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Brian Slattery |
Sep 23, 2022 8:31 am
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The images up on the screen at Gather on State Street on Thursday night were from the Canadian mockumentary comedy series Trailer Park Boys, but they were altered, made psychedelic. The ambient music behind it felt sad and urgent. It was a quick reminder to the people filing into the space just how much a few images and the right music can alter the vibe of a room — fitting, as Gather was performing yet another transformation, from coffee shop to after-hours lounge.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 19, 2022 9:07 am
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Cara DeLucia of Qween Kong.
Artist and musician Bill Saunders, of New Cardiff Giants, was beaming from the stage of the State House Friday night, looking over the good-sized crowd who had assembled there. He marveled at the health of the New Haven music scene, the emergence of new bands, the persistence of older bands. “It seems like everyone’s coming out with their own form of self-expression,” he said. Then he introduced the first band by saying he got to announce something he’d wanted to be able to say for a long time: “The Queen is dead! God save Qween Kong!”
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Jake Dressler |
Sep 16, 2022 10:15 am
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Fivio Foreign and Coi Leray performing Thursday night at College Street Music Hall.
New York drill icon Fivio Foreign and TikTok sensation Coi Leray performed at College Street Music Hall Thursday night in front of hundreds of teens in a sponsored collaboration with New Haven’s Youth and Recreation Department. The event — titled as a “Back 2 School Concert” — sold out in less than two days.
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Karen Ponzio |
Sep 16, 2022 9:35 am
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Mo Niklz vending Mo Piklz.
New Haven hip hop scene stalwart DJ Mo Niklz is well known across the city, state, and country as a purveyor of hot beats, but in recent years he has become nearly as well known for his half sours, pickled pineapple, and yes, even beets. Seen most often on New Haven stages spinning tunes with accompanying video at dance parties and providing the sounds at live shows behind artists such as Ceschi Ramos and Sketch Tha Cataclysm, Niklz has added a new business venture to the mix: Mo Piklz. The pickled items began as merch being sold at live shows, have become a welcome addition to local farmer’s markets and other events, and are appearing next at the New Haven PRIDE celebration on the Green this Saturday, Sept. 17.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 15, 2022 9:44 am
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Iridessa Søul LaFlare performs for PRIDE.
Host Maddelynn Hatter broke in the crowd at Gotham Citi Cafe on Orange Street Wednesday night by establishing a few guidelines regarding drag shows.
“If you ever know any drag queens, you know the most important rule — other than to be able to paint your face — is to be kind,” she said. “All of the queens have passed the test. They are very kind. Which is good, because I am an awful person.”
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Lindsay Skedgell |
Sep 12, 2022 9:39 am
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At the edge of Edgerton Park on Saturday, peeking from beneath the reddened cliffside of East Rock, a small stage on a winding path lined with pines held the final song of Moonrise Cartel’s set. Next to them, a field opened up to a man in a brown wizard hat, a circle of pastel yoga mats where children embodied woodland animals through yogic poses, people juggling, and long ribbon silk fans that got carried and lifted by the day’s wind. As Moonrise Cartel finished their last song, the sound of a bell was heard from somewhere off in the field as the voices of Goodnight Moonshine rose up from over the hill. The CT Folk Festival and Green Expo was back, after a two-year hiatus.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 12, 2022 9:33 am
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Niyonu.
Niyonu Spann had her eyes closed, her hands reaching for the audience. The gesture mirrored the music swirling around her. In all of it was weight and longing, but also, strength and freedom. It was the heady sound of an experienced hand flying into uncharted territory, as on Friday night at the State House, Spann, a musician with a career spanning decades, was launching new music with a new ensemble, digging ever deeper and expanding on the musical and spiritual ideas that had fueled her for her entire life. Backed by a small choir of singers — Foluke Bennett, Paul Bryant Hudson, Ingrid Lakey, Cindy Mizell, and Diane Spann — as well as a band of John F. Adams on keys, Carl Carter on bass, Chris Wright on drums, and Eric Rey on conga, Spann created music of deep grooves, rich harmonies, and poetic lyrics that spoke to the spirit. Mizell regaled the audience with a scorching take on Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On?”
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Michael Barone |
Sep 9, 2022 2:43 pm
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Claudia Bell.
Claudia Bell, a mainstay of the original music scene in New Haven during the fertile late 1970s and 1980s as a music journalist and a bass player, died Aug. 14 at the age of 69 after a long bout with cancer. One of her pals and bandmates, Michael Barone, below offers reflections of her and what it meant to be in New Haven at the time.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 9, 2022 11:14 am
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Michalsen.
Appreciation of nature. Acknowledgment of change. Grief at what’s being lost. But also, hope for the possibility of adaptation. These are the themes of a new set of climate concerts being organized by Dignity Music, a nonprofit helmed by musician and educator Ravenna Michalsen. The first one — slated for Saturday, Sept. 17 at Bethesda Lutheran Church — is intended to stir heart and mind together to action.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 6, 2022 9:04 am
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“Here Again,” the first track from Saint James’s new EPUs and Your Friends, starts with a fuzzy chord dragged from the guitar’s strings, setting the mood right for the heavy drums and bass that fall in at the end of the measure. They’re accompanied by a slide guitar, a healthy heaping of twang, that feels right at home in the music but broadens the sound’s landscape. We’re not just in the Northeast anymore. We could be anywhere in America, or maybe passing through it. But Saint James isn’t exactly about windswept highways across the prairie. There’s menace there, too, embedded in the music and the lyrics: “Like a phony gun I am holding you up with a sense of revenge,” the singer states on the chorus, knowing helplessness and rage coiled together.
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Brian Slattery |
Aug 31, 2022 9:08 am
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After a two-year Covid hiatus, CT Folk returns this year with a changed Folk Festival and Green Expo. It’s still at Edgerton Park, and it still combines a music festival with a dedication to furthering environmental causes. But it’s now a two-day event — Sept. 10 and 11 — featuring its most diverse lineup yet, from solo singer-songwriters to R&B and jam bands to hip hop artists. If the shift seems abrupt, it shouldn’t; rather, it’s the fruition of an intention CT Folk stated years ago to expand its musical boundaries, exploring what folk music means and what it can be in 2022. For its organizers, the hope is that the festival can reach more and more people, in New Haven and beyond, and help turn the festival into a larger regional tentpole end-of-summer event.
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Lindsay Skedgell |
Aug 30, 2022 8:48 am
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Your Queer Plant Shop.
The outer edge of Pitkin Plaza on Sunday was lined with rare plants, bursts of pollinators, handmade leather goods, zines, and two birthday cakes of four different flavors. Nestled between vibrant murals, performers sang and folks from all around New Haven filled the brick park. One man next to a mural waved a cigar around in circles, dancing to the music Love n’ Co played. The band’s singer — Lovelind Richards — had various shades of blue painted across her eyes in thick bands. A leather worker from Beacon Craft Studio stitched a deep maroon leather piece with thick thread. It was East Rock House’s first birthday.
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Brian Slattery |
Aug 29, 2022 9:27 am
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The music poured onto Temple Street all the way from the plaza in the middle of the block, directing and enticing a steady stream of pedestrians and shoppers to the long rows of canopies set up for the Black Wall Street Festival, an afternoon-long event designed to showcase a wide range of Black entrepreneurs.
Thanks to the robust turnout, a live band, and a pervasive sense of cheer, the festival was true to its name, turning Temple Street Plaza into something like bazaar meets block party.
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Brian Slattery |
Aug 29, 2022 9:17 am
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Rev. Jeremiah Paul.
The Rev. Jeremiah Paul, pastor for Hamden Plains United Methodist Church, held his hand high as he spoke to the crowd assembled to hear him at Hamden’s Town Center Park on Friday evening. His audience were members of his congregation, but also from the greater New Haven community, a mix of languages, ages, cultures and creeds. Among them were artists selling their pieces and food truck vendors feeding the people.
“We had a little rain shower, which I consider a blessing from the heavens,” he said amiably. With the sun out, the show was ready to start.
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Brian Slattery |
Aug 24, 2022 8:06 am
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The Tines.
“Collarbone,” the lead single from the latest album by the New Haven-based band The Tines, starts with a simple, steady drumbeat, a pulsing bass, a single guitar chord. It’s a sound that’s taking its time, leaving plenty of space. Having established the atmosphere, the instruments get down to work. The guitar fleshes out its ideas. The bass answers with a melody of its own. A keyboard wriggles in from a corner of the musical space. The drums add their own accents. An echoing voice then takes its place within the music. “Chin clamping down on collarbone / talking on the phone / talking on the phone,” it sings. “With the one who leaves you prone / makes you feel so known / makes you feel so known.”
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Colin Roberts |
Aug 22, 2022 8:46 am
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Rex.
On Friday night, Cafe Nine played host to a pair of bands — Snake Oil and Rex — that had both been out of commission for some time. The Connecticut- and New York-based Snake Oil hadn’t played since 2019. Rex’s current run of shows marked the first since their unceremonious split in the late 1990s. Before that, however, their trio of albums — rex, C and 3 — were pivotal in the development of the indie rock subgenre known as slowcore. With two-thirds of the records seeing a recent reissue, the formerly-Brooklyn-based-by-way-of-Maine band reunited to take their songs to a new generation of audiences.
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Brian Slattery |
Aug 19, 2022 9:20 am
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Rania Das moved gracefully across the stage set up on the New Haven Green Thursday afternoon, her gestures precise yet fluid, graceful and controlled. They were about practicing a tradition that began in India over 2,000 years ago. They were telling a story, about a prankster god getting into mischief. But they were also about crossing thousands of miles, halfway around the world, to make connections to people here in New Haven.
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Brian Slattery |
Aug 18, 2022 9:12 am
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Meridian Brothers.
The Meridian Brothers were already driving hard on a cumbia when bandleader Eblis Álvarez, who had been contributing a rhythmic guitar pattern to the groove, suddenly wrenched an echoing clatter out of the instrument — a sound that people unfamiliar with Álvarez’s work might not have known a guitar could make. But very few people in Cafe Nine on Wednesday night seemed new to the Meridian Brothers, a Colombian band that has steadily made fans worldwide on the strength of its recorded output from Bogotá. With pandemic restrictions lifted, the band was now on tour in the U.S. for the first time in years, and at the club on State and Crown, there was a sense of floodgates opening.
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Brian Slattery |
Aug 17, 2022 9:15 am
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Davis performing Tuesday evening at Stetson Branch Library.
The first phrase of Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer” flowed from Chris “Big Dog” Davis’s fingertips, instantly familiar. But the chord voicings Davis put underneath it felt thoroughly modern.
As he proceeded through the classic of American music, Ace Livingston on bass and Dexter Pettaway, Sr. on drums fell in behind him. Together the trio made the classic a quick trip through the history of American jazz, from its murky origins to its up-to-the-minute contemporary form.
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Brian Slattery |
Aug 16, 2022 8:45 am
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Ben-Salhuddin.
“Jディラ(Love Dilla)” starts with a stately, old-school groove, straight out of the ’70s. Suddenly it’s chopped up, turned inside out. The tempo speeds up, the old sound made into something new. It becomes a vehicle for a rapper’s insistent voice. It’s a narrative about wrestling demons, about running out of time. “It doesn’t really matter in the end ’cause when it’s said and done / the only one who’s winning in the end is Father Time / I’m truly sorry if I ever had to take your son / I’d send you flowers with a note I wrote, it’s so sublime,” he raps, as the music cascades around him, lush and frantic. He drops out, and makes a drama of being allowed back in to rap some more — which is when the music really gets dramatic.
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Kimberly Wipfler |
Aug 15, 2022 9:50 am
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Scott Troublefield and New Vision.
Far out behind the crowded audience at Goffe Street Park, beyond still the stragglers who spread out among the opposing baseball diamond’s outfield, tucked just inside the entryway of the third-base dugout, a woman with gray hair and blue Nikes called out: “Amen!”
The Sunday sun had set, but the sound of gospel from the stage still echoed as far as Crescent Street. The woman, silhouetted by the park floodlights, said she was taking her church from all the way back there.
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Brian Slattery |
Aug 12, 2022 9:22 am
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Arachne at Best Video Thursday night.
Lydia Arachne, the songwriter and bandleader of Semaphora, offered a knowing smile to the audience at Best Video on Thursday night as she announced her first song.
“This song,” she said, “is about cats and how they might save us in the future if we misplace our nuclear waste.”
She delivered it as a joke, but the story turns out to be true. The comment set the tone for what had come before and what would follow, as the Connecticut-based Semaphora and opening act Gold Eris — a well-paired set of bands — each performed music that was intelligent and heartfelt in equal measure.
“Put me on a pedestal, and I’ll only disappoint you!”
The College Street Music Hall crowd scream-sang along with Courtney Barnett.
“Tell me I’m exceptional; I promise to exploit you!”
In the pit, a teenage girl with winged eyeliner looked around to make sure she wasn’t the only one letting loose. Near her, a white-haired man in a ponytail thrashed his arms to the beat. Toward the center, rowdy 20-somethings tossed their bodies against one another; if there were ever a time to mosh, it was now.
“I think you’re a joke, but I don’t find you very fu-u-u-u-u-nny!” the Aussie rocker continued from the state, as two middle-aged women crooned the line to two middle-aged men.
In fact, at that moment, there wasn’t a single person in the hall who didn’t sing along.
