Greetings! The weather is looking fine this weekend and if you’re looking for something to do outside of a show (shock horror!), I’d recommend going to the Vendy Awards on Governors Island. The annual event brings together some of the best street vendors the city has to offer and is for a good cause, raising money for the Street Vendor Project. Now we’re done with the PSA, here are this weekend’s best musical options… One event that came to my attention too late to make the list is the Shorewave Records relaunch at Our Wicked Lady on Friday.
5) Neko Case, Thao at Beacon Theatre
Hell-On is Neko Case‘s seventh solo record and was released on Anti in June, the five years since previous album The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You, appear to have been worth the wait (there have been New Pornographers albums in the meantime, of course). To make things even better, she’s playing at the Beacon Theatre, one of New York’s finest venues. Thursday 8pm
4) Pig Destroyer, Despise You, Full of Hell at Gramercy Theatre
Featured heavily in last week’s This One Goes to Eleven column, I won’t be able to put it better than Coleman who remarked that the band released their first album in six long, Pig Destroyer-less years, Head Cage (Relapse). The world is a different place than it was in 2012 and Pig Destroyer sound fittingly and newly pissed, grinding through one caustic beatdown after the next as if Dubya was still shelling Baghdad (see: Early PD. I know he wasn’t in office in 2012). The more things change, the more they stay the same, however, and Pig Destroyer still sound like Pig Destroyer, cutting their scathing strain of powerviolence with touches of southern fried sludge and power electronics. If that doesn’t get you out to the show, then presumably grindcore just isn’t for you! Saturday 8pm
3) Public Service Broadcasting at the Intrepid
As part of Nasa’s 60th anniversary, British trio Public Service Broadcasting will be performing on the Intrepid (where they also played a couple of years ago), playing tracks from The Race to Space, which tells the story of the American / Soviet space race from 1957-72 with samples from the British Film Institute. It’s an excellent record and the band are a joy to see live, whether you’re a nerd or not. Thursday 7:30pm
2) Paul Simon Madison at Square Garden
Earlier in the year, Paul Simon announced his Homeward Bound farewell tour, which true to the name, wraps up with three shows this weekend. Two of those are at Madison Square Garden (Thursday and Friday), while the final show is at Flushing Meadows Corona Park on Saturday (at the time of writing, that show is sold out, while MSG still has some tickets). I caught a show on this tour back in June in Philadelphia and but for a slight lull in the middle of the set, it was a joy to see him perform some truly great songs.
1) TV on the Radio at Knockdown Center
Dear Science was released ten years ago and to celebrate, TV On the Radio will be performing it in full at Knockdown Center. The show is understandably sold out, though there is an official exchange program called Lyte that the event is using so that people can offer up tickets at reasonable prices (more of this please). While many of the band have moved away from New York to the West coast, they’ll always be a New York band and they deserve to be praised among the all-time greats this city has produced. Thursday 8pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wT
