It’s nice to see CMJ’s annual music and film festival gaining strength again — I was particularly impressed with their premiering Oren Moverman’s worth-the-rental The Messenger starring Woody Harrelson. Here’s the partial 2010 line-up, clips of three band discoveries I made at CMJs past, plus the audience Q+A from last year’s screening of The Messenger.
|
- As experienced by Svein Brunstad
Ebony Bones is perhaps the most chattered about act in London right now. She’s a one-of-a-kind producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist with a great rhythm section and backing vocalists. Named as one of SXSW’s best new acts of 2009, her critically acclaimed debut album Bone Of My Bones is slated for release in the US later this year. Known for playing a role on the British TV drama Family Affairs, Ebony Thomas has also been nominated for The British Soap Awards’ sexiest female. And some of that sexiness, in her self-designed costumes, shined on the lucky audience this rainy Friday night. …MORE
|
Last night at 205 Chrystie, just after 1:00 am, Nirvana’s cheerleaders got an update during Ebony Bones’ set, as one of the coolest singers and the two most awesome back-up vocalists went through alternately joyous and solemn dances in the spirit of “a small village in Africa,” per lead singer Ebony’s quip. And while their garb is tribal, they are far more steeped in subculture—namely that great tradition of conceptual British art-pop informed by a societal, political, and historical consciousness, and expressed by the Bones crew to an, at-times harrowing, and often rapturous and delirious pitch. During one moment, the back-up singers vamped with a boppy, New Wave dolly coo, asked a question pondered since time immemorial by thinkers like Morrissey, Eldridge Cleaver, et. al: Why do we smile at the people that we hate the most?
If Ms. Bones’ alarmed …
2comments