The Bowery Presents

Music Hall of Williamsburg upcoming shows

Yeasayer
official website
myspace
The music of Brooklyn's Yeasayer is an eclectic, genre-bending journey into pop, druggy rock, Middle Eastern and African musics, folk, and dub. Vocalist/keyboardist Chris Keating and vocalist/guitarist Anand Wilder were both raised in Baltimore, where they honed their vocal skills in a barbershop quartet and initiated a musical partnership before leaving town to attend different colleges. Years later, the two relocated to New York and began shaping the project that would soon become Yeasayer. Wilder's cousin, Ira Wolf Tuton, joined as the group's bassist, and drummer Luke Fasano solidified the lineup in May 2006. The band set to work on recording their debut album, All Hour Cymbals, which was unveiled in October 2007.
--by Kenyon Hopkin
Javelin
official website
myspace
In performance, Javelin will use colorfully painted boomboxes that form large speaker totems (“boombaatas”) which can hang from the ceiling or stack up on the floor like pyramids. The signal from the show is broadcast via FM transmitter, thereby fostering audience participation (B.Y.O.Boombox) or fueling battery-powered, mobile parties.

The duo has played venues as diverse as the children’s branch of the Olneyville Public Library (RI), to the Museum of Modern Art (NY), both of which happened in the same week. When not performing, Javelin is busy producing. Together they have amassed a vast catalogue of music, varying in its aesthetic range. Songs resemble the record collection from whence they spring, if not literally as when sampling, then figuratively as when past forms are cited and recontextualized.

Sounds range from broken dance jams to relaxed instrumental cut-ups, created with love on their MPCs. Long forgotten samples are chopped and re-assembled with drums, wooden recorders, old keyboards, handmade thumb pianos or whatever instruments are readily at hand. The result is a kind of mix tape fantasy (residing in the mythical “dollar bins of the future”), where R&B impresarios, amateur booty bass producers and Andean flautists hold equal sway.
Class Actress
official website
myspace
Once the solo project of singer Elizabeth Harper, Class Actress is now a fully-formed band, hustling around Brooklyn's preening, synth-obsessed pop scene like Chairlift's alien-abducted stepsiblings. "Careful What You Say" gets its kicks from ballooning square waves much like the aforementioned trio, only instead of grabbing for the hook they're content to float amongst their own self-created fog. - RCRDLBL

"Harper is a beauty with a voice like a sleepy winter afternoon. Alternately playful and melancholy, Harper’s songwriting is reminiscent of the Smiths.” – TimeOutNY

“Don't feel conflicted by the singer-songwriter tag in front of Elizabeth Harper's name on any billing. While the tag is accurate, the Brooklyn-based musician is less Tori Amos and more Christina Rosenvinge, or even New Order's Bernand Sumner. Something vaguely Northern English afflicts Ms. Harper's otherwise bubbly music, as if the threat or memory of melancholy is never far away. Ms. Harper effortlessly swings from variations on late 1960s French pop to 1970s California folk-pop, but something mid- 1980s Manchester never feels too far behind her lovely voice.” – New York Sun

“A patch of green, Anglophilic moss thriving in the shade of the monolith that is Brooklyn’s music scene. With Harper rightfully compared to a female version of the beloved Mozzer, it’s no wonder she was first signed overseas by London’s Angular Records. Impeccable in both presentation (her demo's wax-paper packaging was covered in black-ink calligraphy) and performance, her songs recall Orange Juice, Aztec Camera, and New Order at their most tasteful." – Flavorpill

“We’ve gone on record repeatedly about how much we love Elizabeth Harper, and we stand by our assertion that she’s fronting one of the most promising bands in New York City.” – L Magazine

"Elizabeth Harper still seems posied to break pretty big, and were puling for it to happen. She's got one of the best voices we've ever heard and her taste in accompaniment is impeccable" - L Magazine
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