New York Magazine .com / April 14, 2008
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2008/04/geeks_glowsticks_wiggle_at_hot.html

Last Night's Gig: Hot Chip
Geeks, glow sticks wiggle at Hot Chip Show

There were shirtless kids and a smattering of glow sticks wiggling about at Terminal 5 Saturday as Hot Chip converted the oft-maligned (and sold-out) space into a full-fledged club. The band is more explosive live than their deeply nerdy appearance and their more mannered albums would suggest, and in a night populated by ecstatically greeted slow jams as well as freak-outs, “Don’t Dance” naturally sent the crowd into the most intense of paroxysms. By the set’s end, impish front dude Alexis Taylor — bedecked in several layers of rain-slicker yellow, the outermost of which consisted of a flimsy basketball jersey from Wendy’s — was as sweat-soaked as the kids filling the venue’s three levels. “Geeking” is totally the new “grooving.”

New York Magazine .com / March 5, 2008
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2008/03/jonathan_richman_overwhelms_th.html

Last Night's Gig: Jonathan Richman
Jonathan Richman overwhelms the ladies at first of two shows

While Clinton and Obama were still counting delegates in Texas and Ohio late last night, a blissfully apolitical Jonathan Richman kept fare nice and light in Brooklyn. Looking as though he’d just flown in from Ibiza, Richman shimmied his way through the first of two sold-out shows at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, racking up yuks and dusting off numbers culled from his many solo adventures as well as from his days as a Modern Lover. After one uncomfortably enthusiastic female fan was escorted someplace else for punctuating the first quarter-hour of Richman’s acoustic work (including a not quite appropriate “Springtime in New York”) with love shouts, another chided him shortly thereafter for the lack of love en español. What quickly followed was a version of the Cameron Diaz–inspired “Let Her Go Into the Darkness,” presented in four different languages, in response to which a German woman said to a friend with a giggle, “He’s crazy.” Pretty much.

New York Magazine .com / January 22, 2008
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2008/01/andrew_wk_plays_civilized_pian.html

Last Night's Gig: Andrew W.K.
Andrew W.K. plays civilized piano gig

Andrew W.K. introduced his quiet new self in his typically overstated fashion Sunday at Pianos. He didn't wear the sweat-stained whites that are his uniform; he dressed all in black. And he didn't karate-kick out the jams that made him semi-famous (“Party Hard,” “Party Till You Puke,” “It's Time to Party,” etc.); he hunched over a piano hugging stage left. W.K. sprinted through a half-hour of newly penned songs and covers punctuated by the occasional bout of free-form ivory pummeling. There was no head-banging, no mosh pit, and no blood. But once the crowd started thinning in the back, devotees were treated to the payoff they must have seen coming: After a fifteen-second encore, W.K. sat down and tore through “I Get Wet,” leading the crowd through the raucous shout-along chorus they all paid $10 for.