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Archive for June, 2024

Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls / Amigo the Devil / Bridge City Sinners / Micah Schnabel & Vanessa Jean Speckman (Fillmore Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, June 22, 2024) [DID NOT ATTEND]

Posted in Amigo the Devil, Bridge City Sinners, Frank Turner, Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls, Micah Schnabel, Philadelphia, PA, The Fillmore Philadelphia, Vanessa Jean Speckman on June 22, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[DID NOT ATTEND: June 22, 2024] Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls / Amigo the Devil / Bridge City Sinners / Micah Schnabel & Vanessa Jean Speckman

I had been wanting to see him for a long time because I’d heard his live shows were amazing.  I saw him last year in a solo (more or less) performance.  And it was great.  So next, I wanted to see him with his band because I’ve heard the band version is even wilder with a more punk aesthetic and I do love a fun punk show.

For the last couple of years he has disappointed me by having a show on Mother’s Day and then on Father’s Day.  This year it was the week after and I was sure I would be able to go.

And then my son and his friend had car/motorcycle trouble about 90 minutes away.  There was no way I could go out and have fun while worrying about them.  So I stayed home (they had made arrangements to get home by then, but had been out in the heat and sun for nearly ten hours).

So, yet again, I miss Frank Turner and his band.  Luckily, he never stops touring, so I’m sure they’ll be back again, on some other inconvenient holiday, no doubt. (more…)

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Isiliel (PhilaMOCA, Philadelphia, PA, June 21, 2024)

Posted in Isiliel, Necronomidol, Philadelphia, PA, PhilaMOCA on June 22, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: June 21, 2024] Isiliel

Seven months ago, I spontaneously bought a ticket to see Isiliel at PhilaMOCA.  The show was weird but fun.

I’m going to repost (almost my entire review from that show and then add some details for this one:

So, who is Isiliel?  She is Himari Tsukishiro who is the main singer in the Japanese band Necronomidol.  As her site puts it

Isiliel is a solo dance/vocal project by Himari Tsukishiro (NECRONOMIDOL).
Mixing genres as diverse as folk, blackgaze and city pop via a worldwide team of veteran songwriters such as King Dude and NARASAKI of COALTAR OF THE DEEPERS, through Isiliel Himari will express hitherto unexplored depths of pathos and beauty on stage.

As Isiliel, she has one album out.  It is, as implied, a heavy metal sounding album, with heavy guitars and a lot of double bass.  But she does not sing like a heavy metal singer.  Her delivery is quiet and slow (and it’s in Japanese).

I hadn’t heard of either her or her main band until about a week before this show was announced.  But when I saw what Necronomidol looked like, I wanted to go to this show too.  It turned out she has some real fans in Philly.  The audience was probably about 30 people, but the show had about a week’s notice.  And several of these fans brought identical small red lanterns which they waved in time to the beat (I asked the merch guy if he was selling them and he said no–they brought them in!)

She wasn’t in corpse paint (like the other band), rather she was dressed much like she is on the album–a midriff baring top (with a metal breastplate) and short skirt.  Her hair is crazy long.

When the music started she began dancing.  It was sweet and a little weird–it reminded me a but of when my daughter was little and she would make up dances that seemed to fit with the music. (more…)

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Ted Leo + Pharmacists (Union Transfer, Philadelphia, PA, June 21, 2024)

Posted in Dead Best, Ekko Astral, Philadelphia, PA, Ted Leo, Ted Leo + Pharmacists, Union Transfer on June 21, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: June 21, 2024] Ted Leo + Pharmacists / Ekko Astral

I saw Ted Leo + Pharmacists back in 2019 and really enjoyed the show.  At the time IW rote

Even though I like Ted Leo I really don’t know a lot of his songs–I’ve been more of a casual fan.  So I was delighted by the variety of sounds and styles he played from throughout his career.

Over the last five years I’ve wanted to see him again but for one reason or another I didn’t.  So when he announced a show at Union Transfer I grabbed a ticket.  I didn’t really give much thought to the fact that he was playing Shake the Sheets because I don’t really know any of his albums per se.  So I didn’t really care about that (It turns out when I saw him last time he played a bunch of songs from that album).

When the Isiliel show was announced for the same night I was quite torn.  I thought that the Ted Leo show would be more fun, but I didn’t know if Isiliel would ever come back, so I opted for that one. It ended at 10:30 and I had seen that most of the Ted Leo shows were ending around 11:30.  Since Union Transfer is about four block from PhilMOCA I decided to pop in and catch the end of Ted Leo and I’m really glad that I did.

So I missed the entire set from openers Ekko Astral (whom Ted praised very very highly and made me wish I had seen them–if I could have seen them in stead of Isenmor, that would have been amazing).  I’s like to make sure I see them again someday.

Luckily for me (but I would have hated this is I was there), Ted and the band didn’t go on until 9:40.  I just found out though that there were actually TWO opening bands, which explains the delay for Ted.

The middle opening act was (more…)

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Isenmor (PhilaMOCA, Philadelphia, PA, June 21, 2024) [ISILIEL]

Posted in Isenmor, Isiliel, Philadelphia, PA, PhilaMOCA on June 21, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: June 21, 2024] Isenmor

I hadn’t heard of Isenmor before this show.  They are

a dual-violin-fronted Gewyrdelic Folc Metal. Isenmor fuses the heart of the Old World with the spirit of those who sought out new shores.

They were good fun, dressed in vaguely period and vaguely authentic-looking costumes (not in the picture on the right), the two lead violins (Nick Schneider & Mark Williams) were great fun.  They both played lead, but there was also Pete Lesko on lead guitar who played solo or in harmony with the violins.  There were two lead singers.  Schneider was also the main lead singer and Tim Regan the second guitarist also sang a few songs.  David Spencer was on drums.  Folk metal has lots of stylistic changes and the drums have to match up–slow and quiet or some hefty double bass action.  (Keyboardist Jon Lyon was absent).

There were a surprising number of technical issues.  From the start, bassist Mike Wilson told us that he broke his bass just before the show!  So he was playing a guitar (although I thought his bass sound was still really good).  There were also a few glitches with the drums.  But they dealt with the problems very well and during one pause Schneider played a ripping jog that got the crowd clapping along. (more…)

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Folly / Paulson / Teenage Halloween / The Best of the Worst / Silk Sheets (Crossroads, Garwood, NJ, June 21, 2024) [DID NOT ATTEND]

Posted in Crossroads, Folly, Garwood, NJ, Paulson, Silk Sheets, Teenage Halloween, The Best of the Worst on June 21, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[DID NOT ATTEND: June 21, 2024] Folly / Paulson / Teenage Halloween / The Best of the Worst / Silk Sheets

I heard about this show because I saw Teenage Halloween open for THICK and really liked them.  I assumed they were headlining, but as more details came to light, they were in the middle of five bands I knew I wasn’t going to go.

Folly are a screaming punk band.

Hailing from northern NJ, Folly’s eclectic sound fuses the fury of hardcore, chaos of metal, urgency of punk rock, and jubilation of ska/reggae. They are known for their energized and immersive live shows,

Paulson was from Midland Park which is near where I grew up.  They apparently broke up many years ago and this is  their first show in 12 years.

The Best of the Worst are a new Jersey ska-core band.  So it’s screaming punk, with horns!

Silk Sheets are another Jersey band that are the loudest and most cathartic of the lineup.

Teenage Halloween definitely rocks, but they don;t seem to be quite heavy enough for this show.  This would have been exhausting.

 

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Airiel / Blushing / Bodywash (Johnny Brenda’s, Philadelphia, PA, June 19, 2024) [DID NOT ATTEND]

Posted in Airiel, Blushing, Bodywash, Johnny Brenda's, Philadelphia, PA on June 19, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[DID NOT ATTEND: June 19, 2024] Airiel / Blushing / Bodywash

I saw Blushing open for Ringo Deathstarr and I really liked them a lot.  That was five years ago and I was ready to see them again.  Even if they were second on the bill.

I hadn’t heard of Airiel even though they’d been around for over twenty years.  They had been pretty dormant for much of it. so I guess its not too surprising.  I listened to some of their songs and really liked them. And then I felt as though I liked them a little less each time I listened again.

They describe their music as “It’s loud, it’s pretty and you can dance to it”

I was intrigued, but ultimately decided to stay home because I had gone out the two nights before and was going out the two nights after.

Bodywash play a shoegaze style (with synths) and two singers Chris Steward and Rosie Long Decter.  They are from Montreal. (more…)

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Kathleen Edwards / Ken Yates (Concerts Under the Stars series Upper Merion Township Building Park, King of Prussia, PA, June 19, 2024) [POSTPONED]

Posted in Concerts Under the Stars series, Kathleen Edwards, Ken Yates, King of Prussia PA, Philadelphia, PA, Upper Merion Township Building Park on June 19, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[POSTPONED: June 19, 2024] Kathleen Edwards / Ken Yates [moved to July 24]

I once thought that I would never get to see Kathleen Edwards.  And then she resurfaced from her coffee shop and I saw her three times in a year.

I would have liked to see her at this show (I saw her at an outdoor show two years ago) but King of Prussia is really far.  And then the whole tour was postponed because she and her band ran into Visa issues (for the first time ever).

She managed to rescheduled the dates (I guess there’s a good reason to do short two week tours, they are much easier to reschedule).  (more…)

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Los Campesinos! (Union Transfer, Philadelphia, PA, June 17, 2024)

Posted in Los Campesinos!, Philadelphia, PA, Short Fictions, Union Transfer on June 18, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: June 17. 2024] Los Campesinos!

I have been a fan of Los Campesinos! (who are actually Welsh) since their debut album.  But I have never seen them live.  I missed the 2022 show because our postponed Ben Folds concert was rescheduled to this evening.  Bummer.

I didn’t really follow them much after their first couple of albums, but their overall vibe hasn’t changed dramatically over the years.  They write funny, literate songs about loss disguised as really catchy scream along type anthems.

Singer Gareth David Paisey has a yelling kind of voice that is really fun to get behind.  (Util this year all of the band members used Campesinos as their last name, but now they acknowledge their actual names.

I had always thought they were a totally under the radar band.  But I was shocked to see how many people were at this show, in particular how many younger people were at this show. I mean, where do you hear about Los Campesinos! in 2024?  But everyone there knew all the words and shouted along.  It’s also fun to realize that most of the band has been with them since the beginning and the newer people are all in the band over ten years by this point.  Pitchfork describes their fan base

emo-curious indie adults, indie-curious emo kids, DIY scenesters and Genius annotators, avid consumers of hard cider and hard-left politics, obsessives of European football and American Football alike.

The new album All Hell is just as good if not better than their others.  The lyrics are still wordy and verbose with words like selenograph and phrases like “a cavalcade through antemortem, terminal suburban boredom.”  If these words appeal and you can imagine more or less screaming them over catchy melodies, then this is the band for you. (more…)

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Trans-Canada Highwaymen (World Cafe Live, Philadelphia, PA, June 18, 2024)

Posted in Barenaked Ladies, New Odds, Odds, Philadelphia, PA, Sloan, Steven Page, The New Odds, The Pursuit of Happiness, Trans-Canada Highwaymen, World Cafe Live, WXPN 88.5 FM--Philadelphia, PA on June 18, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: June 18, 2024] Trans-Canada Highwaymen

I was pretty thrilled when the “supergroup” of Trans-Canada Highwaymen formed.  I put that word in quotes because it’s likely that some (mostly non-Canadian) people don’t know half of the band.  But I was thrilled to have a guy from four terrific bands pooling themselves together.  And the fact that they were basically covering 70s AM radio hits was just a weird bonus.

I assumed they’d never tour the States.  But when they announced a show in Philly, I grabbed a ticket immediately.  I had no idea if it would sell well (it didn’t, really), but it there was a decent crowd and the people who were there were psyched (some a little too psyched).

There was no opening act.

We had seats in the third row (there were open eats in front of us).  But the row right in front of us was filled with about eight real keen Canadians who were crazy drunk and very loud.   It’s possible only we were bothered by them but I found them more annoying than fun.

But that’s fine, because the music was fantastic.

I’ve said before that I could listen to Steven Page sing anything.  So, having him start with an old BNL song was really fun.  It started with Steven and Craig Northey (from Odds) on guitar Moe Berg (from The Pursuit of Happiness) on bass and Chris Murphy (from Sloan) on drums.

By the end of the night everyone had played drums for at least two songs. (more…)

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Short Fictions (Union Transfer, Philadelphia, PA, June 17, 2024) [LOS CAMPESIONS!]

Posted in Los Campesinos!, Philadelphia, PA, Short Fictions, Union Transfer on June 17, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: June 17. 2024] Short Fictions

I didn’t know Short Fictions before this show.

They have a similar vibe to Los Campesinos!  A kind of delightful chaos that resolves into really catchy songs.  With a trombone!  Anda  xylophone!

The band rocked in a kind of bouncy ramshackle way, singing songs with titles like “Living in Places Like These Can Be Bad for Your Health (Can’t Live Here Anymore)”

They were fun and funny, introducing “I’m Going to Kill Myself with a Gun” by saying that the singer’s mom begged them not  to play that horrible song. But what she doesn’t realize is that it’s about unfair wages and economic inequality!

Some of the songs, like “Wasting” rocked a little harder than other, but other songs are twitchy and weird but also somehow sing-along worthy.  And then a song like “Self Betterment in a Time of Loneliness” had a middle section where the band just went crazy with super fast drums and cymbals.  Jittery and punky and a lot of fun. (more…)

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