I became a big fan of Sunset Rubdown late last year, having picked up Dragonslayer and pretty much falling in love with Apollo and the Buffalo and Anna Anna Anna Oh! I finally (and belatedly) picked up their 2007 album, Random Spirit Lover, and I’m captivated by the manic flailing about of the opening track, The Mending of the Gown.
Caught She & Him’s show in Royal Oak last night, and I finally got to see the lovely and talented Zooey Deschanel in person. As you can tell from the above photo she was within paper airplane-throwing distance. I’m amazed I got next to the stage; the show was sold out and the theater was packed with hundreds of people. Sorry for the grainy iPhone picture, but real cameras were strictly verbotten, and even cell phone cameras got the attention of the bruising bouncers, especially next to the stage. By the raucous encore song, though, the bouncers relented and the cell phones came out.
Early October in San Francisco means the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park, a weekend affair that’s free to the masses and, naturally, quite popular. Of course, with a name like “Hardly Strictly Bluegrass” you expect some variety, but you may not expect MC Hammer. It’s a bit comical, as he and his posse perform on a Friday, so the school districts bus in a ton of kids who were a decade from even being born when Hammer was at his peak and you can tell they’re trying to figure the old geezer on stage out. Meanwhile, all the adults–from the bus drivers to the school teachers to the passers by–are all suddenly transported to 1990 and you can tell they’re itching to bust a move to “U Catch Touch This.” Me included.
Thanks to some leftover promotional credit I picked up Sea Wolf’s sophomore album for just under $4 at Amazon’s MP3 store. I heard the first track, Wicked Blood, on the radio this weekend and it hooked me. It also helped that I was listening to my music library on the bus earlier today and realized that I’m in desperate need of new tunes; I haven’t picked up anything new in months and months. My big Metric binge is finally starting to taper off; I still heart Emily Haines and Fantasies remains an awesome album, but there’s only so many times I can listen to Gimme Sympathy. Meanwhile, I was sort of disappointed in Bishop Allen’s Grrrr…
I also heard the new song from Florence and the Machine and it sounds interesting, but haven’t bit the bullet on it quite yet.