We don't know about you, but we're ready to kick down these walls and listen to music outside. If you’re on board, you’re in luck. Napa Valley BottleRock festival arrives later this month, Live 105’s annual BFD comes to the peninsula June 6, the treasured Stern Grove kicks off mid-June, and Phono Del Sol comes to the Mission July 11. Grab your picnic basket...and a flask.
Wednesday: Torres at Bottom of the Hill
The word is out about Brooklynite Torres. There’s a zero-qualms-given savagery in her voice—her songs are part catharsis, part righteous unleashing. Her second full-length release, Sprinter, is all about finding a kernel of truth, then another, then another, and exposing her subject like a Vanity Fair hit piece for all it truly is.
Friday: Lord Huron at Fox Theater
ICYMI, Ben Schneider‘s Lord Huron just released its second album, another tremendously riveting collection of alt-country soul-searching. Strange Trails follows a similar blueprint as the band’s first album, Lonesome Dreams, insofar as much as they create moments of serenity with alarming ease, then go for the jugular. Spin puts it more frankly: “pulling a Bon Iver-gone-to-Walden Pond move might be grossly overdone by now, but Lord Huron has skillfully overturned the tired mulch in favor of tuneful new growth.” If you’re feeling a void left by the disintegration of Fleet Foxes, fill it with this.
Woods, who might also be a distant, psychedelic cousin of the aforementioned Fleet Foxes, really sounds like it could also be a distant nephew of The Doors. Guitars noodle in unexpected ways, a saloon piano sets an eerie noir scene, and lazy acoustic guitars lull you into a meditative state. They’ve been around these parts before, but to see such acoustic prowess in San Francisco’s greatest acoustic venue, The Chapel, will be a revelation.
Friday: Lyrics Born at The Independent
Berkeley’s own Tom Shimura hunkered down in New Orleans for inspiration and support for his eighth studio album, Real People. “I felt like I needed to do something different. I needed to get out of my comfort zone,” he told SF Gate recently. And Shimura mixed it up with some of New Orleans' most prominent cultural staples, working with parts of Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Galactic, and Trombone Shorty, to name a few.
Saturday: Jesus and the Mary Chain at the Warfield
Prepare yourself to feel really, really old: Jesus and the Mary Chain are in town to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their seminal 80s rock album Psychocandy. This is the only reminder from the Glasgow rock band—”Just Like Honey”:
For more words like these, follow @ChrisTrenchard.
