Cage the Elephant Throws a “Neon” Night in DC
Words by Matt Bailey
Photos by James Todd Miller
Cage the Elephant recently brought non-stop energy to The Anthem in DC with an undeniable explosion of lights, sounds, and the unmatched stage presence of frontman Matt Shultz.
Multi-GRAMMY and Academy Award winner Jon Batiste released his new album Big Money on August 22 via Verve/Interscope.
He’s now on tour, and he brings the Big Money Tour to The Anthem in DC on Friday, Oct. 31 with special guests Andra Day and Diana Silvers!
Darkwave synthpop band Lebanon Hanover made it to the Black Cat recently for their first-ever show in Washington, DC. The European duo have toured the United States before but it wasn’t until the release of their latest album, Asylum Lullabies, that they made it here.
That said, Lebanon Hanover played only one song from the new album — “Parrots” — in their encore! The rest of the show was a baker’s dozen of dance tunes picked from across their catalog and back to their first studio album, 2012’s The World Is Getting Colder. These selections held the fully engaged audience spellbound as Larissa Iceglass and William Maybelline brought down the temperature in the room!
The Queen of the Sugar Trap, Rico Nasty, shut down a sold-out Fillmore Silver Spring not long ago for her homecoming show on her Lethal Tour, in support of her most recent album of the same name. The Maryland rapper has consistently been one of the most diverse artists to ever come out of the DMV music scene, and the way she had the alt-kids along with everyone else packing out the crowd moshing, twerking, and bouncing all in the same show confirmed it.
Rodney Crowell has been a fixture in the Nashville music establishment for more than five decades. While he’s achieved his greatest success with over artists covering his songs, he’s a fine performer in his own right, which he more than showed in his recent appearance at the Lincoln Theatre, with a set that spanned the length of his remarkable career.
Before she sold out arenas like Capital One, Laufey was writing music in her bedroom in DC. The singer-songwriter — who spent time throughout her childhood and adulthood in the city — made it clear at her sold-out DC tour stop just how significant DC is for her. So special, in fact, that she wore light pink in honor of DC’s signature cherry blossoms.
The Icelandic artist brought her A Matter of Time Tour to Capital One Arena on Oct. 23, and what could have been an arena show instead felt like a soft and intimate love letter to the city that helped her grow.
There’s no audience quite like those at a Laufey show.
Aly & AJ arrived recently arrived in DC for a show in support of their latest Tour, the Silver Deliverer Tour at The Anthem. A lot of major acts visiting DC play The Anthem nowadays, and this was the perfect setting for the dynamic show put on by Aly & AJ.
“We moved to Nashville,” Tanya Trotter told the audience in their recent appearance at The Barns at Wolf Trap, to play “the country gospel.” Tanya and her husband, Michael, make up the Grammy-nominated duo The War and Treaty. They recently appeared for the first of two nights at the venue, and it was a meaty set that rocked harder than you might think for music that meets the description of country gospel.
As AllMusic describes, the duo makes “impassioned soul music that draws on country, R&B, traditional folk, and spirituals, often combining them all.” As Michael put it, he wrote “Carried Away” to “smash together D’Angelo and Hank Williams.” They’ve recorded (“Hey Driver,” for which they were joined by opening act Thunderstorm Artis) and shared stages with country phenomenon Zach Bryan and the late John Prine, and appeared at AmericanaFest. “Love Like Whiskey,” which Michael said is “a true story,” was cowritten with Miranda Lambert.
Jeff Tweedy released a new album, Twilight Override, a triple album, last month via dBpm Records. The three chapters of Twilight Override stand alone, but together, they tell a story of the past, present, and future.
In conjunction with the new album, Jeff has hit the road for a full band North American and European tour, which comes to DC for two nights: Sunday, Oct. 26, at the Lincoln Theatre, and Monday, Oct. 27, at 9:30 Club.
Under pulsing blue lights and a wall of sub-bass, Doechii recently emerged from inside a two-story-tall boombox at The Anthem, seated at an old-school combination desk-and-chair — the kind found in every middle-school classroom. As the crowd roared, the motorized desk rolled forward from the boombox’s open door until it reached center stage, revealing the artist in a gray pinstriped pantsuit with a gold cone-cup bustier beneath the jacket — a look made famous by Madonna.
