• At this weekend's Whispering Beard Folk Festival in Southeast Indiana, masterful Cold Spring, Ky., Americana group The Kentucky Struts debuted their great new music video for the ominous, creeping and soulful tune, "Country Road," from their The Year of the Horse album. The band made the video with Keith Neltner and Brian Steege, who worked on the documentary Charlie Louvin: Still Rattlin' the Devil's Cage. (Read more about the Struts recent album from CityBeat here.)

The Kentucky Struts "Country Road" from Keith Neltner on Vimeo.

• Gifted local Hip Hop MC Buggs Tha Rocka (who, along with a solo career, also fronts the great live Hip Hop band Gold Shoes; read CityBeat's profile here) recently debuted the video for the third single (the previous two, "Hold Me Back" and "The Warm Up," also got the music vid treatment) off of his Wrath of Zeus album. The album is available for free download here. The latest video (made with Moxy Monster and PRES Productions) is for the track "Chicken Soup for Tha Soul."



• Late last month, local Roots Pop group Shiny and the Spoon released a gorgeous video for their gorgeous cover version of the ’80s hit by Norwegian Pop group a-ha, "Take on Me," taken from the band's LP, Ferris Wheel (download the a-ha cover and a few more songs from the album here for free). It's not the first time the band has made a video for a cover of "Take on Me." A low-budget version featuring only vocals and ukulele was posted in 2009 and became a modest viral sensation (particularly among ukulele fanatics); the video currently has over 300,000 hits on YouTube. (Read more about the group's evolution from CityBeat here.)

Check that version here and the new "Take on Me" (shot on Fountain Square and in Camp Washington this spring and directed by Josh Flowers and e.E. Charlton-Trujillo at Pinata Productions) below.



• Pitchfork recently debuted the great video for "Sod in the Seed," the title track off of acclaimed and eclectic Indie/Pop/Hip Hop group Why?'s new EP (a prelude to the full-length, Mumps, etc., which is due in October). Cincy natives, Why? resided for years in the Bay Area and helped found the fantastic underground Hip Hop label Anticon, but returned to the Cincinnati region a couple of years ago. After a European tour, the group comes back to the States for an extensive run of tour dates, including an Oct. 18 show at the Contemporary Arts Center. (Check out our interview with frontman Yoni Wolf here.)

Here's the fun clip for "Sod in the Seed," made with local video artist and musician (Culture Queer), Scott Fredette.

Archer’s paradox, according to Wikipedia, is the phenomenon whereby "in order to strike the center of the target with an arrow, the arrow must be pointed slightly to the side of the target." 

Archer’s Paradox, the band, according to the two members I spoke with on a hot Thursday — much the same.

“It started about a year ago. I disbanded from a band I was in earlier (with Mia Carruthers, of MTV’s Taking the Stage fame) and Stefan Wright (drummer) and I started making songs in my room by myself,” says project founder, Seth Huff, “and then Cam (Nawaz, synth and backup vocals) started coming over out of nowhere, and we started hanging out and he was like, ‘Hey, those songs are pretty good’, and here we are, a year later, with four other people, having fun.”

Originally conceived as a two-piece consisting of Huff and Nawaz performing live with recorded backing tracks, the duo realized that direction would be “the most boring thing in the world,” says Nawaz, “so we quickly moved past that. And we realized that we have numerous friends who are really good at playing instruments.”

The band was fleshed out with Wright on drums, guitarist Alex Solin, and bassist Mark Wilson.

Working with a five-song EP recorded solely on Huff’s MacBook Pro, Archer’s Paradox has a distinctly DIY vibe. Very calculated in their approach to publicity and performing, Archer’s Paradox only performed its first show this year at Rohs Street Café during the sixth The Heights Music Festival in Clifton.

“We’re all about the DIY thing. That’s kind of like our religion. If we had to pick a religion, it would be DIY,” says Huff, who writes all of Archer’s Paradox material.

More shows followed, and in “a stroke of luck”, as Nawaz says, Archer’s Paradox earned a slot at the inaugural Bunbury Music Festival, held at Sawyer Point today through Sunday. Nawaz details how, while informing friends via text of their latest project and upcoming show, Wright happened to text Ian Bolender, a former bandmate from another band (Ellison), who happened to be an employee of Nederlander Entertainment, which happened to be the company booking Bunbury Music Festival. Bolender responded within 15 minutes with the offer of having Archer’s Paradox play Bunbury.

“We make our own luck,” clarifies Nawaz. “We use every outlet of who we know and every resource to our absolute maximum potential.”

Huff agrees, relaying how other shows have fallen into place just as harmoniously. I point out that maybe instead of finding "luck," Archer’s Paradox has serendipity on their side.

“THAT’S our religion,” Huff jumps in, eagerly. “I take back that thing I said before.” We note the fact that the letters “DIY” are also in ‘serendipity’, and thusly, the band’s definition is fully confirmed.

“Work smart, not hard,” Huff continues. “Observing the way other bands do it, you can learn a lot and make a game plan from that. If you have decent music, you have a really good shot if you learn to use the machine that is the Internet.”

“We knew we didn’t want to take the ‘let’s get signed right away, let’s get distributed’ path before playing anything,” Nawaz chimes in, referencing internet-phenom bands without much substance to back up their product.

“You have to gain the respect of fans and then they’ll actually want to pay for the music,” says Huff.

At this year’s Bunbury Music Festival, Archer’s Paradox will have their biggest chance yet to do just that.

Archer’s Paradox opens up the Landor Stage at Bunbury on Sunday at noon. Listen to them here and check out this clip for the group's song "Patience."

After the tumultuous revolution of The White Stripes, the twisted Pop/Rock convention of The Raconteurs and the Blues/Indie Rock gene splice of Dead Weather, there was nothing left for Jack White to do but to hang his own name on the marquee and go the solo route. There is an argument to be made that every White project is an extension of his musical persona regardless of the personnel he surrounds himself with or what he calls it; even the album's he produces bear his distinctive mark. At the same time, it’s also true White uses his shifting musical guises to offer a prismatic glimpse into the unique facets of his creative psyche, each one cut from the same bolt of cloth but patterned into something subtly but noticeably different.

White’s debut solo album, Blunderbuss, follows that logic line in much the same way. He explores and expands upon many of the genre variations that have defined his catalog to date in the service of imploding love songs that, at least on the surface, would seem to point toward his recent divorce as inspiration. In fact, the lack of actual drama surrounding that event indicates that White has written a song cycle about theoretical bad love rather than using pages out of his tear-stained journal for his muse.

Musically, Blunderbuss is a mixed bag of White’s best tricks; the Who-like guitar blast of “Sixteen Saltines,” the Prince-channels-the-Stooges Soul squall of “Freedom at 21” and the bluesy sugar swing of “I’m Shakin’.” But White also pushes his work down some interesting new paths as well, from the Americanapolitan Soul of “Love Interruption" (where White and singer Ruby Amanfu duet in a manner befitting Robert Plant and Alison Krauss) and the purer Country sway of the effecting title track to the Ray Davies-tinged dancehall Pop of “Hip (Eponymous) Poor Boy” and the loungey piano Pop of “Hypocritical Kiss.”

Blunderbuss is another prime example of Jack White’s impeccable track record as one of Indie Rock’s most reliable chameleons.

(Edited to correct White's duet partner on "Love Interruption")

Music Tonight: From the land of Bob Dylan comes Thomas Kivi and Sarah Pray, a Minneapolis-based Folk duo styled after Dylan and Joan Baez's collaborative performances and similar to contemporary duos like Gillian Welch and David Rawlings or current breakout stars The Civil Wars. The twosome performs a free, 9 p.m. show tonight at Sitwell's on Ludlow Ave. in Clifton, part of their four-week U.S. jaunt called "The Better Weather Tour" (oops — sorry for the rain, y'all!). Joining forces in the summer of 2010, Kivi and Pray wasted no time taking their music to the world, embarking on an 11-week, 11-country tour of Europe in the fall of 2010. The pair have also found time to tend to their solo careers —a year ago, Kivi released his debut, Crying Child, to widespread local acclaim, while both artists have new recordings coming soon. Below, enjoy some great footage put together by bandwithsessions.com when the duo was in Ireland on that first big tour (billed as "Minnesota Nice").

Read More

Music Tonight: Though Brooklyn is viewed as the U.S. capitol of Indie music cool, that doesn’t mean every musician working out the New York borough fits the bill. One such band is progressive Funk/Rock jammers Dopapod, who moved to Brooklyn from Boson, where they met and formed as students at the Berklee College of Music. With twinges of Jazz and Electronica, Dopapod’s groovy mash has been building steam on the jam-band circuit. The group has released two studio albums since 2009 and, two days ago, the first Dopapodz live album, I Saw Live Dopapod Evil Was I, was released (it’s available as a free download if you “like” the group’s Facebook page). The band is joined by local, like-minded Psychedelic adventurers Pharaoh Loosey for tonight’s 9 p.m. show at Corryville club The Mad Frog. Check out the below clip for a taste of the group’s funky live sylings.

Read More

It's always a baffling moment for me when one of the things many of us have joked about happening in the future actually happens in the future.

"One day we'll just talk to the TV to change channels," we'd say, goofing around as we maneuvered the broomstick taped to the channel changer dial on (yes, ON) the television set so we wouldn't have to get off the couch to change it (more) manually.

"Wouldn't it be cool if, like, we could go see Kajagoogoo in Cleveland this weekend, but just broadcast to us in the garage so we can chug Milwaukee's Best and do Whip-Its while we watched it?" we'd say, knowing Mom would let us borrow the station wagon to go see the New Wave megastars in Cleveland when pigs can fly or we can carry around all the books in the library in our pockets!

Yeah, like that'll happen. But only because Kajagoogoo broke up years ago (and it did NOT end well). Last weekend, I was able to watch several artists perform at Coachella live, as it happened, while laying on my couch. Not naked, but also not sweating or getting run into constantly by some wasted "raver" in a purple Adidas jumpsuit shouting "Play 'Our House!'" while I'm trying to watch Madness.

I don't think the latest watershed the-silly-future-is-now moment — Tupac Shakur appearing at Coachella in hologram form alongside Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre — was part of the live broadcast through YouTube. But enough people have seen footage of it now that it has become a super-high trending topic on our digital future-boxes with the interweb and the series of tubes and whatnot.

I've been a bit shocked that the gimmick has elicited way more "OMG" responses that "WTF" ones. It is a neato technological trick and certainly warrants a lots of "Well I'll be"-type responses, but I've been bewildered that most of the commentary has been in the range of "tearful amazement" and "pure awe." This is based on some serious Twitter research, which has revealed how people like Katy Perry ("I think I might have cried when I saw Tupac") and Rihanna ("#IWASTHERE #STORY4myGrandKidz") reacted. I can only assume the "little people" feel the same way and are equally impressed.

If you somehow haven't seen it, take a gander:



I've made jokes in print about things like a "Hip Hopera," using it as something beyond the realm of possibility because it would be so cheesy and ridiculous. It's happened numerous times since. Never that successfully, because, you know, it's a Hip Hopera.

I've used the dead-musician-hologram gag similarly — a far-fetched concept to play upon the ridiculous rate of technological advancement today and the greed of the music biz that might one day enable all the great dead artists of our time to be brought back to life as holograms and go on tour. Older artists could go out as their vintage selves — The Rolling Stones circa Beggars Banquet or Wu-Tang Clan circa Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (… and EVERYONE shows up). "Bands" could do multinational shows simultaneously. And the only people really getting paid to tour would be the A/V geeks hired to run the equipment.

It's such a bizarre concept; it's not supposed to ever actually come true. That's the kind of thing that makes jokes dated. And it's why The Jetsons still holds up. Robot maids — that shit's hilarious!

As dazzled as everyone seems to be by the projection of a dead rapper fake-performing (even shouting out "Coachella," though, to be fair, they could have cobbled that together from a sample from when Tupac used to play Frisbee Golf there on spring break), could there actually be a market for a hologram act to "tour"? (Note: Yes, I realize the Tupac at Coachella wasn't actually a "hologram," so shut it.)

Promoters, apparently, are going to find out if reports are true that Hologram2Pac might go on tour with Dr. Dre. Since the ghost cameo was the talk of the entire festival, Dre and Co. probably started planning it immediately. Especially after Shakur's mother gave her permission for the Coachella use and was reportedly amazed by how it came off.

That could be a fun special effect as part of someone else's act, but could it ever go to the next level? Will there ever be a tour reliant on a holographic headliner? Would people pay to see that? I'm not equating a DJ concert with a film projection of a dead person, but put, say, hologram Elvis on Daft Punk's stage — with Daft Punk — and would it double or triple the usual Daft Punk draw on tour?

I don't know if "The 1969 Beatles on Tour" or "Eddie Van Halen and His Fabulous Rotating Hologram Singers" would find an audience at this point. But I'm constantly amazed by what people love. Reality TV? Now That's What I Call Music compilations? Karaoke? Bon Iver? Every sitcom on CBS? We can do better.

If you would have told me while I was listening to 2Pac's All Eyez On Me album in 1996 (and, honestly, trying to figure out why so many considered the man a genius) that one day within the next two decades a dead Shakur would be the talk of some huge festival ("It's like that Lollapalooza thing, ’cept it don't travel"), I would have spit Milwaukee's Best out of my nose. (Yeah, I didn't mature much.)

I've watched as the concert experience — the actual, go-some-place-type of concert experience — has evolved in the past 20 years. The most talked about today is the phenomenon involving young people fiddling with their phones instead of "not paying attention" to the concert. I was, like many, annoyed/befuddled by the perceived lack of focus, but I realized something while watching Paul McCartney's Cincinnati concert at Great American Ballpark last summer that has helped me take a deep breath and just accept it.

Everyone enjoys music — listening to it, watching it performed, absorbing it — in different ways.

It was especially evident at the McCartney show because so many people had deep connections to the music being played, but they showed it — or expressed it — in different ways. I was intensely attentive and a bit internally emotional. I didn't talk a lot. My epiphany came when my girlfriend spoke to me while Sir Paul was introducing the next song. I could not imagine how insane someone must be to TALK while PAUL FREAKIN' MCCARTNEY WAS TALKING?!

And then I realized how stupid that was. My way of experiencing the show was different than hers or from the hammered 60-something couple dancing with their eyes shut or the beaming kids with their parents or the teen with the smartphone tweeting. They all had fun. And they'll all remember it (and those who don't as well will have photos to help).

So if Hologram2Pac is the next wave of live concert entertainment, I probably won't go to any of those concerts, but I won't make fun of people who do. Well, maybe just a little. Mostly because I won't be able to stop thinking about the early Saturday Night Live "fake commercial" promoting a concert residency, not long after Elvis died, starring Elvis' coat. That's one old music biz joke that hasn't come true. Yet. (Though EP did "tour" as video footage on big screens backed by a live band. And it did pretty damn well, from what I remember.)

Elvis Presley's Coat from Walter Williams on Vimeo

My recommendation is to do as I do, frustrated concertgoers. Accept our new hologram superstars. You never know — they might some day come to life and the world will be ruled by hologram images of great pop cultural icons originally crafted for beer commercials and personal appearances at car dealerships.

President Sinatra, I supported you all along.

(And now that I've made a joke about it, it has about a 600 percent better chance of happening.)

Neon Indian is finally getting ready to release the much-anticipated follow-up to its 2009 breakthrough debut album, Psychic Chasms. The Texas Indie/Electronic band — a MidPoint Indie Summer Series "regular," playing packed shows at Fountain Square's free Friday night concerts this and last year — is dropping Era Extraña on Neon Indian mastermind Alan Palomo's (pictured) own Static Tongues imprint on Sept. 13. Want a sneak peak? Head below and click the widget to receive a link for a free download of the new album track, "Fallout."

Read More

The Van's Warped Tour might not be the most financially successful summer package tour of all time (the promoter and performers work together to keep an ego-free environment and low ticket prices), but it's hard to argue that it is not the most successful overall, especially in terms of longevity. Now in its 18th year, Kevin Lyman's eclectic traveling festival has outlived all of the roving music events that sprouted up around the same time (from Lollapalooza to Lilith Fair) by creating a "customer friendly" experience that's also very "artist friendly."

The tour's 2012 finale is this weekend in Portland, but before shutting things down for the summer, the fest makes its annual stop at Cincinnati's Riverbend today. Doors open at 11 a.m. and music kicks off shortly after. The show ends around 9 p.m. Tickets at the box office will cost ya $42 (about a dime a band, by my estimation).

Click here for more local show details, including info on how you can "Skip the Line" and walk right into the venue.

The set-times for each act are decided just prior to the gates opening; if you're going, look for the giant inflatable Warped logoed amp to see when your favorites are playing. I also highly recommend grabbing the official Warped Tour app.

Be sure to support our local music scene reps — The Few The Fallen, Heres To The Heroes and Let It Happen will play the Ernie Ball Stage. Check out Let It Happen's recent video for "Bridges" from the great release, It Hurts, But It's Worth It.



Here is who's playing where (via Riverbend's site). (Welsh rockers Lostprophets are also on the bill, though not listed on Riverbend's site; all info is subject to change.)

MAIN STAGE: Taking Back Sunday, All Time Low, New Found Glory, Streetlight Manifesto, Yellowcard, Piece The Veil, Four Year Strong, Of Mice and Men, We The Kings, Breathe Carolina, Miss May I, Falling In Reverse, Blood On The Dance

TBD STAGE:  Every Time I Die, Mayday Parade, blessthefall, Chelsea Grin, For Today, Memphis May Fire, Motionless In White, Rise To Remain, Sleeping With Sirens, The Ghost Inside, Vampires Everywhere!, Title Fight

TILLY’S STAGE: Senses Fail, Vanna, Polar Bear Club, We Are The Crowd, Man Overboard, A Loss For Words, Funeral Party, I Fight Dragons, Machine Gun Kelly, Oh No Fiasco

TBD STAGE: Echo Movement, G-Eazy, Stepdad, The Constellations, Ballyhoo!, Champagne, T. Mills, Tomorrows Bad Seeds, Mod Sun, The Green, Amyst

ERNIE BALL STAGE:  iwrestledabearonce, Born Of Osiris, Chunk! No Captain, Fireworks, Transit, Cold Forty Three, The Scissors, The Few The Fallen, Here's To The Heroes and Let It Happen.

KEVIN SAYS STAGE:  Make Do And Mend, Matt Toka, Tonight Alive, Skip The Foreplay, Sick of Sarah, Mighty Mongo, Captain Capa, I Call Fives, Hostage Calm, The Silver Comet, Twin Atlantic, The Darlings, Dead Sara

ACOUSTIC BASEMENT:   A Loss For Words, Koji, Brian Marquis, Rocky Votolato, Transit Owen Plant, Anthony Raneri

Music Tonight: This is the start of one of the more jam-packed music weekends of the summer, with numerous festivals (Feywill, Swinefest, Ohmstead, Taste of Blue Ash, Whispering Beard) competing with some quality club shows, concerts at larger venues and more. First up, a look at the less local-music-centric lineup for Swinefest and the always interesting bookings for Taste of Blue Ash.

Read More

Saturday, one of the more anticipated bands performing at this year’s MidPoint Music Festival, Okkervil River, jump back on the road for several weeks of dates around North America, picking up the tour for its latest album, the Jagjaguwar Records release I Am Very Far. Before they get to Cincinnati (the third-last tour stop), the band plays West Coast dates with The Decemberists, several other festivals and shows around the Midwest/South with buzzing Indie duo Wye Oak. As the Indie group begins its road to MPMF ’11, a new 7-inch and free MP3 have been issued. Click the arrow above to listen to “Your Past Life As a Blast” (free download here), recently issued as a 7-inch vinyl single. Below is a video clip from IntoTheWoods.tv featuring a live performance of Okkervil outtake “I Guess We Lost.”

Read More