this week in music

THE HITCHCOCK 9: THE RING

The bell is sounding for the start of BAM series featuring nine early silent films by Alfred Hitchcock, beginning with THE RING

THE RING (Alfred Hitchcock, 1927)
BAMcinématek, BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
Saturday, June 29, $25, 3:00
Series runs June 29 – July 3
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

When one thinks of Alfred Hitchcock, such psychological thrillers as North by Northwest, Psycho, Vertigo, Notorious, and Rear Window come to mind, not The Manxman, Easy Virtue, The Pleasure Garden, and The Farmer’s Wife. But it is these early, British silent films that are the focus of BAM’s exciting new series, “The Hitchcock 9.” The program runs June 29 through July 3 and features brand-new DCP restorations of nine romantic melodramas made by the Master of Suspense, each one shown in the Harvey Theater on the new Steinberg Screen, with live musical accompaniment. The series begins with 1927’s The Ring, a tantalizing tale of a love triangle set in the world of boxing, a favorite sport of Hitchcock’s. When Bob Corby (Ian Hunter) shows up at a county fair and takes a liking to Mabel (Lillian Hall-Davis), who sells tickets to see her fiance, “One-Round” Jack Sander (Carl Brisson), battle all comers for a cash prize, Corby decides to get in the ring with Sander to impress Mabel; little do they know that Corby is a professional. Soon the two men are also fighting outside the ring, to win the heart of their beloved. Comic relief is supplied by Gordon Harker as Jack’s trainer, who makes some very funny faces throughout. One can see Hitchcock’s visual style emerging in The Ring, as he employs little dialogue in favor of dramatic montages, ghostly superimpositions, and shadowy lighting. The film also deals with issues of class and financial success, themes that will become prevalent in much of Hitchcock’s work. Produced at Elstree Studios and the first film to be released by Gainsborough Pictures, The Ring will be screened at BAM on June 29 at 3:00, with a live score performed by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.

ELEANOR FRIEDBERGER

Eleanor Friedberger will get personal at Music Hall of Williamsburg on June 29 (photo by Michael Rubenstein)

Music Hall of Williamsburg
66 North Sixth St.
Friday, June 28, $17, 9:00
www.musichallofwilliamsburg.com
www.eleanorfriedberger.com

There’s something extremely comforting about Eleanor Friedberger’s voice, whether she’s singing about loneliness and heartbreak or the streets of her adopted hometown of New York City. With the Fiery Furnaces — the constantly shifting experimental outfit she formed with brother Matt in 2000 — on extended hiatus, the Chicago-born Friedberger has just released her second solo album, Personal Record (Merge, June 4), the follow-up to 2011’s Last Summer. Written with John Wesley Harding, the new songs have a more accessible indie pop feel to them, with infectious melodies and even repeated choruses that harken back to the classic rock she grew up on. Several of the songs feature demonstratively emotional titles — “I Don’t Want to Bother You,” “I’ll Never Be Happy Again,” “You’ll Never Know Me” — although the lyrics are somewhat more abstract and poetic. On the album opener, “I Don’t Want to Bother You,” she sings, “And you’ve given me everything I ever wanted / I want to be scared and I want to be haunted / Judgment impaired by your hair as it falls on my face / You’re a disgrace.” “When I Knew” boasts an irresistible Velvet Underground–like bounce, while she takes a look back, and ahead, on “I Am the Past,” explaining, “I am the past / You’ll never forget me / I’d probably come back and stay if you’d let me / I am the past and you cannot ignore me / You’ve got no idea what happened before me. . . . But mostly I’m me / I’m the past to infinity.” The album concludes with the anti-lullaby “Singing Time,” in which Friedberger repeats, “Singing time is over,” but here’s hoping that for Friedberger, singing time keeps going and going and going. She’ll be playing the Music Hall of Williamsburg on June 29, when she’ll also present the debut screening of her short film, “She’s a Mirror,” based on a song from the sweet new album.

4KNOTS VIDEO OF THE DAY: “TAKE THE MIRROR” BY WHITE LUNG

“I want to warn you,” White Lung declares on “Bag,” from their May 2012 sophomore effort on Deranged Records, Sorry. Consider yourself warned. On June 29, the Vancouver quartet — singer Mish Way, guitarist Kenneth William, bassist Grady Mackintosh, and drummer Anne-Marie Vassiliou — will be playing the 4Knots Music Festival at the South Street Seaport, pummeling the crowd with songs from Sorry, which features ten tracks that crash through in less than twenty minutes, as well as their 2010 full-length debut, It’s the Evil, in which eleven songs pass by in a far more leisurely twenty-four minutes. Also on the bill, which spreads across two stages, on Piers 16 and 17, are Kurt Vile & the Violators, Marnie Stern, the Men, Parquet Courts, Heliotropes, Hunters, Reigning Sound, the Babies, Fat Tony, and Steve Gunn. Like we said, consider yourselves warned.

NYC PRIDE 2013

New York City celebrates gay pride this weekend with a series of special events (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Multiple locations
June 28-30, free – $45
www.nycpride.org
2012 gay pride parade slideshow

As more and more states pass same-sex marriage bills, especially now that DOMA has been defeated, there is more and more to celebrate at annual gay pride festivities, although there is of course still a long way to go until there is full equality nationwide. The party begins June 28 at 7:00 with the Rally (free) in Hudson River Park’s Pier 26, hosted by Pandora Boxx and Keith Price and featuring performances by Pam Ann, Nhoji, Vicci Martinez, Shawnee She King, Alexis Houston, JLine, Kit Yan, Jessica Halem, Sassfrass Lowrey, Ryan Amador, the NYC Gay Men’s Chorus, Teresa Genecco & Her Little Big Band, and the Imperial Court of New York, with speeches by Rev. Mark Erson, Carl Siciliano, Jacob Rudolph, Danny Garvin, and Janice Thom. The next day, the VIP Rooftop Party ($35-$500) takes place on Hudson Terrace from 2:00 to 10:00, with DJs Serving Ovahness, Marco Da Silva, and Frankie Knuckles, running side by side with the tenth anniversary of the official women’s event Rapture on the River ($25-$1,000) on Pier 26, with DJs Dimples and Whitney Day. On Sunday at 12 noon, the March (free) gets under way, moving from Fifth Ave. & Thirty-Sixth St. down to Christopher & Greenwich Sts., led by grand marshals Edie Windsor, Earl Fowlkes, and Harry Belafonte; among the awards being given out are Best Use of Theme, Best Marching Contingent, Best Decorated Vehicle, Best Musical Contingent, and Most Original. Also on Sunday, the LGBT street fair PrideFest (free) runs from 11:00 to 6:00 on Hudson St., with live performances by Rhythm Locura, Victoria Chase, Lady M., Ladyboi, Tania Marissa, Kelly King, Christine Martucci, and others, while the sold-out Dance on the Pier ($45-$1,250) gets hot and heavy on Pier 26 and people cool off at the new event Pride {Poolside} ($35-$500) presented by Hed Kandi at Hotel Americano in Chelsea.

4KNOTS VIDEO OF THE DAY: “THE DOVE” BY HELIOTROPES

The key thing about the 4Knots Music Festival at the South Street Seaport, which was formerly known as the Siren Festival in Coney Island, is that you get to see — for free — a whole bunch of bands you’ve either never heard of or who are just beginning to catch some buzz. Over the years, the lineup has featured such groups as Black Lips, Sleater-Kinney, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Modest Mouse, Death Cab for Cutie, TV on the Radio, M.I.A., Superchunk, Guided by Voices, Matt and Kim, Oberhofer, Eleanor Friedberger, Titus Andronicus, and so many more, not all of whom were well known at the time. One of this year’s big surprises is likely to be Brooklyn’s Heliotropes, who blew people away recently at SXSW and CMJ and have now released the best album of the summer so far, their stunning debut LP, A Constant Sea (Manimal, June 18), which you can stream here. On the record, bassist Nya Abudu, drummer Cici Harrison, vocalist and tambourine player Amber Myers, and lead singer and guitarist Jessica Numsuwankijkul take listeners on an awesome sonic journey through psychedelic indie rock and punk, from the fuzz blast of the opening track, “Early in the Morning,” to the sweet harmonies of “Unadorned,” from the propulsive “Good and Evil” and “Ribbons” to “I Walk upon the Water,” which ends with a supersonic freakout. “One of these days I’m gonna jump right outta my skin,” Jess sings on “Quatto” — yes, it’s named for the creature in Total Recall — and Heliotropes is liable to have the crowd jumping out of its skin when they take the stage at 4Knots, which also includes Kurt Vile & the Violators, Marnie Stern, the Men, Parquet Courts, White Lung, Hunters, Reigning Sound, the Babies, Fat Tony, and Steve Gunn. And be on the lookout for Heliotropes’ killer cover of Roky Erickson & the Aliens’ “I Walked with a Zombie.”

4KNOTS VIDEO OF THE DAY: “KV CRIMES” BY KURT VILE AND THE VIOLATORS

Lo-fi Philly CDR psychedelic indie rocker Kurt Vile and his band, the Violators, will be headlining this year’s 4Knots Music Festival at the South Street Seaport on June 29, highlighting songs from their latest record, Wakin on a Pretty Daze (Matador, April 2013). A former member of the War on Drugs, Vile has previously released such albums as 2008’s Constant Hitmaker, and 2009’s Childish Prodigy, building a loyal following and gaining a reputation for his wide range. Wakin on a Pretty Daze consists of eleven tracks totaling nearly seventy minutes, with one, “Goldtone,” cracking the ten-minute barrier. Vile and Violators Rob Laakso and Jesse Trbovich occasionally take off on hippie ramblings as Vile shares such thoughts as “I wanna live all the time / in my fantasy infinity / There I will never be abandoned / There I’ll have a handle against everything from ever happening to them.” 4Knots will take place on two stages from 1:00 to 8:00 and also includes performances by Marnie Stern, the Men, Parquet Courts, White Lung, Hunters, Reigning Sound, the Babies, Fat Tony, Heliotropes, and recent Violator Steve Gunn. Vile will also be at Rumsey Playfield on June 30 for the all-star SummerStage presentation of Big Star’s Third with Jody Stephens, Ken Stringfellow, Mike Mills, Sharon Van Etten, Marshall Crenshaw, Pete Yorn, Jonathan Donahue, Jane Scarpantoni, Reeve Carney, and a chamber orchestra, among other participants.

RIVER TO RIVER FESTIVAL: ANGELIQUE KIDJO

Angelique Kidjo will be performing a free show in Rockefeller Park on June 25

Angélique Kidjo will be performing a free show in Rockefeller Park on June 25

Rockefeller Park, Battery Park City
Tuesday, June 25, free, 7:00
www.rivertorivernyc.com
kidjo.com

Describing the music of prodigiously talented and world-acclaimed singer-songwriter and activist Angélique Kidjo involves such an astonishing list of styles, collaborators, and influences that it may be best to just go hear her at River to River and let your jaw drop. The Benin-born Kidjo attained renown in West Africa while still a teenager with a Miriam Makeba cover (“Les Trois Z”); she then moved to Paris in her early twenties and was soon signed to Chris Blackwell’s Island Records, where she recorded four highly successful albums with collaborators as varied as the Miami Sound Machine’s Joe Galdo, Branford Marsalis, Cassandra Wilson, and Carlos Santana. Fluent in four languages and numerous musical genres, Kidjo incorporates Brazilian, African American, African, Caribbean, and Latin American musical traditions in her work. She won a Grammy for Best Contemporary World Music Album for 2007’s Djin Djin, to which Ziggy Marley, Alicia Keys, Amadou and Mariam, and a host of additional artists contributed; was nominated for the same award for 2010’s Õÿö; and released a live album in February 2012, Spirit Rising, of her PBS special that included appearances by Josh Groban, Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig, Marsalis, and Dianne Reeves. A UNICEF goodwill ambassador for more than ten years who has spoken out about climate change, education for girls in developing nations, and basic human rights around the world, Kidjo, who lives in New York City, has sold out Carnegie Hall, but you can catch her for free on June 25 when she performs in Rockefeller Park at 7:00. The term “world music” can seem like a fuzzy catch-all for coffee-shop background buzz, but Kidjo truly is a world musician in a whole other sense of the word.