The Music Court

Hello Music Court readers. I am happy to re-introduce Beth Kelly to the Music Court pages who has a special feature on some excellent summer festivals. With that, take it away Beth.

Ah, sweet summertime. While most of the Midwest is still de-thawing, it might be hard to remember a time when the air didn’t hurt your face. But with hotter days ahead and warm evenings on the horizon, soon it will be time to pack up the car, grab some friends, and hit the road for one of the summer’s best music festivals. From the small and the scrappy to the big and (let’s be honest) overblown, let us help you find the fest that fits best. Read on for a few I’m excited about myself!

Movement Electronic Music Festival – Detroit, MI / May 23-25th

After the first Detroit Electronic Music Festival brought together hundreds of international Techno lovers from all over the globe in 2000, Hart Plaza has become home to the enormous, electronic-themed event. This year sees a diverse mix of house, techno, and hip hop among performers who include Wu Tang Clan’s Method Man, house music icon Kerri Chandler, dance-punk rockers !!!, Disclosure, and even Snoop Dogg, who, after revealing a love for “Euro tekno” last year, has been performing under the moniker “DJ Snoopadelic.” Make a trip to the Motor City on Memorial Day and witness some of techno’s pioneers in action, all set against a beautiful backdrop of the Detroit River and Ambassador Bridge. If you thought Eminem was the only musical export to come from the city in recent years, consider this an education.

Sasquatch! – George, WA / May 22-25th

An internationally-acclaimed music festival/mythical being that emerges from basalt cliffs carved high above the Columbia River Gorge each Memorial Day weekend, Sasquatch! never disappoints. This year’s Sasquatch! lineup remains as impressive as ever, with highlights that include Modest Mouse, James Blake, Hot Chip, Tame Impala, and a dizzying list of other talented performers. Camping is your only option here, so bring enough supplies to last you and your friends all four days. A significantly smaller-scale event when compared to jumbo-fests such like Lollapalooza, with attendees numbering at about 20,000 you can expect a communal PNW vibe and maybe even this guy.

Pitchfork Music Festival – Chicago, IL / July 17th – 19th

Chicago’s annual celebration of all things left of mainstream Pop, this 3-day party finds its home in the cozy Union Park. Coming into its tenth year (I feel old) the event is known for featuring a range of popular and critically-acclaimed performers. Summer 2015’s lineup runs the gamut from local rap act Chance the Rapper to Norwegian DJ Todd Terje. In addition to the music, Pitchfork hosts a vendor sale which includes art, gig posters, and a record sale managed and organized by Chicago’s independent community station. The shows tend to end promptly at 10pm, so do your best to fit in all the food, drinks, and fun your body can handle before sunset—but don’t forget to leave room for the after-party.

Made In America Fest – Los Angeles, CA and Philedelphia, PA / September 7-9th

After starting the first festival small in 2012, Jay Z got together with Budweiser in 2013 to put on the first big two-day “Made in America” festival in Philadelphia. Last year, the event expanded to Los Angeles, occurring in both cities simultaneously over Labor Day weekend. Performers included Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, Pharrell, and the controversial Iggy Azalea. While Jay-Z is off on his own tour with Beyonce this year (you can click here for live-streaming info), if you’re looking for a hip-hop focused fest, this is surely one of the best.

Hopscotch Music Festival – Raleigh, VA – September 10-12

One of Raleigh’s biggest annual events, this festival was established by local newspaper Independent Weekly in an effort to bring both local and national acts to the stages of Virginia. In a “SXSW” style the bands play at various venues across town, touching on genres spanning from classical to dance and “alt-country.” Under new leadership this year, it’s safe to say we can expect a lineup even better than last year’s. Though after Spoon, De La Soul, St, Vincent, and a host of other talented musicians captured crowds in 2014, it’s going to be a tough act to follow.

Have you ever gathered a few friends in one place to play some tunes? Well, Emanuel Lundgren, an uber-talented Swedish singer/songwriter, collected 29 of his closest friends to help record a few tracks back in 2005, and many of them have never left.

I’m From Barcelona, a menagerie of musicians based in Jönköping, Sweden, has been cranking out harmonious pop music since its inception a decade ago, and although the coterie of band members has swooned from the twenties to 19 current musicians, the band has not lost any of its jovial luster, and, as its recent release suggests, it has no plans for growing up.

Growing Up is For Trees, the band’s fifth studio album and first since Forever Today,which was released in 2011, is a 10-track affair featuring a diverse selection of music that will latch onto the ears of pop music lovers. Much in the vein of artists like Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros and even The Polyphonic Spree, I’m From Barcelona employs a wide range of instruments and sounds – from clapping to trumpets. The album’s premier track (below) is an excellent example of what I’m From Barcelona does particularly well. Instead of the wall of sound approach that many big collectives prefer to employ, I’m From Barcelona instead diversifies its musical approach, pairing a full range of vocals that stagger through the song with a consistent rhythm from guitar and percussion. The number of musicians simply leads to a fuller sound and more multifaceted vocal play. The band is so capable; it knows when to drop to fewer musicians and when to bring it all together as it does at the end of the piece in a hard-hitting collection of instruments and vocals. Oh yeah, the video is also pretty cool.

Other tracks to listen to on the new album are “Benjamin” and “Departure,” two songs that feature an agglutination of voices that is powerful and calls back to the band’s initial tracks back on its first few albums. “Benjamin” features a vocal call-back paired with an awesome pre-chorus breakdown that has horns, harmonies, and pretty much everything good in the music world.

In short, you should listen to this album. It is an organized frenzy of fun frisson that is fresh and full. It’s an alliteration of awesome music.

Check out more about the band on its website, Facebook, or Twitter.

When I went to go see the Moody Blues for the first time this past Friday, I quickly learned two important things about the band. One, as the dearth of parking at the NYCB Theater at Westbury – a theater that one does not often have difficulty finding parking at – suggested, the Moody Blues are pretty popular. Perhaps this speaks to the shows I usually see at the former tent in Westbury, but I have never seen the house more crowded than it was on Friday. Second, and most importantly, the Moody Blues effortlessly demonstrates the adage that you’re only as old as you feel; the band is lithe and youthful featuring potent instrumentation and billowy vocals. A product of additional band members? Sure, that does not hurt; however, Graeme Edge, John Lodge, Justin Hayward are just as ardent and inspired by music as I assume they were in 1967 when the uber-successful, gold record Days of Future Passed was released. And isn’t that just amazing? The band, which is celebrating its 51st anniversary this year, is still running on high and does not show any signs of stopping.

So, as stated in the last paragraph, my father and I stepped into a jam-packed theater with a mixed crowd of mostly older women and men, who, when the Moody Blues walked down onto the revolving stage, all erupted and transformed into their younger selves. Sometimes when you see a classic band – and trust me I’ve seen a whole lot – the crowd of older individuals who grew up with the band, well, kind-of reflect their age. Terrible for me to say, but true. On the contrary in this show, the crowd reflected the Moody Blues, who played each song with intensity and soaked up the applause like a sponge, growing in size until almost spilling out with joy on songs like “Question,” “Nights in White Satin” and “Ride My See-Saw,” which the band concluded the night with. This was almost magical, a weird ethereal ambiance that lasted for the entire show and then faded as people left – if only for one brief concert, people were able to transform into their youthful selves and party with the Moody Blues – dancing with the tunes, yelling laudations at the band, and, in general, having fun, which the Moody Blues was doing as well!

The Moody Blues are a forerunner of the classical music blend of progressive rock, a style in-part pioneered by the Blues, mixed with contemporaries like The Beatles, Procol Harum, and The Beach Boys (not too shabby). The airy, spacey sounds of “Nights in White Satin,” which blends orchestral sounds (part Mellotron, part London Festival Orchestra) with rock – and a wonderful poem (“Late Lament”), which was penned by Edge and read by keyboardist Mike Pinder, inspired so many progressive rock bands – Pink Floyd and King Crimson to name two. The band’s seminal 1967 album is always cited as one of the most influential albums of the 60s. The Moody Blues’ musical success ranges throughout the 70s and the 80s, where the band released “Your Wildest Dreams” in 1986 and “I Know You’re Out There Somewhere” in 1988. It is pretty impressive that the Moody Blues had hits in three decades, as not many bands can say that they had this success.

All in all, the concert was a lot of fun and it was a joy experiencing The Moody Blues’ transcendent music with a jam-packed theater of fans of great music!

Matt and Kim has always been known for wacky antics and effervescent pop music. New Glow, Matt and Kim’s fifth full-length will not be any different; the Brooklyn duo who met while attending Pratt Institute is keeping power pop alive.

“Hey Now”,  which features a minimalistic video of the duo dancing maniacally with the Brooklyn Bridge in the background, is a testament to the genre of percussion-laden, horn-heavy pop. Matt and Kim has a penchant for creating opening notes that latch on to a listener’s ears like super glue. If you are a fan of vocal-heavy pop, you just cannot turn the song off and before you know it the song has already repeated 4-5 times. The tracks are short and effective.

Is Matt and Kim for everyone. No, no band is for everyone. However, an attribute I have always respected about the band is its knowledge of who it is. Matt and Kim may change up the notes, but the duo is never going to explore the unfamiliar realm of not creating fun, jocular tracks that listeners can sing along to easily.

The video is just … so … happy! It’s tough to watch it without smiling. That innate joyousness in the music is infectious. Do I love all power poppy music? No. But Matt and Kim has some special quality to the music that makes me want to listen constantly. In “Hey Now,” it is a mix between the segmented vocal chanting, clickity percussion, and the chanted lyric. The song is anthemic, a piece that could easily be the concluding track of a Broadway play or movie … where everything ends well of course. I’ll be keeping an eye out for the new album, which I’m sure will be muy divertido.

It’s important we get this point out of the way early: I do like Mumford & Sons. Sigh No More was a folk-rock revelation; an ode to crescendoing banjos and acoustic guitars that was paired so nicely with powerful lead vocals that it was similar to a fine wine and food pairing. Every song went down smoothly. Was there inherent self-style repetition in the tunes? Of course. It is no secret that Mumford & Sons change some chords around and follow the same exact pattern in mostly every song: slowly rising power fit with a climactic crash of all instruments at the end of a piece. But that was OK. The music was rich in sound and ebullient. It was the pinnacle of the newer folk/rock movement. And, 5 years later and tremendous success behind them, the band has dropped the banjo, added an electric guitar, and have abandoned the folky sound in favor of mainstream Coldplay-like tunes, which works for Coldplay, of course, but sounds mightily contrived for a band that once yelled “I really f*cked it up” in a fast-paced angry folk song.

But evolution is good in music, Matt. Doesn’t this just show that the band is not willing to follow the same pattern in its songs. This would be true if it were indeed reflective of the song. Listen to it. Instead of slow acoustic instrumentation, the song starts with an ethereal piano that basically replaces the string instrumentation. It is a 2-minute “Fix You”-like piece that lulls the listener to musical sleep. Then, a weird out-of-place electric guitar solos over some drums, and the song turns to a mainstream pop/rock song, a trope overdone by SO many bands. Mumford & Sons has abandoned its originality in favor of a type of music and the band is clearly not adept with it.

Maybe I just don’t get it, and remember this is just one person’s opinion. However, I’m not loving it, and if this is the direction of the new album, it’s a real shame.