Yo La Tengo
At LPR, the country-not country sounds of Lambchop seem right for the moment
Whatever the lineup’s been, Lambchop and Wagner have always been about the in-betweens, exploiting sonic silences and relating to characters who aren't yet fully formed, even to themselves. Wagner has also been unusually open about his financial difficulties: he’s had trouble acquiring health care, and a recent cancer scare set him back $80,000 he couldn’t afford to lose. So the crowd laughed, albeit uncomfortably, when the band joked that the intended audience of the night was “hundreds of millions of YouTube viewers.” Were they in need of a viral hit? More
Streets of Your Town: this week's shows, with Yo La Tengo, Dum Dum Girls, Digable Planets, a Luaka Bop showcase, and more
The holidays are a time for family, which can be a bit tricky if you're a member of a touring rock band.
There are two ways around this. One is to give up on the idea of family altogether and live life as nothing more than a series of empty, anonymous encounters with groups of loud strangers swilling beer and screaming requests, drifting blindly from city to city and hotel room to hotel room in a haze of pharmaceuticals, booze, and truck-stop microwave cheeseburgers. Or you could just bring your family on tour with you, as two of the acts coming to New York this week do; one of them has been balancing work and family for the better part of the past 30 years. More
