this week in music

SCOTLAND WEEK 2013

David Eustace’s captivating “Highland Heart” exhibit will be on view at Hudson Studios April 5-7 (© David Eustace)

SCOTLAND WEEK / TARTAN WEEK
Multiple venues
Through April 21
www.scotland.org
www.scotlandshop.com

The sixth annual Scotland Week, also known as Tartan Week, kicks into high gear this weekend, celebrating Scottish art and culture with a diverse group of events taking place all over the city. On Friday, former minesweeper and prison guard David Eustace will unveil a new collection of photographs, “Highland Heart,” stunning black-and-white images of the Western Islands, at Hudson Studios in Chelsea. On Saturday morning at 8:00, some ten thousand people are expected to take part in the 10K Scotland Run in Central Park, followed by the Kirkin o’ the Tartan and Pre-Parade Brunch at the Church of Our Saviour and the Tartan Day Parade, which will make its way up Sixth Ave. from Forty-Fifth to Fifty-Fifth Sts. with bagpipers, Scottish clans, music groups, Scottish terriers, and more. On Saturday night, the Caledonia Collective at Webster Hall will consist of Stanley Odd, Rachel Sermanni with Louis Abbott of Admiral Fallow, and Breabach. Stanley Odd will also share a bill with the View Saturday night at the Knitting Factory and Sunday night at Bowery Ballroom. On April 7, Alan Cumming begins a three-month Broadway run starring as the title character in the one-man National Theatre of Scotland production of Macbeth, set in a mental ward. On April 8, Scottish fashion will be on display at “From Scotland with Love: The Scottish Lion Meets the Asian Dragon,” a cocktail party and fashion show at Stage 48. On April 9, Ian Gow, curator of the National Trust for Scotland, will receive the Great Scot Award at the black-tie “Celebration of Scotland’s Treasures” dinner at the Metropolitan Club. On April 12, Ken Loach’s Cannes Jury Prize winner The Angels’ Share opens at Lincoln Plaza and the Landmark Sunshine. And on April 14, the Scottish Ensemble, a string orchestra highlighted by trumpeter Alison Balsom, will perform at Town Hall with a program that includes the U.S. premiere of James MacMillan’s “Seraph.” A h-uile la sona dhuibh ’s gun la idir dona dhuibh!

VIDEO OF THE DAY: “UNDREAM A YEAR” BY VALLEYS

“There is no hiding now or ever / There’s no escape for us, it seems,” Matilda (Tillie) Perks sings on “Hounds,” one of ten tracks on the “debut” album by Montreal-based lo-fi dream-pop shoegazers Valleys. Formerly a trio that released the 2009 LP Sometimes Water Kills People, the 2010 EP Stoner, and the 2011 tour EP River Phoenix, Valleys is now firmly a duo, with Perks on vocals, guitar, keyboards, and sequencer and Marc St Louis on vocals, guitar, keyboards, and drums. (Pascal Oliver is no longer part of the group.) Valleys is escaping from their former incarnation, reintroducing themselves on their new record, Are You Going to Stand There and Talk Weird All Night? (Kanine, April 30, 2012), wiping away the past and starting again with a fresh, though still ethereal, sound. Valleys deals with loss and recovery on the disc, which features such songs as “Absolutely Everything All the Time,” “Living Normal,” “Exing Everything,” and “John, Meet Me at the Precipice.” Are You Going to Stand There and Talk Weird All Night? basks in a mysterious, otherworldly glow, created with the help of coproducer Alec Dippie, aka Orson Presence from the Monochrome Set, as tunes weave in and out of emotional highs and lows, with plenty of droning feedback throughout. Valleys will be at Glasslands on April 4 with Fol Chen and Softspot.

TICKET AND DRINKS GIVEAWAY: WHITEHORSE AT HILL COUNTRY LIVE

Whitehorse — consisting of married couple Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland — will be at Hill Country on April 4

Hill Country
30 West 26th St.
Thursday, April 4, $10-$12, 9:30
212-255-4544
www.music.hillcountryny.com
www.whitehorsemusic.ca

Many married couples live by the maxim that they should never go to bed angry with each other; Canadian musicians Melissa McClelland and Luke Doucet expand that to include never going onstage mad. After first developing successful individual careers, animal activist McClelland and marathon runner Doucet teamed up professionally in 2011 to form the duo Whitehorse. Their second full-length Six Shooter disc, The Fate of the World Depends on This Kiss, was released in the U.S. in January, followed quickly by the live covers EP The Road to Massey Hall. Combining elements of (North) Americana roots rock, acoustic folk, pop, and blues, on The Fate of the World Whitehorse employs sweet harmonies, and some killer guitar solos, on such songs as the hot and steamy “Achilles’ Desire,” the beautiful “Mismatched Eyes (Boat Song),” the jaunty “Peterbilt Coalmine,” and the rocking “Out Like a Lion.” Meanwhile, the EP features unique takes on Neil Young’s “Winterlong,” Blue Rodeo’s “Dark Angel,” Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind,” Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” Ron Sexsmith’s “Strawberry Blonde,” and Antoine Gérin-Lajoie’s 1842 “Un Canadien errant.”

TICKET/DRINKS GIVEAWAY: On April 4 at 9:30, Whitehorse will be playing Hill Country Live, the barbecue joint on West 26th St. that also showcases roots rock, Americana, honky-tonk, and folk, and twi-ny has a pair of tickets to give away — and each ticket comes with a free drink as well. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and all-time-favorite Canadian musician to contest@twi-ny.com by Monday, April 1, at 5:00 to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; one winner will be selected at random.

VIDEO OF THE DAY: “I WANT MY MOJO BACK” BY SCOTT H. BIRAM

“I want my mojo back,” Scott H. Biram declares on his most recent record, fall 2011’s Bad Ingredients, but he sounds like he never lost it. Also known as the Dirty Old One Man Band, Biram is like an East Texas drifter on the album, with no place in this hard, cold world — sleeping underground or in the back of a car, only feeling alive when out on the open road. “Now I’m flyin’ ’cross the desert / slowly blowin’ out of my mind / I’m getting’ tired of seekin’ answers / that’ll only let me down / I been drinkin’ since forever / but I just can’t put it down / And I never felt nothin’ / like a warm safe place / ’til I hit that open road,” he howls on “Open Road,” one of thirteen tracks on the Bloodshot disc. Using old microphones, a 1959 Gibson, and an amplified left foot providing percussion, the Austin-based Biram makes his way through bluesy hillbilly punk raising his own kind of hell on such songs as “Born in Jail,” “Black Creek Risin’,” and “Killed a Chicken Last Night.” On “Broke Ass” he declares, “Well, I like makin’ money, honey / but I sure don’t like to work / when I could be down here just sinnin’ / wipin’ beer stains on my shirt.” No, Biram, who even plays his own gospel choir on “I Want My Mojo Back” (but doesn’t play the sax on the song, leaving that to the record’s only guest, Walter Daniels), has never lost his “motherfuckin’ mojo hand,” and he’ll be provin’ it on Thursday night when he plays Target Free Thursdays at the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center. (And don’t be fooled by Lincoln Center’s web address for the event, which uses the name “birman” instead of “biram.”)

VIDEO OF THE DAY: “NEVER DON’T STAY” BY KEVIN BOWE

Minneapolis native Kevin Bowe decided to become a musician after seeing one of the Replacements’ earliest gigs, blown away by the beautiful reckless abandon of the legendary Minnesota band. Years later Bowe, who wrote songs, produced, and/or played with Leiber and Stoller, Etta James, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Jonny Lang, Alison Scott, Leo Kottke, Peter Case, John Mayall, the Proclaimers, Robben Ford, the Meat Puppets, and Freedy Johnston, got to become a Replacement, joining Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson on a four-track covers EP recorded this past September to help raise funds for former ’Mats guitarist Slim Dunlop, who suffered a stroke in February 2012. Now Bowe is back with his longtime band, the Okemah Prophets, on tour with their new disc, Natchez Trace, the follow-up to 2003’s Angels on the Freeway (Crosses on the Road) and 1999’s Restoration. The sixteen-song disc, made with Prophets Pete Anderson on drums and Steve Price on bass, along with contributions from Westerberg, Johnston, Chuck Prophet, Scarlet Rivera, Tim O’Regan, and Nels Cline, is a collection of countrified indie rock, pop, and blues, with such highlights as the rollicking “In Too Deep” and “Devil’s Garden,” the driving “Haven’t You Heard,” the horn-heavy “Everybody Lies,” the foot-stompin’ “Waitin’ for the Wheel” and “Just Restless,” and the Westerbergian “Never Don’t Stay” and “Gutters of Paradise.” (You can check out all the songs and more here.) Kevin Bowe + the Okemah Prophets will be at Rockwood Music Hall on March 26 at 7:00 (free), preceded by Jonathan Powell and followed by Caitlin Canty, and at the Rock Shop in Brooklyn on March 27 ($10) with Dear Comrade and A Is for Atom.

NICK CAVE: HEARD•NY

Artist Nick Cave watches a rehearsal of “Heard•NY” (sans horse costumes) in Vanderbilt Hall (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Grand Central Terminal, Vanderbilt Hall
89 East 42nd St.between Lexington and Vanderbilt
March 25-31, free
Daily crossings at 11:00 and 2:00, daily tours at 3:30
www.creativetime.org
heard•ny rehearsal slideshow

Grand Central Terminal is famous for its cattle-like crowds — hence the overused cliché “It’s like Grand Central Station in here!” — but it’s about to take in a whole new kind of herd this week. Starting on Monday, March 25, and continuing through Sunday March 31, Nick Cave’s “Heard•NY” will add to all the hustle and bustle. The Missouri-born multidisciplinary artist, whose dual exhibits “Ever-After” at Jack Shainman and “For Now” at Mary Boone ran in Chelsea in the fall of 2011, is installing thirty of his life-size horse Soundsuits in Vanderbilt Hall, where they will be on view all week. But every day at 11:00 am and 2:00 pm, student dancers from the Ailey School will get inside the colorful suits and perform what are being called “Crossings,” making their through the world’s most famous train terminal in intricate movements developed by Cave and Chicago-based choreographer William Gill, with live music by harpists Shelley Burgon and Mary Lattimore and percussionists Robert Levin and Junior Wedderburn. (There will also be daily guided tours of the installation at 3:30.) The performances harken back to the days when horse-drawn carts were prevalent in the city, prior to the coming of the railways and automobiles. A collaboration between Creative Time and MTA Arts for Transit as part of Grand Central Terminal’s ongoing centennial celebration, “Heard•NY” continues Cave’s exploration of human and animal ritual behavior and social and cultural identity, using found and recycled materials to create sculpture, video, and combinations of the two. The artist will discuss his latest work in relation to masquerade, performance, and dreaming in public at a special presentation, “A Conversation with Nick Cave,” in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Bonnie J. Sacerdote Lecture Hall on March 29 at 6:00 (free with museum admission), with Cave, Creative Time curator Nato Thompson, and Met curator Alisa LaGamma. “A herd of horses has been unleashed in Grand Central Terminal,” Thompson poetically explains in a statement. “Grazing in Vanderbilt Hall, they move at a pace perhaps too slow for the needs of a commuter, seeming to ask us to slow down. To take a second. To look. . . . In the frantic pace of our contemporary age, in the monumental machine that is Grand Central Terminal, we are temporarily placed outside ourselves by crossing paths with Cave’s creations. We can observe these horses in the same way that we look upon our fellow travelers in the Main Concourse, sensing the texture of time and the dizzying visual seduction that is the pleasure and bewilderment of our contemporary moment.” People are always rushing through train stations, which primarily serve as weigh stations at the beginning, middle, or end of a journey, but “Heard•NY” should make everyone stop for a few minutes, take a deep breath, and enjoy the surrounding fun, taking advantage of where they are rather than hurrying to get where they are going. (Coincidentally, madman Australian musician Nick Cave is also in New York City this week, playing the Beacon Theatre March 28-30 with his longtime band, the Bad Seeds.)

CLASSICAL AT THE CORNELIA: BEETHOVEN BACH SHINNERS

Evan Shinners promises to mix in a little bit of Passover along with Bach and Beethoven at Cornelia Street Café on March 25

Cornelia Street Café
29 Cornelia St.
Monday, March 25, $20 (includes one drink), 8:30
212-989-9319
corneliastreetcafe.com
www.facebook.com/evanshinners

It is traditional for the Passover seder to end with a series of songs sung by the whole mishpacha. Pianist extraordinaire Evan Shinners, who is bringing his unique take on classical and pop music to the Cornelia Street Café on March 25, the first night of Pesach, is promising that it will be “a perfect occasion to come down to the West Village to enjoy a seder led by Bach and me. There will be fugues on ‘Dayenu,’ the four duets will answer the Four Questions, and if these jokes have no effect on you, then you certainly have no excuse to miss it.” Born in Denver and based in New York City, Shinners has been playing piano since he was nine. He has performed for Pope John Paul II in Rome and President Barack Obama at the White House, and he has just returned from a sold-out tour of Europe, where he played original music as well as works by Bach and Beethoven. “Monday night is me in my element,” he explained in an e-mail, “an intimate space and an hour with you. . . . Sonatas by Ludwig, suites by Johann, song and dance by Evan.” We have no information on whether the self-described “poet and tummler” plans on hiding the afikoman as well.