Concert Previews
Beyoncé Never mind that Rihanna: Queen B descends upon city and Shore this weekend. She may have gotten overshadowed by Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls and tripped over her dress while ripping into "Ring the Alarm" in Orlando last month, but there's no doubt that the formidable and fierce Beyoncé Knowles and her all-female band will make clear to the Wachovia Center and Trump Taj Mahal crowds who's the most irreplaceable diva of them all. Canadian blue-eyed soul man Robin Thicke opens.
Beyoncé
Never mind that Rihanna: Queen B descends upon city and Shore this weekend. She may have gotten overshadowed by Jennifer Hudson in
Dreamgirls
and tripped over her dress while ripping into "Ring the Alarm" in Orlando last month, but there's no doubt that the formidable and fierce Beyoncé Knowles and her all-female band will make clear to the Wachovia Center and Trump Taj Mahal crowds who's the most irreplaceable diva of them all. Canadian blue-eyed soul man Robin Thicke opens.
- Dan DeLuca
Alison Krauss and Union Station
Alison Krauss comes in many guises: She's a world-class fiddler, a sophisticated vocalist equally comfortable with plaintive pop and traditional country (as evidenced on the recent compilation
A Hundred Miles or More
), an in-demand producer (she helmed Alan Jackson's
Like Red on a Rose
last year), and a risk-taker (
Raising Sand
, an album of duets with Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant, arrives in October). But she's most at home fronting her band Union Station. Featuring dobro-master Jerry Douglas, Union Station is flexible enough to add subtle and unobtrusive colors to Krauss' crystalline voice on the tender ballads in which she specializes, but they also work up a heady mix of old-time gospel, classic country and, especially, vibrant bluegrass.
- Steve Klinge
Making Time, with Los Campesinos!
Another Dave Pianka dance party starring another hipster band with an exclamation point at the end of its name. Ah. Yet, for this event, Making Time not only celebrates the birthday of its head DJ and organizer Pianka, it celebrates a brand of squeaky indie traditionalism far from the monthly's fabulous milieu of cranking electro and snapped discordant disco-rock. Los Campesinos!, whose debut with its EP
Sticking Fingers Into Sockets
, doesn't sound like Making Time's usual funky-punk rock a la the DFA label's infamous snap-crackling productions or LCD Soundsystem. With its jangling guitars, nervous girl-on-boy harmony vocals, sprightly rhythms, and zesty pop melodies, the warm fuzzy septet come across like Yo La Tengo with attitude. Wow, there's no one less trendy than Yo La Tengo, yo. Though the sentiment of "We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives" might be less than cuddly, there's the knowing "You! Me! Dancing!" and its central theme - "It's sad you think that we're all just scenesters/Even if we were, it's not the scene you're thinking." Smart, huh.
- A.D. Amorosi