Will Butler and TEEN at Bowery Ballroom

We had the pleasure of catching Will Butler and his great band at Bowery Ballroom last night, ahead of the release of his first solo LP next Tuesday. The album is streaming on Spotify right now, and while it may not sound that much like the Butler's more famous project (you may have heard of Arcade Fire?), it certainly holds its own. Give the record a listen, and check out our pics from this killer show. Also check out his opening act, TEEN, a female four piece that wowed the crowd with their set. Photos and show review by Chelsea Mae Hassman.

Will Butler

TEEN

Live at Mercury Lounge: Matthew Hemerlein

Even if you haven't heard Matthew's music, there's something to grasp onto from just looking at him. No shoes necessary, perfectly on-point blue jeans, a sleep-ready henley, a haircut that's more Men's Vogue than musician and a handle on an instrument most typically used in folksy-throwback bands on Mercury Lounge's stage. Multidimensional in the finest of senses, it's tough to figure out what this guy's all about on the surface. And, as one of the kindest people we've ever met and deepest artists we've ever worked with, his music has a particular uncommonness that keeps us coming back for more.

Which, if your extend of knowledge about him still brims at the photos above, should change now. Now-now. Now-now-now-now-now. There are few people in this world who can master a spot-on Ginuwine cover or write a song called "Luminescent Braid" that's actually a chunk of musical poetry, and I'm confident in saying that Matthew might be the only name in that sliver between circles in the venn diagram of aforementioned skills. We're told he'll be bringing his weekly Washington D.C.-based Family Hemerlein showcases our way this year, and you can bet your butts we'll be urging the lot of you to come along with us. He may be far away for now, but soon, he'll be ours once again.

A Bitta Bela.

Never mind that I showed up 40 minutes late and wound up being seated so close to Bela Fleck that he probably could have scolded me, I realized one thing while spacing the fuck out to drum machines and harmonicas and gut-string instruments: seeing a band like that makes me, in a way, almost never want to go back to Mercury Lounge again.

Now, before an indie mob starts drawing literal pitchforks and I'm thought to undermine this entire furniture endeavor, you gotta realize that we silently made it an intergral part of the site to not pay attention to boundary lines and not make booking decisions based on who gets placed in what genre. That's how we've been lucky enough to capture everything from an electronic duo to an Australian folk-rock band to a multi-talented violinist, all of which, in a way, now fit a different category in and of themselves. 

I'll save that discussion for another day, as this story's not about that. It's about costly, ticketed, sit-down theatre shows being an entirely different beast I completely forgot about, and didn't realize until last night that I miss altogether. 

At a show like this, there are no cell phones shrink-raying and dip-dying the entire experience into a clickable image with a two-sentence update. No one's at the back bar talking too loudly, nobody's e-mailing their co-worker about tomorrow's meeting, not a soul is updating Facebook during a song. At the least, there's a some rowdy grandfather cheering every Future Man solo; at most, there's a curious amount of audience-led eyefucking. (Ladies, if you get dumped, put on some makeup go to a banjo concert. Trust me.)

To be at a show where one band member is legit dressed like a pirate, another holds a record amount of GRAMMYs but you'd never recognize him on the street and people give more of a shit about their African instrument documentary than how their Twitter handle is spelled is refreshing. It's real. And, it makes me want to see more shows like this. 

After all, you know no one in that audience was holding up an iPad to snap a couple pics.

The Nose Knows.

Anyone who follows us on Twitter knows we're obsessed with this band. Like, Backstreet-Boys-in-the-TRL-studio-screaming-fan obsessed. We almost got wisked away by a flash flood at Lollapalooza catching their set, baked them a killer macaroni-and-cheese during their first stateside trip because we wanted them to adore Nueva York and literally yelped out loud yesterday when we heard one of their new songs being used in a commercial for our (well, my) large-schnozed love Owen Wilson's new movie.

Speaking of things we adore as well as those new diddies, we stopped by Knitting Factory back in August to catch them play those tunes live, and it was just as fantastic as we'd hoped. While we're not sure how long we'll have to wait in the middle of Times Square screaming upwards at 1515 Broadway to profess our love for these five, the amount of time that we need to put on the clock for the rest of you to get mesmerized comes in at just under 5 minutes, the proper amount of time each of these two videos from the show will set you back.

Coh-winky-dink? We think not. Take a goose and a gander at these slices of heaven, and keep an ear out for their return to some sets of cities next month. You know we'll be there.

MP3

Boy & Bear - "Blood To Gold (live at Knitting Factory)"

Boy & Bear - "Feeding Line (live at Knitting Factory)"

Boy & Bear - "The Storm (live at Knitting Factory)"

Big Ugly Yellow Couch Session: Boy & Bear

Photo Booth: Patti Smith and Metric.

Patti Smith and Metric at LnA's Afterparty at Milk Studios, 2/11.

This Fashion Week stuff is silly.