Patti Smith is a living legend, and I came to love her art—as I suspect a good number in attendance of her December 29th Brooklyn Steels show did—through her writing, specifically, her much lauded memoir,Just Kids. The book chronicled her life with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in NYC in the later half of the 60s and early 70s as they both became generational talents we know them as today.
While these years were portrayed as hard scrabble in the book, it’s less of a Down & Out at the Chelsea Hotel and more of a celebration of the underground arts scene during that era. Just Kids brought Patti Smith to the attention of a new generation, which was clear by the audience made up of equal parts NY punk rock and hippie stalwarts who were there, man, and younger music fans who seemed every bit as excited.
Back to Smith being a living legend. That appellation might suggest, as I’ve had the experience with other mainstay acts from the 70s, that an artists best days are behind them. This was not the case at Smith’s show. She and her band played in perfect synchronicity, and the performance fell vital and invigorating. Smith opened the show with hits including “Dancing Barefoot,” “Redondo Beach,” and “Because The Night” and the set included a stirring cover of Dylan’s “One Too Many Mornings.” Even though the two night stand was billed as a celebration of Smith’s 76th birthday, she exuded a youthful energy, her voice strong and exhuberant. It’s clear that Smith is not resting on her laurels, and seems to have no plans to slow down any time soon.
Scroll down for setlist, pics of the show (photos by Emilio Herce)
Setlist: Dancing Barefoot, Redondo Beach, Free Money, Ghost Dance, Because The Night, My Blakean Year, Nine, Pissing In A River | Band Interlude without PS- Time Won’t Let Me, If I Could Turn Back Time, Time Is On My Side | One Too Many Mornings, Peaceable Kingdom/People Have The Power, Summer Cannibals, Ain’t It Strange, Time Has Come Today, People Have The Power Encore: Happy Birthday to You, Gloria (In Excelsis Deo)
Wet Leg returned to NYC last week to perform four sold-out shows at Webster Hall, Bowery Ballroom, Elsewhere, and Music Hall of Williamsburg. I was lucky enough to catch the inaugural show on their four-night run, on December 13th at Webster, almost exactly a year since I had last seen them first on their initial US tour.
In a little over a year, from first hearing whispers of this buzzy UK band signed to Domino and catching them at a Baby’s All Right (a much smaller room than the ones they played on this run; see pics), the band has released their eponymous debut album (to critical acclaim) and made three visits to the states (each time playing increasingly larger venues to increasingly adoring crowds. See pics from Brooklyn Steel).
There were initial rumblings that the band was somehow an industry plant or somehow undeserving of its upward trajectory (these were based not a little on sexism imo), but I suspect that the band was always meant to play venues the size of Webster, and everything before this was course correction until they reached this level. It’s hard to make the case otherwise anyway, considering how swiftly they sold out all four venues on his run, and how they absolutely dominated their December 13th show.
Wet Leg’s Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers seemed like conquering heroes at the show, at least based on their reception. They played a blistering and confident set of songs from their self-titled debut, opening with “Being In Love,” “Wet Dream,” and “Supermarket.” It’s been a joy to see the band’s evolution, not that any of their previous performances were lacking, but the confidence and refusal to accept anything less than they deserve—themes central to their music—were on full display. Most of all the band seemed like they were having just the best time, which of course infected everyone in attendance.
A working theory I have about why the band exploded in popularity during the last two years is that these themes of dissatisfaction and feeling like you deserve better (coupled with a healthy dose of self-doubt and introspection) echo the feelings of an entire generation entering their mid to late 20s and feeling like the pandemic robbed them of something, but perhaps unable to verbalize what exactly that thing is. Wet Leg performed “Too Late Now” in the latter half of the set, my favorite song of theirs, and one which encapsulates this sentiment well, the sense that time is running out and that one is being propelled forward more by momentum than anything else. Still, the song resolves on a hopeful note, embracing self-care. “Everything is going wrong I think I changed my mind again / I just need a bubble bath / To set me on a higher path.”
Seeing their performance too felt like self-care, an empowering embrace, a rejuvenating bubble bath, and I cannot wait to see them again.
Domino label mate, Sasami, opened the show and had a short but powerhouse set of her own, perfectly setting the stage and kicking off an evening of captivating music.
Scroll down for setlist, fan shot videos, pics of the show (photos of Wet Leg by Emilio Herce; photos of Sasami by Kate Hoos)
Sasami setlist: The Greatest, Need It to Work, Skin a Rat, Not the Time, Toxicity (SOAD cover), Say It, Call Me Home
Wet Leg setlist: Being In Love, Wet Dream, Supermarket, Convincing, I Don’t Wanna Go Out, Obvious, Oh No, Ur Mum, Piece of Shit, Too Late Now, Angelica, Chaise Longue
Philadelphia band Palm performed something of a homecoming show on Wednesday, November 30th at Music Hall of Williamsburg. I say ‘of sorts,’ because while most of the members have decamped in Philadelphia, I first got to know them (read, became obsessed with the group) while they were still living in NYC and performing at venues including Palisades, Shea Stadium, and Market Hotel.
The band, made up of Eve Alpert, Kasra Kurt, Gerasimos Livitsanos, and Hugo Stanley has outlived most of the DIY venues where they initially cut their teeth, and while Palm always has been (and I expect always will be), a band ahead of their time, that time seems to be at hand. Their latest record, Nicks and Grazes, was released in October of this year via Saddle Creek Records and received glowing reviews.
In a way, Palm teaches you how to listen to music for the first time, and while they are ostensibly a rock act, in that they use (heavily modified at times) rock and roll instrumentation, their music defies the genre’s usual tropes. Alpert and Kurt’s densely layered and dueling guitars and vocals, Stanley’s immovable and syncopated drum patterns coming in and out of time with Livitsanos’s precise and unstoppable bass lines. Repeated listens are rewarded with new neural pathways, until eventually, to the listener, new patterns emerge, which makes for an intensely gratifying and ear-wormy listening experience.
I do not mean to make Palm’s music sound like homework. The band is not, per se, inaccessible, but they do ask for some investment from the listener. At the core of each song is a dynamic and often dizzying rhythmic skeleton. There is no regard for time signatures or tempos on this end, and no regard for chords or classical melodies on the other. The shorthand I use to describe their sound is that they play jazz music, but not on purpose, and the legend of the group is that they have little formal training, and while this is hard to believe (witnessing the band perform these songs live anyway), it is at the core of what makes them such a powerful and compelling group.
This was on full display at their Music Hall show. Since I last saw them perform, the band has graduated from their aforementioned DIY and club-sized haunts, and they have also graduated in another sense. Their set felt telepathic, all members becoming one organism, a soulful machine. The instrumentation too has changed too, the Midi-processed guitars were still in use (creating sounds akin to a steel drum), but the band has also added a number of drum pads to recreate their studio output. Kurt has also taken to playing a single pickup guitar with foil (?) attached to some strings, seemingly not only feeling constricted by standard song structure, but also by standard instruments.
For so long Palm has felt like DIY music’s greatest secret, whispered about by those lucky enough to have seen them live. It is so gratifying to see their music reach a wider audience and I honestly believe their music is the future.
On Friday, November 11th, Teke::Teke, the Montreal based Japanese band, performed their inaugural NYC show at Brooklyn’s Public Records, a relatively new mid-sized Gowanus venue. The venue is audiophiles dream, built to hi-fi specifications with an aesthetic reminiscent of a wood paneled listening room (in a good way). The room’s high-quality sound system was put to good use by the band, which consists of guitarists Serge Nakauchi Pelletier and Hidetaka Yoneyama, bass player Mishka Stein, drummer Ian Lettre, flutist Yuki Isami, trombone player Etienne Lebel, and vocalist Maya Kuroki, and whose music often defies categorization.
Teke::Teke is an international band in more ways than one, and though Montreal-based, the group pull influences from all over the world, and combine classical Japanese instrumentation and theatre (the show opened with a masked, Noh inspired, performance), surf-rock, psychedelia, middle-eastern guitar interplay, big band vigor, and even some doomier metal drones. On paper, this sounds like it would be a little chaotic, but it’s a credit to the band that they are able to pull these disparate sounds together on stage for a cohesive and riveting live show.
Each musician played their instrument masterfully, especially the wind instrument section which (which included a stunning bagpipe solo), and served the songs winding but interconnected themes. It was honestly a nice change of pace to see a group defy genre so deftly, in a Brooklyn scene which is saturated but mostly homogenized, and you should certainly catch the band live if at all possible.
Scroll down for pics of the show (photos by Emilio Herce)
Will Toledo is one of the sharpest and most emotionally affecting songwriters of his generation, full stop. It’s possible that he (and his band Car Seat Headrest) don’t receive the credit they’re due because his band performs loud (!) and he has taken to wearing a mask (reminiscent of Donnie Darko’s Frank The Bunny) on stage. It may be easy, but wrong, to dismiss his impressive live show (and the lights and mask) as a form of spectacle (they are awe-inspiring), but to do so would be missing the point.
I was lucky enough to attend and shoot Car Seat’s first of three sold-out shows at Brooklyn Steel on March 29th, 2022. Toledo and band performed a sharp set full of songs from 2020’s underrated Making A Door Less Open including “Weightlifters,” “Hollywood,” and “Can’t Cool Me Down,” but CSH also delved into songs off the excellent Teens of Denial and the re-released (and album I’m currently obsessed with) Twin Fantasy.
It’s clear that Toledo has graduated from the lo-fi bedroom recordings that broke him on Bandcamp, lead to his signing to Matador, and has inspired a devoted fandom (including Smashmouth). He’s both an inspired songwriter and poised to take over the role of stadium headliner with one of the finest live bands around. Also, credit to him, that with the bunny mask he’s the only other person other than Britney Spears to figure out how to make a headset mic look cool. Rising indie star Bartees Strange opened the show, returning to Brooklyn Steel after a string of opening dates for Lucy Dacus (see our photos/review here) saw him rock the venue last fall.
Scroll down for pics of the show (photos by Emilio Herce)
