Parklife DC

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July 14, 2015

Katie Eastburn (Photo by Sabine Rogers)

Slinky and groovy vocalist Katie Eastburn, formerly of Young People, has launched a new project called KATIEE, which offers up some synthy noir for our listening pleasure.

KATIEE releases their first single on August 7 via Selfish Agenda, and the band performs backstage at the Black Cat on Thursday, July 23, in the run up to that release.

Listen to the upcoming debut single, “Passerby,” by KATIEE on Soundcloud:

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/205350602″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]

Hailing from New York, Katie is joined in the project by her bandmates bassist Jim McHugh, saxophonist Jeff Tobias and drummer Jason Robira. If you’re not familiar yet with their work or that of Young People, you may know Katie as a frequent collaborator and guest vocalist for avant-garde composers Nick Hallett, Jason Cady and Ray Sweeten, and pop artist Nicholas Kyrgovich.

According to notes for Katie’s work, “If there were a lost scene in Blade Runner where a band played in a dive bar while Harrison Ford sweated and bought Sean Young a drink, it would be KATIEE. She would pull him onto the dance floor, and he would be a goner.”

Well, with such a soundtrack for a noir nightclub beckoning, how can we resist?

Tickets are available online and at the door.

KATIEE
w/ HD Sunrise and Time Is Fire
Black Cat
Thursday, July 23
Doors @7:30pm
$10
All ages

Music Park: SOAK @ DC9 — 7/12/15

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July 13, 2015

SOAK performs at Rough Trade East in London on March 28, 2015. (Photo by Aurelien Guichard)

When Bridie Monds-Watson was 14-years old, a friend of hers was being bullied by another girl at school in Ireland.

Saddened by the experience, Bridie, now better known as SOAK, took to writing a song in a stream of consciousness manner to deal with the resulting feelings.

“I don’t understand/what her problem is/I think she’s just a fish!” SOAK wrote of her friend’s tormentor in a song that came to be called “Sea Creatures.”

That sort of quirky train of thought runs throughout all of SOAK’s songs, which she writes primarily to deal with things happening in her life. She delivers those songs in a soulful booming voice that belies her diminutive, now 19-year-old, stature. On stage, she’s friendly and warm with a touch of shyness as she strums a guitar that accompanies her haunting voice.

At DC9 on Sunday night, SOAK opened her show with “Explosions,” and the very full room immediately fell silent upon the opening notes of the sad folk pop song.

Watch SOAK perform “Explosions” for The Sunday Sessions, recorded live in The Workman’s Club, Dublin, on Oct. 19, 2014:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2nPmJit0vQ]

Don’t Miss: Little Boots @ U Street Music Hall, 7/25/15

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July 13, 2015

Tickets are available online.

Little Boots (Photo courtesy High Rise PR)

I am beyond excited that U Street Music Hall will welcome Little Boots (born Victoria Hesketh) on Saturday, July 25 as she tours in support of her new album, Working Girl, which she released last week on her own label, On Repeat Records.

I first encountered Little Boots back in 2009 with her single “New in Town” from her debut album, Hands, thanks to its regular rotation at Liberation Dance Party at DC9. I continued to be impressed by that album, which featured a duet with The Human League’s Phil Oakey as a bonus to synthpop nerds like me, and its follow-up, Nocturnes.

Working Girl may be her most exciting offering to date, however, as the bright dance album offers abundantly lovely synths and a decisive theme around which to rally — the corporate work day. All of the videos released for singles from the new album have been quite clever, and feature Little Boots adorned in the best of office fashions, such as with the latest “No Pressure.”

Watch the video for “No Pressure”:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r3bEc1S7fc]

Little Boots isn’t afraid to explore what happens after the workday either, such as with her humorous video for “Better in the Morning,” which takes her on a “walk of shame” after a night of partying too hard.

Watch the video for “Better in the Morning” (and prepare to chuckle and fall in love a little bit):

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ryPPOQHES8]

To my knowledge, this is the first performance of Little Boots ever in DC, although she is a regular visitor to Brooklyn from England, and she nearly made it here on a few previous occasions. Don’t miss what is sure to be a great performance.

Little Boots
w/ Prinze George
U Street Music Hall
Saturday, July 25
Doors @ 7pm
$20
All ages

Food Park: Alex McCoy @ Food Network Star — 7/5/15 (S. 11, Ep. 5)

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July 12, 2015

Former Miami Dolphins football player Eddie Jackson (above) teamed up with DC Chef Alex McCoy last week. (Photo courtesy Food Network)

Today, on the Food Network at 9pm Et, catch the sixth episode of Food Network Star, Season 11.

The competition includes two chefs from the DC area — restaurant owner Alex McCoy and blogger Emilia Cirker. The two survived last week’s episode, “The Perfect Match,” and they both did particularly well in that episode’s challenges. Here at ParklifeDC, we’ve been behind Alex this season, so we are going to recap his progress last episode to bring you up to speed before tonight’s challenges.

In the opening challenge last week, Alex and seven other remaining contestants faced a cook and critique challenge. Each contestant chose their favorite ingredient, and Alex chose Asian five spice powder (Sichuan pepper, fennel seeds, cloves, star anise and Chinese cinnamon). But instead of cooking with that ingredient, each chef swapped ingredients with a partner after a surprise announcement by Food Network Star hosts Bobby Flay and Giada De Laurentiis.

Alex swapped ingredients with contestant Dominick Tesoriero of Staten Island, who chose ricotta as his favorite ingredient. With Dom’s ricotta, Alex chose to make a Smoked Salmon and Ricotta Sandwich. But after the contestants prepared their dishes, Bobby and Giada surprised them again and asked them to switch back so that the original selector of the ingredient would critique the meal made from it.

Dom called Alex’s sandwich “classic” and said he would enjoy eating it at a brunch. Alex hailed Dom’s Beef Noodles with Five Spice Broth as good — an Italian chef’s take on an Asian dish. Both men performed well in the challenge, but neither won it.

Music Park: Mudhoney @ Black Cat — 7/7/15

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Jeremy Bailey

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July 10, 2015

1

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7511NXJNV8o] “I Like It Small” by Mudhoney

“What have I done?”, the plaintive call from Mark Arm in “Blinding Sun”, was exactly how I felt after getting blasted by Mudhoney at the Black Cat on July 7, 2015.

The problem, to be precise, involved standing too close to the speakers for an inappropriate amount of time without ear plugs. My ears are still ringing.

Mudhoney gave the expectant crowd (just over half filled) wave after wave of fuzzy and distorted salvos of music, punctuated by lead singer Mark Arm’s howling and often manic vocals. Few heads failed to nod along with the beat.

There is something to be said about heavy music permeating your face and your bones at a live show. This cannot be captured in a recording and it is why grunge is an experience to be had, not merely listened to.

Mudhoney, among the pioneers of the grunge music scene that roared out of Seattle in the early 1990’s, sing angry lyrics. Yet with a wink, like they’re in on the joke. Not really angry, just looking to entertain.

In “1995” they want to know “What are you looking at?”, as if they’re the cool kids and you’re the nerd that accidentally stared a second too long.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFcjVaSZyRk]

In “Touch Me I’m Sick”, their first single in 1988, they embrace the paranoia around living with disease, and dare the woman to go for it anyway. “I Like It Small”, from their latest album Vanishing Point, is an ode to the mantra that bigger isn’t always better in life (and other things).

They introduced the cover of the Angry Samoans’ almost perky break-up song “You Stupid Asshole”, as a “rock ballad for everyone”, but the song still finds a way to acknowledge that they are assholes too.

Don’t Miss: Mourn @ DC9, 7/13/15

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July 9, 2015

Mourn (Photo courtesy Captured Tracks)

Three young women and a childhood friend coming together to record lo-fi punk tracks in Barcelona might sound like the premise of a Woody Allenesque indie film, but the Catalan quartet Mourn are here for real.

Mourn released their self-titled debut LP on Captured Tracks back in February, and they have traveled the world to land at DC9 in support of it on Monday, July 13.

Vocalists Carla Pérez Fas and Jazz Rodríguez Bueno do indeed occasionally sound mournful, but just as often they sound soulful, as they whip through three-minute rock compositions that reinvent 50s and 60s love song sentiments into modern punk numbers — in a way that very much reflects that they identify The Ramones as their heroes.

Often these songs reflect a young punky woman’s views on love — such as “Your Brain Is Made of Candy” or “Boys Are Cunts” — but just as often they dwell on surprisingly deeper struggles in songs like “Dark Issues” and single “Gertrudis, Get Through This!”

Listen to “Gertrudis, Get Through This!” on Soundcloud:
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/203926260″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Note that Carla and Jazz are 18, as is Jazz’s childhood friend drummer Antonio Postius Echeverría. The bassist is Jazz’s sister, age 15.

These kids sound really good for being so young, which perhaps is what makes them so authentic. Check them out and experience the global impact of New York’s ‘70s punk on music today. DC noisepop quartet Big Moth open the show.

Tickets are available online and at the door.

Mourn
w/ Big Moth
Monday, July 13
Doors @8:30pm
$12-14
All ages

Music Park: Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo @ Warner Theatre — 7/8/15

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July 9, 2015

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3bkHOVfGdE]
A promo for the Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo 35th Anniversary Tour by American Public TV (above).

Pat Benatar told a lovely little story at the Warner Theatre in the latter half of her set on Wednesday night.

She and her band were on the road supporting their second album with a tour, and their management told them to tune into new cable channel MTV on August 1, 1981.

They tuned in via the television in their “cheap motel” and watched music history being made as their video for “You Better Run” aired as the second video ever shown on MTV, making Pat the first female artist and her husband Neil Giraldo the first guitar player to appear on the fledgling network. (The English electronic act The Buggles debuted with the first-ever MTV video, “Video Killed the Radio Star,” and without a guitar in the band, of course.)

With that intro, Pat and Neil launched into “You Better Run,” from the hit record Crimes of Passion, which became her biggest selling album, certified 4X platinum.

Don’t Miss: SOAK @ DC9, 7/12/15

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July 8, 2015

An offbeat 19-year-old girl from Northern Ireland has a haunting voice that spins soulful folk pop, and she’s bringing it to DC9 on Sunday, July 12.

Bridie Monds-Watson is known as SOAK, and she released her debut album on Rough Trade Records on June 2. The album, Before We Forget How to Dream, deals with themes of growing up in isolation

Single “Sea Creatures,” released in February, squarely deals with those feelings of loneliness and isolation with its reminder that “they don’t know what love is” in reference to people who may be like the titular sea creatures. Watch the video for the single on YouTube:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgaRm9j8SQI]

“B a Nobody,” another track from the new album, speaks of being a lost teenager, continuing the fragile streak of loneliness and isolation.

Listen via Soundcloud:
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/166849487″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

DC folk singer Marian McLaughlin opens for SOAK. Tickets are available online and at the door.

SOAK
w/ Marian McLaughlin
DC9
Sunday, July 12
Doors @8:30pm
$12-14
All ages

Music Park: Metric @ Verizon Center — 7/6/15

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July 7, 2015

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z69_ecUsea8]
Emily Haines and Jimmy Shaw perform “The Shade” acoustically for the Verge Music Lab at the Music Mansion: SiriusXM Canada on June 2, 2015.

Drummer Joules Scott-Key pounded out those familiar opening notes and vocalist Emily Haines bounded onto stage to open the set with “Stadium Love.”

And so Metric kicked off their performance at the Verizon Center Monday night, opening for Imagine Dragons in that band’s Smoke + Mirrors Tour, devoting a third of their set to their popular fourth album Fantasies.

After “Stadium Love” was appropriately performed for the enthusiastic stadium attendees, Metric introduced new track “Too Bad, So Sad,” a kinetic lament of being stuck in a bad place belied by its cheering chorus. It rings a bit of a traditional Metric song blended with Blur’s “Song 2.”

“Too Bad, So Sad” was the first of three new songs from the forthcoming album Pagans in Vegas, scheduled for release Sept. 18. Those new songs were undoubtedly the highlight of the show for longtime admirers of the Canadian quartet.

The biggest number for Metric in the concert was “Cascades,” which the Toronto new wavers have described as the heart of the upcoming album. “Cascades” is a wholly electronic affair with synths coating Emily’s sweet but sassy vocals to powerful effect — and it’s so deliriously good that it was an instant new favorite for me and also for the thousands gathered early to see them Monday.

The song, about “cascading waves of emotion,” is a welcome tidal wave that involves Emily, guitarist Jimmy Shaw and bassist Joshua Winstead trading off on three synthesizers. There are guitar and bass parts as well, and when Emily isn’t behind her synthesizer, she’s at the front of the stage in a purple cape billowing above a wind machine.

The arrangement, although simple, is extraordinarily memorable.

Give “Cascades” a listen on Soundcloud:
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/207683616″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]