Tag: Parquet Courts

When I hear the sounds of Islands, I am reminded of sparkling diamonds and shattered glass.

I meant to write the notes for this show sooner than a month after the fact, but travel plans got in the way and here I am struggling for an intro. I can tell you that hearing Sparklehorse take on Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians’ “Listening to the Higsons” for the first time, mere weeks ago, felt like someone became obsessed with the same cassette as I did thirty years ago, but actually got around to letting the hen out.

Tonight’s opening theme is clearly tribute to the Imaginary City — the opening cover is from the town’s The Streetwalkin’ Cheetahs, who are named after an Iggy and the Stooges lyric and have been pumping out a corresponding racket for about 30 years now. The song itself, originally by X, is about a friend of the band that left for England to hook up with the Damned’s Captain Sensible. The lore is unclear on whether the Captain was expecting that or not.

Paleface didn’t say it first, but he probably said it best: it’s a World Full of Cops. Musicians and the authorities have been at each other’s throats for a while now, and there is no shortage of songs showing cops in a bad light, so what I like about “World Full of Cops” is its simple observational mantra: they are everywhere, we put them there, and they are us. Enjoy a full evening of police-themed music — it’s the law!

After a dormancy of a few years, The Dodos have re-emerged and proven to be anything but extinct. This duo makes a sound that is easy to recognize but hard to describe, a sort of acoustic progressive metal filled with droning rhythms and cascading guitars that you can clearly hear on the appropriately-titled “Unicorn”.

You might think Juanes is some sort of reference to a collective of people named Juan, but it is actually a single Juan, more accurately a Colombian named Juan Esteban Aristizábal Vásquez. Here he is singing along to Elvis Costello and the Attractions as part of the fascinating Spanish Model project.

Tonight’s show started off with Picture Book, a one-hour mixtape of songs dedicated to the captured image, whether it be a personal snapshot or an exotic postcard. The rest of the night was the usual Mixtape territory, closing out with my latest inexplicable favorite, International Sangman.

If The Wedding Present were the traditional sort, they would be bringing coral to the festivities. This one is from earlier in their career, closer to the wood years, but the Velvet Underground never goes out of style. This is from another good VU tribute album, Heaven and Hell from 1991 or so.

Habibi is what happens when you spill solvent on the psychedelic garage / surf music / girl groups section of your record collection.

Katie Crutchfield, performing as Waxahatchee, has been slowly and steadily building her repertoire and now her talent is overflowing her banks.