Tag: Radio City Music Hall

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Courtney Barnett Performs “If I Don’t Hear From You Tonight” on “Jimmy kimmel Live!”

With the release of 2012’s I’ve Got a Friend Called Emily Farris EP and 2013’s How to Carve a Carrot Into a Rose, Melbourne-based singer/songwriter and guitarist Courtney Barnett received critical acclaim from outlets across North America, the UK and Australia for work that featured witty and rambling conversational lyrics, often delivered with an ironic deadpan paired with enormous power chord-driven arrangements. And although her success may have seemed like it came about overnight, it wasn’t; Barnett carved out a long-held reputation for being one of Melbourne’s best guitarists: she had a stint in Dandy Warhols’ Brent DeBoer’s side project Immigrant Union and guested on Jen Cloher‘s third album, In Blood Memory.

Barnett’s full-length debut, 2016’s Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit, which featured “Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go To The Party” and the T. Rex-like “Elevator Operator was released to critical praise across the world. The acclaimed Aussie artist collaborated with Kurt Vile on 2017’s critically and commercially successful Lotta See Lice, which landed at #5 on the Aussie charts, #11 on the British charts and #51 on the American charts.

Her sophomore solo album, 2018’s Tell Me How You Really Feel, which featured the motorik groove-driven “City Looks Pretty” continued an enviable run of critical and commercial success. Barnett supported Tell Me How You Really Feel with a three month world tour that included some of her biggest tour steps in Australia at the time.

Barnett’s Stella Mozgawa co-produced third album Things Take Time, Take Time was released last month through Mom + Pop Music and Marathon Artists. Centered around intimately detailed songwriting, Things Take Time, Take Time finds the acclaimed Aussie crafting a journey through heartbreak, recovery and all the soft moments in between that speak to the feelings and experiences that are innately human.

Earlier this year, I wrote about the lovely ballad “Before You Gotta Go.” Centered around a sparse arrangement that begins with a warm drone before gently adding layers of twangy guitar, Barnett’s tender vocals, synths, drums and percussion in a slow-burning crescendo, “Before You Gotta Go” is a simultaneously a frustrated kiss-off and a gracious send-off rooted n a bittersweet, lived in-experience: the hope that the last words between you and a love be to unkind because nothing is guaranteed.

The acclaimed Aussie artist is currently in the middle of a lengthy and extensive North American tour that includes a February 5, 2022 stop at Radio City Music Hall with Julia Jacklin. As always, the rest of the tour dates are below. But in the meantime, Barnett was recently on Jimmy Kimmel Live, where she performed the introspective, garage rock-like “If I Don’t Hear From You Tonight,” a empathetic portrayal of the desperate self-doubt and awkwardness of a crush that’s probably requited, yet not exactly confirmed.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Courtney Barnett Releases a Gorgeous and Surreal Visual for “Before You Gottta Go”

With the release of 2012’s I’ve Got a Friend Called Emily Farris EP and 2013’s How to Carve a Carrot Into a Rose, the  Melbourne-based singer/songwriter and guitarist Courtney Barnett quickly received critical acclaim from outlets across North America, the UK and Australia for work that featured witty and rambling conversational lyrics, often delivered with an ironic deadpan paired with enormous power chord-driven arrangements. And although her success may have seemed like it came about overnight, it wasn’t; Barnett carved out a long-held reputation for being one of Melbourne’s best guitarists: she had a stint in Dandy Warhols’ Brent DeBoer’s side project Immigrant Union and guested on Jen Cloher‘s third album, In Blood Memory.

Barnett’s full-length debut, 2016’s Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit, which featured “Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go To The Party” and the T. Rex-like “Elevator Operator was released to critical acclaimed across the world. Back in 2017, Barnett collaborated with Kurt Vile on the highly acclaimed and commercially successful album Lotta Sea Lice, which landed at #5 on the Aussie charts, #11 on the British charts and #51 on the Stateside charts. The Aussie singer/songwriter and guitarist continued an enviable run of critical and commercial success with her third album, 2018’s Tell Me How You Really Feel, which featured the motork groove-driven “City Looks Pretty.” Barnett supported the album with a three month world tour that included some of her biggest Aussie tour stops. 

The acclaimed Aussie artist’s highly-anticipated third album, the Stella Mozgawa-co-produced Things Take Time, Take Time is slated for a November 12, 2021 release through Mom + Pop Music and Marathon Artists. Centered around intimately detailed songwriting, Things Take Time, Take Time reportedly finds the acclaimed Aussie artist pulling the curtain back to reveal an optimistic and serene side. “Sometimes I try to say everything in one song, or put my whole belief system into a vox pop, but you just can’t do that — it’s impossible,” Barnett says in press notes. The album represents the realization that ideology is represented through the way you treat others, not what you say in a song — that some things are more felt than said. And yet, the album is full of the strangeness, busyness and undeniable warmth of life. 

Things Take Time, Take Time‘s latest single, the lovely “Before You Gotta Go” features a sparse and atmospheric arrangement that begins with a warm drone, before gently adding layers of twangy guitar, Barnett’s tender vocals, synths, drums and percussion in a slow-burning crescendo. But at its core the song is a deceptively complex song that’s both a frustrated kiss-off and a gracious and thoughtful love song centered around a bittersweet yet very real sentiment: that if something bad were to happen that the last words between you and your lover not be unkind. 

Directed by Claudia Sangiorgi Dalimore, the recently released video for “Before You Gotta Go” is fittingly both lovely and surreal. We see Barnett, as an idiosyncratic, suit wearing ethnographer, collecting field recordings of trees, dogs, horses, mushrooms, insects and enormous statues and even plants with her own face, pushing through the ground. “Making this clip was an interesting experience for me,” Sangiorgi Dalimore says in press notes. “I love how brilliantly simple Courtney’s idea was, it brought real joy shooting part of it together, just me, her and my DOP with the other part being two long days directing over zoom across the Tasman Sea. I watch it now and feel that sense of peace, that potent calm you can only get immersed in the beauty of nature.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Formed back in 2010, the acclaimed Baltimore-based dream pop act Lower Dens can trace its origins to when its primary songwriter and founding member Jana Hunter had grown tired of touring and decided to take a hiatus. For what was supposed to be their final tour as a solo artist, Hunter recruited a backing band which featured Geoff Graham, Abram Sanders and Will Adams. Finding that playing with a band was much more enjoyable to them than playing as a solo artist, helped Hunter form Lower Dens. “During that tour, I realized that it wasn’t the touring life that I hated, but more so that the kind of music I wrote as a solo artist wasn’t something I felt entirely comfortable sharing in performance setting. Lower Dens then was the eventual result of the decision to make music with the specific intention of sharing and enjoying it with others,” Hunter said at the time.

Lower Dens’ full-length debut, Twin Hand Movement was released to critical praise from the likes of Pitchfork, who compared Hunter’s vocals to those of PJ Harvey and Beach House’s Victoria Legrand and Dusted Magazine, who praised the album’s lyrics for being “delivered without irony, yet self-aware enough to appreciate the obviousness.” While touring to support Twin Hand Movement, the band began writing on the road — but the limitations of writing on the road forced Hunter to work through a laptop and keyboard rather than a guitar, which lead to an increasing presence of synths on what would become their sophomore album Nootropics.

After they completed their tour, the band chose to record their sophomore album at The Key Club Recording Company in Benton Harbor, MI.  Hunter cited the studio’s remote location as an imperative part of the writing and recording process. Geoff Graham added that the amount of time spent in the studio allowed them to add extra dimensions to the material to make it lusher and thicker. Largely influenced by Kraftwerk‘s Radioactivity, Fripp and Eno and David Bowie‘s production on Iggy Pop‘s The Idiot, Nootropics was released to critical praise from the likes of Pitchfork. Rolling Stone and Spin. 

Building upon a growing profile, Lower Dens opened for Beach House and indie rock legends Yo La Tengo at the Baltimore stop of the legendary act’s  2013 Fade tour. And the following month, they released “Non Grata” on a split 7″ with Baltimore-based band Horse Lords, an effort that was released as part of the Famous Class LAMC series, which benefited VH1’s Save The Music Foundation. 

2015 saw the release of the band’s third album Escape from Evil, which continued a run of critically applauded albums. Since then the band has gone through a series of lineup changes — with the band now being a duo featuring its founding member and primary songwriter Jana Hunter and Nate Nelson. And during that period, the members of Lower Dens had been working on their highly-anticipated follow up to Escape from Evil, The Competition.

Slated for a September 6, 2019 release through their longtime label home Ribbon Music, and the album is reportedly a pop album with an emotionally and politically urgent concept at its core. Competition, by design is the driving force of modern capitalism and the title is Hunnter’s term for a socio-psychological phenomenon that competition generates — a kind of psychosis that accelerates and amplifies our insecurities and anxieties to the point of overload. And as a result our intimacies, our communities and even our senses of self are corroded and distorted. “The issues that have shaped my life, for better or for worse, have to do with coming from a family and a culture that totally bought into this competitive mindset.  I was wild and in a lot of pain as a kid; home life was very bleak, and pop songs were a guaranteed escape to a mental space where beauty, wonder, and love were possible. I wanted to write songs that might have the potential to do that.”

Interestingly, The Competition‘s third and latest single is the atmospheric and slow-burning synth pop “Galapagos.” Centered around shimmering and arpeggiated synths, a motorik-like groove, a soaring hook, four-on-the-floor drumming and Hunter’s achingly tender vocals, the song evokes an unfulfilled and plaintive longing while sonically recalling Kate Bush and Siouxsie and the Banshees. And it may arguably be one of the most cinematic-leaning songs the act has released to date.

The members of Lower Dens recently announced that they’ll be hitting the road to support their new album. They’ll be opening for Of Monsters And Men for most of the tour with the exception of a three special album releases shows in Los Angeles and Baltimore. The tour will include a September 5, 2019 stop at Radio City Music Hall. Check out the rest of the tour dates below.

 

Tour dates – all dates opening for Of Monsters And Men except where noted:
08/31/19 Baltimore, MD @ Rituals *

09/01/19 Baltimore, MD @ Rituals *

09/04/19 Washington, DC @ The Anthem

09/05/19 New York, NY @ Radio City Music Hall

09/08/19 Boston, MA @ Rockland Trust Bank Pavilion

09/10/19 Philadelphia, PA @ Metropolitan Opera House

09/11/19 Toronto, ON @ Budweiser Stage

09/13/19 Chicago, IL @ Aragon Ballroom

09/14/19 Minneapolis, MN @ Surly Brewing Festival Field

09/16/18 Denver, CO @ The Mission Ballroom

09/17/19 Ogden, UT @ Ogden Twilight

09/19/19 Santa Barbara, CA @ Santa Barbara Bowl

09/20/19 Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room *

09/22/19 Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Palladium

09/24/19 Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater

09/26/19 Seattle, WA @ WaMu Theater

09/27/19 Troutdale, OR @ McMenamins Edgefield

09/28/19 Vancouver, BC @ Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre

10/19/19 Maspeth, NY @ Pitchfork Octfest ^

11/01/19 Houston, TX @ Axelrad Beer Garden *

11/02/19 Mexico City, MX @ RadioBosque Festival ^

* Lower Dens headline show

^ without Of Monsters And Men

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Eric Wareheim’s Kinky Video for Blonde Redhead’s “Dripping”

Back in 2014, Blonde Redhead quietly released their ninth full-length effort Barragan, an effort that includes the shimmering and sultry single “Dripping.” The New York-based trio promptly released a hazy and gorgeous video for the song that also doubled as an advertisement for British fashion label All Saints, which you can catch below. Interestingly, comedian, actor and musician Eric Wareheim, best known for his work in comedy duo Tim and Eric is a huge Blonde Redhead fan and he figured that he could two things — create a better video and craft a love letter to his favorite band. And much like the original video, Wareheim’s video is gorgeous, featuring worshipful imagery of beautiful women of all shapes, sizes and colors smoking, drinking whiskey or delicately pruning hedges until the camera gently pulls back and reveals some incredibly kinky activities.