s.

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Night moves: Banging ‘Glorious Gongs’

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HARAPPIAN NIGHT RECORDINGS
The Glorious Gongs of Hainuwele
(Bo Weavil)

By Kimberly Chun

Who is this mysterion going by the name of Dr. Syed Kamran Ali and generating generous swathes of sample-dappled, diseased-transmission psychedelia behind the shadowy guise of Harappian Night Recordings? A mild-mannered, 20-something Chicago software engineer? A UK folk-art chop-shop collagist with a gentle hand and restless mind, digitally futzing with field recordings culled at mythic South Asian rice paddies and fictitious North African marketplaces?

Though it sounds like an inspired, ragtag mélange of random aural documents, The Glorious Gongs of Hainuwele was instead fashioned by this single night-shrouded figure in northern England, supposedly linked to experimentalists Hunter Gracchus of Sheffield, England, and Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides in Lyon, France. “Recorded in the center of the Kadamba Forest, green and red, with a crescent moon as a diadem,” as the liner notes go, Glorious Gongs weaves Mbira pluck with bamboo percussion rattle, collides teams of ouds with whining ehru. The global instrumental crash-ups and roughed-out shit-fi aesthetic almost evoke raucous sonic junk collectors like Captain Beefheart and Tom Waits – without the residual pop hooks – when the faraway, broken-down gamelan bellies up to the sudden foghorn bleat and hissing blues on “Bully Kutta” and “The Ire of Konda Mangali.” I can’t make out the allusions to William Morris’ fantasy writing, but it’s comforting to imagine that they might be there, along with prickly, flowered tributes to lady pirates, Sublime Frequencies, and surrealistic mules. Haunted? Like a house.

Sonic Reducer Overage: TV on the Radio, Bun B, Fischerspooner, Webbie, Floating Goat, Passion Pit, and more

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Memorial Day weekend – the wind is down, and the moment has come to break out the hibachi, dust off those sassy hot pants, and kick back for at least a day or three. And of course, there’s more worthy music to fit in there, in between the sunbathing, cookie-baking, and electroclashing.

Fischerspooner
Does the GE halo give me a double chin? And does it electroclash with the rubber tubing? The jaw-dropping live act whips out a dour, synthpop Entertainment, as well as a new stage show. Fri/22, 9 p.m., $29.50. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. (415) (415) 421-8497.



TV on the Radio and Dirty Projectors
The praise-rattled TVs were peppy as all get out at Treasure Island fest last year – and here they come again with the better-than-ever Dirty Projs, which blew everyone away at SXSW this spring. Fri/22, 8 p.m., $30. Fox Theatre, 1807 Telegraph, Oakl. (415) 421-8497.

How now Chow Nasty? The local combo not on for Bay to Breakers

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By Kimberly Chun

There are a few things you can count on in Ez Eff: the big tree goes up in Union Square every Xmas, summer will be freakin’ freezing west of the Park Presidio fog line, and Chow Nasty will bring the boogie to the wackies walking, running, and huffing in Bay to Breakers each year.

So what happened? First word had it the band was rocking it up as usual at the corner of Hayes and Webster on Sunday, May 17. Then today, according to the shopkeep at the corner market, the group will not be making its date out front, validating all the zany goings-on in that fine every-day-is-a-par-tay SF tradition. Explanation, guys? And band dormancy is no excuse when it comes to those lil’ reminders of only-in-the-citay goofery.

Sonic Reducer Overage: Dead Meadow, Steve Earle, Fracas, Loney Dear, and more

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By Kimberly Chun

Could it be any prettier, any more delicately dewy, any more enticing, out there in this stone-beauty by the Bay? And when the sun goes down, you must go out to play – or watch others play. More worth-while sights, sighs, and sounds for you, more than could fit in print.

Steve Earle
Far from Nashville and an outlaw and songwriter-activist born a little too late, Steve Earle is rattling the chains of his past and looking back on the music of his late brilliant and damaged mentor Townes Van Zandt with the new Townes (New West). Thurs/14, 6 p.m., free. Amoeba Music, 1855 Haight, SF. (415) 831-1200.

Loney Dear
Dudes, make up your mind – comma or no comma? Ah, hell, none of it matters when the Loneys wash those sad-and-lonelies away with their sweet indie-rock melodicism. With Headlights and Audio Out Send. Fri/15, 10 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455.

Welcome to Jersey: Checking the latest Real Housewives

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By Kimberly Chun

Real Housewives of New Jersey: down-to-earth, grown-up Jersey girls – or The Sopranos with big hair, McMansions, and surgically enhanced “bubbies”? I was dying to know after getting sucked into the show’s sneak-preview special – now being aired nonstop on Bravo – so I took a peek into a conference call arranged by NBC Universal-Bravo. On the line: the tough-talking, red-headed matriarch Caroline Manzo, who comes off as softer and much less malevolent sans dramatic edits, and her dark-eyed, down-low sister-in-law Jacqueline Laurita. The Real Housewives of New Jersey premieres tonight, May 12, with a new episode every Tuesday night on Bravo.

Q: Caroline, my first question’s for you. I was just wondering if you could tell us a little bit about the early years leading up to the life you have now.

Caroline Manzo: Sure. I met my husband actually 28 years ago. We will be celebrating our 25th anniversary this July. And when we first started the Brownstone was a very, very young business in its infancy, at least for the Manzo family, and we struggled. My husband, at that time, made less than $200 a week, and we lived in a small apartment above the Brownstone, and we lived there for a couple of years, and then we had our first son, Albie.

Delish peas in a pod, tucked into Pal’s Take Away

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Pal, please: You’ll want your own sandwich and salads at Pal’s Take Away. Photo by Kimberly Chun.

By Kimberly Chun

I love Dynamo Donut’s newest neighbor – nestled in Tony’s Market, at 2751 24th St. and Hampshire – ’cause he’s absolutely delish.

Pal’s Take Away – essentially a stand within the corner bodega across the way from DD – sources its sparkling fresh food stuffs from Acme, Marin Sun, Dirty Girl, Riverdog, Full Belly, Knoll, etc., as well as chums’ fruit trees – and it keeps a concise menu, focusing on sandwiches made to order and two or three salads, tops.

Pal also likes mango on his homemade strawberry jam and almond butter offering – but I’ll forgive him for that because my spring peas salad – with fresh shelling, sugar snap, and snow peas and a blissful dose of mint and champagne vinegar – kind of made my day. I don’t care what some cooks say about frozen peas being a perfectly acceptable substitute for fresh: you can tell the difference, and this salad is the ideal way to relish these tiny-tailed babies.

When dinos go wild: Dengue Fever scores ‘Lost World’ at the Castro

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By Kimberly Chun

Surprise: no theremins in earshot at the Castro Theatre on May 5 when Dengue Fever unleashed its new score for the 1925 silent adventure film, The Lost World, as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival.

Instead the seemingly sold-out audience got plenty of laughs, the compelling Wallace Beery as the seemingly mad Professor Challenger, herky-jerky yet still marvelous stop-motion dinosaurs, shameful black-face in the form of Sambo sidekick (Jules Cowles), and the fab scene of an astonishingly resilient Brontosaurus crashing through London city streets before plummeting from the famed bridge. The latter moment clearly evoked King Kong – and no wonder: the special effects were produced by Willis O’Brien, who also coaxed Kong to life.

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Sonic Reducer Overage: the Dead, Alela Diane, Myka 9, Destroyer, Ponytail, Brilliant Colors, and more

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By Kimberly Chun

Rain-day women, overcast men – it’s drizzling all over SF, but the music keeps coming. Here are more worthy shows than we could drip into print.

Brilliant Colors
The SF trio surfs the latest wave of girlish lo-fi pop with sweet, primal punchiness. With Abe Vigoda, High Castle, and No Babies. Wed/6. 8 p.m., $7. 21 Grand, 416 25th St., Oakl. www.21grand.org

Myka 9
Everyone seems to be borrowing from the rapid-fire Freestyle Fellowship fella, who has lent a hand to performers like Busdriver and Prefuse 73. Thurs/7, 9 p.m., $15. Independent, 628 Divisadero, S.F. (415) 771-1422.

Whole lotta Loquat: the SF indie rockers kick off their du Nord residency Thursday

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By Kimberly Chun

Talk about an unrelenting burst of creativity: San Francisco indie rock band Loquat will be going for broke with its May residency at Cafe du Nord. Vocalist-guitarist Kylee Swenson told me the group is attempting to make each show special, with visuals arranged by the mysterious Kernel Panic, special guests like Raul Sanchez of Penny Arcade, and special DJs like Ted of BAGel Radio. “I just hope it works!” she said by phone. “It could be a total disaster!” As we spoke, Loquat was still tweaking the blend of performers and stage sets.

The group hasn’t been slacking on working on music, either: it has 20 songs written for its next full-length – though don’t expect Loquat to share its latest tunes yet. “We’re still in the incubator stage,” Swenson explained.

Sonic Reducer Overage: Paris, Total Trash Weekend, Garrett Pierce, and more

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Babes in Ty land: Ty Segall messes with ya as part of Total Trash Weekend.

By Kimberly Chun

Bay rap vets and raucous rock sprats – it all goes splat this week. I’m guessing you’ll find plenty of trouble to get into – and musical artistry to appreciate – when you’re not busy downing scrump-dilly-icious (and cheap!) pastor tacos at the Gallo Giro taco truck at 23rd and Treat.

Goapele
Oakland’s own draws the curtain on new music: check her site for the spanking, sinuous “Milk + Honey.” With Cody Chestnutt. Fri/1, 9 p.m., $27. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-1422.

Zion-I
This is the weekend Bay hip-hop stages The TakeOver. The local twosome takes it to another level in honor of its new long-player. With Kev Choice Ensemble and Trackademicks and the Honor Roll. Fri/1, 9 p.m., $19-$23. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. (415) 522-0333.

Ballad of Marianne Dissard

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By Kimberly Chun

Champs Elysees cool cuddles up with dustbowl derring-do: it’s an unlikely union but it works beautifully on Marianne Dissard‘s self-released 2008 debut, L’entredeux. The filmmaker behind the Giant Sand documentary, Drunken Bees, Dissard played the silky seductress to Joey Burns’ easy dupe in Calexico’s cowboy noir “Ballad of Cable Hogue.” L’entredeux sees her donning assorted new chapeaux with help from co-writer and producer Burns. Count on the chanteuse to smoke up the room with her fivepiece when she stops at the Hemlock Tavern on April 29.

Beautiful losers and dour dreamers who can’t make that date will likely dig the 12-track L’entredeux. Calexico’s John Convertino pitches in on drums, along with Willie Nelson contributor Mickey Raphael on harmonica and Tin Hat Trio player Rob Burger on piano, accordion, orchestron, cimbalom, and organ. Now planted in Tucson dust, the French native apparently found plenty of common ground with Burns in the making of this music: the music of Nick Drake, Serge Gainsbourg, and Django Reinhardt as well as the films of Sam Peckinpah. They save the violence for the future recordings – this is music for hot, hazy, lazy days.

‘The Soloist’ director Joe Wright makes beautiful music with Downey, Foxx

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By Kimberly Chun

Encore! Much respect to filmmaker Joe Wright (Atonement, Pride and Prejudice) for The Soloist, a passionate take on homelessness, journalism, and a Los Angeles on the skids and still in love with art. The movie is based on Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez’s book on his friendship with schizophrenic musician Nathaniel Ayers. I spoke with the energetic, well-crumpled English director recently when he came through San Francisco on a press tour.

SFBG: The Soloist marks a big change from Pride and Prejudice and Atonement – it’s not a period film?

Joe Wright: No, but it is – it’s 2005. It’s a specific time. And actually it was quite difficult to try and capture the specifics of that period.

SFBG: What attracted you to project?

JW: I’ve always been fascinated by mental illness and extreme perspectives on reality. I was 20 or 21 when a friend of mine had a psychotic breakdown, and we spent 10 days together walking around the streets of London while he had delusions and paranoias. It scared the living shit out of me, really. And I think I partly make films as a way of confronting my fears, really.

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Right on: Joe Wright.

Sonic Reducer Overage: Vivian Girls, Ghost, Spinal Tap, How to Destroy the Universe, and more

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Take the wheel: Vivian Girls’ “Tell the World.”

How to destroy a weekend – or, for that matter, a weeknight? Sticky, sweaty, and sill up for fun – SF knows how it’s done. Telling ya, there’s so much more to see and hear than we could fit into print.

Dry Spells
Folk rock gets another angelic kick upstairs when the Bay Area band gets onstage. With Pillow Queens and Vultures. Wed/22, 9 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923.

The Pets
The Oaktown garage-rock threesome preps for its European journey. With International Espionage and Master Volume. Wed/22, 9 p.m., $5. Kimo’s, 1351 Polk, SF. (415) 885-4535.

Sonic Reducer Overage: Silversun Pickups, Bloc Party, Atmosphere, Kylesa, free shows, and so much more

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Manic panic: Silversun Pickups’ “Panic Switch.”

Lucky you, you aren’t broiling in the desert at Coachella – you’re keeping your cool in SF, and boy, you’ve got a lot to keep your bad self outta trouble. So partake in the Coachella spillover – and then some…

Intelligence
“Icky Baby” is in the eye of the beholder – and the mind of the Intelligence, those hard-driving, gristly lo-fi smarty-pants. With Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall. Fri/17, 9 p.m., $8. Annie’s Social Club, 917 Folsom, SF. (415) 974-1585.

Loop!Station
Loops, vocals, and cello are Robin Coomer’s and Sam Bass’ tools, arriving now with a new CD.
Fri/17, 8 and 10 p.m., $10. Yoshi’s, 1330 Fillmore, SF. (415) 655-5600.

Leonard Cohen skips, sings, outlasts his audience at the Paramount

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02, you too: A still from Live in London.

By Kimberly Chun

O to be as spry and energetic at 74: Leonard Cohen launched his three-performance stand at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland last night, April 13, with an approximately three-hour concert that had the audience chuckling with amazement when the singer-songwriter came back for a fourth encore. “I tried to leave you,” he moaned.

Cohen had the crowd in his clenched fist throughout multiple standing ovations and a set that fundamentally mirrored that of his recent Live in London DVD and CD. And he put up a good fight, alternating between standing with his knees slightly bent, hands grasping mic and chord, in a boxer’s posture, and kneeling as if a humble mendicant – the latter his favorite way to open an emotionally intense song.

The songwriter received bursts of appreciative applause for lines like, “You told me again you preferred handsome men / but for me you would make an exception,” and, “You fixed yourself, you said, “Well never mind, / we are ugly but we have the music,” from “Chelsea Hotel No. 2,” a song about written about his affair with Janis Joplin. So long ago, yet still so vivid. This beautiful loser has morphed into a wiry, elegant slip of a man, skipping gracefully off the stage after each encore then back. From afar, Cohen resembles less William Burroughs, a Blues Brother, or a Bogart-esque “Tough Jew” like Bugsy Siegel than a smiling Stuart Little-like gent, revealing a snowy white pate beneath the fedora and a fiercely ingenuous grin. There’s a hard-won innocence to the performer, though he was less chatty and more focused than on the recent Live in London. Likewise backup vocalists the Webb sisters chose to chartwheel rather than do-si-do to that key reworked phrase, “All the lousy little poets / coming round / tryin’ to sound like Charlie Manson / and the white girls dancin'” in the charred apocalyptic ode “The Future.”

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“Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye”: A still from Live in London.

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