If it is true, as the women in Enda Walsh’s The New Electric Ballroom recite, that “no man is an island,” then why does it seem as if we are too often drowning in a sea of gobshite*? Walsh, who now resides in London, is a bit of a rogue amongst his playwriting peers, eschewing [...]
Category Archives: Reviews
Review: Girls and Real Estate at Bowery Ballroom
November 9, 2009 – 12:00 pm
Rare are the nights you can catch two first-rate bands, each still in their ascendancy, sharing the same stage in one of Lower Manhattan’s most revered venues. On Friday night at Bowery Ballroom, Jersey upstarts Real Estate worked in support of Girls, a much-buzzed-about foursome from San Francisco that traffics in lovesick ‘60s pop. While [...]
Review: The Kindness Kind at Spike Hill in Brooklyn
October 30, 2009 – 12:50 pm
The Kindness Kind played a brief, captivating set last Saturday at the pocket-sized Spike Hill in Williamsburg, as part of the week long CMJ Festival going on in venues and galleries throughout New York City. The band, who has already built themselves a substantial reputation throughout their native Seattle area, drew heavily on material from [...]
Atlas Sound: Logos
October 26, 2009 – 3:45 am
Even by indie rock’s broad aesthetic standards, Bradford Cox is not your prototypical scene leader. His ubiquitous presence in the music blogosphere belies a popular appeal rarely found within the experimental and often challenging catalog of his primary band Deerhunter. Under the guise of side-project-turned-main-event Atlas Sound, however, Cox has found a niche comfortably ensconced [...]
The Emperor Jones at the Irish Repertory Theatre
October 25, 2009 – 4:18 am
Those who haven’t read Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones will leave the Irish Repertory’s new production occupied with a single question: is this a bad play, or is it just a contrived staging? They’ll be nearly mystified at their dulled senses and likely disappointed that the spectacle hasn’t inspired less ireful considerations. (Those who’ve read [...]
The Clientele: Bonfires on the Heath
October 21, 2009 – 5:34 am
London dreampop quartet The Clientele’s new LP Bonfires on the Heath is a soft focus, slow shutter patchwork of autumn-hued dreamscapes and wood-scented October sunsets. Their first LP since 2007’s Suburban Light, Bonfires on the Heath is teeming with spectres, phantom choirs, disconnected voices in fields, haunted nights, and psychedelic sonic flourishes. According to lead [...]
No Age @ (Le) Poisson Rouge
October 16, 2009 – 2:13 pm
No Age have come to represent a certain lo-fi, DIY aesthetic that draws a lot of parallels with the Sonic Youth-led art-punk community of the 1980’s. Like that band, No Age are more punk in spirit than sound – behind that wall of fuzz and feedback are solid power-pop tunes a la The Thermals or, [...]
Review: The Playboy of the Western World at New York City Center
October 14, 2009 – 7:00 am
Early twentieth century Irish theater has a hard time in America today. The accents, which are integral to the cadences of the old peasant idiom, are frequently a problem for our actors, who not only struggle to produce plausible tones but often deliver limply the words of the theater’s great writers, W.B. Yeats and J.M. [...]
