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BOSTON BEER WORKS – FLEET CENTER

United States Brewpubs

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BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

Since 2005, I’ve thrice revisited the Bay State’s greatest city. Founded by Puritans way back in 1630 and known for throwing a wild tea party, this early colonial settlement became a major seaport with narrow streets, brick sidewalks, stately Old World charm, and nowadays, two worthy small-chain brewpubs.

A li’l history: Post-Christmas ’98, enjoyed Samuel Adams samplers at Boston Commons during one snowy evening, then found a few Harpoon brews previously unobtainable in Jersey. Exactly four years later, …

AU REVOIR SIMONE SPARK UP ‘STILL NIGHT, STILL LIGHT’

Interviews

Au Revoir Simone are three long-legged long-haired lasses living in Brooklyn who weave gossamer pillow-talked seductions through minimalist melodic symphonies, futurist lounge pop, celestial ambient abstractions, and buoyant cybernetic Kraut-rock. Customarily using vintage manual input devices, their most accomplished set yet, ‘09s Still Night, Still Light, refines the ethereal Casio-glazed gauzy linearity, buzz-y electro whirs, and pulsating crystalline balladry previously put forth.

Heather, who’d been watching Pee Wee’s Playhouse religiously, took their French moniker from a line in the

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THE FIELD ARRIVE ‘YESTERDAY AND TODAY’

Interviews,

Under the unassuming pseudonym, The Field, minimalist Swedish electronic music designer, Axel Willner, makes some of the most hypnotizing transcendental meditations and brusque instrumental contraptions currently making the rounds worldwide.

A brilliant laptop-toting tape-manipulating loop-sampling mastermind splattering cold robotic machinations onto lavishly warm hypnotizing euphoria, the formerly Stockholm-based architect corrupts majestically mellifluent processed sound-waves with surrealistic shoegazer-informed sonic droning (pioneered by ‘80s icons My Bloody Valentine and Jesus & Mary Chain) to create fascinatingly ambient symphonies.

The Field’s most popular …

NEW YORK DOLLS MIX IT UP ‘CAUSE I SEZ SO’

Interviews,

Predating punk by a few years, the New York Dolls’ blues-y glamour rock bridged the gap between the Rolling Stones early ‘60s primitivism and the Sex Pistols late-‘70s ruff ‘n tumble amateurism. Lascivious androgynous singer, David Johansen, blurted out defiant lyrics with snot-nosed adolescent authority, creating a tremendous furor his frenzied combo magnanimously embellished. Wearing tight skinny-legged trousers and sporting a devilishly smirked grin, the charismatic Johansen was the perfect greased-up bubble-lipped swivel-hipped Mick Jagger clone posing as a diabolical …

BROTHER ALI SPARES A BROTHER SOME TIME

Interviews

Brother Ali, a highly regarded music hustler informed by old school hip-hoppers KRS-One and Rakim, relates tales of troubled youth on fascinatingly detailed magnum opus, The Undisputed Truth. Victimized at the hands of an immaturely irrational society unconscionably ill-equipped to deal with anybody deemed too weirdly preternatural, the pigmentation-challenged ghost-faced north-westerner seeks affirmation on his own terms. Contradicting the misconceptions aimed at a bald buck who’s a whiter shade of pale, the enterprisingly emancipated emcee peddles a tremendous cross-section …

GUIDED BY VOICES: THE ’97 BOB POLLARD INTERVIEW

Interviews,

FOREWORD: Before I got to hang out with Guided By Voices pilot Bob Pollard a few times in New York during the next few years, I did this phoner with the celebrated Midwestern lo-fi craftsman. His casual humor comes along just fine in this interview to support ‘97s vibrant Mag Earwhig! Damn, this guy’s a lot o’ friggin’ fun. Wish he lived in Jersey. This article originally appeared in Aquarium Weekly.

 

Tragically disregarded by mainstream radio and relatively unknown outside …

BEACHWOOD SPARKS RETURN WITH ‘ONCE WE WERE TREES’

Interviews

FOREWORD: Inactive since ’02, L.A.’s Beachwood Sparks received indie pop and alt-Country notoriety for colorfully integrating Beach Boys harmonies with Byrds and Buffalo Springfield-related folk-rock. Formed by bassist Brent Rademaker (concurrent vocalist-guitarist with fab indie pop group, The Tyde) and guitarist Christopher Gunst (along with Rademaker, originally from respected ’90s outfit, Further), these West Coast denizens rely on ’60s-pop for inspiration. Their final studio recording, ‘02s Make The Cowboy Robots Cry, I have not heard. This article originally appeared in

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HERCULES’ LOVE AFFAIR DANCES TO THE TOP

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First, ancient Greek drama gave us Hercules, the courageous mortal-turned-God. And now, hundreds of centuries later, a non-ancestral Colorado-raised impresario using the same handle currently dominates America’s sullied dance floors. As the reluctant brainchild steadying Hercules And Love Affair’s self-titled debut (DFA Records), techno warrior Andrew Butler has risen out of the windswept Southwest plains to acquire exalted club status in the Big Apple.

 

Encouraged by a teacher to do notation, Butler began constructing Classical piano-based compositions at a formative …

THE WEEK THAT WAS COMES AND GOES

Interviews

Taking their sloganeering moniker from a satirical ‘60s British newsreel hosted by David Frost (who was recently popularized in acclaimed Frost-Nixon movie), The Week That Was is the outstanding offshoot project of Field Music co-founder Peter Brewis. A former drummer in quirky indie-pop enthusiasts, the Futureheads, the 31-year-old Sunderland native grew up just outside England’s historic harbored metropolis, Newcastle, listening to his parents’ Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin, Police, and Peter Gabriel albums as an impressionable youngster.

As the sole musical architecture …

TK WEBB’S VISIONS BOLSTER ‘ANCESTOR’

Interviews

Presumably on a whim, singer-guitarist TK Webb came to New York City looking for exposure. But whether the Kansas City, Missouri, native really landed in the Big Apple due to “lack of a better idea” or just because he sought to be a part of its vital music scene could be debated. What is known is the promising Midwesterner originally performed solo acoustic sets at small Brooklyn lofts but soon found himself “surrounded by bland half-baked folk acts.”

Shortly thereafter, …

DYNAMIC PHILLY DUO GAMBLE & HUFF GET ABOARD ‘LOVE TRAIN’

Interviews,

 

Let’s go back to a different time when vinyl singles’ sales were the barometric metier judging most popular artists’ mainstream success. It was an era, nearly forty years removed from the modern internet age, when composers and arrangers still constructed tunes for various singing groups, the way Motown did it in the ‘60s and Jazz artists had done prior to the dawn of ‘50s rock and roll. Though strict Blues numbers were generally written and performed by the same

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BLITZEN TRAPPER GO PASTOR ‘FURR’

Interviews

OK. The headline is an old joke concerning a pastor’s member going ‘past her fur,’ if you get my meaning, if you catch my drift. All kidding aside, Blitzen Trapper’s psych-folk sound embodies a modicum of religiosity. After all, leader Eric Earley met fellow guitarist Marty Marquis at Covenant College, a Presbyterian school in Georgia. Plus, Marquis admits his father, an actor, listened to church music as well as AM Top 40 and show tunes. Besides, it may be a …