this week in music

SUPERCHUNK

Superchunk is back in town for a pair of sold-out shows (photo by Christian Lantry)

Saturday, September 18, Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St., $22, 9:00
Sunday, September 19, Music Hall of Williamsburg, 66 North Sixth St., $22, 9:00
www.myspace.com/superchunkmusic

We don’t know what we were thinking when we opted not to check out Superchunk’s free concert this past July at the South Street Seaport, but we were majorly bummed when we heard afterward that they put on a great show, bouncing around onstage like a bunch of kids and blowing the crowd away. Well, we’re happy to say that the Chapel Hill band is back for two area gigs this weekend, and although they’re not free, it’s hard to pass up another chance to see one of the most legendary alternative bands still out on the road. (The shows are sold out, but maybe you can search online or beg friends with tickets to let you go with them.) Singer-guitarist Mac McCaughan, bassist Laura Ballance, guitarist Jim Wilbur, and drummer Jon Wurster are touring behind MAJESTY SHREDDING, their first new LP since 2001’s HERE’S TO SHUTTING UP. While the quartet breaks no new ground on the album, which came out Tuesday on Merge Records, the label cofounded by McCaughan and Ballance back in 1989, it’s great to hear McCaughan’s lilting vocals and Wilbur’s alternately searing and crunching guitar sounds pounding out such fresh-sounding new tunes as “Digging for Something,” “My Gap Feels Weird,” and “Crossed Wires.” Superchunk, who has been featuring such older songs as “Art Class (Song for Yayoi Kusama),” “Driveway to Driveway,” “Slack Motherfucker,” and “Hyper Enough” at recent shows, will be at the Bowery Ballroom on Saturday night with Let’s Wrestle and at the Music Hall of Williamsburg on Sunday night with Wild Nothing and Todd Barry.

OF MONTREAL

Of Montreal isn’t afraid to get a little goofy on record or at their live shows

Terminal 5
610 West 56th St.
Friday, September 17, and Saturday, September 18, $27.50-$30, 8:00
www.myspace.com/ofmontreal
www.terminal5nyc.com

Don’t let the funky grooves flying all over Of Montreal’s tenth album, FALSE PRIEST (Polyvinyl, September 14), fool you; band founder and Apollinaire Rave artistic director Kevin Barnes is still delving deep into suicide, shattered hearts, self-brutality, death anxiety, and loneliness — as well as particle wave duality, auto-da-fés, fetishized archetypes, uncalibrated skulls, frontal lobe regression, and Chinese urine. The Athens, Georgia, group, which has been shuffled and reshuffled over its thirteen-year career, with more former members than current members (and some albums recorded primarily by Barnes alone), has a ball on the new disc, mixing in falsetto funk, rollicking R&B, heavenly dance pop, and Euro-disco that has the sonic glee of Gnarls Barkley — perhaps it is no coincidence that OM has covered GB’s “Crazy.” On FALSE PRIEST, Of Montreal channels a little Beatles here (“You Do Mutilate?”), a whole lot of Prince there (“Like a Tourist,” “Sex Karma”), and even a bit of Bowie to boot (“Godly Intersex”). Janelle Monáe of the Wondaland Arts Society adds groovy raps to “Our Riotous Defects” and “Enemy Gene,” while Solange Knowles gets hot and heavy with Barnes on “Sex Karma,” which features the killer rhyme “You took me centuries to master / In the next life I will have to learn you faster.” Barnes and company — Bryan Poole, Davey Pierce, Dottie Alexander, Clayton Rychlik, Thayer Sarrano, Nicolas Dobbratz, and K Ishibashi — will be headlining Terminal 5 this Friday and Saturday with Kansas native Monáe, who recently released her debut album, THE ARCHANDROID (SUITES II AND III) (Bad Boy, May 18, 2010).

PETER YARROW BENEFIT CONCERT

Peter Yarrow will perform a benefit concert for the Museum at Eldridge Street on September 20

Museum at Eldridge Street
12 Eldridge St. between Canal & Division Sts.
Monday, September 20, $36, 7:00
RSVP: 212-219-0888 ext205, hgriff@eldridgestreet.org
www.eldridgestreet.org
www.peterpaulandmary.com

As one-third of the folksinging trio Peter, Paul & Mary, Peter Yarrow sang such seminal songs as “If I Had a Hammer,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” “All My Trials,” “500 Miles,” and, of course, “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” a mix of traditional and original tunes that played an important role in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Sadly, Mary Travers passed away in September 2009 from complications arising from her chemotherapy treatment for leukemia, but Yarrow is still keeping the flame burning, founding the nonprofit group Operation Respect, which works “to assure each child and youth a respectful, safe and compassionate climate of learning where their academic, social and emotional development can take place free of bullying, ridicule and violence”; displaying public outrage when Chip Saltsman sent “Barack the Magic Negro,” an insensitive reworking of Peter, Paul & Mary’s “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” to members of the RNC; and participating in the fight against colon cancer through his 2010 tune “The Colonoscopy Song.” He has also written or been part of a number of children’s books, including THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS, set for release November 15 and featuring the final performance ever by Travers, singing to a new score of the title track by Yarrow. The Christmas book serves as the perfect lead-in to Yarrow’s latest project, a September 20 benefit concert raising funds for the Museum at Eldridge Street, site of a historic Lower East Side synagogue that is being lovingly restored. Tickets are only $36, with all proceeds going to the museum’s extensive cultural and educational programs.

BRYANT PARK FALL FESTIVAL

The Orchestra of St. Luke’s is one of the companies giving free performances as part of this week’s Bryant Park Fall Festival

Bryant Park Fountain Terrace and lawn
40th to 42nd Sts. at Sixth Ave.
Setpember 13-20, free
www.bryantpark.org

Fashion Week festivities might have moved from Bryant Park to Lincoln Center, but that doesn’t mean that the former is just going to hide its head in the sand. Beginning today at lunchtime, Bryant Park will be hosting its own Fall Festival, eight days of live music and dance featuring performances by the New York City Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Parsons Dance, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Black Rock Coalition, Ricky Ian Gordon, and, ironically enough, Jazz at Lincoln Center. Shows take place daily at 12:30 and 6:00, and everything is free.

SHERLOCK’S DAUGHTER

Australia’s Sherlock’s Daughter comes to the Bowery Ballroom and the Music Hall of Williamsburg this week (photo by Kyle Dean Reinford)

Monday, September 13, Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St., $25, 8:00
Tuesday, September 14, Music Hall of Williamsburg, 66 North Sixth St., $25, 8:00
www.myspace.com/sherlocksdaughter

Based in Sydney, five-piece band Sherlock’s Daughter, led by New Zealand vocalist Tanya Horo, is touring behind its self-titled five-song EP, which features beautiful harmonies, soothing melodies, and alluring rhythms. Guitarist Tim Maybury, bassist Liam Flanagan, electronics specialist Jonti Animal, and drummer William Russell create mysterious sounds that wrap around you with just the right amount of uneasiness to keep you slightly off balance but always wanting more on such welcoming tunes as “Sons and Daughters,” “Song for Old People,” and “Kids.” And they also have a way of making relatively mundane lyrics float wonderfully in the ether; on “In the End,” Horo sings, “In the end we will hold on to all that’s in our hearts / Don’t be sad or be frightened / We don’t need to part / Love can’t hurt us now,” and you believe every word of it. They’ll be playing the Bowery Ballroom on September 13 and the Music Hall of Williamsburg on September 14, opening up for this small little British band known as Charlatans UK.

TWO TEARS / GRINGO STAR

Kerry Davis will lead the Two Tears into Cameo Gallery on September 13

Cameo Gallery
93 North Sixth St.
Monday, September 13, 8:00
www.myspace.com/thetwotears
www.myspace.com/cameogallery

After stints in Paris and Dubai, former “one lady band” Kerry Davis is now based in New York City, where she’ll be playing a hometown gig September 13 with her group the Two Tears. Davis, on guitar and vocals, will be joined by Des Roar bassist Ryan Spoto, and Mutilation Rites drummer Justin Ennis as they blast short bursts of experimental bluesy garage punk that is not nearly as cannibalistic as you might think from such titles as “Eat People” and “I Like Your Face” nor as depressing as indicated by such titles as “Die Tonight,” “OOooo I’m Blue,” and “Shit Fucking Job.” In “Senso Unico,” Davis declares, “I hate my life,” but you won’t hate hers when she and Two Tears perform at Brooklyn’s Cameo Gallery on September 13 with Atlanta’s Gringo Star, one of the standouts at the 2008 CMJ Music Marathon. Gringo Star, which plays punk-injected southern garage rock with a twist, is about to go back into the studio to record their follow-up to their debut disc, 2008’s ALL YALL, with producer Ben Allen. Opening up are two Brooklyn bands, the whispery, lo-fi Caveman and the minimalist Soft Black.

FERRAGOSTO 2010


Belmont’s Little Italy
Arthur Ave. between East 187th St. & Crescent Ave.
Sunday, September 12, free, 12 noon – 7:00 pm
www.facebook.com

At last year’s annual Ferragosto in the Bronx, some seventeen thousand people celebrated New York City’s Italian heritage, with food, live entertainment, specialty vendors, and much more. This year’s festival takes place on September 12, featuring performances by the Bronx Wanderers, the Caleps with Gino Venuto, Commedia Dell’arte, Dominic Chianese, Christopher Macchio, Maria Fraccola, and Moreno Fruzzetti as well as a tribute to the Three Tenors, sponsored by the Belmont Business Improvement District.