Vermont’s Grace Potter and the Nocturnals brought their brand of high-octane retro-rock to the Fillmore last night. Given their obvious ’60s influences, the historic Fillmore stage served as a perfect setting. Judging by the platoon of videographers filming a live DVD, the band clearly also thought the setting a good fit.
Potter’s career has been an [...]

The Dodos’ homecoming show at Bimbo’s proved to be an excellent celebration of the band’s success circa Time to Die. Controlled chaos and pronounced energy filled Bimbo’s elegant walls, through the Dodos’ experimental folk and the Ruby Suns’ infectious, tribal-infused indie pop. Photos for both bands after the jump.

All photos by Brittany Nelson & Christine Campbell
I sure hope that any dance-hating Bay Area citizens were far away from Treasure Island last Saturday, because the first day of the festival was a 12-hour ass-shaking, arm-waving, beat-dropping, jump-up-and-down, pump-your-fist-in-the-air-like-you-mean-it kind of day.

I like to think I can string together a serviceable sentence, but seeing Bon Iver early last Sunday morning at LA’s opulent Hollywood Forever cemetery as the rising sun burned through a thick haze of fog after a night long slumber party on the cemetery lawn was a once in a lifetime experience for which [...]

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Amazing Baby played The Troubadour (arguably LA’s coolest venue) on Wednesday night and exemplified that putting the word ‘amazing’ in your band’s name is a ballsy, pun-ripe maneuver (amazingly bland, not as amazingly as you’d want them to be, etc.) when the music comes off a bit like an afterthought to the cultivation of an [...]

For me, summer 2006 was about three things: a new apartment in a new city, a new job, and Brendan Benson’s first three solo records on my iPod. Fresh perspective and exciting new terrain matched aptly with Benson’s warm and wonderfully classic power pop, and on September 10th, 2009, I finally got to see him [...]

Photos by Jay and Laura; words by Anna.
Outside Lands 2009 could have been a lot of things: a failure, a disappointment, a misplaced attempt to draw a wider range of music fans. The slightly off-kilter lineup largely paid tribute to the ’90s (Pearl Jam, Incubus, Dave Matthews Band, Q-Tip and The Beastie Boys — before [...]

All photos by Laura Ciekot
J. Tillman has been busy. He joined indie-folk darlings Fleet Foxes last summer, touring in support of their Sun Giant EP. But Tillman also continued his solo output, releasing his fifth solo album, the hauntingly beautiful Vacilando Territory Blues earlier this year, and is already back with more – Year in [...]