After a brief hiatus due to the passing of her mother, Iyla released her first full length album WEEPING ANGEL, delivering a long awaited return to the limelight. The record comes with a notable shift away from her successful rap-adjacent style to a more soulful, melodic and sometimes angelic delivery. The sold-out DC9 venue filled up rapidly, with fans scrambling to find a decent angle to experience the comeback show.
Lady Gaga Turns Concert into Living Music Video at Capital One Arena
Lady Gaga has reined as the preeminent pop artist of our time. But perhaps more crucially, she stands apart as our contemporary top pop video artist.
Gaga has always been an artist shaped by the language of pop spectacle, and she is leaning all the say into that reputation for the Mayhem Ball Tour, her latest massive movable musical feast.
What does true liberation look like? If aliens visited Earth, where would they want to party? What if they invited some angels and demons along? And what if, for good measure, they brought a bed, a swinging chain, a pole, and a sword to the dance floor?
On her Body High Tour, the British pop auteur formerly known as twigs presents bold answers to these questions. In a marathon set lasting into the late hours of a Wednesday night, FKA twigs shook the rafters of the Anthem with a futuristic rave which showcased her ascent to the cutting edge of contemporary pop music.
After many years wanting to see a Gogol Bordello show, I was finally able to do so recently at 9:30 Club, and it was a great evening of punk, gypsy-rock and roll, and non-stop energy. Gogol Bordello was joined by openers Boris and the Joy and Puzzled Panther for an outstanding show.
Will Westerman has been open about his recent embrace of spontaneity in the process of writing songs and recording.
But as he set out this month for the United States, the London-born, Athens-based musician, who records and performs under his surname, found himself up against the unexpected on his current tour across America.
Originally planned as a full-band — a trio — show, Westerman arrived in Washington DC recently as a two-man operation. While temporarily losing a member of the band to snarled travel would hamper the immediate plans for most, Westerman seized the opportunity to deliver a beautiful performance to the intimate crowd on hand.
During the drive out to Charlestown, West Virginia, on Friday night, I passed along stretches of dark road that occasionally cut through small towns with a few scattered lights. It allowed time for some introspection and the questioning of my life choices. Eventually, on the far horizon, I saw the glow of the casino cutting through the darkness like a beacon.
It was March 20, and the Events Center at Hollywood Casino felt like a snow globe of early-2000’s alt-rock memory waiting to be shaken awake. The show featured a triple bill of Local H, Finger Eleven, and headliner Filter.
On an uncharacteristically balmy March evening in the nation’s capital — where the air carried equal parts early spring optimism and the lingering dread of whatever fresh bureaucratic absurdity awaits us — your humble correspondent found himself once again making the pilgrimage to The Atlantis, a venue that continues to punch well above its weight class and the perfect spot for controlled punk-ish musical chaos.
Saturday night’s affair featured a three-band bill that wasted precisely zero time getting to the point.
Jonathan Richman is a unique personality and performer. A devoted acolyte of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, he started out playing proto-punk with his band, The Modern Lovers, in the ’70s. He took a left turn in his career, opting for stripped-down music with just an acoustic guitar and accompaniment on the drums by Tommy Larkins, who’s been with him for 33 years. While the sound may have changed and evolved over the years, the joy and kindness in his songs and performances hasn’t. In his recent performance at the 9:30 Club, he shared that joy and sense of wonder.
This St. Patrick’s Day, DMV metalheads were lucky to catch the opener of Lamb of God’s Into Oblivion North American Tour. Performing at the The Theatre at MGM National Harbor, they were joined on stage by Sanguisugabogg, Fit for an Autopsy, and Kublai Khan TX for a night of heavy breakdowns, guttural growls, circle pits, and squealies.
With the Drive-By Truckers, Patterson Hood puts a modern twist on loud, hard Southern rock. (Although, as he said, “If you think the Truckers are loud, you should’ve heard Adam’s House Cat,” the punk rock band he had with fellow Trucker Mike Cooley.) As hard as they rock, they write great songs that tackle love, life, politics and more with an unpretentious literary quality and a sharp wit. The raucous, rowdy nature of those performances can sometimes hide just how good the songs really are. With just an acoustic guitar, Hood showed off another side of his artistry in his recent performance at The Birchmere (and again later at Rams Head on Stage), allowing his brilliant lyrics to shine through and telling some amazing stories.Â
