At the Newport, Part I: The Family Tour

World, it’s been a while.

For this, I apologize. I’ve been distant, and I want to soothe the emotional scars with some minty-fresh reportage — it’s the balm, yo.

Recently, I saw two shows at Columbus’s Newport Music Hall. Similarly arranged to Boston’s House of Blues, but on a smaller-scale. The speakers were stacked and the ceiling’s gothic engravings spun with the shows.

The first show was a Rhymesayers fiesta, a tour called The Family Tour: Minnesota-based Atmosphere headlined; Budo and Grieves opened, along with Blueprint (who also opened for Macklemore at Kenyon College a month before). Oh, and on top of all this goodness, it just so happened to be on April 20th, a very special day… because my sister Zoe flew to Ohio to see the show with me! What’s more, m’dude Scotty came along, and we met two more Kenyonites there… yay friends!

Budo and Grieves were the first on stage. The duo are long time friends, not to mention amazing artists. Grieves raps and croons while Budo lays down the beats and plays the trumpet, guitar, and keyboard.

Grieves’s lyrics are typically atypical, as Rhymesayers rappers tend to be. In the song “Scar Gardens,” Grieves laments over lost love, singing, “Purple hearted scar garden harvesting my thoughts song / and, with the chalk gone, / the problem still exists. / At least the outline of its death prevents another fatal kiss.” He’s one of the best I know at rapping about the opposite sex since Snoop sang “We don’t love dem hoes.” Grieves’s best known song is “I Ate Your Soul,” and he TORE IT UP at the show. The song also provided Budo a chance to display his skills as an DJ. Listen to the song, but key-in on 2:54 … that is Budo.

Budo was actually the most impressive performer of the whole night, in my opinion. His unrestrained passion was violently refreshing. In the song “Gwenevieve,” he alternately tore electric licks into the guitar and screamed the refrain “Burn it down!” in an unbridled cry. Powerful stuff. I may or may not have teared up a little.

Blueprint was on next. I already talked about him in an article linked above, but I’ll add some brief commentary. Both when I saw him at Kenyon and at the Newport, Blueprint was the most down to Earth artist I’ve ever seen. Before and after shows, he is so personal with and receptive to his fans. Zoe got a picture with his ugly/goofy mug. On top of this, he gives every performance his all — visceral, full of grit and experimentation.

Finally, we got atmospheric. At the first show of their tour, promoting their new album The Family Sign, Atmosphere delivered a stirring performance through the smoke-clouded room to a weed-addled crowd.

The relentless rage; the unfeeling feeling; a cigarette burn scarring skin… Elation in relating over resentment; angry at ourselves and society; an empty glass just grinning to be filled… I know it’s cliche, but words really can’t capture the energy and emotions that Atmosphere draws from and injects doubly back into their music. Hearts swelled with the throbbing bass in “You,” limbs lurched with each line in “Puppets,” smiles widened with the landscape laid out in “Sunshine.” And those were just the old standbys.

Atmosphere played songs off of The Family Sign, as well. The album is darker than some of their others have been. Here’s some other commentary on the album as a whole:

The Family Sign is Atmosphere’s most personal and intimate album yet; it involves and engages the listener like never before.

[It] comes from a place well refined and firmly planted, from a universal perspective.

[It] is a tribute to their true extended family: their fans, their loved ones, and each other.

— http://www.rhymesayers.com/atmosphere/releases/

The concert was amazing. My sister had a good time. I bought a t-shirt. Couldn’t get any better.

I realize this blog doesn’t exactly specialize in rap or hip-hop; I also realize that all of my posts, even covering the band Why?, have been at least semi-hip-hop oriented. Which is why I’m happy to say that my next post, the second installment of At the Newport, will feature an electronic-infused jam-band called Papadosio that’s been up-and-coming for a while now. Look out for it, here, on PTC!

Macklemore at Kenyon

What it do, world?

What follows is a review I wrote for the Kenyon Collegian of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’s party… I mean performance at The Horn on March 23rd. (All photos by Jake Wayler)

Dust particles, caught in a spotlight momentarily, drifted hesitantly down from The Horn’s rafters this past Wednesday, as if questioning gravity. They never got a chance to settle on the floor: the combination of heat and hardwood bending under feet-bouncing beats stirred the status quo, leaving everyone elated and aloft.

In their first concert in a tour of the Midwest, Seattle-based hip-hop group Macklemore & Ryan Lewis took Kenyon by storm and soul this past Wednesday.

Opening for the headliners was Ohio-based rapper Blueprint. Signed to the Rhymesayers label, Blueprint is part of a faction in the hip-hop industry stressing lyrical consciousness and experimental instrumentals, alongside contemporaries such as Atmosphere, Brother Ali, Grieves, and P.O.S.

Blueprint’s performance was raw, in a style similar to Tyler the Creator, especially when he threw down “The Clouds.” Most of the songs were from his recent album, Adventures in Counter-Culture. His lyricism was witty and cocksure like Childish Gambino, but ranged to the the political in songs like “Hand-Me-Downs,” where Blueprint passionately lamented society’s general apathy: “Used to give us world news – now it’s all videos, / replaced Tavis Smiley with reality shows.” In the chorus, he cynically evokes James Brown’s black power anthem: “Come on say it loud / Look what we handed down / Don’t it make you proud? / Look what we handed down.”

Towards the end of his set, Blueprint released his inner rock star, breaking out the handheld keyboard and hammering out some hammer-ons. Said Leland Holcomb ’14, “Blueprint’s intensity fired me up for the wildness of Macklemore.”

And the rest is modern history.

Iron and Wine at Mass MoCA: Observations, Art and Setlist Guessing

On Saturday night I traversed the back-country to the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, MA  braving the hazardous rural roads and some weird art installations to gaze upon Sam Beam’s mighty fine beard. It was an amazing evening of music, and I’ve brought back some crappy cell phone pictures and a very hazy recollection of the set list for all of you. Click the picture below to see the rest that I took.

Even though I was in the front row and Sam’s setlist was right on the cusp of my vision, I can’t remember the exact order of the songs played. I have a pretty decent idea of what they were though, so its better than nothing. Here’s my best guess- if anybody remembers better please comment and let me know.

Iron and Wine, 4/16/11 Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA
(Setlist tentative)
Boy With A Coin
Freedom Hangs like Heaven
Summer in Savannah
Walking Far From Home
My Lady’s House
Wolves (Song of the Shepherd’s Dog)
Big Burned Hand
Half Moon
Lions Mane
House By The Sea
Tree By The River
God Made the Automobile
Love And Some Verses
Rabbit Will Run
E: Flightless Bird, American Mouth (Acapella)

First off, The Low Anthem were great. They’ve pretty close to perfected their delicate, beautiful compositions, underscoring their elegant lyrics with ephemeral organs, sustained clarinets, finger-picked guitars and alternative instruments like singing saws and bowed banjos. Their performance had an endearing folksiness to it, with the quartet performing several songs gathered around a single microphone and band members swapping instruments between each song. They ended the set with one of the most fasicnating and gorgeous bits of crowd participation I’ve ever heard, asking audience members to pull out their cell phones at the end of “This God Damn House,” call the person they went to the concert with (which disqualified solo attendees like me), put both phones on speaker and position them next to each other. This creates a feedback loop that produces a whirring, almost cricket-like drone that sounded otherworldly with so many people together. Ben Knox Miller even joined in himself, grabbing bandmate Jeff Prytkosky’s phone and whistling into both of them to manipulate the pitch of the humming. Grab a friend and try out the phone thing for yourself, then make your friend come with you to see The Low Anthem.  Check out an awesome video (including the speakerphone outro) below.

My Ravings from Josh Ritter’s Valentine’s Day Brawl in Boston

I don’t think I can/should even try to seperate value judgements of the show from my own personal experience, so I’m not even going to try. This isn’t a concert review, its more like my own journal entry about the awesome time I had. It might be self-indulgent, but considering the tiny amount of traffic we get on this site I don’t really care.

For the Setlist of this show and some coverage from inside the HOB, check out my other post about it.

Firstly, I had mixed feelings about Scott Hutchinson. I’ve been listening to Frightened Rabbit pretty heavily for the past few weeks in preparation, and I must admit they’re becoming one of my favorite bands. However, Scott’s solo acoustic set really didn’t present his songs the right way. His compositions shine in their layered, lush, full-band-requisite glory, and they lost a lot of their beauty stripped down. That’s not Scott’s fault though, I’m sure it wasn’t his decision to leave the rest of his band back in Scotland.
On the plus side, Scott took command of his opening role unlike anyone I’ve ever seen. He was charismatic and likeable, admitting that he didn’t write a setlist and intended to play a whole set of requests. Most openers would never gamble on the crowd knowing enough of their songs to pull something like this, but FR has enough clout and buzz, having played a pretty legendary show in Boston a few years ago. It also worked out for everyone, as the few hardcore Rabbit fans in the crowd requested some of the best songs in their catalog. I would have liked to hear Fun Stuff though. I yelled it out and Scott said it was a decent idea but still didn’t play it. Pity. Check out an awesome video of his performance of “Good Arms and Bad Arms” below, and compare it to the full-band album cut.

Good Arms vs. Bad Arms, Frightened Rabbit