[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

fucking kick ass!

Grass Widow were the shit, mellow but edgy, ambient but with just enough heaviness to appease my more aggressive tastes, a cool pop/street/post-punk sound with an art-rock flavor for jamming breaks and intricacy of guitar/bass work. And those female vocal harmonies between the drummer, bass and guitarist were divine.. the SK ladies always come through with good, hand selected, opening acts..

Wild Flag were delightful, they had a strong and pleasant stage presence, built from all the experience of the artists.. Even though this is a new band having played only a few shows together, they all have a good mutual chemistry not just which each other, but with the crowd full of years long fans. Carrie's songs were great, heavy One Beat style with a bit of the retro/classic rock Woods sound and jamming improves, it was not quite as polished as sleater-kinney, not quite as raw and cutting as Excuse 17, but definitely with more fierceness than the Spells had, and I love this for that. Mary was a bit more timid in her stage presence, pretty much as she has been any of the other times I seen her in the past ten years, but her music was shining, strong, crafted, exactly what to expect from an artist of her caliber and history. They even went on a sonic youth esque turn and at many moments, and Mary especially has a new talent for feedback, noise, no-wave, thrash and experimentation with effects, Carrie we are familiar with this, but them wielding it together, perfection! Janet was amazing as usual, when is she not? The chick from the Minders Rebecca Cole was a solid foundation for driving bass lines on the keys as well as good backing vocals and upbeat dancing. In fact, all the ladies were dancing on stage quite a bit, and that is much more nice than the usual wallflower, stiff as a board stage/crowd presences at art-rock/indy shows, it was like, come on people, its safe to dance you know, and the band showed it! The style of this post-riot grrl era seems to be defined with female vocal harmonies, and Wild Flag nailed it even more so than other groups before them have, we should look forward to at the least a very solid, classic album from this group if not a few years of great shows and albums to come! It was everything I missed from the past five year s-k show hiatus and more!

Janet we love you!
The banter and rapor was fun and sincere..
Carrie had refused a drink that someone in the crowd mistakenly brought her (janet in fact had jokingly ordered a shot of Casadores) which was understandable, not because of her germophobe excuse (though if you know carrie you are aware of her germaphobia) but because I saw her drinking a few mixed drinks during the opening bands, and nobody wants to take a double shot after drinking some drinks before coming on stage and two beers down already during the show!

Further, aside from Mary and Rebecca's dancing, Carrie went a bit wild on the Cobain side, flinging around her guitar and the mic stand all around the crowd, and then getting into a serious iggy pop moment on the encore.. that shit was fucking great! In the SK years Carrie was always rather soft-spoken, kind of shy even on stage, but this wild, punk rock Carrie was refreshingly exciting!

This shit was balls to the wall rock and roll, and there were no balls to speak of! fucking excellent!
from the Spaceland
more from the Spaceland including some serious thrash, no-wave jamming in the middle

[DJ Rick]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

fucking kick ass!

more from the Spaceland including some serious thrash, no-wave jamming in the middle

"Glass Tambourine" was the best song when they played Sacto on this tour.

Opening riff seems to be reverse-engineered from a Thin Lizzy song (maybe "Return of the Farmer's Son"). But if you think that was thrash/no-wave, please delve a bit into 60's psychedelia. The straight line from 1967 to what you saw that night didn't pass through no wave. That struck me as sounding very authentic.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Live Review: Wild Flag at Spaceland

November 21, 2010 | 4:52 pm


 

For a woman who once recorded for a label called Kill Rock Stars, Carrie Brownstein has made her peace with — and claimed her place in — guitar-hero history. Friday night at the Los Angeles debut of her new band, Wild Flag, the former Sleater-Kinney ax woman did Pete Townshend windmills, strummed Keith Richards riffs, got Iggy Pop wild and ended in a Patti Smith trance.
Which is not to say that the skinny tomboy behind the bangs is not definitively her own person. It’s just that the erstwhile music blogger for National Public Radio has tossed the mumbley coyness of indie rock aside for a charged blast of “Nuggets”-style psychedelic power pop — a.k.a. punk. She roared at Spaceland: “I’m a racehorse, you put your money on me.” The song might have been called “Racehorse” or “We’re in the Money” — Portland, Ore.-based Wild Flag has released little information about its music, and the band’s onstage set list was a cipher of names of chords.
In these days of viral hype, this new fab four — including ex-Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss, guitarist-singer Mary Timony (Helium) and keyboardist Rebecca Cole (the Minders) — wants the music to speak for itself. Wild Flag announced its formation less than two months ago. The band has yet to record an album and has released no songs on MySpace or videos on YouTube (though camera-armed fans have posted live shots). This was Wild Flag’s sixth show ever. “We’re trying out this thing of being in a band,” Brownstein said between songs.

 

Thanks to the members’ pedigree, the Spaceland gig was sold out; fans begged for tickets. The band’s first show, Nov. 10 in Olympia, Wash., was covered by Spin.com. Expectations/hopes are high that in this era when women seem to have to announce their sex to be stars, a band that just plays really well can thrive. Friday’s show exceeded those expectations.
Wild Flag is not necessarily an easy mesh of talents. Timony is an accomplished player, but her style’s much more subdued and artistic than that of the S-K duo. She had a bit of a deer-in-the-headlights look at times, because she sang sometimes too softly about a “glass tambourine” and time travel. She and Brownstein traded lead vocals and guitars. When they laced the sounds of their Fender and Gibson together in feedback-drenched workouts, they gave Sonic Youth a run for its money. With Cole adding ’60s-style Farfisa organ, the sound was reminiscent of early Pink Floyd, with Timony as the gifted, fragile Syd Barrett.
Weiss, who has also drummed with Quasi, Stephen Malkmus and the Go-Betweens, is a powerhouse, no-frills player. Instrumentally, the band is rock solid — several of its songs have choruses with no words. The big question about Wild Flag was what would it do vocally. All four members sing, but none with the range, power and tone of Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker (Tucker has her own band now). There were painful pitch moments Friday; at first, I thought Brownstein was going to massacre the encore of Smith’s “Ask the Angels.”
But then, as she did throughout the evening, Brownstein pulled a tiger from her gut. For four years, the renaissance woman largely traded making music for writing and acting (she has a book contract as well as a sketch-comedy show debuting on the Independent Film Channel). It was as if she’d been building up this head of steam that exploded on the Spaceland stage. During the racehorse song, she battered her guitar against her microphone, albeit somewhat gingerly — but not gingerly enough. Tip for would-be Whos: Wait until your last song to smash your instruments. There was an awkward pause as Brownstein fumbled to get her gear working. “They’re good players, but they’re not mechanics,” Weiss cracked.
Wild Flag is an ensemble, but Brownstein is the driving force. In what seemed to be a nod to the current landscape for women in music, she joked that various songs were covers of Katy Perry and Christina Aguilera. Actually, Wild Flag covered the Rolling Stones (“Beast of Burden”), the Standells (“Dirty Water”) and, in a tribute to her National Book Award, Smith. Brownstein whipped the refrain of “Wild!” in “Ask the Angels,” a nod to her band’s name.
As much as Sleater-Kinney is sorely missed, we now have two great bands to follow.
-- Evelyn McDonnell
Top photo: Carrie Brownstein. Credit: Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

As much as Sleater-Kinney is sorely missed, we now have two great bands to follow.
-- Evelyn McDonnell
Times

amen!

[DJ Rick]

Carrie pulled some rockstar moves in Sacto (was ours the only show of the tour where they played on the floor?)...

 

[stu666]

Wild Flag - Los Angeles, November 19, 2010 by etherman i'll upload this here when i get it.

[stu666]

Wild Flag
Spaceland
Los Angeles, California
November 19, 2010

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=B7LWEUHH

[Adolfo]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXmNEOAt8CI

there's more on the channel

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

this show kicked ass. feels like having been part of the birth of something special a few years later into Wild Flag's success. I hope for some more coming up soon!