Dirty Beaches, YellowFever, Widowspeak Glasslands 3/3/11

I was pretty excited to check out Dirty Beaches live, his new record Badlands is on obsessive rotation. I had expectations of how the show would go and was pleased with those ideas but when Alex Zhang Hungtai set quickly became a very high energy theatrical performance my expectations were blown away. He talked about how he was mugged in Flushing Queens when he was in his early teens for only a dollar and some change and apologized to the audience and and to the bands for missing their sets. He a little late to the show because he was recording some new material in a New York studio and said he would make it up to us . . . and that he did. He ripped though his set dedicated his Johnny Cash/Nick Cave cover of "The Singer" to the late Trish Keenan of Broadcast. Just as his set got the crowd fired up, he screamed and howled into his tiny microphone, repeating "Let's see what you got New York" his power to his gear blew out leaving him unamplified for a few minutes. He finally got up and running and played a few more high powered tunes then entered into his final song and invited the gals from Dum Dum GIrls to jam with him as he crawled all over the Glasslands stage like a rockabilly Spiderman (watch the video below). You can read our recent interview with Alex of Dirty Beaches here.

Austin, Texas's Yellow Fever delivered quite a sound for a two piece. They are pretty hard to describe but in the best of ways. Very pleasing off-kilter grooves almost reminiscent of Gang of Four but more melodic like Stereolab but smoother and much dryer in sound. I am at a loss of words but definitely have a listen for yourself.

Widowspeak are a three piece from Brooklyn. There lead singer Molly Hamilton has a dreamy, woozy drugged-out Hope Sandoval circa a la Mazzy Star sound to it but her band consisting of drums and an another guitarist backed her with some very graceful and retro Patsy Cline, Nancy Sinatra grooves, making the whole experience pretty wonderful. Looking forward to hear much more from this trio. Towards the end of their they performed a tasty Chris Issak cover of "Wicked Game." Widowspeak’s are signed to Captured Tracks. They just released a 7″ single of "Harsh Realm/Burnout" The first 400 on white vinyl.