Lana Del Rey is brilliant. She is the queen of rootless melancholy, an emotion many people seem unable to access fully — except through her. She’s a master of her own persona, and she’s constructed it with such consistency across all platforms that it’s baffling. She remains accessible enough to still convince us of her humanity, but remains removed enough that it’s still a question asked: is she real?
LCD Soundsystem’s show at Nashville Municipal Auditorium on October 20th for their american dream tour was one for the books. They’ve played the festival circuit last year and several shows in Webster Hall and Brooklyn Steel in New York, but haven’t had a formal tour to themselves since their 2016 reunion. The band announced their breakup in 2011 and proceeded to play a legendary string of shows in Madison Square Garden documented by the film “Shut Up and Play the Hits”. Their triumphant return last year was fully brought to full realization with the release of the album american dream on September 1st, put out by DFA Records, the label of LCD’s frontman James Murphy.
To say the situation was “uncomfortably wet” Tuesday night as we pushed through clouds of cigarette smoke into the dark confines of The End would be a bit of an understatement, but for some reason the trudge through the cold rain that plagued most of Valentine’s Day was almost a welcome warmup for the experience that lie ahead.
Everyone’s new favorite band, Whitney, has captured the hearts of many an ironic-flower-crown American millennial with just half an hour (exactly half an hour) of recorded music. At Exit/In Monday night, they recaptured those same hearts during the first show of their fall tour.
I was justifiably skeptical in my approach Marathon Music Works for Miike Snow’s return to Nashville after their three year hiatus to pursue personal projects. My sentiment was further warped upon waiting in line to receive my ticket and photo pass, when I was eavesdropping on a woman behind me that was ‘desperately in need of a sitter.’ It was in that instant that I was struck with the realization that I was utterly companionless, afloat in a sea of financial-independence. The late-twenty to late-thirty-year old crowd filled up all the space around me and I buckled in to receive whatever was coming my way.
Last Friday, September 25, while most of my fellow Nashville concertgoers were headed to the first night of Taylor Swift’s 1989 stop at Bridgestone Arena, a friend and I were on our way to the Ryman to see West Coast indie pop/rock group, The Neighbourhood. My friend had never been to the Ryman, so this summer when tickets went on sale at a fairly low price we decided to just go for it (little did we know that Sufjan Stevens would be announcing a show there merely 2 months later…sigh). The Neighbourhood seemed like a strange choice for the Ryman, as they had certainly lost a good deal of relevance (and not to mention, airplay) since the release of their first album in 2013. Despite that, I was excited mostly to see if they could pull off their unique experimental tracks live.
If you’re a fan of Jack White or The Black Keys, then you’re probably well aware of their little rivalry. In the last couple of years White has made a real ass out of himself over The Black Keys. Not only did he bash on the band in a Rolling Stone interview and accuse them of riding on his coattails and being unoriginal, he also pulled his kid out of school to avoid association with Dan Auerbach’s child. Sure he went on to post an apology to The Keys and other artists on his website but come on, he said some pretty shitty stuff about a band that shares much of the same audience as his own, with nothing to provoke him other than his ego.
Like a lot of folks my age, I went through a pretty intense garage-rock phase the first few years of High School and was super into both Jack White’s work as well as that of The Black Keys, for I, unlike Mr. White felt as if I shouldn’t have to choose a side.So when I was given the opportunity to see Jack White play at Bridgestone Arena on Wednesday, I had a couple of thoughts racing through my brain. Firstly, the 15-year-old version of myself trapped inside my head started peeing his pants with excitement. But simultaneously I was thinking back to The Black Keys arena show I witnessed a couple years ago on their El Camino tour and how it left such an awful taste in my mouth. Could Jack White, the man that truly believes he is a head above bands like The Black Keys, really outshine them? Did this guy actually have something to back up his claims? Was Jack White Justified in being a dick?