The Secret Sisters are back in town on Friday. I hope we'll get some songs off of their forthcoming album. Let's go with "He's Fine" as the SOW:
About Yeah Right
Be Our Friend!
Recent Posts
Recently we have been quoted by:
Music
April 14, 2019
April 10, 2019
Concert Reviews
Better Oblivion Community Center at Black Cat – This exceeded my high expectations. I was running late so I missed Christian Lee Hutson’s opening set and arrived during Lala Lala. They were very enjoyable. But BOCC was downright outstanding.
Conor and Phoebe complement each other so well. It reminded me of when Jessica Lea Mayfield and Seth Avett toured together. The harmonies are so clutch. They played pretty much all of their fabulous album – my favorite “Sleepwalkin’” came pretty early in the set. Plus, as I was hoping for, they mixed in a bunch of Bright Eyes (“Easy/Lucky/Free” “Lua”) and Phoebe’s solo songs (“Funeral” “Scott Street” “Would You Rather) which I preferred to the originals (again, sucker for a good harmony). They also covered the third best Replacements song (“Can’t Hardly Wait”) so bonus points for that. I really hope this turns into a longtime collaboration and not a one-off album and tour. But I’m at least glad that I got to see it if this is all we get. Now Phoebe just needs to take boygenius on the road so I can see them.
Amanda Palmer at National Theatre – I have mixed feelings about this show. It had amazing moments, but it dragged on for way too long (I almost fell asleep on several occasions). It was a solo Amanda show to promote her new album – just her, a piano, and a ukulele. For every song she played, she told a story. Kind of like a VH1 Storytellers episode. Which was neat. But the stories were long. Very, very long. So the talking to singing ratio was not great. And the show lasted four hours. And she still didn’t play a ton of songs I would have loved to hear because the majority of that four hours was her talking. It didn’t help that the National Theatre didn’t have a curfew for the show – she said the other venues on the tour did, so she had to keep things more compact. I’m sure those shows were still long, but I could have used some compactness. If she played four hours and it was mostly songs, I would have been fine since it was a seated venue. That’s just a long time to pay attention to intense stories. Plus by the end of the show people were getting more and more drunk and shouting things and that was annoying.
April 09, 2019
Concert Reviews
Lucy Dacus at Black Cat – Fenne Lily and Mal Blum opened the show. Both were good but talked way too much between songs. Lucy started and ended her set with new songs (solo) – bold move, but they were good songs. Otherwise she played with her full band and covered most of her two albums. I had an excellent spot near the stage for the majority of the show, but it was super hot at the venue (I understand – the weather has been fluctuating so much the past few weeks that it is hard to tell if you need heat or air conditioning on) so I had to walk to the back to get some water and more personal space halfway through Lucy’s set. Unfortunately this means that I had a horrible spot for her best songs “I Don’t Wanna Be Funny Anymore” and “Night Shift.” Though I did get to stand next to two teenagers awkwardly making out for both songs, so I have that going for me, which is nice. All the adults around me were visibly laughing. It was that bad.
Jawbreaker at the Anthem – This was bucket list material for me. I’m thankful that Jawbreaker decided to do a short tour after their reunion at Riot Fest. Now I just need the Misfits to do the same! Both opening acts were solid and I had really good VIP seats for the show. The venue was not even close to full – 2/3rds full at best. Hard to tell if that was just due to ticket sales or aided by the ridiculous traffic in DC that evening because a large part of the beltway was closed due to a semi-truck accident. That would suck if someone missed a reunion because of DC traffic.
24 Hour Revenge Therapy was an influential album for me and I’m happy to report that Jawbreaker played six songs from the album, including ending their set with my favorite track “Boxcar.” It was a relatively short 15 song set, but it packed a punch and I enjoyed it greatly. It was also great people watching because there were a ton of couples in the VIP seats where the husband was clearly a huge Jawbreaker fan from the 90s and their wives seemed to have no idea what was happening. I was one of the youngest people there. It was nice to not be surrounded by millennials at a concert for once.
April 08, 2019
April 07, 2019
April 03, 2019
April 02, 2019
Concert Reviews
Kelly Clarkson at Royal Farms Arena – While I was up in Baltimore for Weezer, I made a weekend out of it and saw Kelly Clarkson for the first time in ages. She was magical, obviously. Someone from the Voice (Brynn something) opened and had a great voice and two legit catchy songs. But her set was all of 20 minutes, so not much to report here. I’d also never heard of the next act, Kelsea Ballerini, and the most positive thing I can say about her is that she wore a Kelly Clarkson t-shirt. Kelly ditched her bedazzled Talbot’s style blazers of previous tours for some show-stopping dresses. She also made some burly dudes clean the whole stage with a Swiffer Wet Jet (was this a subtle produce placement or just her preferred cleaning method?) after the openers, which was the talk of our section.
Kelly kicked things off with “A Moment Like This” and went into a solid trio of “Meaning of Life” “Walk Away” and “Love So Soft.” I’m not a huge fan of “Whole Lotta Women,” but appreciate the girl power-ness of it, which came before my favorite stretch of the set with “Behind These Hazel Eyes” “Breakaway” and “Piece by Piece.” For her Minute and a Glass of Wine Facebook live segment she covered Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.” Brynn and Kelsea joined Kelly for “Miss Independent” to end the set, before Kelly returned for a four-song encore ending in (of course) “Since You’ve Been Gone.” Her voice is impeccable and she’s funny and likable when she talks between songs. She announced she has a daytime talk show starting in the fall, which should be fun, but I hope won’t limit her future song production because I need more Kelly Clarkson concerts in my life.
Mariah Carey at MGM National Harbor – This concert was the opposite of Kelly Clarkson. It sucked. I should have expected this. I blame myself for being optimistic.
The opener was a DJ who played 20-30 second snippets of popular songs, asking the audience every time “Put one hand up if you know this one.” This was the 2nd best moment of the show, which says a lot. He also got an embarrassingly high amount of applause when he instructed the crowd to “Point to Michael Jackson in heaven.” Wut. I don’t object to playing his songs. But can we finally stop pretending he wasn’t a horrible person? Let the dream go, people.
Mimi was like a statue on stage. The only moment that was legitimately enjoyable was the encore of “Hero.” A few other ballads were also fine – her vocal delivery was good and it made sense why she was a statue on stage. But the up-tempo numbers…my goodness, the up-tempo numbers. They were remixes (either in full or in part). WHY WOULD I WANT TO HEAR A TECHNO REMIX OF “FANTASY”? No one wants to hear a dance remix of “Fantasy”!!! We can just dance to…”Fantasy.”
Someone (I think Da Brat?) came out for a few of the remixes for all of 15 seconds at a time, so I’m not sure what the point of that was. It should have been lovely to hear “Dreamlover,” “Anytime You Need a Friend,” “Always Be My Baby,” “We Belong Together,” and “Heartbreaker” but the remixes just killed me. I haven’t been this made at a performance since Lauryn Hill did the same thing at the Warner Theatre a few years ago. The set was also really short for a headliner. Which maybe I should be thankful for considering how bad the remixes were. Sigh.
Recent Comments