NEWPORT FOLK FESTIVAL

This article was originally published online on July 8 in a different format.

The Newport Folk Festival — having endured Dylan’s controversial ’65 burst of electricity, financial turmoil and an addiction to corporate sponsorship — has come a long way from its folksy, populist incarnation of 1959. But at this 50-year benchmark, Newport’s architects have struck gold in grafting the Festival’s roots to anachronisitc, serene Fleet Foxes and progressive-folk-rock showmen The Decemberists. Seeger’s even leading a sing-along at age 90, for Pete’s sake.

This past Saturday night, the Cornell Concert Commission welcomed both new and old students alike with a free concert at Barton Hall. The contenders were Ithaca’s own Hubcap and California based Rogue Wave. While the former tried to intrigue new and old students with their alternative rock music and mentions of the ever so fine tastes of Ithaca, such as the all day music festival in Stewart Park next Sunday, the latter spent the majority of their set trying to rouse the Cornell corpses from their zombie like trance, which could have been attributed to the bleak weather outside or a general dissatisfaction with entering into or coming back to Cornell life.

Hey-o spaghetti-o’s!! Welcome back! Or just welcome! Hope everyone enjoyed their summers and is now enjoying the second day of classes. Hope everyone listened to some super rockin’ music. Hope the freshmen have figured out how to get from North Campus to Mann Library (hint: it’s not as long a walk as you think) and that the sophomores haven’t collapsed getting up Libe Slope (hint: umm …. I got nothing, it just sucks) and that the juniors have as yet avoided heinous noise violations, which unfortunately cannot be said for the house across the street from me. Or perhaps fortunately considering the lack of actually falling asleep that went down in my room the last two nights.

Wilco’s seventh studio LP, Wilco (The Album), channeling its eponymous title, spins as a consolidation of singer / songwriter Jeff Tweedy’s oeuvre. Congealing alt-country, quasi-experimental and neo-folk, the album genre-blazes across the band’s decade and a half creative trajectory.

It has come to my attention that not enough people have heard of Discovery, a band whose album became my go-to for everything from running, pre-gaming, partying, post-gaming, driving and just going to bed this summer. It’s one of those rare all weather albums created in part by Rostam Batmanglif, the keyboardist of Vampire Weekend, and in part by Wes Miles, the lead singer of Ra Ra Riot, and as a whole it sounds nothing like the former or the latter. Though the line up of musicians alone should have driven hoards of music listeners to this group, I fear Discovery has been flying a little too low on the radar for such a stellar album released back in July.

About ten minutes into their set, guitarist Tom DeLonge shouted into his mike, “We are fucking awesome. We rock!” and oh, how absolutely true that is. Blink 182’s reunion tour stop at the amphitheater at Jones Beach on Aug 9 verifiably rocked. So much so that I’m convinced that the power of Mark, Tom and Travis playing on the same stage pushed the muggy, downpour of weather that was expected away until precisely after everyone from the venue had cleared out into their cars. So instead of a monsoon, we got clear skies, two full hours of the Blink classics and a glorious evening of feeling like we were in middle school again, minus the whole being awkward part.

Happy Slope Day Cornellians! I hope at least a few of you are still sober enough to read the Sun. And I hope that the actual sun is shining. Today is a more than usually auspicious day for my usually oh-so-humble column.

Why, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you. The reasons are twofold. First, today, as you may know, is Slope Day. It is a day about music. Sort of. And admittedly less so this year than usual. (Though T.I.’s fake gunshots may have been pushing it as well.)

Dig bright, catchy, Beatles-esque lyrics? Groove out to ELO’s symphonic prog rock? How’s a virtually private show sound? Right, so get to the Slope early.

Long before the Pussycat Dolls showcase their ample assets and Asher Roth confesses his inclination towards America’s university system, the Apples in Stereo, ripe with tight, riveting, relevant tunes, will rock the Slope’s punctual arrivals with a premium blend of neo-classic rock and power pop. The American rockers, veterans of six LPs, notched a spot on Rolling Stone’s Top 50 of 2007 with New Magnetic Wonder, a 14 track album linked seamlessly by 10 musical segues.

Pop radio is brainwashing the ears of America. I don’t care how many times you’ve heard it; the music heard on the radio and advertised as mainstream is, more often than not, a dirtied reflection of only the tiniest, most insignificant percentile of actual musical output. Regardless of our inability to change the airwaves, however, it’s easy to stop plugging your ears with the synthesized plastic of music’s darkest dregs.

If any angst-ridden teenagers showed up to The Pains of Being Pure at Heart’s show Saturday night at Risley Hall expecting gloomy, My Chemical Romance fare, they would have been sorely disappointed with the night’s musical offerings (though surely, given that misleading and cringe-inducing name, we couldn’t have blamed them for expecting some emo). But despite the musical illusions created by their name, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, the Brooklyn buzz band that has the indie blogosphere slobbering, play shiny shoegaze pop — and damn do they have fun doing it.