Beat Radio Covers Robyn at Pete's Candy Store

Beat Radio's new album Hard Times, Go! drops on the 19th (though you can buy it now on Bandcamp), and last night at Pete's Candy Store, fans were treated to batch of the new tunes, some old favorites, and a cover of Robyn's "With Every Heartbeat."  When I arrived at Pete's, the bar was bustling.  I squeezed my way into the train car-styled back room, and found myself in the midst of a poetry reading.  The final poet was reading from his book of verses from the point of view of a schizophrenic man, but I found it vapid, considering the author didn't know his character well enough to know where he was or what he was doing.

The poets cleared out after hawking their books, but they should've stuck around.  After soundchecking with a bit of "Golden Age," Brian Sendrowitz a.k.a. Beat Radio took the stage with his guitar.  Beginning with "Days Like Diamonds" from the new album, he moved onto a cover of Robyn's "With Every Heartbeat."  Sendrowitz has admitted that the new album was directly inspired by the Swedish pop singer's Body Talk, so this was more of a loving tribute than a hipster joke.  He then revealed "Chasing a Phantom" was written after watching an episode of Mad Men.

"So my drummer Brian's gonna have a baby.  Well, his wife's gonna have a baby momentarily, so he's not here," Sendrowitz said before inviting Pete Oberg to join him on synth for the single, "Hurricanes, XO."  "This one's kinda sad and depressing," Brian offered, teasing Hank Williams' "There's a Tear in My Beer" preceding one of my favorites, "Stars Collided in Our Heart."  To introduce "Dreaming Wide Awake," he began telling the story of its germination in helping to move his sister-in-law upstate, but was interrupted from a yell in the back.  "Incest!" the guy shouted.  Confused, Sendrowitz asked, "What?"  "You guys need a drummer?" the intruder proposed.  Brian shrugged it off, continuing, "I'm dedicating it to my sister-in-law because it would be a nice thing to do, until things got weird."  Laughs from the crowd.  "Awkward for life. That's our motto," he said, starting into a more subdued version of the song than on the album.  Sendrowitz has been busy recording an acoustic companion to the album for its Kickstarter sponsors, which has been somewhat of a surreal experience for him.  "It's like in 2004, if I'd decided to go in the alternate direction. It feels like I'm living that now," he remarked.  Expecting another HTG track, I was pleasantly surprised to hear heartfelt oldie "Teenage Anthem for the Drunken Boat."  The song references both "Don't Stop Believin'" and "More Than a Feeling" in its lyrics, and with a smile, Brian repeated the "More than a feeling" line in the style of Boston.

There is a definite poetry in Beat Radio's words.  I first saw them perform at the Bell House in 2009 when they opened for the Mugs.  I had slept only an hour the previous night, and was nodding in and out of sleep throughout the performance, but some of those words found their way into my sleepyhead.  I gained even more respect for Sendrowitz after the show, when he stopped chatting with the pretty girls surrounding him in order to get a CD for me.  (I realize now that he was probably married at the time, so it wasn't that big of a deal.)  That concert was my last in New York before I moved to California that year.  It was actually in California, on the lawn of the Brand Library in Glendale, where I really connected to Beat Radio, listening to The Great Big Sea on my iPod, the theme of a romanticized past striking a chord.  Though I don't listen to the album often, I pull it out during the emotional times when I need it.

Hard Times, Go! is a darker album than the previous Beat Radio records.  In earlier efforts, the blips, bloops, and loops of the instrumentation helped to uplift Brian's musings on failed relationships and nostalgia to a point where they never seemed permanent.  He'd learn to love again and lose again, a vicious cycle, but a cycle with some optimism.  Despite the Robyn influence, the new LP is decidedly less electronic, and the lyrics are decidedly more adult, infused with the complications brought on by both the dissolution of the band and money problems.   Sendrowitz, unlike the ambitious, yet spurious poet, knows where his POV is coming from.

So what prevents the album from being a complete dirge?  The hope in Brian's vocals.  Sendrowitz is not technically a great singer, but he's an honest singer.  When his voice wavers, you excuse him because of the excellent songwriting, sort of like Bob Dylan.  Maybe that's not an accurate analogy because Dylan is obviously a better lyricist, and Brian is a better singer.  Jeff Mangum might be a better comparison.  Be that as it may, I think he should have started the show with Pete on keys.  The guitar and synth harmonized to complement Brian's vocals nicely, so if he had put that portion upfront, he could've then stripped it down to be even more honest and intimate.  It might've even kept around some poets who could've initially been turned off by another warbling guy with an acoustic guitar.

BEAT RADIO - 02.01.13 - PETE'S CANDY STORE (33 minutes, 18 seconds)

SOUNDCHECK -
Golden Age (incomplete)

SET -
Days Like Diamonds / With Every Heartbeat / Chasing a Phantom / Hurricanes, XO / Golden Age / There's a Tear in My Beer (tease) > Stars Collided in Our Hearts / Dreaming Wide Awake / Teenage Anthem for the Drunken Boat

The Heavy Give Irving Plaza a Glorious Show

Music is great to listen to on vinyl or the radio or your iPod, but it's meant to be heard live.  Going to concerts has been a passion of mine since my very first one, almost twenty years ago.  I love live music, and I want more people to hear what I'm hearing out there, which is why this blog has become so focused on concert reviews recently.  If you solely listen to the recorded output of an artist, you're experiencing only one facet of the band.  And as evidenced from last night's show by the Heavy at Irving Plaza, the energy of a live performance can not only improve the songs, it can create euphoria.

Fresh off a spot at Afropunk Festival, the Skins opened, and I had a chance to check out their Bandcamp page before the show.  Made up of three siblings and their two friends, the Skins are decidedly influenced by '70s hard rockers Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, both of which they covered at Irving, including the set-closer "How Many More Times."  The androgynous, multiethnic teens that make up the band could have been extras on Skins, and I didn't realize how young they were until they took the stage.  So young that they attempted to lead a chant of "Hide your wife, hide your kids" from "Bed Intruder Song"... without irony.  "Do you guys like Kanye West?  'Cause we do!" shouted lead singer Bayli Mckelthan before they launched into a cover of "Mercy."  While I can't stand Kanye, it was at least interesting to discover this other side of the band.  The in-between-song banter needs improvement ("I would like do something with all of you guys," said Bayli on the attractiveness of the audience.), but after doing a little more research, I found out that the drummer is only 14, so they are literally children.  In a few more years, they could be a force to reckon with if they don't all go to different colleges. 


On record, British rockers the Heavy are a strange brew of the Black Keys, marching band, old soul, and horror movie soundtrack, with most of their lyrics focusing on the macabre.  But when performing live, the group unleashes their inner animal (likely a wolf), infusing their style with so much moxie, all the songs can be heard in a different light.  They were actually the first band David Letterman ever asked to perform an encore on his show.

The quartet took the stage with its crew swollen to incorporate a keyboardist, four backup singers (two male, two female) from Georgia, and introduced as the Dirty Three, a three-piece horn section including Dap-Kings trumpeter Dave Guy.  The audio from the trailer of '60s monster film The She Beast crackled out of the PA, signaling "Can't Play Dead," the first of many tracks to be played off their new album, The Glorious Dead.  Impish lead singer Kelvin Swaby's suit jacket stayed on for exactly one song before he stripped down to a wifebeater.  After charging through some older tunes like the reggae-tinged "Cause for Alarm" and the spaghetti western-inspired "Short Change Hero," Swaby informed the crowd he wanted to play some more songs from The Glorious Dead.  "Curse Me Good," the LP's most melodic number, started the sequence.  A live staple for years, "The Big Bad Wolf" followed it like Little Red Riding Hood, but this wasn't the sneaky trickster from the children's tale.  This was a fucking monster.  With the crowd howling and screaming, "What you say!" it was incredible to realize that I was in a room full of adults singing along, "I'm gonna huff and puff, and blow your house down!"  It was going to be hard to top it, so Swaby walked us through a dry run of the lyrics to the new single, "What Makes a Good Man?"  And then they completely killed it!  The shriek of the horns, the propulsive drums, and the combined shouts of the crowd and backup singers took this one to a whole new plain.  It was during this song that I realized this might've been the loudest concert I've been to in years.

Swaby instructed the crowd for "Same Ol'" next, but may have taken the whole singalong act too far when he wanted us to sing back the words of a song that didn't make it onto the record, "A Lesson Learned."  His banter was that of a cocky person who feigns insecurity: "I'm feeling like New York City loves the Heavy, right?"  While this got old fairly quickly, no one seemed to mind.  Looking around me during the show, everyone was grinning the whole time.

For the encore, the original quartet performed "Girl," a mostly spoken word piece in which Kelvin proposed, "I think all the girls at the Irving Plaza should come back to our hotel room for some tea."  After a useless "Happy Birthday" dedicated to the keyboardist, the band started vamping while Swaby parted the crowd down the middle like Moses, only to do a "Which side of the room is louder?" shtick like at a Universal Studios stunt show.  This didn't accomplish much except to reorganize the crowd before the final song of the night, "How You Like Me Now?"  Used in several commercials and TV shows, it's the song everyone knows, and the crowd went buckwild.  At the song's end, Swaby expressed his gratitude and said, "You made me bust out my ass and everything," revealing that the seam on the back of his trousers had split wide open.

They missed out on an opportunity by not selling any merch.  I would've bought every album on vinyl.  But it's not about the records; it's about the live show.  I stepped out onto Irving Place with my ears ringing and my vocal cords stretched, recalling the concerts I attended when I was the age of the Skins.  So get out there and see a show.  You owe it to yourself to smile for over an hour straight.

THE HEAVY – 08.30.12 – IRVING PLAZA (1 hour, 17 minutes)

SET –

Can’t Play Dead / What You Want Me to Do? / Sixteen / Cause for Alarm / Short Change Hero / Curse Me Good / The Big Bad Wolf / What Makes a Good Man? / Same Ol’ / A Lesson Learned / Don’t Say Nothing / Blood Dirt Love Stop / Just My Luck

ENCORE –

Girl > All Day & All of the Night (tease) > Hello, I Love You (tease) / Happy Birthday / Brukpocket's Interlude / How You Like Me Now?