Monday night? Just another night for a show this summer, as the newly reintroduced Public Space One will open its doors and welcome you to its friendly confines. Joining us this time will be Californians El Olio Wolof, a quintet whose lengthy style of songwriting evokes some hybrid form of the Decemberists (without any prog leanings) and Okkervil River (without that Will Sheff croon). El Olio Wolof make pop songs, yes, but they also make pop tales: “I went to my closet the other night, guess what I saw / A fire-breathing dragon must’ve stood, thirty feet tall / I invited her for lunch but I, first asked my Ma / She said, “Okay just this once, Melvin, but don’t tell your Pa.” This world in which El Olio Wolof resides has been compared to the poetry of Shel Silverstein, and rightfully so. It’s the world where fantasy meets the suburbs on the backbone of pop music. Through it all an intoxicating accordion drones and the songs unfold like strip malls. They invite you to join them Monday night, July 7 at PS1 in downtown Iowa City at 115 East Washington Street. Joining them will be Michael Morris, who played Mission Creek earlier this year, and local songwriter Amanda Crosby.
So, some people are going to be in Des Moines this weekend, but if you’re staying around Iowa City, it won’t exactly be settling. The fine folks with Iowa Ctiy Summer of the Arts have gotten three of the biggest names in contemporary jazz for this year’s Iowa City Jazz Festival: Medeski, Martin & Wood, John Scofield, and the Joshua Redman Trio. For those uninitiated in living jazz artists, you don’t get much bigger. You have to look to the handful of dudes that played with Miles and still giggin’ (oh wait, Scofield was in Davis’ band from ‘82 - ‘85). And like always, the music is free.
John Medeski, Billy Martin, and Chris Wood, headline the first night of the festivitie (i.e. kick off your 4th of July Weekend with a bang). Medeski Martin & Wood have been straddling the line between jam band and jazz band for 16 years, and in many ways, it is that particular friction that keeps them exciting and popular. Loved by dead heads for long, funky jams (or “crunchy grooves”) and equally loved by the jazz set for their avant-garde leanings and incessant exploration, MMW have just enough funk in their trunk or the casual jazz fan and just enough moxy for the snobs.
I love watching country music videos when I’m hungover. Besides the really schlocky and profit-driven-patriotism that is a sad sub-genre of contemporary country, by and large country music videos are awesome: dynamic acting, melodramatic and rousing score, beautiful acoustic guitars, and really great storylines. Because with country, you really have to feel; whereas in indie rock you can sing about butterflies or old movies or your own fragmented urban existence, in country, you sing about life and death and love and heartbreak. By definition, country music is narrative music, and while at the beginning of country music videos that little text box tells you who the director is, at the end it tells you who the songwriter is. Because that’s really what it all comes back to in country music: the songwriter. And Lucinda Williams, first and foremost, is a fucking brilliant songwriter.
Mannix! plays at the Mill tonight in honor of bass player / tom-thumper Sarah Mannix’s birthday. She can’t be more than 18 but this party sure is gonna be adult. In fact it’s going to be a circus, a rock n’ roll circus. Remember way back in the ’60s when the Stones got all self-indulgent and tried to rock some star-studded circus antics via electric guitars? Well it’s back. Mannix!, some of Iowa City’s best garage-iest rockers, channel the raw energy of the Gossip. They share the stage with rock n’ roll heartbreakers and tasty songcrafters, the Puritanicals. Brooklyn hipsters, Renminbi, open up with their funky, almost mathy blend of indie rock. The party starts at 9PM. Bring costumes and wear your cred on your sleeves. Or just pump down some Jaeger shots with the bar staff. It’ll be good, for sure the best thing happening in Iowa City tonight, that is if you are into good times and rock n’ roll.
It’s a strange time in Iowa City (to say the least) but by no means does that mean that the rock has to stop. Wednesday night at the Picador is the most immediate evidence of this we could find, with a show featuring one of our favorite Iowa bands, the Envy Corps, who haven’t been in town for a minute but have been keeping busy. Rumor has it they’re commencing work on the follow-up to Dwell, which is out in the UK on Mercury Records. As such, they don’t have any major touring plans right now but do have a smattering of Iowa appearances this summer, including Wednesday night at the Picador with some other pretty killer bands.
Javelins hail from Detroit and feature Matt Rickle and Julian Wettlin of presently on-hiatus Thunderbirds Are Now! Javelins are touring to support their newest record, Heavy Meadows, which is slated to come out July 1 via Suburban Sprawl. This tour takes them through the end of this week, and then they’ll hook up with Colour Revolt in July for a tour that conveniently features them back at the Picador for a just-announced hot show with Apples in Stereo and Ames’ The Poison Control Center. Get to know them now and be sure not to miss their return on what’s sure to be one of the summer’s most memorable shows.
Headlining band Diesto represent something of an anomaly on a mostly pop bill as the most metal band of the night. This band from Portland probably belonged on last week’s killer Russian Circles bill, but we’ll take them here as a welcome dose of thrashing riffs from their new record Isle of Marauder, which is currently available from Exigent Records. Exigent have made all of their artists’ albums available for streaming, so head here and give Isle of Marauder a listen.
Lastly, we’re happy to have openers Pomegranates on the bill. Last month they delivered their fabulous new album Everything Is Alive via Lujo Records, who also happened to put out one of our favorite records of 2007 - Baby Teeth’s The Simp. Everything Is Alive has drawn comparisons to early Modest Mouse, but I confess that I’m barely hearing it. Rather, I think Pomegranates are deserving of some hybrid comparison of Built to Spill and Tilly - complex pop but not in the heavy handed way, and hella exuberant. The quartet hails from Cincinnati but sounds like California.
Wye Oak is playing at the Mill this Sunday and we hope it will be your ultimate weekend close-out. For those of you on total summer vacation cruise control, this show is just further proof that the weekend never ends - Sunday is the new Thursday, or something like that. Joining them will be the locally legendary Poison Control Center, recent Thrill Jockey signees Pontiak, and San Francisco sunshine pop aficionados the Botticellis.
Wye Oak are a duo from indie rock town-of-the-moment Baltimore whose 2007 debut record If Children just saw reissue from the peerless folks at Merge Records on April 8 (Pitchfork review). The collection of songs - eleven, to be precise - unravels like a finely woven fabric that suggests the work of a much larger group of musicians. If Children is a true work of studio art with seemingly infinite layers of instrumentation backing the slow, reverb-bathed alto of Jenn Wasner. Similarly, Wye Oak prove over and over both on record and live that they can be uncompromisingly loud (see: “Please Concrete”) - so much so, that once again one must question the ability of these two players to conjure up so much sound. The not-so-subtle parts are far outweighed by the subtle parts however, and that’s largely what makes these songs work. They exist in the middle of the Venn diagram where acoustic meets shoegaze, in a place I can only call electric slow folk. The songs themselves are largely reminiscent of some amalgamation of Beach House meets Neva Dinova - nostalgic, wistful, vividly imaginitive: “If children were wishes, my mother spent hers on impossible things / My brother was money, my sister was love, and I was world peace / My brother he spent it, my sister pregnant and all that I’m worth / Will only come true where there are no more of us left on this earth.” You can chew on that while you wait for Sunday’s show - in the meantime, download the track below and visit their download page for 4 more.
A quick one while he’s away: Crystal Antlers have just signed onto the romp that will be F Yeah Fest in Iowa City. Once again, this show will be going down on Tuesday, July 1st at the Mill and will start around 8PM. Other bands include: Monotonix (from Tel Aviv), Team Robespierre (Brooklyn), Puritanicals, and School of Flyentology. There will also be comedians and maybe even a few rounds of bingo. It’ll be a crazy time, the all-out party of the summer. As for Crystal Antlers, read up on them at Pitchfork where they just got a best new music today. Then swing by their Myspace.
OK Englert, stop rubbing it in all of our faces. What, one absurdly killer sold-out show wasn’t enough for the month of June? In case you haven’t been walking past the Englert Theatre in downtown Iowa City, we’ll fill you in: after Iron & Wine comes to town this Thursday, on deck is an even bigger show: Lucinda Williams. We don’t know how they did it but we’re glad they did. Ms. Williams and her band roll into the Englert on Sunday, June 29th. The show starts at 8PM and tickets are currently available at a steep $39 but the experience, within the Englert’s exquisite walls, should be priceless. Summer ain’t so bad. Oh wait, you can’t drive on Dubuque Street.
Hey mates, down-under dweller and former Writers’ Workshop homeboy, Nam Le, returns to Iowa City tonight to read at Prairie Lights on the heels of his highly acclaimed book of short stories, The Boat (2008). While at the workshop Le defied the snotty stereotype one might conjure up of Northeastern, Ivy-adorned writers showing up in the IC and carpet-bagging the hell out of it while failing to spend time in places other than the Dey House and the Foxhead. By all accounts, mine included, Le was the coolest mofro to pass through the Workshop in many years. And on top of that, he is one of the best fiction writers to emerge from Iowa’s legendary literary halls in quite a long time. The Boat is just the beginning, we hope, of a killer career with words. We’d ramble on but the New York Times already did a much better job at filling in the particulars on this 29-year old scribe. Le reads tonight at Prairie Lights. 7PM is the start time. We suggest you arrive by 645PM at the latest.
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Monday night? Just another night for a show this summer, as the newly reintroduced Public Space One will open its doors and welcome you to its friendly confines. Joining us this time will be Californians El Olio Wolof, a quintet whose lengthy style of songwriting evokes some hybrid form of the Decemberists (without any prog leanings) and Okkervil River (without that Will Sheff croon). El Olio Wolof make pop songs, yes, but they also make pop tales: “I went to my closet the other night, guess what I saw / A fire-breathing dragon must’ve stood, thirty feet tall / I invited her for lunch but I, first asked my Ma / She said, “Okay just this once, Melvin, but don’t tell your Pa.” This world in which El Olio Wolof resides has been compared to the poetry of Shel Silverstein, and rightfully so. It’s the world where fantasy meets the suburbs on the backbone of pop music. Through it all an intoxicating accordion drones and the songs unfold like strip malls. They invite you to join them Monday night, July 7 at PS1 in downtown Iowa City at 115 East Washington Street. Joining them will be Michael Morris, who played Mission Creek earlier this year, and local songwriter Amanda Crosby.
So, some people are going to be in 
I love watching country music videos when I’m hungover. Besides the really schlocky and profit-driven-patriotism that is a sad sub-genre of contemporary country, by and large country music videos are awesome: dynamic acting, melodramatic and rousing score, beautiful acoustic guitars, and really great storylines. Because with country, you really have to feel; whereas in indie rock you can sing about butterflies or old movies or your own fragmented urban existence, in country, you sing about life and death and love and heartbreak. By definition, country music is narrative music, and while at the beginning of country music videos that little text box tells you who the director is, at the end it tells you who the songwriter is. Because that’s really what it all comes back to in country music: the songwriter. And Lucinda Williams, first and foremost, is a fucking brilliant songwriter.
Mannix! plays at the Mill tonight in honor of bass player / tom-thumper Sarah Mannix’s birthday. She can’t be more than 18 but this party sure is gonna be adult. In fact it’s going to be a circus, a rock n’ roll circus. Remember way back in the ’60s when the Stones got all self-indulgent and tried to rock some star-studded circus antics via electric guitars? Well it’s back. Mannix!, some of Iowa City’s best garage-iest rockers, channel the raw energy of the Gossip. They share the stage with rock n’ roll heartbreakers and tasty songcrafters, the Puritanicals. Brooklyn hipsters, Renminbi, open up with their funky, almost mathy blend of indie rock. The party starts at 9PM. Bring costumes and wear your cred on your sleeves. Or just pump down some Jaeger shots with the bar staff. It’ll be good, for sure the best thing happening in Iowa City tonight, that is if you are into good times and rock n’ roll.
It’s a strange time in Iowa City (to say the least) but by no means does that mean that the rock has to stop. Wednesday night at the Picador is the most immediate evidence of this we could find, with a show featuring one of our favorite Iowa bands, 
A quick one while he’s away: Crystal Antlers have just signed onto the romp that will be F Yeah Fest in Iowa City. Once again, this show will be going down on Tuesday, July 1st at the Mill and will start around 8PM. Other bands include: Monotonix (from Tel Aviv), Team Robespierre (Brooklyn), Puritanicals, and School of Flyentology. There will also be comedians and maybe even a few rounds of bingo. It’ll be a crazy time, the all-out party of the summer. As for Crystal Antlers, read up on them at 
OK Englert, stop rubbing it in all of our faces. What, one absurdly killer sold-out show wasn’t enough for the month of June? In case you haven’t been walking past the Englert Theatre in downtown Iowa City, we’ll fill you in: after Iron & Wine comes to town this Thursday, on deck is an even bigger show: Lucinda Williams. We don’t know how they did it but we’re glad they did. Ms. Williams and her band roll into the Englert on Sunday, June 29th. The show starts at 8PM and 
Hey mates, down-under dweller and former Writers’ Workshop homeboy, Nam Le, returns to Iowa City tonight to read at Prairie Lights on the heels of his highly acclaimed book of short stories, The Boat (2008). While at the workshop Le defied the snotty stereotype one might conjure up of Northeastern, Ivy-adorned writers showing up in the IC and carpet-bagging the hell out of it while failing to spend time in places other than the Dey House and the Foxhead. By all accounts, mine included, Le was the coolest mofro to pass through the Workshop in many years. And on top of that, he is one of the best fiction writers to emerge from Iowa’s legendary literary halls in quite a long time. The Boat is just the beginning, we hope, of a killer career with words. We’d ramble on but the 