Well, it’s here at last. The trees have donned their leafy green uniforms, the ENO hammocks have found their places amongst the summery shade, and every student is slowly dying a crippling death by means of final exams. This only means one thing for us here at Vanderbilt, and that thing is summer. Before we are set free to our respective internships and summer vacations, we must make it past the hurdles that stand between us and our 14 weeks of relative peace.
As a school in music city, Vanderbilt has an endless supply of great live music venues, concerts, and amazing festivals. I have not been to very many myself, but the ones I have attended – Live on the Green and the CMA Festival – have been very positive experiences. This being said, a large majority of the music festivals that I hear about when I talk to other students include Lollapalooza in Chicago, Illinois, and Bonnaroo in Manchester, Tennessee.
I had no idea who Porter Robinson was when I went to Hard Summer 2015. With other names like ODEZZA, Griz, Big Gigantic, Bro Safari, and Chemical Brothers, it struck me how many kids were wearing black t-shirts with Windings font and carrying “we <3 Porter” signs. Just before his show, I found myself with a group of Robinson fanatics who warned me I was about to have an experience of a lifetime. I smiled, gave a big-festival-hug, and turned toward the stage aglow with the art deco neon of Robinson’s debut album, Worlds.
For some people, salad–especially fruit salad–is really fun to eat. Just search “person eating salad” on Google and you’ll see that 9 out of 10 results feature inexplicably jovial individuals brandishing a bowl of salad in one hand and admiring a tomato or a tuft of lettuce speared on a fork held in the other.
However, as exhilarating as it may be to eat salad, it’s even more fun to listen to it.
Today is April 14th, and that means that school is finally winding down. For our seniors, however, their entire Vanderbilt career is in its final chapter; graduation is only four weeks away, and now WRVU’s graduating DJs only have a few radio shows left. So this week, I thought I’d sit down with a senior DJ and talk about his specialty show, what makes it unique, how he’s managed to keep his shows fresh for four years, and if he has any parting thoughts.
That DJ? Myself.
(Do you know how hard it is to schedule an interview with people this time of the year?! I swear I’m not trying to be self-aggrandizing. I’m simply out of options!)
(Image courtesy of Consequence of Sound)
Since 2011, Teen Suicide, with Maryland singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Sam Ray at the helm, has been fairly consistently lobbing explosive blasts of genre-scattered lo-fi emo/indie pop onto the internet via Bandcamp. Even with all the activity though, and a decent following, the group (mostly the outlet for Ray’s own songs more than a traditional band) “disbanded” in January of 2013, but returned to performing in various capacities by the end of the same year.
Post-rock quartet Explosions in the Sky released their seventh studio album, “The Wilderness” early this April. As a fan and avid listener of their early material, I was skeptical that the group could deliver as engaging and original music as “Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever” or ”The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place.” Their soundtrack material in the interim, such as “Friday Night Lights,” and also tracks off of “All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone,” begin to sound cookie-cutter in their almost melodrama, due only by the group’s early masterful sound.
Just the other day I was making the seemingly endless hike from Kissam to Blair when I put my iPod on shuffle. Yes, times were desperate. My battery was running low and Spotify refused to connect, so I was listening to music that I had actually purchased off iTunes (talk about a throwback.) A U2 song came on and I suddenly realized that the lyrics were speaking to my very soul. You see, second semester senior year is not easy. Whether or not you know what you’re doing after graduation (guess which category I fall in), it’s a confusing and emotional time. But don’t worry, Bono, The Edge and the two other guys are here to empathize with you. The following playlist is a bunch of U2 songs that are a reflection of the struggles of being a second semester senior. Hopefully, this will help motivate you to power through the next month – or at least entertain you as you procrastinate until the bitter end.
There’s something about the music venue at 2208 Elliston Place. I’m not sure what it is, but when you walk through the door into that dimly lit music den to see a show, the world ceases to exist and you become a part of something greater. With its lax security policies and blackwashed interior, it’s a rather unassuming joint; however, when your gaze falls upon the list of names on the dark wall behind the bar, it dawns on you that you’re on sacred turf.
Stories for Monday is known as The Summer Set album that almost didn’t happen. It had been three years since the band released anything, though the band tried to remain active with the occasional tour during that time. Still, there were a lot of questions about whether or not the band had met its end.
Parquet Courts released Human Performance April 8th, and admittedly, after their last album, I can’t say my expectations were very high. Perhaps that is why Human Performance was so easily lovable—or, perhaps, it was because it was the band’s most innovative album yet, exploring new territory and playing with sounds they hadn’t ever touched before.
Last summer, a friend and I somewhat spontaneously decided to go to Shaky Knees music festival in Atlanta, partially to avoid the mess of Vanderbilt graduation and partially because of the killer 2015 lineup. We each had our own personal ideas of bands we wanted to see, but as with any music festival (especially a smaller one like Shaky Knees, where there were only at most two bands playing at the same time), we often had a bit of unscheduled time to casually listen to bands that we weren’t familiar with or didn’t know at all. One such band was Dr. Dog.
Per recommendation from a friend, I recently decided to check out Black Mountain and, more specifically, the band’s fourth studio album, aptly titled IV. Released on Jagjaguwar, the Canadian band’s fourth album truly reminds me why I fell in love with space rock back in high school. The album is jam-filled, spaced-out, and altogether trippy at times, but it also has some really great in-your-face guitar riffs worth mentioning.
“I’m twenty, washed up already,” Frankie Cosmos proclaims in the aptly-named “I’m 20,” the eighth track off her newest release, Next Thing. With poignantly simple lyrics that paint her persona as one fearful of being a corporate sellout, “I’m 20” most notably marks a transition point in both Greta Kline’s latest album and in her career as Frankie Cosmos—marking a kind of profound recognition as she fears it’s happening, rather than after the fact. With words that touch on the flirtatiousness of being playfully young and also scared of not being young, Frankie Cosmos’ Next Thing is a monument of youth and its fading, and adds tremendously to her body of work, showcasing both consistency and novelty.
Rap’s vitality has always been a condition of it being dynamic; rappers come up, styles are birthed, stolen, recycled and then tossed aside. The new stuff rises to the top while remaining indebted to the old at the same time. The resultant mixture is perfect, in a sense, as both listeners and rappers are constantly kept on their toes, and new sounds are abundant. If only someone would come around ever once in awhile and offer some perspective and observation on rap’s current sounds, lyrical trends, and subject matter though.
Last Tuesday marked Yo La Tengo’s triumphant return to Nashville at Exit/In with a concert that was likely one of the biggest genre-rollercoasters of a set I’ve ever seen. Through the band’s decades of genre-bending with their largely varied discography, I couldn’t expect the show to be any different, and it didn’t disappoint.
Omar Moctar, aka Bombino and his band are men of action. No introduction. No witty banter. The band just played, brilliantly.
By Sammy Spencer and Bo Kennedy
This year’s Okeechobee Music Festival, held on Lake Okeechobee in Southern Florida, exceeded all of my expectations for a first year music festival. I arrived late on Friday night due to exams, and set up camp that night already feeling a strong positive energy throughout the site. The next day was a whirlwind of amazing experiences, enhanced by the unbelievable art and music that Okeechobee had to offer.
British indie singer Birdy released her third album last week. Beautiful Lies features her January single “Keeping Your Head Up,” and follows The Fire Within and her self-titled debut album Birdy.