this week in music

SUMMER STREETS 2011

Fifth annual Summer Streets program opens up thoroughfares from Park & 72nd to the Brooklyn Bridge (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Central Park to the Brooklyn Bridge
Saturday, August 20, 7:00 am – 1:00 pm
www.nyc.gov

The final of three Summer Streets days takes place today from 7:00 am to 1:00 pm, as walkers, runners, bike riders, joggers, skateboarders, and other people not using motorized vehicles (we’re not sure about Segways) can travel from Central Park to the Brooklyn Bridge without having to navigate through buses, taxis, cars, trucks, and other gas-guzzling traffic menaces. Beginning at Park Ave. & 72nd St. and making its way down Park Ave. to Lafayette St. before turning toward the bridge, Summer Streets will feature five rest stops with special activities, including tai chi classes, salsa and bachata lessons, and a live performance by Still Saffire at Park & 51st; safety demonstrations, a picnic area, and bike helmet giveaways at Park & 25th; a health and fitness zone at Astor Pl. & Lafayette; an adventure zone with a rock climbing wall, yoga, and flat fixing workshops at Spring St. & Lafayette; and sand sculpting, music and dance performances (Les Racquet, Still Saffire, NJ Nets Dancers, National Double Dutch League), and FringeNYC sneak peeks at Foley Square (Duane & Centre Sts.), among other events at each location. Even if you’re not interested in any of the special activities, just getting outside and looking down a Park Ave. filled with people enjoying the six hours of freedom is energizing and contagious.

ICEAGE

Scandinavian teenage postpunk quartet Iceage is back for two area shows promoting debut album

Saturday, August 20, Cake Shop, $10, 8:00
Monday, August 22, Mercury Lounge, $10, 9:30
www.myspace.com/egaeci

Speeding by at Ramones-like speed, Scandinavian postpunk quartet Iceage’s debut album, New Brigade (What’s Your Rupture?, June 2011), consists of eleven propulsive tracks that clock in at barely more than twenty-five minutes. The Danish teens play a furious mix of Joy Division, the Clash, the Pogues, and the Black Lips, adding in a flurry of black metal, on such songs as “White Rune,” “Teeth Crush,” “Total Drench,” and “Collapse.” Elias Bender Rønnenfelt sings in English, accompanied by Johan Surrballe Wieth on guitar, Jakob Tvilling Pless on bass, and Dan Kjaer Nielsen on drums. Chaotic flourishes power “Eyes” and “Broken Bone,” while a sirenlike wailing guitar sears across “Never Return.” And through it all, Nielsen’s slightly muffled, exhilarating drumming pounds away at your body. “I lie in a pool of spit and fear / But I won’t stay weak or hurt or shattered,” Rønnenfelt sings on the album closer, “You’re Blessed,” and it’s impossible not to get caught up in his youthful exuberance. Iceage will be playing Cake Shop on August 20 with YOU. and Frank (just Frank) and Mercury Lounge on August 22 with Hoax and Hank Wood and the Hammerheads.

PARKED! 2011

The Frites ‘n’ Meats truck is back on the street after suffering a terrible fire and will be at Saturday’s Parked! mobile food extravaganza at the South Street Seaport (Photo by twi-ny/mdr)

South Street Seaport
Saturday, August 20, free, 10:00 am – 9:00 pm
www.meanredproductions.com

Now in its fifth year, Parked!, an annual convergence of New York food trucks presented by Mean Red Productions, pulls into the South Street Seaport on Saturday after previous stops at BKLYN Yard and on Governors Island. From 10:00 am to 9:00 pm, thirty of the city’s finest gourmet mobile eateries will be offering a potpourri of international edible excellence, along with live music by Anais Mitchell, Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens, Two Man Gentlemen Band, and Mikey Palms, DJs, children’s activities (face painting, a temporary playground), cooking demonstrations, and more. If you’re worried about long lines, you can buy a $50 VIP pass that allows you access to an express lane, samples from any ten trucks, and one free drink, but it’s only good between 5:00 and 7:00, which makes no sense to us, but that’s the deal. (If they sell all five hundred passes, won’t that guarantee that there will be lines on the express lanes as well during that two-hour period?) Anyway, among the participating mobile vendors are main course possibilities Big D’s Grub, Frites ‘n’ Meats (back on the street after a terrible fire), Feed Your Hole, Gorilla Cheese, Kimchi Taco, La Cense Burger, Desi, Red Hook Lobster Pound, Schnitzel and Things, Mexicue, Taime Falafel, and Valducci’s Pizza, such dessert choices as CoolHaus Ice Cream, the Cinnamon Snail, Van Leeuwen Ice Cream, Wafels & Dinges, the Cupcake Crew, and the Treats Truck, and such drink options as JoyRide, Kelvin Natural Slush Co., Green Pirate Juice, and Wooly’s Ice. In addition to their regular menus, the trucks will be selling specially selected items at five and eight dollars each. Bon appétit!

VANS HOUSE PARTIES

Tokyo Police Club headlines one of the final Vans House Parties of the summer

25 Franklin St., Brooklyn
Thursday, August 18, and Wednesday, August 24, free with RSVP, 7:00
www.vans.com

The fashion company Vans, sponsor of the annual Warped Tour, has also been hosting a series of free concerts on Franklin St. in Brooklyn all summer long. Among the bands who have played one of these House Parties are No Age, Superchunk, Fucked Up, Screaming Females, and Man Man. The final two shows are being held August 18 with Tokyo Police Club, Against Me!, Big Freedia, Japanther, and Team Robespierre and August 24 with Converge, Cold Cave, and All Pigs Must Die. Advance RSVPs are a must via the above website, but that doesn’t guarantee entry, which is still first come, first served.

ALEX WINSTON: VELVET ELVIS

Alex Winston offers a taste of what to expect from her upcoming January full-length debut album with the tasty little Velvet Elvis EP, due out September 19 (HeavyRoc), which includes two versions of “Velvet Elvis” as well as the new “Fire Ant.” On the title track she sings, “Ma said I ain’t right / Clutching on you all night / But you’re my, you’re my guy / Elvis,” and we have to admit that whenever we hear the Detroit-born Winston, well, she’s our gal. Keep watching twi-ny for information on when her tour comes to town.

COLIN STETSON / CALLERS

Colin Stetson will be at 92YTribeca on August 12 before going on the road with Bon Iver

92YTribeca
200 Hudson St. at Canal St.
Friday, August 12, $12, 9:00
212-415-5500
www.92y.org
www.myspace.com/colinstetsonmusic

Stellar sax sideman Colin Stetson has played with Arcade Fire, the Sway Machinery, Laurie Anderson, the Belle Orchestre, Tom Waits, Antibalas, TV on the Radio, and others, but for his second solo album and tour, he’s front and center, highlighting songs from his dazzling new album, New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges (Constellation, February 2011). The Montreal-based musician brought his alto, tenor, and bass saxophones to Hotel2Tango in his hometown, where producer Shahzad Ismaily and engineer Efrim Menuck set up twenty-four microphones throughout the studio, each one capturing different elements of Stetson’s unique abilities. The recordings were then sent to Greenhouse Studios in Reykjavik, where master mixer Ben Frost transformed them into fourteen soundscapes that boggle the mind. Although it often feels like Stetson is playing with a full band, it’s just him and his saxes, with the only overdubs French horn on one song and Anderson and My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden contributing vocals to several tracks. The songs range from the spacey “Awake on Foreign Shores” and “The Stars in His Head (Dark Lights Remix)” to the beautifully cacophonous “From No Part of Me Could I Summon a Voice,” “Clothed in the Skin of the Dead,” and “The Righteous Wrath of an Honourable Man” to the mysterious finale, “In Love and in Justice.” Worden adds whispery vocals to Blind Willie Johnson’s “Lord I Just Can’t Keep from Crying Sometimes,” while Anderson does her trademark talk-singing on “All the Colors Bleached to White (ILAIJ II)” and “Judges,” with both women featured on “Fear of the Unknown and the Blazing Sun.” On “A Dream of Water,” Anderson intones, “There were those who knew the rules.” On New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges, the rules are thrown out, resulting in a hypnotic suite of electrifying songs that incorporate avant-jazz, classical, minimalism, folk, blues, and more into a whole new sonic experience. Stetson, whose two-track, single-take solo EP Those Who Didn’t Run is set for release on October 4, will be playing with Bon Iver on their upcoming tour, but first he’s making a stop at 92YTribeca on August 12 on a bill with the Brooklyn-based Callers, a trio featuring Ryan Seaton on guitar, Sara Lucas on vocals, and Don Godwin on drums.

DETROIT COBRAS / DES ROAR / THE BAXX SISI’S

The Detroit Cobras are headlining a raucous triple bill August 12 at the Bell House, with Des Roar and the Baxx Sisi’s (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The Bell House
149 Seventh St. between Second & Third Aves., Gowanus
Friday, August 12, $15, 8:00
718-643-6510
www.thebellhouseny.com
www.myspace.com/thedetroitcobras

When last we saw the Detroit Cobras (in August 2010), guitarist Mary Ramirez was doing her best not to get seasick aboard the Half Moon as the Rocks Off Concert Cruise ship teetered and tottered, making it difficult to stand up without holding on to something or someone. Meanwhile, lead singer Rachel Nagy wasn’t about to start the show until things calmed down at least a little bit. And of course, once the seas did calm ever so slightly, Nagy and Martinez, along with guitarist Joey Mazzola, bassist Jake Culkowski, and drummer Kenny Tudrick, ripped into a searing set of hard-driving old-fashioned garage rock that was anything but, well, calm. In their fifteen years together, the Cobras have released a mere four albums, the most recent being 2007’s Tied & True (Bloodshot); there’s been talk of a new album for quite a while now, and we’re hoping they’ll be featuring songs from it tonight at Maxwell’s (with the Booze) or at tomorrow’s hotly anticipated show at the Bell House, with New York City’s Des Roar, whose debut album, Mad Things (December 2009), was a potent combo of surfer rock and 1960s guitar pop and harmonies, and Brooklyn garage punk the Baxx Sisi’s (aka the Back C.C.’s), who might wear dress shirts, jackets, and ties but know how to cut it loose in two-minute bursts of raucous energy.