Author Archive

This Week in Music: Play it Loud: The Antlers/Cotton Jones @ IOTA

Love can’t buy a full room, no matter what the prophets of new media might say. Even when the gushing adoration gets issued from the fast-typing manicured fingers of a name-checking rock critic, it’s not enough to ensure that there will actually be warm-drinking bodies filling the club when the band finally walks out — at least not at Iota.

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A Historic Rage

No matter what Craig Finn may tell you about a unified scene, The Hold Steady comes at you in fragments.

Blame it on the sometimes sloppy, jangly old-school rock and roll riffs — unashamedly lifted straight from your dad’s collection of vinyl — the drunken sing-speak proclamations of Finn, or just the confusion over just what you’re watching; America’s biggest bar band throws the craziest fist-pumping house party in town.

Granted, it’d be a strange place thing to witness from the rafters, a seat, or just a spot on the balcony — boredom and misplaced analysis falls easy— but when you’re packed into the rolling, bouncing first rows of the 9:30 Club on a sloshing Sunday night, there’s no scene that I’d rather fall into.

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