just let me hear your voice, just let me listen

All sorts of great, non-internet/ real life things have filled my time this week. And since I'm currently on the bus headed up to reunion for the weekend, my "week" is officially over. By far the greatest part of my week was last night's The National concert at Barclays which I attended with Ana. We got there a bit before doors opened, and despite being in a line stretching down Atlantic, found ourselves in the 2nd row. While it was my third time seeing them live, and the biggest venue, it was by far the closest I've ever been. The dude standing in front of me even got a high-five from Matt at the end (and declared he was never washing his hand again...)

Their stage presence is as captivating as ever. The projections and lighting they have for this tour is impressive and beautifully done. The new material sounded great, but I'm a sucker mostly for their tendency to freak the fuck out on the older stuff (I'm looking at you, Mr. November and Squalor Victoria). They did a great version of Apartment Story (one of my favorites), plus all the songs from the new album which I've been drawn to (Graceless, I Should Live in Salt, etc). And, as a surprise, Annie Clark showed up fresh off a plane to join them for This Is The Last Time. As a footnote to the encore, they came back out to do their acoustic version of Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks. It was a perfect closing which made an arena-sized show seem small and intimate.

it's been one week, vol. 4

alternate title: hot hot heat.
Yup, it's hot out there. The start of unofficial summer feels very real now with the first heat wave. I'm very thankful for air conditioning... but, here are some good things found this week:

- After much agonizing, I bought a backpack! It's the first one I've bought since I had a Northface Recon in highschool (so, over 10 years ago...) which is still functional but has not looked good in a loooong time. I'm very pleased with my new Everlane purchase, and think it will make a great companion for my weekend trip to reunion (one week away!) and for my bike-riding needs around the city.

- I saw this cute wooly mammoth on Etsy this week (a wooly wooly mammoth!), and then my friend sent me this article about a perfectly preserved wooly mammoth had been found and could potentially be cloned. Crazy!

- For a two-song summer dance party, there are new releases from CHVRCHES and Icona Pop:

- This weekend, if I don't melt, I'll be heading to check out a few of the 600+ Bushwick Open Studios. One of the featured studios, Wayfarers, is where my friend Anne Marie has her work! In addition to being a talented artist, she also has a super cool apartment that I always love visiting, and a new puppy who I made into this gif on the day I met him:

it's been one week, vol. 3

Five years ago this week, I was deep into Senior Week parties and events...and in a couple weeks I'll be off to reunion! Totally crazy.

- I know that the Daft Punk album release was supposedly the BFD this week, but I only listened to half of it and then went back to The National's Trouble Will Find Me (now only $7.99 to download on Amazon!) I'm still a little resentful that the Mercury Lounge show on release day sold out in ~30 seconds (and that I couldn't go to the other two shows they played in teeny venues that day). I guess I'll just have to wait for the (not so teeny) show at Barclay's.
- Today is the 130th birthday of the Brooklyn Bridge! It's still quite a beauty, even though it's getting repaired at the moment. I walked across it with my friends visiting from Chicago two weeks ago, and the repairs feel like they're taking over more and more. The Wall Street Journal has a great slideshow of old photos of the Bridge.

- This week I also belatedly realized that there is a new album out by a perpetual favorite Noah and the Whale: Heart Of Nowhere. It's a great collection of songs, themed around coming of age. They more or less stick to their established sound, which works for me because I don't see the need for everyone to be constantly breaking the mold (a statement which also applies to Trouble Will Find Me).

- Aside from it being Memorial Day weekend, perhaps more importantly it is also the return of Arrested Development via Netflix. There has been quite the onslaught of promos for it, including real life banana stands (sadly not staffed by George Michael). My favorite thing I've seen to prepare for its release is this interactive chart up on NPR's site:

Well, I guess now you know how I'll be closing out the holiday weekend ;-)

mo' food, mo' bands, mo' rain

Friday: all sunshine and clear skies

Saturday: different story...

While I had a super fun time on Friday and Saturday, it's a huge bummer that the Sunday installment of Googa Mooga got canceled last-minute. I can only imagine how much food all those vendors had bought / how much money they're out now. Luckily for me, my tickets were just for Friday and Saturday, so I got my full Googa Mooga experience and was able to eat a bunch of stuff from places I had never patronized around NYC. The bands were amazing, and the drizzle didn't seem to be having a large effect on people's willingness to eat lots of food and sit outside.

Foods!

Falafel from Seersucker & Wings from Kasadela

Coffin Bao Fried Chicken sandwich from Baohaus

- I shared some Tebasaki wings from Kasadela with my friend Casey. Delicious!

- Black Eyed Pea Falafel from Seersucker (which is down the street from me, but I've somehow never been there)

- Car Bomb Parfait from Robicelli's = Guinness stout brownie, Bailey's ricotta creme, Jameson whiskey chocolate sauce, beer nut praline = holy cow. As rich and amazing as it sounds.

- Summer of Riesling!!

- Egg Begley Jr from Northern Spy Food Co.

- Truffle burger from Umami Burger (I split one with Ana, but I kind of wish I had eaten a whole one...)

- Maple cotton candy on a pretzel stick from Liddabits - perfectly mapley!

- Coffin bao fried chicken sandwich from Baohaus - so good. Spicy, sweet, crunchy, soft. I loved it.

Bands!
We were a bit more focused on eating than being active audience members on Friday during The Darkness and The Flaming Lips. I miss the days when Wayne Coyne used the enormous bubble. It was still light / the middle of the afternoon during both of their sets, which seemed like they would be better suited to, well, darkness.

This was my first time seeing the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and even with the (uf, tall people) crowds and annoying girls behind me talking about things to do in Hoboken (what?), it was an amazing experience. Karen O is just the greatest performer and has a great sense of showmanship. I loved all her costume changes and theatrics.

On Saturday, I made sure to get there early enough to get an egg sandwich and position myself well for Sharon Van Etten. Her set was still pretty early in the lineup, so we found ourselves in the front row for her (yet again). She was hopped up on coffee from the Third Rail booth and had some charming (and only slightly loopy) banter between songs. Once again she was evocative and possesses a quiet type of slightly sad magic.

The rest of the day was spent much further back on the lawn, amongst the crowds of picnic blankets. I really enjoyed Father John Misty's set and getting to hear him live (Fear Fun is so great). He had some good natured chiding about the artisanal food offerings and the festival set up, and overall had a stage presence that charmed and translated to those of us who weren't close up to the stage.
Matt and Kim headlined the whole thing, which seems crazy when I think about the first time I saw them play in a dining hall at Cornell with maybe 50 people standing in a circle around them. Their enthusiasm was as contagious as ever, and somehow manages to be so big and crazy as to fill an entire park. I didn't realize they were together until the week leading up to the show, which seems to be a fact they're really promoting these days. Kim spent most of the time between songs talking about their sex life, which was maybe a little TMI. They also had some interstitial hip hop dance throwdowns, which we really enjoyed.

I do think that the organizers managed to fix a lot of the issues from last year in terms of the functionality and lines. The weather ruined Sunday, and I hope that they're able to help out the food vendors who clearly invested a lot into participating in this event and had to eat a huge loss not having customers that last day. I wish I could have eaten more on Friday and Saturday!

it's been one week

Ways in which the internet won this week:

- Simultaneously making me feel better and worse about life in NY: http://theworstroom.tumblr.com/ (conclusion: I can never move apartments)
- The Celebrate Brooklyn lineup was released this week, and looks great!
- Parks and Rec was renewed!
- Adding nothing but amazingness to my week / making me want to go on a road trip with John Krasinski and sing Katy Perry songs (which he probably has some time for now that The Office is ending. Emily Blunt can totally come with.):

- I'm gearing up for GoogaMooga #2 next weekend and praying that it has worked out some of the kinks since last year. At the very least, I hope it isn't quite so hot and sweltering, because the temperatures + lack of shade + consuming allofthefood is what really did us in.

- But the real highlight is that my friends Alex and Kendall are visiting all of us from high school here in NY this weekend and I could not be more excited!!! It's gorgeous out today, so I'm going to go be a tourist this afternoon and soak up some sun.

hands up and touch the sky

See you next year, summer. I'm a little sad to see you go, but I'll be glad to see 90+ degree days leave us. It's been pretty laid back, but a lot of stuff snuck in there -- the best kind of summer I think.

Summer 2012 tally:
- 2 weddings (with #3 coming up in a few weeks!)
- 4 Lou Malnati's pizza parties
- 5 concerts in Prospect Park (Laura Marling; Ghostface Killah; Childish Gambino/Danny Brown/SchoolboyQ; Wilco; Wild Flag)
- many first times including a trip to LA, hanging out in Jersey City, standing up in a friend's wedding, swimming at a NYC beach (the Rockaways!), and going to a bachelorette party (this is that scary part of our 20's where there's some kind of snowball and everyone gets married, isn't it?)
- a visit from two of my favvvvvorite people ever
- plus, 12 weeks of fresh summer vegetables (CSA!) and subsequent super delicious stuff being made
- this also just might be known as the summer of the frozen zombie fishbowl...we had a few too many.

I have no way to quantify the number of times I actually listened to Starships, but it's way more than what I recorded on last.fm. It definitely wound up being my song of the summer. I tried my hardest to avoid Call Me Maybe, but it was totally inescapable, particularly watching any sort of Olympics swimming coverage. yikes.

bring on it on, fall -- I have a sweater and some new shoes I'd love to wear. thanks. ::cue exit music::

sky blue sky? (not quite)

Better late than never? I wrote this and forgot to post it, so...
I'm playing catch-up and am going to backtrack to a few Mondays ago when Wilco played the first of three NYC shows. This particular show was in Prospect Park, making it the fourth(?) show I've seen there this summer alone. Wilco made the space their own, with their now-standard backdrop/lighting system. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the show was that starting about 4 songs in, a steady rain began to fall. Lightning was in the area, but it never actually stormed over the bandshell. Wilco played for two and a half hours, including two multi-song encores, but no one budged an inch. They sounded great (and possibly worth noting, they were also dry because the stage area is totally covered) and checked in on the audience to make sure we weren't too wet or...chafing. Thanks? Their catalog is so extensive that of course they couldn't possibly play every single song that we wanted to hear, but everything they played was so great that I didn't even realize what was "missing" until well after. It was a lot of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and a good sampling of all the other albums. They closed the regular set with A Shot in the Arm, my all-time sentimental favorite.

 

you're like a party I heard through the wall

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, the Dessner-curated festival at BAM, took over the Peter Jay Sharp Building at the end of last week. I went with two friends on Thursday primarily to see Sharon Van Etten and headliners The Walkmen, who I hadn't seen since 2005. Friday night I went with another friend to check out The Antlers and St. Vincent. We tried to get a feel for the rest of the festival, and caught a smaller band or two up in BAMCafe, and a few of the short films. I enjoyed the other aspects, but the focus was clearly on the headlining bands playing in the Howard Gilman Opera House.

St. Vincent

St. Vincent (throwing down the mic at the end of Krokodil)

Out of the four main sets I saw, I'd have to give a gold star to St. Vincent. I had heard raves about her live shows before, but didn't understand the sheer magnitude of her stage presence until I saw it for myself. Annie Clark is a true force of nature on the guitar, not to mention her charmingly off-beat lyrical delivery and overall energy. She did one cover of a Pop Group song, and told a story of playing the song in London with the Pop Group's lead singer - he gave her a dish scrubber that looked like Sid Vicious, which was called "Sid Dishes", and which she described as "adorable much?" and his commentary was that "this is what has become of punk rock." The urge to call Annie Clark "adorable" is both accurate and also insultingly insufficient, because she brought it. The main set was closed out with a raging rendition of her new song Krokodil, in which she jumped out into the crowd, climbed up into the first few rows of seats, and then crowd-surfed her way back to the stage.

 Sharon Van Etten

 Sharon Van Etten (with Aaron Dessner)

The Walkmen

 The Walkmen

 The Walkmen

 The Antlers

 The Antlers

The Antlers

As for everyone else, I was impressed by Sharon Van Etten (both musically, and that she wore those 4" heels the whole time!). She had a charming stage presence with a fairly quiet crowd (which included her parents). The crowd perked up more when Aaron Dessner came out and joined her for a few songs, and the energy seemed to pick up after that. The Walkmen followed, and my only complaint was that there wasn't more Bows+Arrows action going on. I also really loved their lighting scheme. On Friday, The Antlers were fantastic. They were as emotionally-charged as ever, and sounded great live. The only other time I've seen them was also at BAM, but I was much closer this time around. Their sincerity seems to make the reverence that takes over the Opera House as a venue.

Overall it was a really successful two days at BAM for me (I couldn't make it to Saturday's final lineup). The only actual complaint I have is that there was a guy standing one person over from me during St. Vincent who really should have been kicked out. He had weaseled his way into the front row, basically by leaning on top of me (ugh), and then squeezed his friend in between us. He gave a *lovely* pre-show rant about how he didn't give a shit if he pisses people off at concerts (clearly). His enthusiasm for St Vincent was overwhelmingly displayed physically during the show, as he pounded on the stage, jumped and flailed his arms, fist pumped, stomped repeatedly, and felt the need to yell "I mean, Come ON!" in between every song. A security guard came over to talk to him 3 times, but somehow he avoided getting kicked out. He is hands down the worst person I have ever been near during a show, which is really saying something. Congrats, dude.

the king of carrot flowers, himself

Jeff Mangum held a captive audience at BAM last Friday night. Unlike some other shows I had attended there, no one rushed into the aisles on the main floor or crowded the stage. Everyone remained seated, focused, faced forward to hear every note and see every strum of his guitar. About 1/3 of the way through the set he broke the fourth wall to tell us that "you know, you can yell things at me!" The crowd perked up slightly, but for the most part it was still very reserved. Perhaps the location, perhaps the fact that Jeff Mangum has only recently come out of "seclusion," but the reverence in that theater could be cut with a knife. It had the potential to be a wild sing-a-long. It could have been a crazy dance party. From someone I know who went to the Saturday night show, they had more of a crowding-the-aisles type of experience. Instead, Friday was beautiful and somewhat somber.

The first section of his set was done solo, surrounded by the three guitars he was not currently playing. In this sense, it brought back memories of college and my friend who used to play Neutral Milk Hotel songs late at night on his guitar. But as things progressed, he was joined on stage by horns and accordian -- a piece of the overall sound that I had notably been missing (I wish they had accompanied during King of Carrot Flowers. I love their parts.)

I never really imagined that I would get to see Jeff Mangum play live... that's one to knock off the concert bucket list. I'm not sure if my friends loved it quite as much as I did, but I could point to the backs of a lot of heads that certainly agreed with me. They really were a crowd that looked like NMH fans / BAM patrons, ifyouknowwhatimean.

Opening for Jeff was the current Julian Koster project, The Music Tapes. Their the live act really has more of a "variety show" feeling than your typical concert set and reflects the quirky nature of what they're doing. I'm not sure that I'd recommend them...or not recommend them. It was definitely a unique experience. I'm a big fan of the 7' Tall Metronome (though, I don't understand why the arm doesn't actually keep time properly. If you're going to go to such lengths, you may as well make it be functional). You can see it in the background of the photo above.

"How now did you see what I did see?"

Seemingly out of nowhere on Monday morning, a tweet/post went up on BrooklynVegan that Clap Your Hands Say Yeah would be performing at Littlefield that same night with tickets going on sale at noon. I dutifully waited with my laptop and pounced, snagging 2 tickets. The show was great, as the crowd wasn't pushy nor the venue overly full (despite being sold out). Everyone seemed so chill, in fact, that Ana and I found ourselves in the front row moments before the opening act took the stage.

I tend to have mixed luck with opening bands that I'm unfamiliar with, but we were really happy with Conversion Party. They switched up vocalists and instruments several times, but the sound remained fairly consistent. I got a Thermals-ish vibe from them at times, which I didn't mind at all.

CYHSY played a mix of their first two albums interspersed with tracks from their upcoming album. All the new tracks sounded great and I'm really excited to hear the whole thing in September. While I was never the biggest fan of Some Loud Thunder, the songs they chose to play translated well to the stage and I may give it a second chance. The crowd was pretty vocal as time went on that they wanted Gimme Some Salt to be played, so their wish was granted in the form of an extra song thrown into the encore. How do we know it was extra? Because our front-row positioning allowed me to hop up onto the edge of the stage and snag Robbie's set list after the show. Win! Photos of the show, including the setlist, below:

(Gimme Some Salt was inserted before Heavy Metal)