The Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park featured many indie rock up-and-comers, as well as established acts like Neil Young, Metallica, and Stevie Wonder. Continue reading…
Bazile is a solo artist from Austin, TX who writes music that he calls “Space Folk.”
Originally from Mississippi, Bazile grew up listening to film scores, and that appreciation has greatly contributed to his style of songwriting. And although his songs are often cinematic, Bazile truly shines when it’s just his voice and guitar.
Bazile took two years to record his debut album, The Sojourn of Professor Narducci, and it was a long, deliberative process. The end result, however, is a captivating work that succeeds in balancing the music with his often melancholy lyrics. For a sample of the album, check out “Solder City” and the Sufjan Stevens-esque “Life of Particles” (MP3s). Bazile’s Poetic Memory is below.
Since its inception in June 2002, Bonnaroo has become the premiere North American music festival. This year’s outing will be my third excursion to the farmlands of Manchester, Tennessee — I was there for Wilco and Bob Dylan in 2004, and I returned for Beck and Radiohead in 2006.
Each year challenges attendees to survive three days of camping, sweating, and drinking with 80,000 of your strangest friends. So, in part one of Owl and Bear’s Bonnaroo preview, we’ll let you in on a few secrets to surviving a sweltering — but inevitably fun-filled — weekend at Bonnaroo. Continue reading…
Tom Fec, the mastermind behind O&B Best Of 2009 alum Black Moth Super Rainbow, is back with his other project. Tobacco is a psychedelic, glitch-pop, one-man supergoup that’s one acid trip from the loony bin — in a good way.
With Maniac Meat, Fec continues the electro buzz-saw sound he created on his first full-length, Fucked Up Friends. Shying away from the ambient, slowed-down grooves of Black Moth Super Rainbow, Maniac Meat is, well, meatier. The more robust, aggressive sounding effort leans on Beastie Boy-ish beats and tons of synth layers.
Lending an air of prestige to the proceedings, the one and only Beck (who Fec has said produced his favorite album ever, Mellow Gold) appears on two tracks. Continue reading…
In the final moments of Friday’s The Tonight Show, the now former host, Conan O’Brien, grabbed an ax (that’s slang for guitar) and joined The Max Weinberg 7 to perform “Freebird,†which also included one of the dudes from ZZ Top (the long-bearded guy), Ben Harper, Beck, and Will Ferrell on lead vocals. The spectacle turned an otherwise melancholy moment into something amusing (the segment, along with the rest of O’Brien’s final episode at the helm, can currently be viewed, with limited commercial interruption, at Hulu). The supergroup’s competencies notwithstanding, there were two remarkable things about the performance. First, O’Brien’s ability to shred (that’s slang for play ax); and second, his alternating expressions of joy, sadness, and, more interestingly, relief.
He’s been through a lot (frankly, we all have). O’Brien was having fun jamming, for sure, but by the end it was like watching someone who, after coming to terms with the fact that there’s nothing more the doctors can do for him, happily dies in his sleep while dreaming and, once dead, ascends to heaven. Or something to that effect. Continue reading