Forward Music Fest Recap: Part II

 

photo of Alan Sparhawk by DJ Hostettler

Words by DJ Hostettler

The Saturday of the Forward Music Fest was all about one band for me—Low. I hadn’t seen Duluth’s Mormon balladeers in well over ten years, and it had gotten so bad that I couldn’t tell you the name of one of their songs if you threatened me with a forced preview of the new Vampire Weekend album. But I remembered them as the band that could teach every sad bastard playing sad bastard music on the planet how the hell it’s done, and I didn’t wanna miss it. Fortunately, they were slated to hit the stage at the High Noon Saloon at 6 p.m., allowing me to see what was likely to be the best show of the festival before heading back to Milwaukee to see some touring friends at the Borg Ward. All too easy. 

Forward Music Fest Recap: Part I

 

photo of the New Loud by DJ Hostettler

Words By DJ Hostettler

While doing some shopping at B-Side Records on State Street before the bands started on Saturday, I overheard some of the store employees echoing a sentiment I had been hearing from a few other people regarding this year’s Forward Music Festival in Madison: “where’s the draw this year?” Sure, acts like Andrew Bird and Low are nothing to sneeze at, but when compared to last year’s diverse three-pronged attack of Neko Case, Bob Mould, and local legends Killdozer, this year’s crop of national headliners felt a little less exciting. Add to this the fact that most of the national acts seemed lazily culled from the annals of Pitchfork’s “Best New Music” (Yacht, Antlers, Ra Ra Riot), and my enthusiasm for the trek to Madtown wasn’t what it was last year. Still, I’m a huge fan of the Festival in principle, and want to see a big, multivenue music fest succeed and thrive in Wisconsin, so I hopped in the car and drove west. 

Seis-Seis-Seis

Who: Davila 666

What: a show: Davila 666 from Puerto Rico (see/listen to above videos for details), The Flips, The Yolks

Where: Club Garibaldi’s (2501 S. Superior)

When: Tonight, 10 p.m.

Why: you won’t have to put up with some asshat in the crowd singing along to every word — es la magica de la lengua de Espanol.

Lisa Gatewood: Recording Spontaneity

image courtesy of Lisa Gatewood

Words by Erin Wolf

Folk music oftentimes has the ideals of conventionalism attached to it — its simplistic, storytelling qualities and stripped down instrumentation paints its music with clean, broad strokes. How, then, does a self-dubbed folk singer make their songs stand out and sparkle? Local artist Lisa Gatewood knows that a natural sparkle lies in the ingenuity and spontaneity of the live performance. With that in mind, she’s taking to the stage at Linneman’s Riverwest Inn on Saturday to record her second album in a show setting. She explains it as this: “I have been working on these songs for a long time, some of them even before the first album…we [will] try to capture something quite elusive…the thing with a live album is that so much of it depends on the energy of the audience. And there is no sincerer energy that I can think of than that of friends.”

Lisa Gatewood, “The Black Coat Song”

Lisa Gatewood, “Better Than” [reprise]

At Latl Regroups

 

image courtesy of the band

 Words by Erin Wolf

Atlatl/At Latl, where’ve you been? The band that was all over Milwaukee’s 2008 music scene, its five members packing their heated Modest Mouse-ish, carnivalesque pop over the radio airwaves, at venues such as Stonefly, Mad Planet and Cactus and on location stints at Summerfest and Record Store Day, were MIA for quite some time recently. Most bands have ripples and reconfigurations of some sort if they’re in a long-term musical relationship, and At Latl, although going through two major changes, are bucking the reconfigurations by hitting up Mad Planet on Thursday for a show that leaves them not even skipping a beat, even after skipping out.