Screaming Females and JEFF the Brotherhood at Bowery Ballroom

You know you’re doing something right when fans start chanting your name before you’ve even struck a note. So it was on Saturday night when Nashville’s JEFF the Brotherhood took to the stage at the Bowery Ballroom, mid-way through a seven-band bill assembled to celebrate the mighty Don Giovanni Records.Singer Jake Orrall began the set dressed in leather and teetering on the top of a stack of amps, ending it 30 minutes later amid the sinewy limbs of sweaty stage divers and an exuberantly bludgeoned mosh pit. In between, we got bone-gnawing riffage, never-ending smiles from Jake’s brother Jamin, on drums, and a set of songs that are surely about to propel their quirky take on Neanderthal rock tropes to a wider audience. Judging from the front row here, that process is already well underway.

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JEFF the Brotherhood Interview

Jake Orrall fixes the crowd with a piercing stare from beneath his bowl haircut, brandishes his guitar in front of him like a sword and then steps into the throng like a medieval jouster about to spear an opponent. A meaty guitar riff billows out from Jake’s amp behind him while his younger brother, Jamin Orrall, pounds away at his drum kit, unable to wipe the fixed grin from his face.This is the scene at Pianos during a sweat-drenched CMJ show in October 2009, just one of many appearances at the festival by Nashville two-piece JEFF the Brotherhood. It was during this time that innumerable people were converted to the cult of JEFF, having been won over by the sunbaked ’70s rock riffage and Jake’s affinity for donning leather trousers and dangling a raccoon tail from his guitar strap.



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Gil Scott-Heron - I'm New Here: Review

It’s been a long, hard road to redemption for Gil Scott-Heron, the influential musician, poet and author, whose last full-length album, Spirits, was released 16 years ago. In the interim, he’s been in and out of jail on various drug-related offences, his taste for narcotics sapping the creative impulses that once burned so brightly. Scott-Heron’s saviour came in the unlikely shape of XL Records boss Richard Russell – the man responsible for rave classic The Bouncer by Kicks Like a Mule – who offered to produce an album by the singer during his stint in Rikers.

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Bob Blank - The Blank Generation: Review

The Mutant Disco revival that emerged at the beginning of the last decade gave some long overdue credit to a group of diverse musicians who congregated in New York during the early Eighties. But one man seemed to slip through the cracks when the critical plaudits were being handed out, despite his near-ubiquity on the compilation albums that were swiftly glued together and shoved out. If you squint at the producer credits on those records, the name of Bob Blank crops up more often than not, his steady hand helping to guide and shape the dissident visions of Lydia Lunch, Sun Ra, Arthur Russell and August Darnell. Fortunately, someone at the excellent Strut label had their reading glasses on and has released The Blank Generation, a compilation of wildly disparate tracks that were pieced together in his Blank Tapes studio in Chelsea.

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Midnight Masses Interview

Notions of redemption, death and resurrection run rife throughout the music of the Williamsburg-based Midnight Masses. Singer Autry Fulbright was transplanted from Los Angeles to Atlanta at a young age, subsequently spending much of his youth listening to the brittle punk of the Minutemen and X, and spreading the word of the Jehovah’s Witnesses with his mother. Somewhere between these two worlds lies Midnight Masses, the sweetly melancholic group Fulbright fronts with various friends and indie rock luminaries.

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Chicago Underground Duo - Boca Negra: Review

Boca Negra is a slang term in Spanish, used to denote someone who is foul-mouthed or abusive. It’s also a type of cake. Somewhere in between the sour and the sweet lies this album from Thrill Jockey mainstays Chicago Underground Duo. Cornetist Rob Mazurek and drummer Chad Taylor have been around the block a few times, collaborating with the cream of the crop of Chicago musicians. But for this, their fifth album for Thrill Jockey in 12 years, they traveled to São Paolo, Brazil, where they cut an album that combines their love of scattered improv work and tightly confined grooves.

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Gang Gang Dance and DJ/Rupture at Music Hall of Williamsburg

The appearance of DJ/Rupture (AKA Jace Clayton) as a support act to Gang Gang Dance illustrated the sharp divide in the headline act’s audience. Half of the crowd was made up of tranced-out club kids who were happy to dance to a mix that includes the old (Aaliyah’s still-radiant “We Need a Resolution”) and the new (Joy Orbison’s all-encompassing “Hyph Mngo”). Meanwhile, the indie rock contingent stared blankly at the stage, feeling short-changed at having a DJ as an opening act and hoping none of the revelers spill their beer.

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