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Portugal.The Man • Highly Suspect Fidlar • Wolf Parade • The Growlers Car Seat Headrest • Modern Baseball Twin Peaks • Temples • Pup Preoccupations • Pinegrove • Lo Moon The London Souls • Margaret Glaspy Cymbals Eat Guitars • Zipper Club Tyler Bryant & The Shakedown Frank Carter & the Rattlesnakes Songs For Kids Daily Performance
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The Stray Birds Friday • Live! at the Ludlow Garage The past five years have been a succession of pinch-me moments for The Stray Birds, beginning with their self-released, self-titled debut album, a Folk/Bluegrass/Pop hybrid that made National Public Radio’s Top 10 Folk/Americana list for 2012. The seeds for that event were sown years before, when Oliver Craven and Charlie Muench played together in River Wheel, a Bluegrass band in their Lancaster, Pa. hometown. As a side venture, Craven began playing open mics with Maya de Vitry, eventually recording an EP in 2010, with Muench guesting on bass; coincidentally, he and de Vitry had played together in their middle school orchestra. After a year spent exploring individual options, the trio regrouped, dubbed themselves The Stray Birds and set about to The Stray Birds stand the Bluegrass P H O T O : E m i l i a Pa r é world on its ear. The band’s acclaimed debut album attracted invitations to numerous festivals, the prestigious Kerrville and Falcon Ridge events among them. After the Echo Sessions EP — a set covering some of their favorite artists — and touring for two solid years, the Birds served up 2014’s Bad Local Natives Medicine, their debut PHOTO : Brian Sheffield for Yep Roc Records and a brilliant blend of their harmonic influences (The Beatles, The Band, Bill Monroe and The Carter Family among them) and innate ability to weave a compelling sonic tapestry from authentic threads on a contemporary loom. The Stray Birds’ latest effort, last summer’s Magic Fire, represents a number of departures from the group’s standard operating procedures, most notably the addition of drummer Shane Leonard, who was asked to join the band after playing a single song with the trio. The other new wrinkle on Magic Fire is the presence of the Birds’ first outside producer, Grammy-winner Larry Campbell, who worked his special brand of musical voodoo for the band on both sides of the studio glass. The Stray Birds’ most important element remains unchanged: their unwavering desire to make viable connections, between themselves as musicians, between disparate musical styles and between the diverse group of
people who are drawn to their work. Mission beautifully accomplished. (Brian Baker) Local Natives with Little Scream Monday • Madison Theater If you became a fan of Los Angeles-based band Local Natives when the group released its most recent album, last year’s Sunlit Youth, but were unaware of its previous work and want to check it out, you definitely should. But for an untainted listening experience, do not read any of the old reviews first. It might be confusing. Local Natives started building a fanbase immediately upon the release of their debut, Gorilla Manor (which came out in the U.K. in 2009 and in the States on Frenchkiss Records in 2010), and critics were also, for the most part, smitten. Just scanning a few of the reviews for Manor, you’ll notice that progressive, artsy Indie Rock/Indie Folk acts like Grizzly Bear and Fleet Foxes are referenced often, due to Local Natives’ similar use of unique song structures and spinetingling, quasi-psychedelic harmonies (and likely because all three acts released buzzed-about albums in roughly the same time period). The follow-up, 2013’s more melancholy Hummingbird, was also fairly well received by critics (resulting in many more of the same comparisons), but more fans stepped up to embrace it, evidence of the debut’s “grower” appeal. It debuted at No. 12 on the Billboard album charts. The hues and textures on Local Natives’ first two albums are distinct, but on Sunlit Youth, the band both reinvented itself and retained much of its essence. And they figured out how to avoid Fleet Foxes comparisons — just add synths. Sunlit Youth is more directly poppy than the group’s other albums, but the electronic elements and the strident melodies don’t feel forced, as if Local Natives signed a billion dollar deal with a major label that locked them in a studio and didn’t let them out until there was a “hit.” In fact, it’s almost as if the band members simply switched up their toolkit — the songs are still creatively constructed, the harmonies are largely still intact (though there are more solo melodic “leads” by the