When Aussie singer Clairy Browne hits San Francisco this week with her R&B-rockabilly band the Bangin’ Rackettes — touting their steamy debut, “Baby Caught the Bus,” with its single “Love Letter,” featured in a Heineken ad — it won’t be the first time she has appeared in town. She was here on vacation a decade ago, crooning karaoke in the Castro. Clubs warned her she could only perform one song, she says, on the phone from a South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas. “So I’d take a bunch of wigs and do as many songs as I could in as many wigs as I had.” But security caught her.
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Modern house aficionados will pack Public Works on Friday for another “Icee Hot” dance party, this time featuring the West Coast debut of Rotterdam, Netherlands, artist Gerd. “Icee Hot” co-founder Ghosts on Tape (aka Ryan Merry) said the Gerd night has been long in coming.
“We’ve just been big fans for a long time and he’s awesome,” Merry said. “It was just perfect for us. His music represents a lot of what we’re about.”
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When Dead Can Dance co-founder Brendan Perry is strumming onstage next to his otherworldly voiced bandmate Lisa Gerrard, he hardly notices the soft play of violet and aquamarine lights flickering over him. Singing with his eyes shut, he isn’t overly conscious of what happens around him, and is in a “very special place” by the end of the set. With no distractions, he makes every intricate note count, like the group does on its ethereal new live recording, “In Concert.” The group plays Davies Symphony Hall this week. Never seen them?
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Karpathos is a minuscule Greek island in the south Aegean sea, 24 hours away from Athens by boat with roughly 6,000 inhabitants in 10 villages. With a population of 761, its dinky waystation of Olympos is even more remote, says Foals frontman Yannis Philippakis, who returned to his birthplace to compose portions of his U.K. band’s third outing, “Holy Fire.”
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Amanda Warner would love to recount optimistic stories of her post-college years living in the Bay Area from 2003 to 2009, before she moved to New York and — with producer-partner Peter Wade — re-created herself as the brainy synth-popper MNDR.
But she doesn’t have any.
Retaining a publishing deal after her band Triangle failed, Warner became a hot Big Apple songwriter. An early effort there was “Bang Bang Bang,” a collaboration with Mark Ronson and the first hit single on the album “Record Collection.”
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Sunny, funky experimental electronic artist Devonwho will help leading music software company Ableton show off new wares in a unique premiere at Public Works on Thursday.
The San Francisco-based producer will perform an Ableton-enabled set as part of a night of cutting-edge beat-making with Kid606, Christopher Willits and Mophono.
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Ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr titled his debut solo CD “The Messenger” for good reason. He’s on a mission to make records that make people feel good in the daytime for four minutes. He says he has always admired people who wrote songs “that made you feel good on the way to school, or good coming home from school or work. And as a writer, to do that is the challenge.” A winner of NME’s Godlike Genius Award in February, the guitarist is comfortably stepping into the spotlight again after years working with The Cribs, The The, Bryan Ferry, Modest Mouse and Bernard Sumner.
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Rachel Davies, dark-minded frontwoman for British gothic trio Esben and the Witch, doesn’t have rose-colored ruminations when she’s traveling from concert to concert.
“You spend a lot of time thinking about things, a lot of time just looking out van windows and questioning yourself,” says the singer, who appears today with her band in The City, playing songs from “Wash the Sins Not Only the Face,” their second CD.
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Looks are deceiving when it comes to BottleRock Napa Valley, the four-day music, comedy, food and wine festival in May that was suddenly announced in January.
Co-producer Gabe Meyers, 42 — who conceived the 60-band, 12-comedian event with longtime real estate partner Bob Vogt (who turned Napa’s languishing Uptown Theater into a popular concert hall) — admits that although they had been planning it for a long time, they were working under the radar and so the event seems like it “came out of nowhere.” When people inquire how long, he’s ready with the same witty response
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As is typical, the lineup for the 31st annual San Francisco Jazz Festival is expansive and fun. Announced by SFJazz officials last week, the festival runs June 12-23, with most concerts in the new SFJazz Center at 201 Franklin St.
The opening concert June 12 will present the Stefano Bollani Trio, featuring the acclaimed Italian pianist.
Latin jazz highlights include singer-songwriter-guitarist Milton Nascimento on June 13-14, percussionist Pedrito Martinez on June 16 and the Bay Area’s Pacific Mambo Orchestra on June 15.
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