Post by David Lewis

Recently reunited post rock/mathrock/whatever pioneers Polvo (above) graced the Echoplex stage Sunday night in a show presented by the F Yeah Fest. Playing a long (nearly two hour) set of their challenging, extremely tight, mostly instrumental music made for a long -- but rewarding -- night. The quartet sounded as good as they did in their prime -- a decade ago -- and they had a hard time leaving the stage ("No one has to work tomorrow, right?" joked frontman Ash Bowie). A new album is rumored to be in the works, and if the crowd's enthusiasm Sunday was any indication, it will be warmly received.

Openers Trans Am are no slouches themselves when it comes to post rock noise, although their songs have more of an electronic influence than Polvo's guitar-driven rock. Vocals were minimal, and largely synnthesized, allowing the singer/keyboard player to chow down on some chips during their set.

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Post by Matt Kivel

The Glass Candy set was a tale of two shows. If you were up close and crammed into the throbbing stageside pit, the dance beats and tightly-wound synth refrains were all too much to deal with -- boogie fever overtook the entire crowd. Friends of mine came back sweating and sucking for air, claiming they had "seen god" and danced to his sweet funk. The other experience was my own -- casually observing beside the well-lit merch table, jotting down notes and generally feeling bored with what I gleaned to be an average set of mid-tempo disco.

But I give my friends the benefit of the doubt on this one. I should have been down there, sweating alongside them, fixing my eyes on the nodding heads and Ginger Green's emerald tube top. I'm off my high horse -- the ecstatic looks that concertgoers gave one another after the set were enough. Glass Candy rocked the f&%ing house.

Post by Sammy JC

Inside the spacious Echoplex, fresh-faced highschoolers, tattooed punks, neon t-shirted hipsters and local Latinos all mixed and mingled together. Like a visual census of the alternative youth of East Hollywood, there was a rare sense of community and ease as the stagehands set up the gear for hardcore punk legends Negative Approach.

Before the band launched into their jackhammer sonic assault, frontman John Brannon remarked, "It only took us 27 years to get here," noting this as the Detroit band's first West Coast appearance. Even with such abrasive music, the room was large enough that fans at the stage could crowd surf and mosh while those in the back continued to socialize and drink as if immune to the mayhem up ahead. F Yeah Fest founder Sean Carlson himself even stood by the lip of the stage to help the flailing stream of crowd surfers off and on. The songs were short, Brannon struck menacing poses and contorted his face and the kids ate it up. Though abrasive and outwardly inaccessible, Negative Approach is such a powerful band with so much presence that they handily won over people who simply had never seen a hardcore performance before. They devirginized the casual observers and Brannon was just mesmerizing.

Check out our interview with Negative Approach's John Brannon.

(Photo by Olivia Hermaratanatorn)

Post by Sammy JC

Abe Vigoda played a set of highly inventive songs with rollicking rhythms, echo- drenched guitars, dub-thick bass lines and yelping dual vocals that put their sound somewhere between Sonic Youth, Talking Heads and calypso music. However, the jam-packed audience never let their hipster-selves get too lost in the danceable grooves and instead, remained polite and patient even when one of the guitar players took a few minutes to change a broken string.

Coupled with the sweet smell of bar-b-q wafting in from the back of the club, the band socialized with friends between numbers and kept the mood loose and carefree. Fixtures of the LA scene, much of the F Yeah Fest would play out as a celebration of Abe Vigoda and other Smell-based bands like No Age and Mika Miko whose recent success seems to have taken the whole community by surprise.

Photo by Dan Monick

Post by David Lewis

Most bands interact with the crowd to form a "we're all together" bond. Some bands stage-dive and let the crowd hold them up, passing them around the venue on a sea of fans' hands. Monotonix tops them all, by playing while crowd surfing. At their late-night Echo performance, the Israeli trio skipped playing on the stage (too pedestrian), opting instead to perform with their instruments set up in the middle of the crowd. It made for difficult viewing, but an electrifying performance.

Before long, singer Ami Shalev was being passed over the heads of the packed crowd, singing all the while. Likewise, guitarist Yonatan Gat was raised up high in the air by a groups of fans, while hammering out sloppy arena-style solos. The coup de grace came when various audience members hoisted seated drummer Haggai Fershtman up high, along with multiple pieces of his drumkit (hi-hat, snare drum). He then played more than just a few bars while seemingly floating in thin air. The music itself, though somewhat of a moot point, was non-stop garage rock, chock full of Zeppelinish riffs.

Best of all was the fact that they pulled off all of these maneuvers with out cordless equipment. Meaning that there was still a length of cord, originating from the amp on stage, snaking through the audience even after Gat had been passed right out the exit. They then proceeded to play outside the venue for the brief remainder of their set.

Photos by Bryce Frees.

Post by Andrew Barker

Considering the band is comprised of only two people, it's simply astounding how much noise No Age is capable of generating. Waves of noise, looped and layered over each other, bubbling over with low hypnotic patterns and building to epic catharses, all the while never dipping below the red. And yet you don't even notice just how loud they are until you step out into the street afterward and notice the painful ringing in your ears, so perfectly controlled and oddly soothing is their deeply original, brilliantly crafted brand of beautiful chaos.

Delivering the headlining set of Saturday's F Yeah Festival, the L.A. duo justified the substantial attention they've been receiving of late, making for a perfect closer to a day filled with excitement, energy and experimentation.

Whereas the band's recordings can often hew too closely to the same formula (a gentle, syncopated instrumental suite followed by a bone-rattling blast of blissed-out noise pop, or vice-versa), here they let the songs stretch, drag and bleed into one another as needed, reinventing a number of them entirely. Guitarist Randy Randall climbed the amps and covered every square foot of the stage like the bastard son of Kevin Shields and Angus Young, while drummer/singer Dean Spunt proved an engaging, watchable frontman, despite being seated for most of the performance.

It was also a perfectly structured show, beginning on a loose, improvisatory note, then slowly ratcheting up the energy to the mid-set one-two punch of "Brain Burners" and "Eraser" (the latter of which would be a top 10 hit in a slightly skewed parallel universe), cooling down a bit to the dreamy "Ripped Knees," then ending on an explosive, feedback drenched cover of the Misfits' "Night of the Living Dead" that likely left anyone within 10 feet of the speakers with permanent hearing damage.

For all the obvious attention that No Age put into the instrumental side of their music, Spunt's vocals can often seem an afterthought, and are frequently buried so far down in the live mix that they might as well be -- hopefully this is an area the band will continue to fine tune and develop. As it is, No Age still have more potential than any new band in recent memory.

Photo by Bryce Frees.

Check out the Set List's video interview with No Age's Randy Randall.

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Post by Andrew Barker

Brooklyn alterna-dance duo Matt and Kim were on some serious happy drugs Saturday night, with keyboard player/singer Matt frequently jumping up from his seat and cutting himself off mid-song, too eager to get to the next one, and perpetually smiling drummer Kim bobbing her head with a maniacal intensity. The crowd responded in kind, becoming an ebullient, throbbing mass, even prompting this reporter to attempt his first crowd surf since a Descendents concert in 1996 (semi-successfully).

Photo by Bryce Frees.

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Post by David Lewis

Toronto hardcore iconoclasts Fucked Up (a name somewhat appropriate for this particular festival) have been building a significant buzz over the last few years due to their reputedly raucous live shows and their willingness to experiment on record (unexpected instrumentation, pop sounds, epic-length songs, guest vocalists). Raucous their F yeah set was, but it was short on experimentation and stuck rigidly to traditional, but relentlessly entertaining, hardcore punk.

The sweaty crowd was packed in tight and it was clear from the outset that they came to fuck things up: Many audience members started moshing a split-second before the band even began, anticipating a large, savage pit. Fucked Up frontman, a 300-pound dude named Damian Abraham, was intimidating but surprisingly charming, funny and self-deprecating. He spent half of his time interacting with the crowd, offering audience members the mic and stage-diving in equal measure. Likewise, the band seemed to have a strong sense of humor often missing from the hardcore scene, even playing a few bars of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Having three guitars allowed the sextet to create an endless stream of speedy, distorted crunch, but in the spacious Echoplex, the specific riffs melted away, leaving a deafening wall of white noise.

They're obviously informed by the early days of hardcore (including Negative Approach, who played immediately after them), but Fucked Up push the envelope musically and are significantly more populist and accessible than some of their peers. The F Yeah Fest in general is the same way: Look to the early days of DIY punk, but mix in new elements and invite everybody to contribute in some way.

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Post by Andrew Barker

Playing in the early evening at the Echo, Bay Area duo Two Gallants' blend of vintage folk melodies, blues riffs and sea shanties should have been a welcome respite from the steady hardcore that dominated the afternoon. They certainly exhibited good taste in the styles they chose to emulate, and it's encouraging to see a roots band dig back further into the blues/folk vault than the simple Mississippi Delta/Woody Guthrie diet that sustains most retro-minded rockers.

But Two Gallants just simply didn't swing, despite a style that demands it. Perhaps it was the strange lack of chemistry between the two men (a drummer and guitarist/singer), or their sour-faced lack of enthusiasm performing, or the fact that their singer sounds far more like Geddy Lee than Leadbelly, but there was something uncomfortably amiss about the whole performance.

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Post by David Lewis

Vancouver's Ladyhawk* suffered one of the day's few major technical glitches. As a result, they took to the stage about 15 minutes late, but vocalist Duffy Driediger passed the time by riffing on Canada, U.S. vs. Canadian money (someone in the crowd gave him a Canadian $5 bill), and, hilariously, the awkwardness that follows when a fellow male compliments his well-groomed beard (it was pretty handsome, to be honest). He later kept the comedy vibe going by jokingly yelling "Yeah Ladyhawk! Worst band ever!" between songs.

Decked out in vintage tees (including the Grateful Dead and Elvis) and vintage sneakers, Ladyhawk is also most comfortable drawing their music from the past. Echoes of Neil Young creep into their largely late '80s-early '90s-inspired (think Dinosaur Jr., Replacements, even Built to Spill) arsenal of rootsy, guitar-driven indie rock. At the 3/4-full Echo they got jammy in a welcomed, My Morning Jacket kind of way, but their final song (for which the drummer and guitarist swapped instruments) was jammy in a bad way. They also played the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated," which was itself rather sedated.

*Not to be confused with buzzy New Zealand electro-poppers Ladyhawke (like the Matthew Broderick film), who will be gracing the Echo's stage in October.

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Post by Matt Kivel

The first day of the F Yeah Fest in Echo Park proudly displayed a veritable all star team of bands from Los Angeles' vibrant counterculture. Hipsters and teenagers decked out in florescent t-shirts and wide-rimmed spectacles engulfed the three block stretch of Sunset Blvd between Glendale Blvd and Echo Park Ave, within which which the Echo and Echoplex venues reside.

Festivities kicked off at around 3: 30 PM and for the most part, early concerts enjoyed moderate attendance. The Mae Shi proved to be an exception. Fans packed into the Echoplex at around 4: 15 PM to catch a glimpse of the band's spastic punk rock -- a refreshingly unpretentious blend of seemingly incongruous musical sub-genres. Some of the songs employ long, avant-garde freak outs and Kraut-flavored improvisations while others borrow unashamedly from early 90s mainstream FM radio with epic hooks and gleeful crowd-bating chants.

Band members propelled themselves across the stage and the lead vocalists screamed and shouted in tandem, echoing each other's refrains and hammering home the choruses. The Mae Shi set was galvanizing in the best of ways, revving up the crowd and uniting concertgoers from different ends of the musical spectrum. Hardcore and punk fans pumped fists with pop-lovers and ska fans alike -- that sort of unity among fans regardless of musical preference continued throughout the night and made for a celebratory concert experience.

Photo by Faith Crawford

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Post by Matt Kivel

A large portion of this week's Set List content has been devoted to a dynamic, locally-run Los Angeles festival called the F Yeah Fest. Each year, the promoters and festival operators generously give their money, time and effort to the maintenance and  independence  of the  F Yeah brand -- often receiving little  to no recompense for their tireless work. So it saddens me to report that those same, well-meaning festival volunteers were attacked outside of Radiohead's Hollywood Bowl performance Monday night.

The harrowing scene is depicted vividly in Randall Roberts' report for the LA Weekly.

Basically, F Yeah Fest  founder Sean Carlson, promoter Phil Hoelting  and  filmmaker Robert Reich were  allegedly stationed outside of the Bowl Monday night, distributing flyers for the weekend festival when they caught site of a grizzly altercation between Bowl security and a concertgoer. Reich -- who was filming the scene  for an upcoming F Yeah documentary -- captured much of the action on camera. What followed was a disturbing chase down Highland Blvd, in which Carlson and Reich were physically attacked by security guards. The tape was confiscated and the young men were left bruised and bewildered -- Carlson's cell phone and keys were stolen.

A sad situation to say the least. If any Set List readers witnessed this event, please leave your account in the comments section.

The first list of artists confirmed for the the 28th annual CMJ Music Marathon in New York has been released and it immediately sounds like an improvement on last year's festival. Booked to perform are:  3OH!3, A Place To Bury Strangers, AIDS Wolf, An Albatross, Ane Brun, Anna Ternheim, Annuals, Beach House, Broken Social Scene, Cool Kids, Crystal Castles, Cut Off Your Hands, Deerhoof, Del McCoury Band, Delta Spirit, Donavon Frankenreiter, Envy On The Coast, Gang Gang Dance, Lee “Scratch” Perry, IRAN, Jay Reatard, Japanese Motors, Juliana Hatfield, Jupiter One, Lykke Li, Margot And The Nuclear So And So’s, Minus The Bear, Roisin Murphy, The Dears, The Takeover UK, They Might Be Giants, The Virgins and Yo Majesty.
CMJ Music Marathon & Film Festival will take place Oct. 21-25 across New York City.
The Film Festival will have its first ever Cineminis Competition for short narrative and documentary films. 

Sam Moore will perform a tribute to the late Isaac Hayes at the Sunset Junction Festival on Aug. 23.
Most of Moore's hits in the 1960s with his partner Dave were penned by Hayes and Dave Porter; Hayes often produced the duo and backed then on piano.
Moore will perform on the Hoover Stage at 9:30 p.m. on the 23rd, the slot for which Hayes was booked.

Sunset Junction, one of the more popular outdoor music festivals in L.A. will be headlined by Cold War Kids, the Black Keys and a slew of R&B performers from the '60s and '70s.
Event takes place Aug. 23 and 24 in the Silver Lake section of Los Angeles on two stages, one on Sunset Boulevard between Fountain and Sanborn and another on Santa Monica Boulevard between Hoover and Sanborn.
The 28th annual street fair will also feature the reunited Beachwood Sparks and Broken Social Scene. Among the R&B greats on the bills are Isaac Hayes, who led Brooklyn festival last month, Billy Paul, Jeffrey Osborne, Stephanie Mills and Jeane Carne.
Admission will be $15 in advance and $20 day of show. Schedule is after the jump.

Monterey Jazz Festival Records has come up with six titles for its second round of releases of concert recordings.The releases are slated for Aug. 5.
Four are year-specific recordings: Art Blakey and the Giants of Jazz/1972; Shirley Horn/1994; Tito Puente & His Orchestra/1977; and Jimmy Witherspoon featuring Robben Ford/1972. Two “best of” recordings are Dave Brubeck "50 Years of Dave Brubeck: Live at the Monterey Jazz Festival, 1958-2007" and Cal Tjader "The Best of Cal Tjader, Live at the Monterey Jazz Festival, 1958-1980."
Interesting tidbits: The  Blakey album includes Thelonious Monk on piano; among the performers with Brubeck are, of course, Paul Desmond on alto but also Gerry Mulligan on baritone saxophone; Puente performs with a 15-piece orchestra; and the Witherspoon disc includes a bonus track with Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster from 1959.
At the 51st Monterey Jazz Fest in September, the Cuban flutist and singer Orlando “Maraca” Valle is slated to record a CD with special guests David Sánchez, Miguel Zenón, Ed Simon, Murray Low, John Benitez, Giovanni Hidalgo, Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez and the Monterey Jazz Festival Chamber Orchestra.

Considered one of the finest festivals in all of Europe, Italia Wave Love Festival will settle in at the Tuscan seaside town of Livorno, about 200 kilometers from its former home in Arrezo, from July 16 to 19.Last year was held in Florence.
The bands we have heard of: the Chemical Brothers, the Verve, Gnarls Barkley, Wombats, the Ting Tings, Konono No. 1.
The Italians: Sud Sound System, Elio e le Storie Tese,  Linea 77, Sergent Garcia, Tricarico, Bugo, Pivot, Stereo Total, Ralf, Radici nel cemento, Paolo Benvegnù, Carlo Lucarelli, il Vernacoliere, Paolo Migone, rock lessons.
International acts:  Vanessa de Mata from Brasil,John de Leo, Saba from Somalia, Freshlyground from South Africa, Deti Picasso from Russia. Then there's the whole dance scene  in the Elettrowave section.
Here's where they get crazy: The day starts at 10 a.m. on the Wake up Stage (there's a Psycho Stage in the afternoons) with  bands that won a national contest.
Mainstage concerts are presented in the A. Picchi Football Stadium.
A four-day pass is all of 40 euros, or about 60 bucks.

A tip of the hat to the 40th anniversary of the protests that shut down the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, Richie Havens will perform "Freedom" at the fest's opening ceremonies of the 61st edition on Wednesday.
Havens, whose marathon performance of "Freedom"' was one of the glorious moments at Woodstock 39 years ago, released his  27th album, "Nobody Left to Crown," in Europe in February. Announcement of a  U.S. release date and label is expected soon. Havens has U.S. dates into next year scheduled after the jump.

The musical breeding ground that gave the world the Doors, Love, Guns N' Rose, Buffalo Springfield and too many hair bands to count will be celebrated during a three-day festival in June.
The Sunset Strip Music Festival will be held June 26-28 and take place in the Strip's current clubs  the Viper Room, Roxy, Whisky, House of Blues, Cat and Key Club.
An opening night party will take place June 26 at the House of Blues, hosted by Mark McGrath. Event will pay tribute to the Godfathers of the Sunset Strip - specifically the club owners Lou Adler, Mario Maglieri and Elmer Valentine.CNN''s Larry King will interview the three "godfathers"on June 28 at new London West Hollywood Hotel.
Updates on the bands playing on the Friday and Saturday night bills will be posted on the event's MySpace page.

Little Steven's Underground Garage radio show will this weekend celebrate the New Orleans music festival Ponderosa Stomp, being held April 29 and 30 at the Crescent City's House of Blues.
Dr. Ira "Dr. Ike" Padnos curated the lineup but it looks like he invaded my closet and asked which artists had special meaning to me. For example:
? & The Mysterians (my favorite record ever, "96 Tears")
Dr. John (the performer at the club on my first date with my future wife)
Eddie Bo (the performer at a N'awlins club where we were celebrating our first anniversary)
Ronnie Spector (top 3 in my list of favorite female singers)
13th Floor Elevators ("Nuggets," anyone?)
Roy Head (As a fan of songs with "hey" chants, is there anything better than "Treat Her Right"?)

Is it possible the L.A.-based Cambodian-American rock band Dengue Fever has become the ultimate festival band?
The act announced their summer tour today and it includes 19 festival gigs. That's staggering by anyone's standards.

May
10 Santa Monica Festival, Clover Park, Santa Monica, Calif..
14 Sasquatch Music Festival @ The Gorge, George, Wash. (Main Stage)
27 Borderline, London, England
30 Tong Tong Festival Pasar Malem Besar, The Hague, The Netherlands

June
1 Wychwood Festival @ Cheltenham Racecourse, Gloucestershire, England
7 Amoeba Music in-store, Berkeley (day)
7 DAWN ‘08, Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco (evening)
14 Juneteenth Celebration @ M.L.K Park, Long Beach
21 Make Music Pasadena
27 Hove Festival, Arendal, Norway
28 Respect Music Festival, Prague, Czech Republic
29 Glastonbury Festival, Q Magazine Stage, Somerset, England

July
3 Roskilde Festival, Roskilde, Denmark
5 Summer Stage in Central Park, New York (w/ Rashid Taha)
6 Black Cat, Washington, D.C.
7 Johnny Brenda’s, Philadelphia
8 Iron Horse, Northampton, Mass.
09 Museum of Fine Arts, Calderwood Courtyard, Boston
11 Empty Bottle, Chicago
12 La Fete de Marquis at Central Park, Madison, Wisc.
18 Larmertree Festival, Salisbury, England
19 Lovebox London Weekender, London, England
26 WOMAD Festival, Charleton Park, Wiltshire, England
27 WOMAD Festival, Charleton Park, Wiltshire, England

August
6 Oya Festival, Oslo, Norway
8 Way Out West, Goteborg, Sweden (Debut)
9 Summer Sundae Weekender, Leicester, England
16 Beautiful Days, Devon, England
21 Festival Musicas Do mar, Povoa do Varzim, Portugal

Gotham's Downtown Music Gallery has hipped us to one of the coolest festivals on the planet for avant-garde music, Festival International Musique Actuelle Victoriaville in Quebec, which will celebrate its 25th Anniversary May 15-19.
Event's grand finale is the world premiere of Art Bears Songbook, a revisiting of the music made by
Fred Frith and Chris Cutler in the late 1970s/early '80s after disbanding Henry Cow. Frith and Cutler will be joined by Jewlia Eisenberg, Carla Kihlstedt, Zeena Parkins and Kristin Slipp.
Among the other shows is Frith’s brand new rock band Cosa Brava; John Zorn's the Dreamers, which features Cyro Baptista, Joey Baron, Trevor Dunn and Marc Ribot; Roscoe Mitchell's double quartet the Note Factory; and Elliott Sharp playing his  8-string electroacoustic guitarbass in a solo setting.
Festival will also include the premiere of turntablist Martin Tétreault performing with guitarist René Lussier and fellow tu