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Tonight: The Tins

With the advent of 107.7’s Kerfuffle event becoming the start of a Buffalo tradition, so too is the local after-party that surrounds the event. These after-parties have been marked by bands much in-tune with indie/alt-pop sound of the Kerfuffle events themselves and often by artists who easily could be slated for the event itself. This season that after-party takes place at Buffalo Iron Works with local act, The Tins, headlining. The band has increasingly making a name for themselves with their brand of indie rock, gaining attention from major UK trendsetter, NME, and popular indie blog, PopMatters. The band have a tight-layered pop sound reminiscent of bands like The Shins and Peter, Bjorn, and John. The local act’s arrives on the strength of their highly-impressive new Young Blame EP, a hint of things to come from a Buffalo-based band well and truly on the rise. Doors at Iron Works open[...]

Column 20: Hunger Games – Inspiration for Rebellion and our Youth

While it might be tempting to ignore or write-off the soundtracks for recent mega-blockbuster young adult franchises, the last five years has made this increasingly hard to do. In an effort to both create a sonic landscape for their films and create brand identity, studios have been turning to the world of indie rock. It’s hardly a new idea, going back to the 90s it’s easy to forget that films like Romeo & Juliet and Great Expectations featured original music by bands like Radiohead and Pulp. It almost is a bit heartening listening to these soundtracks and imaging the pre-teens hearing many of these great artists for the first time to find an alternative to what the radio has fed them. That said, Lionsgate deserves special credit for handing the reigns of their entire soundtrack for their biggest franchise over to Lorde. The 18-year old artist is right in the[...]

Column 19: Frank Sidebottom and the Craft of Avant-Garde Pop

While he’s not the household name he is in the UK, those who have spent any significant time with British indie rock are sure to have at least have heard of Frank Sidebottom. The comedian and singer/songwriter Chris Sievey spent the vast majority of his 30 year career donned with a giant paper-mache head assuming the identity of Frank Sidebottom, a cheery optimistic singer from Manchester. The artist’s unusual and offbeat original covers of pop music standards with his band, the Oh Blimey Big Band, won him television fame in the early 90s and a home in the emerging Madchester scene. Sievey rarely did interviews out-of-character and was notoriously secretive, which makes the new film, Frank, so incredible compelling. The film, co-written by former band member Jon Ronson, loosely follows his experiences playing in the Oh Blimey Big Band and gives a certain insight into the mindset and creative process[...]

Tonight: Francie Moon

Tonight, the up-and-coming lo-fi blues rock singer, Francie Moon, makes her way to Buffalo to play Mohawk Place. The young singer/songwriter has yet to release a full-length album but has produced 4 spellbinding EPs that you can find on her bandcamp. With the aesthetic of all the best early lo-fi rockers like Guided by Voices and Slint, and the songwriting of a young P.J. Harvey, this music has absolutely blown me away. Francie Moon is an artist almost destined to greater things and tonight she stops by our neck of the woods to play all the beautiful tunes that have killed me for the past week. She’ll be joined by talented Pennsylvanian artist Shane Palko, whose powerful indie-singer-songwriter sound has been making waves of late in the blogger community. The bill also features local staples Alpha Hopper, Space is Haunted, and Mr. Boneless Doors open at 8pm with a cover of[...]

Stars at the Tralf Music Hall (11/23/14)

After half of Buffalo spent the past week left stranded by a relentless snowstorm, it’s safe to say that we all probably needed a pick-me-up. With a host of shows already laid to waste by blizzard conditions, Sunday night’s Stars show definitely risked becoming the latest casualty of #snowvember. Thankfully though, the stars (pun half-intended) aligned and the city’s excellent clean-up crews were able to clear streets in time to make last night’s show a reality. Suffice it to say, Stars’ show helped provide the pick-me-up this city desperately needed. The Canadian indie-pop band made its way to Buffalo in support of latest record, No One is Lost, an album that finds the band leaning harder on a synth-pop sound and playing to its dancier sensibilities. This might seem like a minor shift, but it was one that was soundly felt throughout the show, as the band’s performance was less the theatrical pop musical[...]

Tonight: Stars

Over the better part of the last decade, Montreal has hosted something of an indie rock renaissance. While a lot of great bands have come from this city, from Arcade Fire to Tegan and Sara to Wolf Parade, there’s been one scene at the heart of Canada’s musical revival and that’s the Arts & Crafts scene. The label was co-created by Broken Social Scene co-founder Kevin Drew and quickly hosted a bevy of talented Canadian artists who would work together in Broken Social Scene while creating exciting works in their own bands. At the core of this scene was Stars, a band who often traded members with Broken Social Scene while producing memorable albums like Heart, In Our Bedroom After the War, and their 2004, masterpiece, Set Yourself on Fire. The band has been consistently turning out charming albums of their brand of theatrical hyper-literate pop ever since. Tonight, the Montreal 5-piece return to[...]

Column 18: Pulp Returns to Spotlight on Life, Death, & Supermarkets

There’s been a recent surge of classic Britpop bands resurfacing, from the Verve to Suede to Blur, and Pulp appears to be the latest. That said, Pulp’s reunion seems a weirdly appropriate time to reunite. While other Britpop acts had a wide array of influential factors, Jarvis Cocker’s have remained the same: sex, politics, and class inequality. Since classic singles “Mis-Shapes” and “Common People” were released 20 years ago, that inequality has only grown, both in their homeland of England and here in America. And with the release of the first documentary about the band, Pulp: A Film About Life, Death, & Supermarkets, Pulp is back in focus as the film centers on the band’s return back to hometown of Sheffield and attempts to discover the culture that influenced its writing. Pulp spends its majority splitting time between both the band and the people of Sheffield. At times, we get[...]

Column 17: How the Music of Guardians of the Galaxy Created Our Most Human of Heroes

With Oscar season now in full-effect, its worth pointing out that there has been a recent absence of popular music in nominated films. Whether it’s the period, tone, or just an effort to pick up additional nominations, Oscar contenders seem to shun the use of pop music. So I thought it might be best to take this time to look back at this year, and few films stand out more than James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy. The film was not only the biggest at the box office in 2014, but for my money, the best musically. This is not to say that other films haven’t had better original songs or more enjoyable soundtracks, but there was no film where pop music played as pivotal of a role as in Guardians. For those who haven’t seen the film, let me set the stage for you. The movie opens on a[...]

Tonight: Sloan

Sloan are no strangers to Buffalo. Returning for their fourth show in the past five years, the Canadian power-pop legends make their way back to The Tralf again tonight in support of their latest album, Commonwealth. The four-piece is famous for their shared songwriting credits and the latest double-album perhaps offers the clearest distillation of Sloan’s sound with all four band members offering a collection of songs. One can expect  plenty of new rockers from the storied Canadian band as well as classics from seminal albums like Twice Removed and Pretty Together. With recent (and upcoming( appearances from other Canadian Indie Rockers like Tokyo Police Club and Stars, Sloan’s appearance tonight is yet another chapter in the great Canadian/Buffalo musical tradition and one not to be missed. Doors at the Tralf open at 7:00 PM tonight and tickets are $24 at the door.

Column 16: BBC’s Drive Experiment Crashes & Burns

When I was a kid, I remember trying to explore everything my computer could do. A personal computer was still an exciting new technology and I had so many fresh tools at my disposal. But of all these tools I had to use, I enjoyed messing with none more than Windows Movie Maker. I still have fond memories of taking popular shows or movies I watched and crudely mashing them up with some of my favorite songs. I share this not to revel in nostalgia, but because that’s what BBC’s latest experiment reminded me of. In the last week, famous BBC radio DJ, Zane Lowe, premiered his rescored version of Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2009 film, Drive. The project overseen by Lowe earned the blessing of the film’s director and collected some of the UK’s biggest indie & electronic acts to create original music for the film. The original was already[...]

Column 15: Pop Music in Horror Movies

While this feature often highlights the use of music in contemporary work, with Halloween just two days away, it seems only appropriate to focus on horror movies this week. While it took a good 20 years for horror movies to catch up to popular culture, ever since the use of “Don’t Fear the Reaper” in John Carpenter’s Halloween, horror filmmakers have been keenly using pop music in a variety of ways. This week, we’ll take a look at some of my favorites. The Strangers – Joanna Newsom Joanna Newsom’s voice has always been a divisive factor in her music. Her almost elfin voice is as entrancing to some listeners as it is off-putting to others. Using this quality of Newsom’s voice to his advantage is director Bryan Bertino. The filmmaker soundtrack’s The Strangers first real scare with Newsom’s “The Sprout and the Bean.” With the specter of looming menace outside our protaganist’s front[...]

Tonight: Handsome Jack Album Release Show

With their Southern blues-rock sound, some might mistake Handsome Jack for one of the host of bands from the Nashville rock scene, but rather this talented four-piece hail from our very own Lockport, NY. The local retro-rockers will take the stage tonight at Mohawk Place to celebrate the release of their new album, Do What Comes Naturally. The album is already receiving early acclaim and even landed them a shout from Rolling Stone. Tonight offers a rare chance to hear the self-described “boogie-soul” band debut their latest record in an intimate venue while you still can. The band will also be joined by a local acts Bearhunter, JOHNS, and Pine Fever. Doors opens at Mohawk Place at 8pm and tickets are $7.

Radiohead’s “Lift”

Lost Gems is a new feature where I will explore some of the B-Sides, Covers, and Unreleased songs from some of pop music’s greatest artists. Some of the weird, cool, or brilliant songs that for whatever reason might never have gotten the notice they deserve. Today we begin this feature with Radiohead, and the story of “Lift.” “It probably would have been the best song on the record” – Ed O’ Brien In 1996, Radiohead had just released The Bends and was currently on a US tour supporting Alanis Morissette. While the band had just become huge stars in its own country off the popularity of “Street Spirit (Fade Out),“ the five piece was a band still struggling to fight off the one-hit wonder perception over here in the States. Night after night, Radiohead played to largely indifferent crowds who couldn’t be bothered with anything that wasn’t “Creep,“ and new songs like “Paranoid Android” and “Climbing[...]

Column 13: Belle & Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch Tries On The Movie Musical

Expanding on the world he’s created through his music comes Stuart Murdoch’s God Help the Girl. The frontman of indie-pop legends Belle & Sebastian makes his directorial debut with this coming-of-age musical that brings all the same retro twee kitsch and emotional vulnerability that style his music to his debut film. While the film’s plot isn’t terribly dense, the film rather plays through a series of musical vignettes that flesh out it’s characters and speak to it’s wider themes about the various purposes for musical expression. The transition isn’t always seamless as at times, the change in emotional tone that works well in the music is slightly more jarring on screen. The film also seems to runs a bit longer than it needs to, as if Murdoch was intent on finding room for every song written in the film. That said, when these sequences work (and the majority do), they really[...]

Column 12: Beauty in the Ugly – The Music of Gone Girl

**Warning – This article features mild spoilers for the film Gone Girl** The first memorable musical moment of David Fincher’s recent film, Gone Girl, takes place in a flashback as protagonists Nick (Ben Affleck) and Amy (Rosamund Pike) trade witticisms before embracing in a cloud of sugar in a New York back alley. The scene’s mood is set by it’s soft lighting and the gentlest of marimba hits making the moment feel like something out of a fairytale, and that’s because it is. If you’ve seen the movie, it’s clear that, above all, Gone Girl is a film about perceptions and the versions of ourselves that we create, for others and for ourselves. In this early scene, audiences are meant to believe what we’re witnessing is a real event, only to later find out it’s a fictional romanticization by Amy to build a perception of the early stages of her and Nick’s[...]