District Dialect: The Dubliner

The District Dialect: The Dubliner by igorgerman

Nico Dodd goes behind the scenes of The Dubliner, DC's best known Irish Pub, and explores the culture of live music that exists there.

Review: White Hinterland, Kairos

 

White Hinterland

Kairos

C- (only because the first track is good)

Who does this girl sound like? I don’t know. The first track is the only good song on this album. From there it gets really boring. This girl sounds like a not as good version of Bjork or the lead singer of Camera Obscura. Lots of echo and loop pedals and electronic stuff. Is this experimental? synth overload. This is difficult to listen to the whole way through. She does his thing with her voice that is like Rihanna at the Vancouver Olympics (eh, eh, eh,). “Kairos” is pretty good name for an album. I expect better from Dead Oceans.

-- Nico Dodd
Host, "Size 14 (The Big Shoe)" Mondays 4-6 pm on WGTB

Review: Citay "Dream Get Together"

Citay

Dream Get Together

Grade: A-

San Francisco’s Citay are a classic rock revival group with solid songwriting, Allman Brothers guitars and Steely Dan vocals. Soundscapes are built with guitar solos free from electronic studio effects. Like Dead Oceans label mates Bowerbirds; Citay tends to keep it simple, relatively. Dream Get Together, the group’s third studio album, is hardly raw. The guitars are more Styx than Stones, and keyboards are layered throughout with strings and organs. With nary a song under four minutes, three reaching over seven, Citay’s songs indulge in what has been rock taboo for almost decade, without leaving you bored. They allow themselves be virtuosic without stuffing their crotch. What makes this album enjoyable is the way the songs shuffle without having heavy snares or dance beats, as well as being able to have lengthy tracks without forcing or feigning avant-garde. Citay pulls from their influences very well. They even have a tongue in cheek tribute to CCR with “Fortunate Sun”. This album is worth a listen if you know your classic rock canon. The album lags as every song begins with the “strumma strumma struuum” acoustic guitar, but JET they aren’t, so play on.

-- Nico Dodd

Host, Size 14 (The Big Shoe) Monday 4:00 - 6:00 pm on WGTB

Review: The Watson Twins, Talking To Me, Talking To You

The Watson Twins

Talking to Me, Talking to You

C+

Remember these two? From that collabo. album with Jenny Lewis? They’re still around, but with no lead singer to support they don’t do too much by themselves. I expected to hear an alt-country album, but this sounds as if it were recorded with a jazz band playing indie rock fusion. Lots of wah wah pedal. I would expect more from a group this talented. There is little that makes this record stands out. Sounds like a pair of cabaret singers who never made it. At some points the organ and guitar sound great. The last minute of “Midnight” sounds like a late night classic rock radio jam, but is quickly ruined by the next track, “Savin’ You”. I think it’s because they started singing again. On the whole, the songs are pretty hokey, very pieced together. There are holes in the songs that could have been built up more. There’s a sort of spaciousness that is felt throughout the album, as if it were recorded in a large studio. reeeeverb. There isn’t much to say about it because there isn’t much here. They sing songs they wrote. That’s about all they do on this record. It doesn’t sound as if they were very involved with the instrumentals.

 It never gets too loud, or too interesting. Too bad.

-- Nico Dodd 

Host, "Size 14 (The Big Shoe), Mondays 4-6 pm on WGTB