Posts Tagged ‘ cover songs ’

The War on Drugs: September 4, 2014 Hopscotch Music Festival, Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh, NC (FLAC/MP3/Streaming)

September 8, 2014
By



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[photos by acidjack]

The Hopscotch Music Festival, held in Raleigh, North Carolina, has made it five years — not quite an eternity in a world of corporate music festivals like SXSW and Lollapalooza, but a rare achievement for an organically grown festival in a “midsize market” that has proven over and over that they are willing to take chances. Hopscotch is the festival willing to put a heavy metal band on its largest, outdoor, downtown stage on its Saturday night, rather than a more accessible mainstream act.  Hopscotch dedicates entire venues, at various times, to genres like experimental noise, ambient, thrash, black metal, and indie hip-hop. It is hosted in a city whose good humor and kindness borders upon unreal, sprawled across a fast-growing downtown, and unlike the best-known festival that attempts to use an entire city’s music venues as part of its sprawl, it opens everything to everyone, not reserving entry to “the big stuff” for the connected and the corporate.

Hopscotch, then, has much in common with The War on Drugs. I’ll make this bold claim now: they are the best rock act who has released an album this year. They didn’t get to that point quickly, or with flash, or with marketing, or even at times with buzz, though we did our best over here at this site. Three years ago, we caught them opening at Bowery Ballroom for Sharon Van Etten, another artist whose acclaim grew slowly on the back of honesty and hard work. This band grew on the back of the validity of their mission, the honesty of their approach, and their hard, hard work. Just like Hopscotch.

Adam Granduciel’s herculean writing and arranging on Lost In the Dream is well documented. He has applied that same intensity to the expanded live show for this tour, which we first caught on back to back dates in March, including the band’s rather hyped cover of “Mind Games”. Not every band’s play for the big time might include a bunch of double-radio-length songs, but not every band is The War on Drugs. What we got here at Raleigh’s Lincoln Theatre was a set that resembled some of what we heard back in March, including the expanded band that includes Jon Natchez on keyboards. A packed and somewhat chatty room got to see the band joined by local music maven Brad Cook of Megafaun on “Ocean” followed by a searing rendition of “Red Eyes” and closing the main set on the album’s title track. The highlight of the encore was another rare cover, Bill Fay’s “I Hear You Calling”, which ended my first night of Hopscotch in exactly the right way. If you don’t see another act this year, go see The War on Drugs, a band whose heart matches their massive sound, bound for the arenas they deserve.

I recorded this set with Schoeps MK41 supercardiod microphones at the soundboard rather than our preferred spot in Lincoln Theatre that is a bit closer. Due to technical issues a soundboard feed was not available, and there is some enthusiastic audience chatter on this that makes the sound inferior to the two recordings from March, though still quite good. Plenty more Hopscotch recordings will be coming 0ver the next month or so as well. Keep your eyes on this space.

This recording is now hosted on the Live Music Archive.  Download the complete show via these links: [MP3] | [FLAC]

Stream “I Hear You Calling” [Bill Fay]

Stream the full set:

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.

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The War on Drugs
2014-09-04
Hopscotch Music Festival
Lincoln Theater
Raleigh, NC USA

Hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack

Schoeps MK41 (DINa, at SBD)>KCY>Z-PFA>Sound Devices USBPre2>Edirol R-44 [OCM]>24bit/48kHz WAV>Izotope Ozone 5 (effects)>Audacity 2.0.3 (fades, mix down, tracking, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [Total Time 1:32:48]
01 Burning
02 Comin’ Through
03 Eyes to the Wind
04 Under the Pressure
05 In Reverse>
06 An Ocean In Between the Waves
07 [banter]
08 Brothers [with Brad Cook of Megafaun]
09 Baby Missiles>
10 Suffering
11 [banter2]
12 Red Eyes
13 Lost in the Dream
14 [encore break and segue music]
15 Disappearing
16 Your Love Is Calling My Name
17 I Hear You Calling [Bill Fay]

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT The War on Drugs, visit their website, and buy Lost In the Dream from Secretly Canadian

Built to Spill: May 20, 2014 Music Hall of Williamsburg – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

May 22, 2014
By

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[photos by Johnny Fried Chicken Boy and acidjack]

There was a period in this site’s history during the 2009-2010 range where we collectively saw Built to Spill more than ten times in a short span (four shows in October 2009 alone). Most bands seen that often that close together would burn you out for good, but we have continued to follow Doug Martsch and his outstanding band since then. The reason Martsch feels he can continue playing New York with such frequency — even when he doesn’t have new material on offer — is that the show doesn’t just go on, its gets better every time. This performance at Music Hall of Williamsburg was easily the best BTS performance I have seen in all of the many times I have experienced this band.

Without the burden of promoting a new album, Martsch felt free to let he and the band’s whimsies roam, playing classic BTS songs like “Stab” from There’s Nothing Wrong With Love alongside newer favorites like “Planting Seeds”. We got songs that were great, short bursts; we also got a nearly ten-minute “Goin’ Against Your Mind” straight into “Carry the Zero” to close out the main set. But what set this show apart were its four cover songs. If you haven’t heard Martsch do his best J. Mascis impersonation, now you can, on this epic cover of Dinosaur Jr.‘s “Sludgefeast”. Or if classic rock is more your thing, you couldn’t go wrong with this phenomenal note-for-note rendition of Blue Öyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper”, or BTS’ take on The Byrds’ “Eight Miles High”. The night ended, as did the Brooklyn Bowl show, with the craziest cover of all — a seventeen-minute free-for-all to the tune of “Genius of Love” by Tom Tom Club, which found the audience joining the band on stage for an epic, old-style Brooklyn dance party. It was the kind of thing a band with two fewer decades’ experience might have done, a lark to put a punctuation mark on the night. But that’s the genius of Built to Spill — whether the songs are new or old, the show never stays the same.

I recorded this set along with Johnny Fried Chicken Boy from our usual spot in the balcony directly over the soundboard cage, using Schoeps MK5 cardiod microphones. With some careful editing to mitigate the boomy nature of the house mix, this recording is excellent. Enjoy!

Stream “Eight Miles High [The Byrds]”

Stream “Sludgefeast [Dinosaur Jr.]”

Stream “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper [Blue Oyster Cult]”

Stream “Genius of Love [Tom Tom Club]”

Download the complete show: [MP3] | [FLAC] (faster offsite link) | [FLAC] (permanent link – please use if temporary link is no longer working)

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct download links or the files on other sites without our permission. Feel free to re-post the Soundcloud links. Please respect our request.

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Built to Spill
2014-05-20
Music Hall of Williamsburg
Brooklyn, NY USA

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack

Schoeps MK5 (Balcony, PAS bar)>KC5>CMC6>Sound Devices USBPre2>Sony PCM-D50>24bit/48kHz WAV>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, exciter, multiband compression)>Audacity 2.0.3 (fades, tracking, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [Total Time: 1:57:32]
01 Revolution
02 The Plan
03 Stab
04 Conventional Wisdom
05 Kicked It in the Sun
06 Mess With Time
07 Liar
08 Eight Miles High [The Byrds]
09 Reasons
10 [tuning]
11 Planting Seeds
12 Sludgefeast [Dinosaur Jr.]
13 [tuning2]
14 Goin’ Against Your Mind
15 Carry the Zero
16 [encore break]
17 (Don’t Fear) The Reaper [Blue Öyster Cult]
18 Big Dipper
19 [tuning3]
20 Genius of Love [Tom Tom Club]

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Built To Spill, visit their website, and purchase their official releases from the Official Store at their website [HERE].

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