88.1 KDHX Welcomes...
YO LA TENGO / CALEXICO
| Tickets: | Buy Tickets Online |
|---|---|
| Date: | Thursday, January 31, 2013 |
| Doors: | 7:00 pm / Show: 8:00 pm |
| Price: | General Admission $22.50adv/$25dos | Balcony [closed] |
| Age restriction: | All Ages :: $2 Minor Surcharge at Door |
Calexico 8-9:15pm Yo La Tengo 9:45-11:15pm *Set times are approximate and subject to change without notice. Camera Policy: Small Cameras OK / NO Audio / NO Video RSVP on facebook - You could win a pair of tickets! Yo La Tengo web: yolatengo.com facebook: facebook.com/TheRealYLT twitter: @TheRealYLT Most of us fans have a silly tendency to look at our favorite musicians as being the smartest people in the world. Within their lyrics we know we’ll find the answers to everything, if we just look hard enough. In truth, most musicians are no smarter than any of us—often much less so. You can find many books on this subject. Georgia, Ira and James of Yo La Tengo are exceptions to this rule, and Popular Songs, their 12th (or 14th, depending on what and how you count) album is the proof. Because when this new and dramatically unimproved world puts the hard questions to Yo La Tengo, they go Socratic as hell, swaggeringly, reassuringly, honestly telling us that all they know is they know nothing. They do not know why that sunbeam comes through the window when you are determined to sulk; they do not know just how are we going to make it, anyway? Still, Yo La Tengo are nothing if not attentive: They do know that, if you are hearing this record and reading these words (preferably both), you are still here, and they are too, and so—Popular Songs, to resanctify us and all our foibles and goodnesses. They might’ve called it Manual for the People, or perhaps even Carry On, Oy! But it’s good they didn’t. Popular Songs demonstrates that everything said about Yo La Tengo in the past is still true, only more so. Now, almost any song can sound like Yo La Tengo, provided it’s Yo La Tengo playing it: The strings-and-keyboards orchestrations of the opener, “Here to Fall,” on which Ira offers the new best articulation of what it means to love; the Clean-feeling pop of “Avalon or Someone Very Similar,” unburdened by gravity or friction; Georgia’s aching “By Two’s,” a dream-machine in motion, a warm shiver for your cold, still nights. And that’s just the first three tunes! CALEXICO web: casadecalexico.com facebook: facebook.com/Calexico twitter: @casadecalexico They call New Orleans a melting pot. When one thinks about it like that, it’s hardly surprising that this is where CALEXICO reconvened to record their seventh full-length album, ALGIERS. Joey Burns and John Convertino have long called upon an extended range of musical influences, blending them together so distinctly that the results have almost become a genre of their own. Nonetheless, the choice of New Orleans may still come as a surprise to many. CALEXICO are, after all, associated with a style that their name – borrowed from a small town of less than 40,000 inhabitants on the border between the US and Mexico – has always defined with an unusual precision. Their work has spoken of dusty deserts and the loners that inhabit them, mixing America’s country music heritage with that of a Latin persuasion. In other words, it isn’t obviously affiliated with the sounds that have made New Orleans one of the premiere tourist destinations in the US. What’s emerged as a result of this decision, however, is arguably the most exciting and accessible record CALEXICO have made. It’s a fact emphasised by the band’s decision to name the album in tribute to the neighbourhood where they worked: Algiers. “When I say New Orleans, you think…. ’what?’” Burns elaborates. “Preservation Hall Band, Wynton Marsalis, Treme, Satchmo, Dr John, The Funky Butt, The Meters, Fats Domino, Boswell Sisters, Quintron, Trombone Shorty, Galactic, Harry Connick Jr, Brad Pitt, Daniel Lanois. And so do I. But when you are there, on Algiers Point or on the river or standing outside the chain link fence at Congo Square, you go back across the water to Haiti, Cuba, Africa. Some strange circles down there resurface.” The feel of ALGIERS is recognisably classic CALEXICO, but their style been revitalised and reborn by the experience of recording in the city. Its influence isn't necessarily sonically evident, but there’s a strange, powerful connection to the sounds that have always coloured their own, influences Burns has previously identified as including “Portugese fado, 50’s jazz, gypsy or romani music and its offshoots, 60’s surf and twang from Link Wray to country’s Duane Eddy, the spaghetti western epics of Ennio Morricone and dark indie rock singer songwriters.” |
