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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.
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Olivia Gross |
Jul 25, 2022 9:17 am
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The main stage at Seeing Sounds.
The concrete made the temperature seem twice as high at Edgewood Park’s skate park Saturday, but skateboards still flew through the crowd — and music filled the air at the first annual Seeing Sounds music festival.
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Brian Slattery |
Jul 25, 2022 9:17 am
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Moore.
In the middle of his set to close out the day, musician Trey Moore took a moment to be thankful. “I just woke up one day and decided to do this, and here you are, in the flesh.”
He spoke with an air of gratitude, and just a hint of incredulity, that Seeing Sounds — a day-long festival of music, clothing, food, games, and skating that he organized at Edgewood Skate Park — had actually happened.
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Colin Roberts |
Jul 25, 2022 8:49 am
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The Cult.
On Sunday night The Cult, led by vocalist Ian Astbury and guitarist Billy Duffy, took their We Own The Night Tour to College Street Music Hall in downtown New Haven. With a plethora of material to choose from, the group — who creatively fused hard rock, new wave and goth in the ’80s and ’90s — played a set of fan favorites, drawing mainly from their trio of late-’80s hit records Love, Electric and Sonic Temple.
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Brian Slattery |
Jul 21, 2022 8:08 am
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Oliveras.
Andrew Cohen, vocalist and guitarist of the band Oliveras, mopped a little perspiration from his brow. All the doors and windows in Neverending Books were open, but a heat wave was a heat wave.
“I guess we’ll just get started,” he said.
That drew a cheer from the audience right away.
“I haven’t even done anything yet!” he responded, to laughter.
But then he became genuine, mentioning that this was the first time he and drummer Ryan Tedesco had played out, the first time he’d played songs he’d written in front of people. “Thanks everyone. This is a dream come true.”
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Brian Slattery |
Jul 18, 2022 9:26 am
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On Friday evening a group of percussionists gathered on the north end of the New Haven Green. They were mostly members of the bomba group Proyecto Cimarrón, and they were there to play for the community — and honor a musical luminary who, just before coming to the Green, gave them a lesson in the heritage of the music they were playing.
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Brian Slattery |
Jul 13, 2022 9:03 am
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“Blood on the Fitting Room Floor,” from the new album The Devil and the Deluge by New Haven-based hip-hop artists Kevlar Kohleone & DoSe, is a rumination on fashion that starts with a nod to the people who paved the way. Over a swinging, soulful beat, we hear from Harlem fashion icon Dapper Dan, who helped define the look that accompanied the sound of hip hop starting in the early 1980s. “Fresh is a word that spans generations,” Dan says. “That word is so suitable for hip hop, because hip hop has to stay fresh. And so fresh to me means that which is most hip and current to whatever’s going on at the moment.”
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Brian Slattery |
Jul 11, 2022 12:25 pm
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Julie Smith: "Fingers crossed" on open-air concerts resuming.
A new executive has taken over at Best Video — just in time to work with her former colleagues in Hamden city government to enable one of the town’s cultural gems to resume popular outdoor concerts.
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Nora Grace-Flood |
Jul 10, 2022 11:57 am
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Mikaela Davis and Southern Star performing at Space Ballroom.
Hamden’s Space Ballroom ascended into a rainbow-splashed, psychedelic heaven Friday night after upstate New Yorker Mikaela Davis set the scene for a fourth-dimensional funk-folk-country-rock set list — with the help of a golden harp and angelic voice.
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Brian Slattery |
Jul 8, 2022 9:25 am
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The Roots.
A packed College Street Music Hall on Thursday night was treated to a three-act evening of deeply soulful music that encompassed New Haven music heroes Phat Astronaut and culminated in the now-seminal Philadephia hip hop act the Roots.
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Brian Slattery |
Jul 5, 2022 8:30 am
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Critelli.
A strummed guitar. An organ’s warm, held guitar. A bent note from a guitar like an invitation. Then Frank Critelli’s declarative voice: “I didn’t know what it was called, but I was glad when you called,” he sings. “I called you back / No one could predict / one drink would lead to that kiss on your neck / And I almost didn’t recognize / A familiar look in faraway eyes / But I knew you were someone else in disguise / And there was no turning back.”
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Olivia Charis |
Jul 1, 2022 10:06 am
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Adae and his father next to the portrait of his late grandmother, at ConnCAT opening of the artist's first solo show.
Adae describes his portrait of his friend Kimberly Cherubin.
New Haveners are likely to know Kwadwo Adae’s work from his murals like the one of Dr. Edward Bouchet on the corner of Henry Street and Dixwell Avenue. Thursday evening, Adae brought his vibrant artwork and personage indoors — and a distinctive approach to connecting with community and nature along with him.
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Brian Slattery |
Jul 1, 2022 9:20 am
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Dr. Martino was halfway through its set at the State House on Thursday night when Simone Puleo and Amy Shaw, who had been playing guitar and bass, respectively, suddenly switched instruments. Shaw then shot a smile toward the crowd.
“Any questions?” she said. “I’m taking questions. No? Good.”
The trio then ripped into another joyously raucous song, celebrating not only the band’s return to the State House stage, but a 10-day tour it was about to embark on with fellow Connecticut rockers Big Fang. There was thus a sense of things coming full circle, as the two bands had toured together before the pandemic, in 2019, but also starting new.
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Olivia Charis |
Jun 30, 2022 12:59 pm
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Cobalt Rhythm Kings kick off summer concert series
A soft summer sunset hit a crowd full of lawn chairs and to-go dinners nestled under rustling trees — as the wail of a harmonica harmonized with a bass guitar line and deep tenor vocals left a smooth blues echo down Lighthouse Road.
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 30, 2022 9:15 am
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Lighthouse.
Positive energy flowed through Cafe Nine Wednesday night as three bands — Lighthouse, Lumot, and The Fivers — brought music that was filled with ups and downs, quiet and loud, and at the same time, conveyed a sense of equilibrium.
