Paul Robicheau
The Smile grew in stature at Roadrunner on Wednesday, the second date of its first U.S. tour. It didn’t take long for the band to flash shades of Radiohead-like intensity.
Damn straight, English singer/songwriter Beth Orton was back in the room – after a six-year absence.
Surprisingly, for a band whose hypnotic music throughout the documentary provides a continuum with menacing and meditative extremes that mesh with near-mathematical discipline, it’s the human elements that leave the greatest impressions..
At House of Blues, Fontaines D.C.’s brooding, bristling music was offset by shifting swatches of amber and purple lighting amid the shadows, casting the musicians in mysterious terms.
Once the original Roxy Music core took the stage with their nine supporting musicians, most concerns melted into 100 sublime minutes of music.
The veteran band from Louisville, Kentucky, kicked into the millennium with a wild and woolly mix of Southern rock, alt-country, space-prog, and electro-funk that grew weirder over time.
A relatively short-but-sweet night that struck just enough highs and no real lows – as long as one accepts that Van Morrison gives more heed to covers than his own hits.
This version of Beach Road Weekend marked a huge step to the event joining Newport Folk and Solid Sound among New England’s marquee mid-size festivals.
To some degree, everything fit under the resilient umbrella that the late George Wein raised at the edge of Newport Harbor.
The Newport Folk Festival’s biggest secrets were cleanly hidden and tightly executed with the day-capping revelations of Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell.
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