Monthly Archives: March 2013

Music, The Features, We Love Music
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We Love Music: Cold Showers, Veronica Falls @ Black Cat — 3/6/13

Veronica Falls alterna2

So last week, I ventured to the Black Cat to catch Veronica Falls, a band that a lot of my indie-minded friends have praised at one point or another. They have released their second album, Waiting for Something to Happen, which offers up more of the bright speedy pop found on their debut album.

Songs like “Broken Toy,” “Waiting for Something to Happen” and “If You Still Want Me” — which were played to good effect in the middle to latter half of the set — all come urgently while showcasing sweet harmonies between Roxanne Clifford and James Hoare, who share vocal duties while playing their guitars. Those guitars got louder as the show progressed, as the band seemed to arrange their set list to build up the sound and the layers as the show progressed.

While it’s a given that Veronica Falls are labeled shoegaze by many critics, they don’t exactly play like shoegazers. The guitar players notably keep their heads up and their instruments are rather quite free of the fuzzy guitar feedback that serves as a hallmark of the classic shoegaze sound. Their playing is muscular yet jangly, however, defying easy classification.

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Music, The Features, We Love Music
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We Love Music: Django Django @ 9:30 Club — 3/9/13

Django Django blikeng

Django Django got moves like Devo.

And I say that in the most sincerely flattering way. The young London-based quartet is by no means copying anything from their Ohio-born predecessors. Django Django have their own neo-psychedelic sound that comes off as a breath of fresh air — something somewhat unique in a time when a lot of people are embracing a lot of electro-pop tunes that recycle a lot of the same sounds. Django Django makes music that soars yet soothes and they don’t really retread any ground covered by Devo.

However, there is something in their presentation — the way they play with careless abandon, the way they sometime move in unison like robots and the way they sometimes look like geeky young fathers instead of rock stars — unmistakably smacks of the off-kilter, art-punk Devo. In the same way Devo approached new wave and shook it up with new approaches and occasionally different notes, so too does Django Django approaches its neo-psych with a fresh perspective, borrowing from surf rock and African melodies when it suits them.

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Featured Photo
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Featured Photo

stetsons ekelly80

A constant request I get from my friends is to “teach me to take photos like you do.” I find I have to stop myself from responding like George Costanza: “That’s like asking Picasso to teach me to paint like you paint.” The arrogance of the statement is only half of the issue; the other half is that it’s very hard to explain how someone visualizes a photograph. Many times I don’t even know what has drawn my eye to take the picture until I sort through my photos later.

Abstract photos are particularly difficult to explain. Take Erin’s photo above, a great abstract photo. What drew her eye to take this photo? If it was the peeling paint, she could have cropped it more like this. Was it the contrasting colors in the scene; the dull tones of the paint, with the muted reflected colors? It’s easy to say it was all of the above, but it could have been the shape of the window. Or perhaps even something I am missing. How does what explain finding and taking this picture?

And if the aim was to get something abstract, there are many types that could work; ceilings, portions of railings, shadows on sidewalks, even reflections of signs.

The ultimate answer is you shoot what catches your eye. It’s a carefully cultivated talent, that is unique to each person. I, or any photographer, could no more teach this skill than Picasso teach us to paint like he does. Each person just has to go out there and take photos the way they take photos.

The Features, We Love Arts
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We Love Arts: Manon Lescaut

(l-r) Patricia Racette as Manon Lescaut and Kamen Chanev as Chevalier des Grieux. Photo by Scott Suchman for WNO.

(l-r) Patricia Racette as Manon Lescaut and Kamen Chanev as Chevalier des Grieux. Photo by Scott Suchman for WNO.

If you’ve been wanting to try the opera, start with Washington National Opera’s Manon Lescaut this month at the Kennedy Center Opera House.

Puccini’s first real hit runs a mere two hours, 45 minutes including two intermissions. Within this tight time constraint, the epic love story comes nearly bite-sized.

Soprano Patricia Racette makes her role debut as the tragic heroine Manon Lescaut – a woman torn between her love for the finer things and her love for impoverished student Chevalier des Grieux. After she leaves des Grieux for the wealth of “that ancient dandy” Geronte de Ravoir, her conflicting loves torment her and lead to devastation.

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We Love Weekends
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We Love Weekends, March 8-10

Atlas yostinator

Jenn: So much to catch! This is the last weekend of the DC Intersections festival at the Atlas Performing Arts Center over on H Street NE, with exciting selections such as Vijar Iyer’s documentary concert Holding It Down: The Veterans Dreams Project, theOur City Film Festival, and a musical mash-up with North Indian classical violinist Nistha Raj, jazz saxophonist Aakash Mittal, tabliya Debu Nayak, and beatboxer Christylez Bacon. It’s also the last weekend for the opulent exhibit of Turkish design, The Sultan’s Garden: The Blossoming of Ottoman Art, at the Textile Museum. Plus the last weekend for Folger Theatre’s riveting production of Henry V. And I definitely want to hit Hogo for the next installment of their rotating chef series, with Aaron Silverman of the upcoming Capitol Hill spot Rose’s Luxury previewing some dishes like popcorn soup and spicy pork and lychee — yum. Can I say yum and still be taken seriously?

Tom: After the failed snowstorm this week, I’m thinking Spring might really be upon us. Have you looked at the weather? 51 on Saturday, 58 on Sunday, and full of sunshine. I’ve been dying to check out the Corcoran’s Pump Me Up exhibit, so it’s possible I’ll put on a go-go/native punk playlist and bike down to check it out. There’s also still baseball and hockey to watch to watch this weekend, and civic association work to be done, so look for me at Turkey Thicket getting a count on activity.

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We Love Weekends
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We Love Weekends, normally

icing over philliefan99

But we’re all buried deep beneath the snow from this monster storm and will be doing nothing more than digging ourselves out.

(Editor note to Don, remove before publication: Hey, you really think it’s smart to write this so far in advance? I know we’re all concerned about the storm projections but I think we might want to wait to put up a placeholder even if the expectation is it’s gonna be so rough. It’s your call, but I’d advise against it; you never know how you might get caught out on this stuff.)

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Entertainment, Music, Night Life, The Features, We Love Music
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The Winning Ticket: Hot in Herre dance party @ 930 Club, 3/8/2013

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Today We Love DC is giving away a pair of tickets to the 2000s dance party “Hot in Herre”, this Friday, March 8th at 930 club. DJ Will Eastman and Brian Billion (whose ’90s dance night No Scrubs has sold out the club before) will spin their favorite hits of the 2000s. Tickets can be purchased through Ticketfly or in-person at the 930 club box office. (#HIH930)

For your chance to win a pair of tickets to the Hot in Herre dance party, simply leave a comment on this post using a valid email address until 4pm today. One entry per email address, please.

For the rules of this giveaway…

Comments will be closed at 4pm and a winner will be randomly selected. The winner will be notified by email. The winner must respond to our email within 24 hours or they will forfeit their tickets and we will pick another winner.

Tickets will be available to the winner at the will-call window of the 930 Club on the night of the party. The tickets must be claimed with a valid ID. The winner must be old enough to attend the specific concert or must have a parent’s permission to enter if he/she is under 18 years old.

Comment away!

Sports Fix
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Fan Spring Training: Pitching Stats

Photo courtesy of NDwas
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courtesy of NDwas

Like a goalie in hockey and a quarterback in football the pitcher in baseball has the most impact on if his team wins or not, and there was a time when a pitcher had even more control. Once the role of the starting pitcher was to pitch all nine innings and the only reason they didn’t was because they massively failed. The Win stat however doesn’t measure how well a pitcher pitched. What it does measure is if a pitcher pitched at least five innings, left with their team in the lead, and no reliever surrendered the lead. Over a long enough time line the pitcher Win stat still will inform on who was good but the win stat is a symptom of a pitcher being good and not the reason.

To more accurately measure what a pitcher is doing ERA can be used, but there are still issues with ERA. Again, like the Win stat, on a long enough time line ERA will inform us a great deal of how a pitcher has done for their career, but for one season even bad pitchers can have good Win or ERA totals. What ERA measures is the earned run average that a pitcher would have given up had he gone nine. An earned run is any run that crosses the plate not due to an error, and an error is decided upon by an official scorer. Beyond that defense can play a great role in ERA. A slow roller to the left of a bad fielder could get by while a smash deep in the hole can be converted to an out by a good fielder. A good pitcher in front of a bad defense will end up with more of his balls in play being hits than a bad pitcher in front of a good defense.

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Entertainment, Interviews, Music, Night Life, The Features, We Love Music
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Q&A with GEMS

photo courtesy of GEMS

photo courtesy of GEMS

GEMS is the newest creative vehicle for Clifford John Usher and Lindsay Pitts, formally formed in August of 2012. Their sound is dreamy, lush, hypnotic, melancholic pop. Previously the duo went by the name Birdlips, and had a more acoustic driven, organic, though equally gorgeous sound. Both incarnations feature beautiful vocals and highlight harmonies, nestled in layers of lush sounds. GEMS will be playing this Wednesday, March 6th, at Rock & Roll Hotel along with Ex Cops and Dead Professional, before hitting the road to SXSW. (* note- due to inclement weather, this show has been canceled.* )We Love DC got the chance for a brief chat with Cliff this past week, and here’s what he had to say.

Alexia Kauffman: So how did you you first start playing music?

Clifford John Usher: Well Lindsay and I met in Charlottesville, Virginia, I guess it was in 2007, and started playing in a college band that we had, and that band broke up after school, and we started Birdlips then, just the two of us. And then this new band was started this past August. We had known that we wanted to start a new band for a while, so it was kind of a progression.

Alexia: So what brought about the whole metamorphosis into GEMS?

Cliff: It was really a variety of factors, I guess. We did Birdlips for over five years, and I think the last year and a half of Birdlips we were pretty certain we wanted to do something else. I think we just wanted a clean break. We wanted to kind of start over in a lot of different areas, and not feel like we were obliged to keep playing old material. We didn’t want to feel constricted by what we had done in the past, I guess. We knew we wanted to do something louder, more electric. We wanted to get away from the whole folk association that we kind of had in Birdlips. It was hard, you know, even at the end of Birdlips we were doing something that I don’t think was really folk at all, and we still felt kind of trapped by the folk or psych-folk genre. So that was a big part of it. And we just had been playing more with electric guitars and with different recording techniques, so it kind of just made sense to us to start a new band. We’ve also been playing with a drummer. Which all the shows we’ve done as GEMS so far we’ve done with a drummer. Although the string that we’re getting ready to do- going down to South by Southwest we’re just going as a duo. Continue reading →

Music, The Features, We Love Music
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We Love Music: The Orwells @ DC9 — 3/3/13

Photo courtesy of The Orwells

Photo courtesy of The Orwells

Chicago quintet The Orwells perform a cover of The Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog” in concert.

Sadly, they didn’t play it when they rolled through DC Sunday night with a late show at DC9. The fact that the cover is in their repertoire, however, tells you a lot of what you need to know about these up and coming guys. They like to rock and roll.

Mostly everything about The Orwells suggests early garage and punk bands of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Lead singer Mario Cuomo (clearly not the former governor of New York) is a long-haired rocker, literally throwing himself into his songs, shaking his head and body to the beat of the band.

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Featured Photo
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Featured Photo

Rainy Entrance ep_jhu

I’ve recently started to enjoy (and, when I go out to take photos, look for) shots that give the scale of a scene. We live in a time where impressively large buildings and objects are around us all the time. And yet we tend not to realize the size of our world.

Eric shows us scale with his photo. We have two people walking by a parking garage; something we see everyday. But look at how big the entrance and exist are; even the scale of the signs become apparent. Yes, we’re given another sign to explain, in exact terms, the size of the entrance, but contrasting it with the person actually shows the size; very different. The photo is also helped by the drab black, white, and gray look, with only hints of coloring in the umbrella, signs, and shrubbery. The composition is also spot on, with the straight lines of the openings framing both people, to capture the scene. Truly well done.

Weekend Flashback
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Weekend Flashback: 3/1-3/3

Booth crush Fitsum Belay/iLLIMETER

No turning back now, we’re in the mouth of the lion (AKA: beginning of March). And it might just take its first bite this week. Some people have jinxed us and already started naming things, as if we’ve gotten some snowflakes already. You all now know who to blame when nothing comes (and I awarded you Featured Photo last week Phil!). To help even things out, I said everything before this sentence; I’m willing to accept a thousand I-told-you-sos if it means we get snow. So there we have it. We now may or may not get snow this week. You heard it here first…or, whatever.

Look on the bright side, literally: Daylight Savings Time begins Sunday, so more light!!

Anyways, it certainly didn’t snow this past weekend, and we got a particularly good selection of contributions. Please enjoy! Continue reading →