NYS Music 20​18

Tag: review

  • Hearing Aide: Florence and the Machine’s ‘High as Hope’

    Florence and the Machine released their newest album High as Hope on June 29 and it feels like a blast from the past, still holding that classic Florence and the Machine sound known and loved by fans. This fourth studio album by the them was released by Republic Records and Virgin EMI Records. Being a big Florence and the Machine fan, like many others, I waited to see what this new album would hold with a slightly skeptical eye. Not having been as impressed with their 2015 album How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful as much as I would have hoped, I wasn’t sure how the new album would sound, but to my delight it didn’t disappoint in the slightest.

    Florence Welch courtesy of Florence and the Machine’s Instagram.

    The ten song album, which was produced by Welch herself along with Emile Haynie, had a very minimalistic feel to it that grounded it. The album started with the song, “June” which has these lines that say, “And you’re so high, you’re so high, you had to be an angel/ And I’m so high, I’m so high, I can see an angel” which immediately tells the listener what this album is about. It’s about struggle, it’s about belief or lack thereof, it’s about love, it’s about drugs. The song then moves on to one of its singles, “Hunger,” which focuses on all these points. It talks about Welch’s struggle with an eating disorder and has the lines saying, “We all have a hunger” over and over, showing that every person has some struggle in their life. For her, it was an eating disorder but it could it be something different for someone else. Her voice leaves the listener with this aching feeling of knowing that’s what pain suffered in solitude feels like. It’s a pain we all know but seldom talk about.

    I could talk about each song in this much detail but then you would be left with a very long article so I’ll just talk about two more songs. The first song is “Big God” which was the other single off of the album and has the iconic lines, “You need a big god/ Big enough to hold your love/ You need a big god/ Big enough to fill you up.” This song really pulls into this minimal feeling of the album, having having the bass notes of a piano following it for half of the song before the rest of the ensemble comes in. But even this ensemble is a minimal one. This song, just like the others, has this continued theme of struggle and belief or lack thereof.

    The other song which needs to given some proper attention is “No Choir” which is the last song on the album. It starts by saying, “And it’s hard to write about being happy/ ‘Cause the older I get/ I find that happiness is an extremely uneventful subject/ And there will be no grand choirs to sing/ No chorus will come in/ About two people sitting doing nothing,” which really stuck out to me as a listener. The song has this very melancholy emptiness to it which I believe is this acceptance that the whole album rounds back on. It’s an understanding that happiness doesn’t feel as great as sadness feels awful. That struggle, belief or lack thereof, love, drugs – they all make an impact on us and it’s what we do with that impact that matters.

    Overall, I thought this was the best album Florence and the Machine has had since Between Two Lungs. It manages to keep an authentic Florence and the Machine sound with a more grown up set of topics. And it does this well, keeping itself well rounded between upbeat and mellow songs. The minimalist tracks throughout builds on this authenticity of the lyrics. It doesn’t need to be big and flashy to get it’s point across. In fact, being flashy would most likely only distract the listener from the main messages. You can listen to the entire album on Spotify.

    For more information visit Florence and the Machine’s website.

  • Celtic Punk Rock Makes a Pit Stop in Central New York with the Dropkick Murphys

    In Big Flats, New York, there isn’t necessarily a lot to see, but it has the Tag’s Budweiser Summer Stage bringing in people from all over central New York. On June 2, the stage was packed with fans of Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly with both bands stopping there on their summer 2018 co-headlining US tour.

    Dropkick Murphys performing during encore at Tag’s Budweiser Summer Stage. Photo by Nora Hones.

    Flogging Molly performed first with the Dropkick Murphys following, but nothing about the line-up made it feel like the two bands weren’t equals. During both of their sets, they were constantly boosting each other up and dedicating songs to each other. The set-up of Tag’s Budweiser Summer Stage aided to this sense of equal partnership. The merch was equal, the stage set ups were equal, the excitement from the the crowd was equal.

    Flogging Molly pulled out an array of classics including, “Devil’s Dance Floor,” “If I Ever Leave This World Alive”, and “What’s Left Of The Flag,” but also included new music in their performance that the crowd really seemed to enjoy. Dropkick Murphys also played many fan favorites like “Rose Tattoo”, “I’m Shipping Up To Boston”, and “The Boys Are Back” which the crowd went wild for, and did a multi-song encore, even bringing out some of the members of Flogging Molly on stage with them and pulling up members from the crowd.

    For a pile of punk rockers, the crowd was as pleasant and polite as can be and so were the bands. It was all smiles, laughs and mosh pits. Ken Casey, who is usually the bass guitarist (he wasn’t playing bass during the show due to his recent back surgery, just singing) and co-lead singer and songwriter of Dropkick Murphys, explained to the the crowd the rules of mosh pitting at his shows. Right in front of the stage, it’s an anything-goes, mosh-pit-frenzy, where you can get a sneaker to the face and that’s totally acceptable, but if he sees anyone going too crazy in the outer areas of the crowd, like where there were kids, he made sure that the crowd knew, to use his language, that anyone who starts something where they shouldn’t be has the right to have the shit kicked out of them.

    It was one of the politest crowds and band combinations I’ve seen at a show like this and would be something I would definitely look to attend again. Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly continue their 2018 summer tour throughout June and show dates can be found below.

    Show dates:
    June 5 – Masonic Temple Theatre – DETROIT, MI
    June 7 – PMC Amphitheater -KANSAS CITY/BONNER SPRINGS, KS
    June 8 – The Armory – MINNEAPOLIS, MN
    June 9 –  Stir Cove – COUNCIL BLUFFS, IA
    June 10 – Fox Street Compound – DENVER, CO
    June 12 – Pop’s Outside – ST LOUIS/SAUGET, IL
    June 13 – Express Live! – COLUMBUS, OH
    June 16 – RI Bold Point Park – PROVIDENCE, RI
    June 17 – Stone Pony Summerstage – ASBURY PARK, NJ
    June 18 – Stage AE – PITTSBURGH, PA
    June 19 – Red Hat Amphitheatre – RALEIGH, NC
    June 21 – Festival Pier – PHILADELPHIA, PA
    June 22 – Forest Hills Stadium – QUEENS, NY
    June 23 – Bank Of New Hampshire Pavilion featuring Professional Boxing – GILFORD, NH

  • Hearing Aide: Teddy Midnight ‘French Press’

    French Press Album Cover

    Teddy Midnight, the Brooklyn-based live electronic band, dropped their newest EP, titled French Press, at its release party at Pianos NYC on April 26. The EP has a jazzy feel to it. It’s sample heavy, but it doesn’t feel like it is when listening to it. It doesn’t sound like something you’ve already heard; it’s got its own originality to it. One of the ways it’s able to do this is with it’s blend of new and vintage synths, keeping the music unpredictable. It uses combinations of Disco, Soul, 90s House, New Wave, Techno and a little Hip Hop, into non-stop, dance party vibes to keep itself intriguing to the listener.

    The EP starts off with the song “Say it Loud!” which is an all instrumental track except for the very end when the title of the song is said. It has a very, almost “New Order” feel to it which mostly comes from the repetitive drum machine acting as a backbone to the song. It then moves into the song “Eclipse (Go There)” which is also an instrumental track but more upbeat and best illustrates the intended Hip Hop feel. This sounds like a song that you might hear in a dance club soon. Both songs are good, but slightly repetitive and long. Each song lands close to the six and half minute mark, and for someone not particularly knowledgeable or invested in electronica, it was hard to sit through without having some repetitive pieces of the song to anchor onto, like a chorus.

    Then French Press takes a turn with its next song, “Come Over (feat. Tara Lawton & David Schnurman).” You finally get to hear some vocals and the fact the song is six minutes long is barely noticeable, unlike like the previous songs. The album then goes into “Mind the Gap,” which is another instrumental piece. It is very upbeat and has a lot of change-ups that make it one of a kind and continually interesting; this is important since it’s almost nine minutes long. The next song is “Not Enough” which starts off saying, “It’s not enough baby. It’s just not enough,” building up with the tempo in the song. The techno dance party feel increases with those lines appearing often in the change ups of the song. This song, much like “Come Over,” was easier on a listener like myself who might not have as much experience listening to instrumental electronic music. Even though it only really landed on those simple phrases throughout the song, it acted as a point of destination for the song to loop itself back in. The EP concludes on an instrumental version of “Come Over,” which was good, but knowing what it sounded like with the lyrics it felt like it was missing something slightly important to its overall feel. It was able to convey the emotion through the music but, without the words, the listener is left without a direction in which to run those emotions.

    The six song EP has a run time of 41 minutes, which is long but, if you’re into mellow synthesized electronica, this definitely could be an album for you. Even the dance party songs have very mellow undertones to them to make the EP something the listener can just close their eyes and disappear into. Not being someone who previously listened to much electronica music, this album wouldn’t necessarily be something I would pick up to listen to regularly, but it was a satisfying mix of those mellow, almost entrancing, undertones, and upbeat, “can’t sit still while listening to” overtones. First time listeners might want to start by dipping their toes in and starting with “Come Over” or “Not Enough.”

    Teddy Midnight will perform next on June 1 at Olives in Nyack, NY. And be sure to check out the entire EP available on SoundCloud and Spotify

    Key Tracks: 

    https://soundcloud.com/teddy-midnight/not-enough

    https://soundcloud.com/teddy-midnight/come-over