Latest Posts

Tonight: Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad

October 29, 2015

Fresh off the May release of their fifth studio album Bright Days, Rochester’s favorite live reggae jam band, Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad will be returning to Buffalo’s The Tralf tonight. While Bright Days was mostly an exercise in finely crafted, laid-back roots-rock, the band’s usual live sound is a funky, low-end heavy mix of jam-band rock and dub reggae. It’ll be anybody’s guess which style they decide to bring to tonight’s show. My hope is a little of both. Bright Days is an amazingly natural-sounding, with the Eagles-esque soft rock of tunes like “Trust In Time” and the country ballad “Humboldt County Gold.” You’d think they took more influence from the Band than the Wailers. Still, it’s things like the electronic-tinged reggae rhythms of “Missing You More,” the funky wah wah bass of “Love You More” and the 420-friendly lyrics of “Mr. Cop” that the band is best known for. Opening[...]

Tonight: What the Beck

October 10, 2015

After performing to packed crowds at Nietzsche’s, What the Beck, the pun-ey tribute group to alt-rock’s favorite genre-bender, is performing at the Tralf tonight. While Beck songs normally dabble in rock, alternative, funk, west coast folk, hip hop, country, and latin music – in other words, pretty much everything – the group itself is a 10-piece big band. It’s a welcome reimagining of one of rock’s most fluid and experimental song-writers. In fact, it’s surprising Beck himself hasn’t tried big band renditions of his own songs, given his flair for reinvention and bold, difficult performances. As an added bonus, the opener will be local cover group Pockets, performing the music of Modest Mouse. It goes practically without saying that the indie-rock darlings, headed by the always frenetic and sarcastic Isaac Brock, are great local favorites, purportedly selling out their April show at Babeville within minutes. Doors will open at 8pm,[...]

Music is Art Readies for Year 13

September 11, 2015

A stage devoted to beat poets. An elaborate performance artist who adorned her set-piece in shiny blank CDs. A guitar-maker whose primary material is old cigar boxes. A bearded bluegrass quartet performing not 100 yards from an EDM DJ. These are just a few of the sights and sounds that I recall from past incarnations of Music is Art – Buffalo’s 12-year-old celebration of everything music and art, including many acts that creatively meld visual and sonic forms of expression. This means the festival is appropriately varied (as you have surely already inferred), with more than 100 artists taking six band stages, six DJ stages and two dance stages. Hell, there’s even a stage for the children – the Kid’s Village Stage. And while the festival may lack the big-name appeal of the other music fest taking place Saturday – Edgefest, at Canalside – there is no better time to check[...]

Tonight: Incubus & Deftones

August 2, 2015

These days, the so-called nu metal movement of the late 90s and early Aughts – spawning such atrocities as Papa Roach, Kid Rock and Linkin Park, to name a few – is typically dismissed with the contempt and scorn it so rightfully deserves. But, as is the case with most fad sub-genres, it also spawned a handful of artists who are actually worth your time and money. Chief among these nu-metal diamonds in the rough was the Sacramento art-metal quintet the Deftones. While their contemporaries have mostly fallen by the wayside, finally succumbing to years critical panning and godawful records, the Deftones have remained popular and even acclaimed, buoyed largely by their varied influences, adventurous experimentation and flair for juxtaposing beautiful, serene moments with vicious screaming and chainsaw riffage. You could make the same case for the alt/funk rockers Incubus, who while best known for their 2000 rock ballad “Drive,”[...]

Neil Young and Promise of the Real – The Monsanto Years

July 1, 2015

Sure, in writing it sounded like a good idea, or at the very least a ballsy and righteous one. Neil Young, one of rock’s most dedicated social and environmental activists, dedicating the space of an entire LP to taking down one of the most controversial corporations in modern America, Monsanto Company, your trusted neighborhood manufacturer of carcinogenic PCBs, genetically-modified farming seeds and various herbicides. But political art – be in poetry, literature or music – is a delicate balancing act, and usually necessitates a less-or-more approach. This is the central problem for Neil Young and Co. on The Monsanto Years: he drives home the same points so heavy-handed and incessantly that his message grows dull and befuddled long before the record’s end. Attempts to clarify his argument – on “A Rock Star Bucks A Coffee” he addresses legislative efforts to have GMO foods labeled, and the company’s responding lawsuits –[...]

Tonight: Steve Miller Band

June 30, 2015

“Some people call me the space cowboy, yeah / some call me the gangster of love.” Chances are, even if you’ve never heard of the Steve Miller Band, you are at least familiar with the above lines, which are the iconic opening to the San Fran outfit’s most familiar song, “The Joker.” But the Steve Miller Band had an impressive and successful run of hits, mostly in the 1970s, including “Fly Like an Eagle” and “Jungle Love.” Clearly, the band has not been relegated to dinosaur or one-hit wonder status: the group’s set at Artpark tonight sold out days in advance. Opening the show, fittingly enough, is the local R&B/soul group Miller and Other Sinners. The show begins at 6:30pm, with doors opening at 4:45pm. Artwork is located in Lewiston, just off Route 104.

Tonight: Benjamin Booker

June 16, 2015

Benjamin Booker is certainly far from the first to mix the power and passion of blues with the vigorous energy and attitude of rock ’n’roll. But few in modern music seem as committed to the rawness and simplicity of their respective influences – which, in this Virginia Beach singer-songwriter’s case, is mostly DIY punk and bluesy garage-rock revival, with a dash of gritty, Joe Cocker-esque soul. And what better place to catch Booker’s intense, lo-fi rock approach than at Buffalo’s Tralf Music Hall tonight? From here he’ll be heading home, south to Virginia and then to Dover, Del. for the Firefly Music Festival. There he’ll be right at home with the likes of Hozier and Gary Clark, Jr., and hopefully find new fans amongst the 80,000 in attendance. For the blues-buff who finds someone like the aforementioned Hozier or the the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach too slick, too pop-oriented, Benjamin[...]

Of Monsters and Men – Beneath the Skin

June 8, 2015

Nearly four years after their hugely successful debut, My Head Is an Animal, the Icelandic indie-folk/indie-pop quintet Of Monsters and Men has at last returned with a proper follow-up in Beneath the Skin. The record is a rare, near-perfect follow-up that both retains the group’s galloping choruses and effervescent energy while also pushing their sound in new directions. On Animal, the quintet’s melodies were so jaunty and jangely that even tragic songs like “Little Talks” – which seems to discuss communications between two lovers, one living, one dead – came across as bubbly and lighthearted. With Skin, some of alt-rock’s best hook-writers have gotten better at channeling that tragedy and beauty into their music. They still employ their big horn hooks and chants, but they’re done more subtly and artfully. The addition of pummeling tribal drums have also lent the music an oomph and expansiveness that fits excellently in the[...]

Florence + the Machine – How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful

June 2, 2015

As humans we would never wish personal turmoil, i.e. a tough breakup, on anybody, most of us having gone through a lot of that shit ourselves. As music-fans, however, there’s nothing better than a breakup, divorce, death of a loved one or mental breakdown, as tragedy has inspired so many artists’ best music. For baroque-y British soulstress Florence Welch, the personal turmoil included a “complicated, on-again-off-again relationship” with both a man and the bottle, culminating in a near mental breakdown during her time off following her astonishing sprint to the top with 2009’s Lungs and 2011’s Ceremonials. It’s also, thankfully for us, culminated in How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful – the most intimate, powerful album yet from this vocal powerhouse. She matches soul-barring, confrontational lyrics (see “You were on the other side, like always / You could never make you mine” from lead single “What Kind of Man”) with[...]

Faith No More – Sol Invictus

May 19, 2015

Even while experi-metal rockers Faith No More helped inform so much heavy music of the 90s and early Aughts, they always seemed to be miles removed from it. In the early 90s they were too abrasive for the alt-rock crowd, too weird and unpredictable for grunge, and by the late 90s too arty for the likes of KoRn and System of a Down, the nu-metal freaks they’d helped inspire. But the group still maintained a sizable cult following that’s proven impervious to critical panning and total lack of chart hits – sans “Epic” and “Midlife Crisis” – and one that only seems to have grown since their temporary disbanding in ’99. It seems only now the band’s getting the dues they deserve, and they couldn’t have proven themselves with a finer, so-called “comeback” disc than Sol Invictus. Rather than try and build on their enormously varied body of work, the[...]

Snoop Dogg – BUSH

May 12, 2015

Snoop Dogg sure is having one hell of a late-career rediscovery. After more than two decades in his revered gangsta rap persona, the D-O-Double-G reinvented himself as a peace-loving, rastacap-wearing reggae crooner for 2013’s Reincarnated. After that he had a brief stint as SnoopZilla, for his one-off 7 Days of Funk album with Dam-Funk, and a longer stint as DJ Snoopadelic, a phase which pretty much explains itself. For his latest project, BUSH, the unlikely hip-hop chameleon teamed up with Pharrell Williams for an upbeat set inspired by old-school funk, disco, and modern EDM music. Think Kanye’s 808s filtered through the jazzy funk amalgam of To Pimp A Butterfly’s production. What you end up with is the funnest, most-focused set of Tha Dogg’s career. The record opens with “California Roll” – a piece of sunny, Golden State-loving funk set over the bass-line and rhythms of “Drop It Like It’s Hot.” It’s[...]

Mumford & Sons – Wilder Nights

May 5, 2015

Though the de facto leaders of the folk revival movement, Mumford & Sons have always been arena rock as much as anything. On songs like 2009’s “Little Lion Man” and “I Will Wait” off their GRAMMY-winning sophomore effort Babel, frontman Marcus Mumford brought a dramatic edge – and of course, huge singalong choruses – that practically demanded a huge starry-eyed audience. For their third effort, Wilder Mind, they embrace their inner pop – and populist – impulses, and, of course, plug in. And while they do deserve a kudos for a radical departure from a very successful formula,the results are anything but bold. With help from The National guitarist Aaron Dessner, the group employs a slow building and moody approach that replicates a watered down approach of that group’s style. They also add Coldplay-esque sentimentality, loads of boring chords that’d find home in a Snow Patrol songs and splashes of[...]

Raekwon – Fly International Luxury Art

April 29, 2015

The Wu-Tang Clan as a collective has unquestionably seen better days, but the group’s most talented member (if not Ghostface Killah) has enjoyed something of a Raekwonaissance as of lately. Buoyed by the 2009 release of the excellent, long-delayed sequel Only Built 4 Cuban Linx Pt. II, Raekwon has been unusually high-profile in recent years, turning in guest verses for the likes of Kanye West and SchoolBoy-Q. Naturally, the Chef tried to build on his success and create music that would appeal to a broader audience than his usual Mafioso rap narratives. At least that was his stated goal in 2013, when he announced Fly International Luxury Art, his sixth studio album. But after two years of push-backs and delays, it’s hard not to feel underwhelmed with much of the final result. Production-wise, the album is yet another return to Raekwon’s roots – specially the first Cuban Linx – with[...]

Tonight: Afrika Bambaataa

April 25, 2015

Legendary DJ Afrika Bambaataa is making his debut performance in the Queen City tonight at Duke’s Bohemian Grove Bar. While the South Bronx DJ has scarcely a popular hit to his name, his fusions of hip-hop, funk and electro house made him one of the most ground-breaking DJs of the early 80s. Bambaataa (real name: Kevin Donovan) is widely as an originator of breakbeat DJing and electro-funk, and is widely referred to as the “Godfather of Hip-Hop” (not to be confused with the Doggfather – Snoop). His classic tracks include such old-school hip-hop staples as “Jazzy Sensation,” “Planet Rock” and of course, “Renegades of Funk” (which 90s babies may remember for its excellent funk-metal cover by Rage Against the Machine in 2000). But Bambaataa’s influence has largely overshadowed his relatively obscure hip-hop funk classics. Among his legacy is the Universal Zulu Nation – a hip-hop awareness group that helped spread[...]

Alabama Shakes – Sound & Color

April 21, 2015

When they exploded on the scene in 2012, Alabama Shakes’ mix of bluesy garage rock, Southern rock and soul (channeled via vocalist Brittany Howard) led most critics to brand them a roots rock group. It was, for the most part, a fitting umbrella genre to peg the eclectic, idiosyncratic quartet under. But with the release of their sophomore record, Sound & Color, forget any notion you might have had about the Shakes playing so-called roots rock. In fact, forget any notion that these Heart of Dixie oddballs could be branded under any singular genre or style. A breathtakingly weird and diverse record, Sound & Color adds R&B, disco, funk, classic rock and even dashes of punk to its established soul and blues rock amalgam. And while genre-blending may be more or less ubiquitous in popular music in our post-millennium world, most acts are far more subtle, seamless and safe in[...]