this week in music

CHELSEA ART WALK 2012

Artist Patrick Lundeen will play with his band, the Oblique Mystique, at Mike Weiss Gallery as part of Thursday night’s Chelsea Art Walk (Lundeen’s solo show, “Good for You Son,” continues at the gallery through July 28)

Multiple locations in Chelsea
Thursday, July 26, free, 5:00 – 8:00
artwalkchelsea.com

More than eighty galleries and some two dozen artist studios will remain open until 8:00 on July 26 for the third annual Chelsea Art Walk. Although summer is of course the time for group shows (not that there’s anything wrong with that), there are a handful of solo exhibits worth looking out for, including “Jake Berthot: Artist Model, Angels Putti, Poetry Visual Prose, works on paper” at Betty Cuningham, “Zoe Strauss: 10 Years, A Slideshow” at Bruce Silverstein, “Luca Pizzaroni: Bianco Trash” at Fred Torres Collaborations, Shawn Barber’s “Memoir: The Tattooed Portraits” at Joshua Liner, “Patrick Lundeen: Good for You Son” at Mike Weiss (including a set by the artist’s band, the Oblique Mystique, at 7:00), “Holly Zausner: A Small Criminal Enterprise” at Postmasters, and “Jim Marshall: The Rolling Stones and Beyond” at Steven Kasher. Among the special events are tours at 6:00 & 7:00 led by “fledgling theater company” Rudy’s Meritocracy (meet at Tenth Ave. & Twenty-first St.), a book signing with William Steiger and Rainer Gross at Margaret Thatcher Projects, and visitors to Ultra Violet Studios can have a Polaroid portrait taken of them, among numerous other gallery and artist talks and tours and opening and closing receptions.

CATALPA VIDEO OF THE DAY: “LET’S GO” BY MATT AND KIM

Nobody throws an outdoor party quite like Matt Johnson and Kim Schifino. The perpetually smiling Pratt couple better known simply as Matt and Kim have been making fun, infectious music since 2005, including their eponymous 2006 debut album, 2009’s Grand, and 2010’s Sidewalks. Onstage they are an utter delight, Kim pounding away on her drum kit — when not standing on top of it — and Matt banging on the keyboards and taking lead vocals. They’ve stirred up the crowd at McCarren Park Pool, the Siren Festival in Coney Island, and RiverRocks on Pier 54, and now they figure to do the same this Sunday when they play the Catalpa Festival on Randall’s Island, on a bill with Girl Talk, Matisyahu, the Dirty Heads, City and Colour, Snoop Dogg, and others. Look for the crazy kids, who once famously ran naked through Times Square for a music video, to feature songs from their upcoming album, Lightning, which is scheduled for release on October 12. To find out more about Catalpa, read our interview with the festival’s founder, Dave Foran, here.

CATALPA SONG OF THE DAY: “THE WAY IT IS” BY THE SHEEPDOGS

The Sheepdogs should bring warm feelings of Woodstock to Randall’s Island when they play the Catalpa Festival on Saturday afternoon. The bluesy psychedelic rockers, who hail from Saskatoon, Canada, know how to keep on choogling with their rollicking good-time music, as they’ve shown on such records as 2007’s Trying to Grow and 2010’s Learn & Burn and an exhausting touring schedule. But singer-guitarist Ewan Currie, guitarist Leot Hanson, bassist Ryan Gullen, and drummer Sam Corbett, LP lovers all, took a giant leap forward last summer when they were voted onto the cover of Rolling Stone, the first unsigned band to achieve that honor. The victory came with an Atlantic Records contract; their eponymous major-label debut is set for release September 4, but the first song, “The Way It Is,” is available now. The Sheepdogs will be taking over the 2nd Stage at Catalpa at 5:00 on July 28, following the Demos and before Umphrey’s McGee. For an interview with the festival’s founder, Dave Foran, go here.

CATALPA VIDEO OF THE DAY: “SEEKIR” BY ZOLA JESUS

Singer-songwriter Nika Roza Danilova, better known as the one-woman recording phenomenon Zola Jesus, continues her reign as the alterna–Stevie Nicks on her third album, Conatus (Sacred Bones, October 2011), the follow-up to her 2010 sophomore full-length, Stridulum II. The twenty-three-year-old, who was born and raised on a large farm in Wisconsin, favors long, flowing blonde hair that meshes with her long, flowing white outfits, both supplying a stark contrast to her haunting electro-Goth music. On Conatus, she takes listeners on a dark, introspective journey into the fear that pervades her soul, filled with repeated images of fire. “Oh, it hurts to let you in,” she sings on “Collapse.” On “Seekir” she asks, “Is there nothing left / of this mess we made? / Is there nothing left / of the love I gave?” On tour she is joined by a backing band that ably captures her unique sound, whether at CMJ or in the Guggenheim rotunda, where she performed this past May. Zola Jesus will be at the Catalpa Festival on Saturday, sharing an impressive bill with Hercules and Love Affair, Umphrey’s McGee, TV on the Radio, headliners the Black Keys, and others. The two-day festival continues on Sunday with Snoop Dogg, Girl Talk, Matt and Kim, Matisyahu, and more. For an interview with the festival’s founder, Dave Foran, go here.

CATALPA VIDEO OF THE DAY: “SPREAD TOO THIN” BY THE DIRTY HEADS

“Well, come with me to a place by the sea / If your ship breaks down you can always find me and Dirty J chillin’ underneath a shady tree / Our fans are always welcome with our friends and family,” the Dirty Heads sing on the title track to their sophomore album, Cabin by the Sea (Five Seven Music, June 2012), continuing, “And if you wish you could stay, as long as you please / Just lend a helping hand to build our cabin by the sea / Where every day is beautiful, the sun, the sand, the breeze / And everybody lives together here in harmony.” The song might be the centerpiece of their long-awaited follow-up to 2008’s alternative hit Any Port in a Storm, but it also can sum up their upcoming appearance at the Catalpa Festival on Randall’s Island on July 29. (They will also be playing the Paramount in Huntington on July 23.) Currently on tour with Matisyahu, who will also be at Catalpa on July 29 (along with Cold War Kids, Matt and Kim, Girl Talk, headliner Snoop Dogg, and others), SoCal’s Dirty Heads once again feature their unique brand of reggae-influenced hip-hop, rap, and indie pop on Cabin by the Sea, which opens with the tender “Arrival” before turning into a Jamaican party with such special guests as Ky-Mani Marley, Rome (of Sublime with Rome), Del the Funky Homosapien, and Matisyahu joining front man Jared “Dirty J” Watson, vocalist-guitarist Dustin “Duddy B” Bushnell, percussionist Jon Olazabal, drummer Matt Ochoa, and bassist David Foral. Blasts of horns combine with lyrics filled with confidence, braggadocio, positive energy, and shout-outs to themselves and hero Bob Marley on the new record, highlighted by such tunes as “Disguise,” “Spread Too Thin,” “Mongo Push,” “We Will Rise,” and “Hipster,” on which they sing, “So endlessly, we will carry on through your energy /Every song we sing creates a memory I wouldn’t change for anything / Music is eternity and lives in me eternally / Endlessly, we will come together like a symphony / And everything you do feels like it’s meant to be.” The two-day art and music Catalpa Festival begins on July 28 with the Black Keys, TV on the Radio, Umphrey’s McGee, Hercules and Love Affair, Zola Jesus, and others; for an interview with the festival’s founder, Dave Foran, go here.

HARLEM BOOK FAIR: FROM HARLEM, WITH LOVE

West 135th St. between Malcolm X Blvd. & Frederick Douglass Blvd.
Saturday, July 21, free, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
www.qbr.com

Kicking off with the inaugural Literacy Across Harlem march, in which participants carry their favorite book, the Harlem Book Fair features a full day of activities celebrating the written word. Taking place at such venues as the Countee Cullen Library, the Langston Hughes Auditorium and the American Negro Theater in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the main stage outdoors on West 135th St., the fair will include live performances and readings by Lynn Pinder, Mitzi Carrasquillo, Elijah Brown, Sadequ Johnson, Danny Simmons, Renarda Huggins, Atiba Wilson & the Befo’ Quotet, Eleanor Wells, and others. Among the panel discussions and lectures are “Decision 2012: Race, Democracy, and the New Jim Crow” with Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Cornel West, Fredrick C. Harris, and Sonia Sanchez, moderated by Peniel Joseph; “Black to the Future: Why We No Longer Die First in Science Fiction Movies,” with Shykia Bell, Joelle Sterling, R. Kayeen Thomas, and Gregory “Brother G” Walker, moderated by Harlem Book Fair founder Max Rodriguez; and “The End of Anger: Teen Book Talk with Author Ellis Cose.” There will also be a special tribute to Sekou Molefi Baako, with musical guests Mzuri Moyo and Jazz Trio, the Atiba Kwabena Trio, and the NuyoRican School Poetry Jazz Ensemble featuring Americo Casiano Jr. with Edy Martinez, Ray Martinez, & Yunior Terry in addition to poets E. J. Antonio, Cypress Jackson Preston, Tony Mitchelson, and Ed Toney.

NEW MUSEUM BLOCK PARTY

Experimental composer Sxip Shirey will be performing at 2:45 at the New Museum Block Party in Sara D. Roosevelt Park on July 21

New Museum of Contemporary Art, 235 Bowery at Prince St.
Sara D. Roosevelt Park, Chrystie St. between Delancey & Broome Sts.
Saturday, July 21, 12 noon – 5:00
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org

The sixth annual New Museum Block Party takes place on the Lower East Side on Saturday in nearby Sara D. Roosevelt Park as well as the museum itself. There will be live outdoor performances by experimental artists Chris Giarmo/Boys Don’t Fight, Yvonne Meier, Sxip Shirey, and High Priest of Antipop Consortium, a Bowery Artist Tribute in which visitors can remix and recontextualize poems that have ties to the neighborhood, a digital archive of New Museum catalogs (in which you can create your own mix-and-match mini-catalog), an Op art workshop, a Lower East Side photo show, an interactive paper workshop led by Nicolás Paris, an alternate-color demonstration, and free admission to the museum (with tours every hour at a quarter past), where you can check out the exhibitions “Ghosts in the Machine,” “Pictures from the Moon: Artists’ Holograms 1969 – 2008,” “The Parade: Nathalie Djurberg with Music by Hans Berg,” and “Carlos Motta: We Who Feel Differently.”