Wavves - Live Show Pics!

Photographer Joe Waslin got some great shots of Wavves performing at Shea Stadium BK on Friday April 12! View the full set HERE!

PAWS @ Glasslands March 5th - Live Show Review

PAWS finally landed in America Tuesday night! This blog has been waiting to see them live ever since we first heard single “Sore Tummy” tear open 90s riffs and bring it to 2012. These are hardworking guys from Glasgow, Scotland who’ve earned their debut tour across the pond. Their punk is much more reflective and melancholic, and less in-the-moment; there really isn’t even a clear shout in their debut album Cokefloat! until track 9 (“Tulips”). They sing songs about mothers and fathers, bullies and ex-girlfriends, and Cupid, who fucked them up pretty bad apparently. They never really threaten to go off rails and do something conventionally “punk,” but that doesn’t mean it’s not good stuff.

Otherwise known as that band Japandroids wear often on their chests, PAWS (all-caps) still seem a bit mysterious to me, even after they did a 7 Silly Questions interview with this blog. Where does that name come from? What’s the significance of a coke float, and can I drink one with the band? And is the cover to their album meant to brainwash us? Either way, it’s working. Here’s to hopefully many more tours in America, more record releases, and more notoriety.

Check out their full tour below. Definitely try and make it if they’re in your city—they’re selling an exclusive EP cassette called “Tiger Lily” with three unreleased songs! Or you can just stream it here.

And check out more PAWS photos here!

-Story and Photos by Joe Waslin

Tour Dates:
3/7 - DC9, Washington DC
3/8 - The Barbary, Philadelphia PA
3/9 - Shea Stadium, Brooklyn NY
3/10 - The Spotty Dog, Hudson NY
3/11 - Great Scott, Allston MA
3/13 - 3/16 SXSW, Austin TX

Foxygen at Pianos, NYC 2/28/13 - Live Show Review!

My Dad lives and breathes and dies by the Rolling Stones. To him, it’s the only the band that ever mattered. So during a depressing November day last year, when I failed to get him way over-priced Stones tickets for their shows in Jersey and Brooklyn, I told him about Foxygen. “You’ve got to hear this guy; he sounds just like Mick Jagger!” I clicked different points of their songs off the EP Take The Kids Off Broadway, but couldn’t find a good reference point. Instead we heard a different sound every time I changed it. “Oh yeah, they also sound like the Doors, and the Zombies, and…yeah.”

Foxygen are much harder to pin down than their detractors insist. It’s new and fresh and overcomes the derivative output that traps many of their peers by being consistently jagged and surprising with their abrupt time-changes. One second singer Sam France is affecting a Lou Reed impersonation, the next a Dylan, and so on. Is it a joke? Is it a tribute? They do rock their own way. I mean their new record is called We Are the 21st Ambassadors of Peace and Magic, certainly not the ambassadors of 20th century rock and roll. Maybe they’re a nostalgic band, mining a range of sounds from the 60s and 70s and being playful about it. It may feel like a farce, but it’s actually a lot of fun.

Most performers I see fall into two categories: pleasant, but a little boring, or there’s moshing, so who really cares about what’s happening onstage anyway? There are few exceptions. Foxygen is one of those exceptions. They aren't just musicians: they’re spontaneous, funny, and weird. Sam rapped for a bit, saying things like “Chinese chicken tenders” (“That was a new song”), asked all the people named Dan in the room to raise their hand, and someone brought out a doll puppet. That all sounds a bit dumb, but believe me, bands like Foxygen are quite a rarity these days.

Perhaps I’ll take my Dad to see them one day. They could be my Rolling Stones. Or maybe I should just give up veganism and eat some Chinese chicken tenders with Foxygen. They make me question animal rights! They’re that good.

Check out the complete photo set HERE!

-Photos and Story by Joe Waslin 
**All photos copyright Joe Waslin Photography. For licensing, contact Joe via his Flickr page.

Vivian Girls, Widowspeak, Eternal Summers & Heliotropes @ Music Hall of Williamsburg Live Show Review!

On Friday, Music Hall of Williamsburg hosted a stellar set of indie rock with legendary local icons Vivian Girls (their first NY show since 2011!) and Widowspeak, along with the up-and-coming Brooklyn bands Eternal Summers and Heliotropes.

Everybody's favorite shoe—that would be Converse of course—sponsored the free-with-RSVP event. I'm not exactly sure if it was required of performers to don the shoes, but it was probably mere coincidence that I caught Vivian Girls bassist Katy Goodman wearing a pair of ankle-high all-black converse. Sweet. I'm sure she was not the only one wearing them too, but I've always felt that winter is not the best time to wear my pair.

But I digress. It was a night of memorable performances, start to finish, although I missed most of the Heliotropes so I guess I can't really say that, but I'm sure they were great too! I've been a fan of them since discovering their cover of Roky Erickson's "I Walked with a Zombie." Oh well. Red Bull is apparently curating a new monthly showcase on trending local bands, and Heliotropes will be playing the inaugural event at the Bowery Electric this Tuesday for only $3—count me in.

For the performances I did see in full, all were pleasantly excellent and unique, I guess a little paradoxically, like every band in Brooklyn these days. And that's a compliment to the fact that I am fortunate to see so many great bands in one music scene. But because there's so much greatness going on at once, I was actually not too familiar with most of the acts, so I saw this show as an opportunity to see bands I have heard good things about across the blogosphere. In fact it was this very blog that named "You Kill" by Eternal Summers its favorite song of 2012. And I did know a lot of about Vivian Girls from a peripheral standpoint, enjoying associated acts like The Babies and the work of former bandmates Frankie Rose and Ali Koehler, who drummed for a bit with Best Coast.

I won't bore you with my vapid observations, but here were two noteworthy things: two of the bands were entirely female, and all leading vocalists were women. I really hope that we're at a time in music where no one will think twice about that, because this wasn't a showcase of great female musicians. This was awesome rock, period.

The second observation is that the drummer for Eternal Summers looks like he could play Sabretooth in an X-Men movie, and I'm very jealous about that. Check out my photos if you don't believe me.

And don't forget to check out my photos of Vivian Girls and WIDOWSPEAK too!

-Photos and Story by Joe Waslin

People Get Ready - Live Show Photos - Mercury Lounge

People Get Ready live at the Mercury Lounge in NY, February 8, 2013. Photos by Joe Waslin.  Here are some of our favorites! To see the full set, go here!

Live Show Review - Punks On Mars/Dinowalrus - Shea Stadium BK Feb 2nd

When I heard that Punks on Mars, the glam punk band I profiled in our Bands That You Should Like feature, would be performing at nearby Shea Stadium I decided to check them out for myself and see how they perform live. I wasn't wrong to liken the band to The Clash either; Sandistina played on and off throughout the night between sets. Both bands I saw were awesome in their own right, and I wish I had gotten there earlier to see the other performances as well, including a DJ set by Diiv bassist Devin Ruben Perez. The crowd thinned out by the time the last openers Dinowalrus finished playing, but I'm still glad I made the trek despite the mild blizzard that hit New York Saturday night (which in all fairness is probably why the crowd was a little small, even for this tiny loft venue). Look out for a live recording of the show on the Shea Stadium website; they record and release every performance at the venue!

-Photos and Story by Joe Waslin