From the You’re Really Old files this week: Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” is now TWENTY years old. Which, of course, means you are old. Like, very old.
But good news! This video will never get old:
Prepare to hear this name for a long, long time: Hospitality. The Brooklyn indie pop band can hide no longer. A decent helping of critical kudos and an international tour should be enough to get this band the buzz it deserves. The A.V. Club is leading the applause parade, calling their 2014 album “flawlessly melodic pop songwriting” while All Music Guide calls it “a vindication of promise.” We’ll call it innovative, whimsical, dreamy indie rock that recalls the inspired musings of Belle & Sebastian and the expansive guitar fluctuations of Sleater-Kinney. Learn the name, remember the name.
Thao & The Get Down Stay Down/Sonny and the Sunsets at The Fillmore
Appropriately, a few of San Francisco’s oddest romantics will share a bill at one of the country’s most romantic venues on America’s most romantic day, Valentine’s Day. Thao Nguyen and Sonny Smith, two of our finest local musical treasures, have been winning over hearts and minds for years, Thao with her minimalist, quirky ditties, and Sonny with his hallucinatory pop experiments. Each artist has a way of recalling life’s most innocent moments from a misfit's perspective. San Francisco, these are your spokespeople.
Band of Horses at Palace of Fine Arts
“The Funeral” still holds up as one of the past decade’s most poignant, touching ballads known to alt-Americana rock. It’s also the most telling entry point in the discography of a band that explores the sobering realities of small-town life and big-city sorrow, an agenda-setting song if there ever was one. Since that song hit the infant, infinite blogosphere, circa 2006, the band’s artistic output has been staggering. BOH is set to release its fifth studio album, Acoustic at the Ryman, on Tuesday (preview the album here). Come prepared; this figures to be a show rife with new material, but cross your fingers for that fascinating breakthrough song.
Panic! At the Disco at the Fox Theater
Leave it to Panic! at the Disco to bring a show to a screeching halt by breaking the concert hall. That’s exactly what happened in Georgia this past week when the band was forced to postpone a show due to the floor cracking. We’re guessing a lot of Red Bull was involved. No joke, you can almost hear the energy drink flow through the rapid-fire verses and sugary guitar hooks. Luckily the Fox Theater is as sturdy a venue as they come, so we need only concern ourselves with the safety of our eardrums.
Bag Raiders at Audio Discotech
You’ve heard the song “Shooting Star” somewhere — either on TV, your laptop, the elevator or, if you’re lucky enough, one of their recent live performances in S.F. — but these new disco propagators are much more than a one-hit wonder. Their debut self-title album was filled with dance pop anthems, and buzz is already building for their second album, which the band is currently working on (!).
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