Mar

Grimes brings post-Internet jams to Brillobox – PGH City Paper – 3/14/12

“Of all the vague genre monikers that get batted around independent music’s current vocabulary (“chillwave” being the most infamous, and “witch house” the most blatantly stupid), “post-Internet” is probably the most bewildering. It’s a simple but deceptively nuanced buzzword that works only because it wasn’t born from the haughty pens of beard-stroking music critics. Montreal native Claire Boucher, who churns out 21^st-century electronic pop as the artsy synth-fueled fem-bot Grimes, conjured the label in an interview with The New York Times Magazine in late 2011, elaborating a thesis that perfectly captures Generation Y’s approach to making music.” Grimes brings post-Internet jams to Brillobox – PGH City Paper

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Jul

The Hold Steady brings rock ‘n’ roll problems to Diesel – PGH City Paper 4/8/10

By Patrick Bowman

Rock ‘n’ roll problems, for most of the world, aren’t real problems. The Hold Steady knows this fact intimately, but doesn’t seem to care. The Brooklyn-by-way-of-Minneapolis group believes in a world where Paul Westerberg and Bruce Springsteen are saints, redemption is found at the bottom of a bottle, and miracles happen nightly on bar stages across America.

With its upcoming release Heaven Is Whenever (out May 4), the band’s lineup has changed — mustachioed keyboardist Franz Nicolay left the group last January — but not its philosophy. The album’s lead single “Hurricane J” has all the trademarks of the Steady’s boozy, Midwestern romanticism: charging guitars, anthemic choruses and lead singer Craig Finn’s street-prophet poetics.

If anything, the group seems a bit more self-aware about its status as “America’s Greatest Bar Band,” a label that has followed The Hold Steady around for years. On the song “Rock Problems,” from Heaven Is Whenever, Finn howls, “She said, ‘I just can’t sympathize / with your rock ‘n’ roll problems.’” The band is seemingly coming to grips with a world that doesn’t seem to be on the same page as its rock-as-religion gospel.

But when the group rolls into Diesel on April 14 for its fourth show in Pittsburgh in four years, the outside world won’t really matter. Just listen to the last words of “Rock Problems” — Finn makes it perfectly clear where The Hold Steady stands on the subject. “This is just what we wanted,” he yells, “this is just what we wanted.”

The Hold Steady brings rock ‘n’ roll problems to Diesel – PGH City Paper 4/8/10

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Jul

The Smith Westerns bring glam-garage to Brillobox – PGH City Paper 3/25/10

From this post on, until I begin generating new content, I will be posting pieces I have published in other newspapers, magazines, websites, etc. The date of the publication will be attached in the title.

By Patrick Bowman

Chicago garage-glam rockers The Smith Westerns played Gooski’s back room last September, armed only with ’60s-pop harmonies, snarling distortion and youthful abandon. The set was lightning fast and practically on fire, breaking through the smoky haze of Pittsburgh’s consummate neighborhood bar like a brick thrown through a window in a fit of teen-age anomie.

The show, like most on the Gooski’s stage, was under the radar but urgent, coming quick on the heels of the group’s self-titled debut LP, released late last July. The album attracted the taste-making music elite (including Gorilla Vs. Bear and Pitchfork) and perfectly captured 2009′s love affair with lo-fi intensity in 10 tracks.

Songs like “Girl in Love” and “Diamond Boys” ooze with glam rock’s brash sexuality while betraying a gauche, youthful anxiety. This isn’t a gimmick; at the time of the album’s release all four members of The Smith Westerns were between the ages of 17 and 19. That balance of adolescent urge and knowing desire informs the album’s most indelible cut, “Be My Girl,” a track that struts with Marc Bolan’s bravura before erupting into the subtle-as-a-sledgehammer chorus.

The Smith Westerns are on the radar now, and on yet another national tour, which visits Brillobox on Wed., March 31. They’re ready to put an arrow through your sister’s heart, flaunting the reckless love of 17 like it was going out of style.

The Smith Westerns bring glam-garage to Brillobox – PGH City Paper 3/25/10

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