Todd Owyoung

M83 | I Break Horses
The Pageant
May 2, 2012

The crowd at the M83 show last night was ecclectic. Girls wearing their best Forever 21 skirts, middle aged men and women sprinkled in the balcony and a parade of bros, hipsters and people looking generally out of place. That's what happens when there is a breaking band on the stage. M83 is on the cusp of mainstream success. With a gutsy, critically acclaimed double album, 2011's Hurry Up, We're Dreaming, a song featured in a Victoria's Secret commercial and a string of high-profile festival gigs, the band is only getting bigger.

View a full slideshow of M83 at the Pageant.

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Henry Diltz

Van Dyke Parks | Rats & People Motion Picture Orchestra
April 5, 2012
The Luminary Center for the Arts

Van Dyke Parks embarked on his first-ever tour this year at the age of 69. It has been a limited run of shows in the United States, but with any justice more audiences will get to experience what the crowd at the Luminary Center for the Arts saw last night. Part concert and part monologue, Parks gave a tour of America that touched on song craft, of course, but also literature, militarism, copyright law, first-world problems and the humbling power of nature. By the end of the night he chalked it all up to "a long life of illuminated wonders."

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Photos by Blair Stiles

Youth Lagoon | Porcelain Raft
The Firebird
April 3, 2012

Trevor Power's lucid dream Youth Lagoon became tactile a year ago, about when he put "July" on Bandcamp. Before the band's debut album came out, hype was already building on sites like Pitchfork, and when the album did come out, it premiered on Spin. The buzz hasn't faded; Youth Lagoon is thriving. It has aquired a following of prototypical indie kids, about 200 of whom came sailing in to the Firebird last night.

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Kholood Eid

Diplo | Chiddy Bang | Lunice
The Firebird
March 30, 2012

In this day and age of corporate sponsorships often intertwining and ultimately propelling events by selling artists' "cool" - some kind of interesting (and confusing) standard is being set by the Axe: One Night Only tour featuring Lunice, Chiddy Bang and Diplo. The tour headed to undisclosed venues in select cities, with information and free tickets only announced via AXE on both Facebook and Twitter.

View a full slideshow of Diplo at the Firebird here.

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Mabel Suen

Some fans came in costume: Yuna from Final Fantasy X.

Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy
Powell Hall
March 23 and March 24, 2012

The most interesting aspect of a Final Fantasy concert could be the audience. The orchestra was often met with thunderous applause and screaming between pieces or at the start of familiar and popular songs -- more like a rock show than a typical orchestral performance. Once the music began, the crowd was unusually quiet, wanting to soak in the sounds of their beloved games.

Since its inception in December 2007, Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy has traveled the world, sharing with audiences the grandeur and elegance of the musical scores found in the video game series. Not unlike the films of Disney or Lucas Arts, Final Fantasy has provided a fictional universe to intertwine with the childhood memories of many and has done this through the malleable art-form of video gaming.

Distant Worlds is a collaborative effort between series composer Nobuo Uematsu and Grammy Award-winning artist and composer Arnie Roth. Featuring carefully considered selections from the history of Final Fantasy, Distant Worlds carries with it a wide range of musical styles and techniques, reminding fans of accompanying scenes of despair, love, unity and betrayal.

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Ben Moon

Blind Pilot | Cataldo
Plush
March 2, 2012

The crowd had gathered in Midtown to see Blind Pilot, the charming, affable and endlessly melodic folk band from Portland, Oregon whose star has been steadily rising since 2009. But the concert was as much a rock show as it was a proving ground for Plush, the two-month old venue that was hosting its first major weekend of concerts. Based on overheard chatter, most of the full (but not sold-out) crowd was getting its first taste of the venue and restaurant; people seemed to cotton to the club and its kitchen-sink approach to décor. Aside from a corral-like effect of patrons waiting to get in the venue/restaurant's only entrance, things went smoothly, and Plush had a successful debut for the first-timers. (Confidential to people who bitch about waiting to get a beer at a crowded bar: Patience is a virtue.)

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Catholic Guilt

This weekend El Lenador officially became the epicenter of the South St. Louis music scene. It's a place where locals go to see other locals. There's a tight sense of community, but that's not to say that it feels exclusive or exclusionary. It's a place where bands seem to look out for and support each other.

Friday night brought a packed show with Bloody Knives, Bug Chaser, Tone Rodent and Trauma Harness. A small fight broke out in the crowd when a few rowdy jerks tried to start a mosh pit, but the offenders were quickly shown the door. The crowd, undaunted, quickly went back to enjoying its collective evening.

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Matthew Sweet

Matthew Sweet | Miles Zuniga
Blueberry Hill's Duck Room
October 16, 2011

Your feelings on the current wave of twenty-years-gone nostalgia could have indicated your level of excitement for this weekend's Matthew Sweet show at Blueberry Hill. Sweet has been touring behind the twentieth anniversary of his breakthrough album Girlfriend, playing it front-to-back while leaving a little space at the end for a few other hits. In a fall that's been largely dominated by Nirvana's Nevermind and, to a lesser extent, the long-awaited DVD release of the documentary 1991: The Year Punk Broke, you could spend all of this month's disposable income reliving 1991. (And, speaking of that doc, how many of you felt like your parents just announced their divorce now that Thurston and Kim have split?)

But Sweet's story is a little different. His critically (and cultishly) adored Girlfriend never had anywhere near the mass impact of Nevermind, nor did it spawn a generation of sound-alikes. It's not a perfect album but a damned great one. His best, most enduring songs are found there. It's been Legacy Edition-ed and adored for years, so it's hard to fault Sweet for revisiting it in full. And judging by the sold-out room (tickets were gone as of a month ago), plenty of people saw reason to celebrate this power-pop gem.

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Welch and Rawlings in 2009

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings
The Pageant
September 3, 2011

When the mechanics of a rock & roll concert get thrown out of whack -- when the lights flicker, when the bar service halts, when the A/C sputters off -- you become grateful that the night's performers are not at all beholden to the mechanics of a rock & roll show. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings' masterful performance in front of a packed Pageant crowd was never really in threat of being scuttled by the power surges, which came after the early-evening storm that knocked out power to half of the Loop. Had push come to shove (and the Pageant powers-that-be allowed it), the always-acoustic duo would have soldiered on without mics or stage lights. But as it was, some behind-the-board wizard allocated enough juice for the PA, the spotlights, and the bathrooms -- and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone in the crowd that minded the slight inconvenience.

And thank God the show did go on -- Gillian Welch fans, a patient lot, had become tired of waiting. It had been eight years since her last record and four years since her last St. Louis show at the Duck Room. The upgrade in venue size suggests that her absence has increased her audience four-fold, or that this year's The Harrow & the Harvest brought some new fans. Whatever the case, first-timers and long-timers were treated to two sets, two dozen songs and some great stage banter in the face of the impending power outage (including a spitballed definition of a "brown-out" and a pretty amazing story of Welch locking herself out of her hotel room, in nothing but a towel, during the day's tornado-like storm).

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Joe Budden played an 80-minute set at Fubar last night -- his first solo effort in St. Louis.

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Joe Budden
Fubar
August 26, 2011

Joe Budden is not an asshole -- or at least that's what his merch would have you believe. (Literally: "I'm Not An Asshole" screams from the t-shirts he's selling.) While an obnoxious slogan probably won't be enough to convince anyone who's been following his career for the past few years, a small crowd of his devoted fans came out to support the New Jersey rapper for his first solo performance in St Louis.

The undercard lineup started a little before 8 p.m., making the show a five-hour-plus event. The roster included several low-profile local acts: Man of Destiny, K.F.P., Plane Mode and Ryda Click, to name a few. There were varying amounts of skill and experience on display, but the standout set came from an emcee from south city, who (appropriately enough) goes by the name Prospect. A good chunk of his music was mixtape material - the artist rapping over other people's songs. His stage presence and slick bars compensated for the lack of original beats.

Joe Budden inconspicuously rolled up to the venue in a black minivan around 11:15, with his hypeman and what appeared to be his current ladyfriend. He stopped briefly outside to huff a cig and take a few pictures before heading into Fubar, and the place started to buzz as the hardcore fans staked out their spots near the front of the stage. Budden's DJ, Killa Touch, tried to get the crowd warm with a few east-coast classics (Mobb Deep, Biggie) during the sound check, and then Joey B. finally took the stage at around 11:40.

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