Concert Previews
Fiona Apple/ Blake Mills "Anything We Want: An Evening With Fiona Apple and Blake Mills" is the title of this collaborative show. The volatile, mercurial, unfiltered Apple is what the audience will want: She is inventive, eclectic, and, on most
Fiona Apple/ Blake Mills
"Anything We Want: An Evening With Fiona Apple and Blake Mills" is the title of this collaborative show. The volatile, mercurial, unfiltered Apple is what the audience will want: She is inventive, eclectic, and, on most nights, if all goes well, an electrifying performer. And if it doesn't go well - well, she can be petulant or combative, but she won't be boring. Mills toured with her for last year's The Idler Wheel . . . as the opening act and guitarist in her band. He has worked with a wide variety of other artists, including Lucinda Williams, Billy Gibbons, and Sky Ferreira, and he released an impressive solo album, Break Mirrors, in 2010. With help from Barbara Gruska on drums and Sebastian Steinberg on double bass, Apple and Mills promise an evening of songs old and new.
- Steve Klinge
Franz Ferdinand/ Frankie Rose
This week's Franz and Frankie show is a winner. Back in 2001, Glasgow's Franz Ferdinand were borrowing from Gang of 4's spiky rhythms and discordant noise-scapes and getting away with it quite handsomely. Singer/guitarist Alex Kapranos, in particular, was a yelping, slashing one-man gang, and Franz's first big hits, like "Take Me Out," came fast and furious. Subsequent CDs got slicker and more danceable, but their newest album,
Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action
, finds them reapproaching the grouchy and the noisy with glee. Frankie Rose's sound is a little less playful than Franz's. Her new album,
Herein Wild
, has big hooks and rapturously melodic vocal lines. The whole thing, though, is wrapped in a gauzy, gloomy vibe - a shroud, really - through which her chunky guitars and breezy, high voices must pierce.
- A.D. Amorosi
Terakaft
The most transfixing experience I had at this year's South by Southwest Music festival in Austin, Texas, came courtesy of Terakaft, the Saharan desert blues band. The group, fronted by Sanou Ag Ahmed, dress much better than your average guitar band, wearing traditional keffiyeh nomad garb, and specializing in Ali Farka Touré-John Lee Hooker-Chuck Berry-inspired hypnotic drone-rock. Working in the tradition of other Northern African nomadic acts like Tinariwen and Bombino, Terakaft, whose name means "caravan" in Tamasheq, can be fairly transporting in their recording, but they're utterly mesmerizing live.
- Dan DeLuca