When I picked up Black Mountain’sIn the Future and asked my friend Lev if he’d heard of the band, his eyes popped in such diameters of familiarity and glee that I had to ask him to write up the review. Says he:
Whether intentionally sarcastic, or accidentally honey-tongued, the title of Black Mountain’s second full-length “In The Future” is a perfectly unfitting title to describe the music contained therein. The opening chords of “Stormy High” teleport you back to the smoke-filled seventies, doused in all of the psychedelic fervor, debauchery, and flower-power that gleamed so bright some-forty-odd years ago. Large doses of whirling organ, fuzzed out Gibson SG’s, and dual vocal harmonies drowned in reverb, undoubtably, and comfortably, place this record alongside some of the dusty vinyl in your dad’s record collection. The album’s song structures stick to such a relentlessly precise formula of combing abrupt moments of energy and drudging meditative breaks that the schizophrenic rhythm of the album sometimes begs for a shorter, more impactive musical delivery. Ultimately, this album will appeal to people either attempting to relive their youth under the guise of the seventies, or those assuming the seventies never ended.
As pedestrians walked past the McNally Robinson book store in Soho, they stumbled a few paces back and forth. Beaming from the other side of the glass front was an engaged throng of faces. They had stuffed themselves into the store’s cafe area, late comers sprawling wherever there was space. Visible to the outsider was the strong back of a woman in a green sweater, whose face, unknown to him, was where all eyes in the room fell. Some bent their head whichever way against the glass until they recognized author Zadie Smith, and a few amongst them had even a point-and-shoot handy. We were monkeys in a zoo, gathered to hear authors Zadie Smith and Gary Shteyngart read from Gregor von Rezzori’s , Memoirs of an Anti-Semite; the novel has been re-issued by New York Review of Books, with an introduction by Deborah Eisenberg that Zadie Smith described as “brilliant”.
New York’s brass outfit Zlatne Uste hosts the annual Golden Festival this weekend, bringing over 50 bands to upper Manhattan in celebration of Balkan brass. The festival starts modestly tonight at The Good Shepherd School from 7:30 PM, resuming the festivities there at 6:00 PM tomorrow, when bands will play three stages till 4 AM. See full schedule.
One of them is Providence’s What Cheer Brigade, who I saw at the center of an enchanted crowd gathered outside the McCarren Pool during last summer’s Man Man show. They will be playing the Auditorium at 3AM. Pictures from that first encounter:
If you missed buying Joanna Newsom tickets, like I did, for her show at BAM with members of Brooklyn Philharmonic, do not despair! Another date has been added the night before: Jan 31 it is, and good seats are still available.
When I picked up Black Mountain’s In the Future and asked my friend Lev if he’d heard of the band, his eyes popped in such diameters of familiarity and glee that I had to ask him to write up the review. Says he:
