[JAM] Central New Tork based jammy folk band, Floodwood, return to Buffalo for a show at Buffalo Ironworks on Thursday, December 7. Featuring Vinnie Amico of moe on the drums, the three piece band jams hard on bluegrass, country, rock, and jazz inspired sounds during their entertaining live shows. PA Line opens the show.
[INDIE] The hidden indie-rock gem of a show you’re looking for this weekend is happening this Saturday, December 9 at Nietzsche’s. Yace Booking has a line up of four solid indie rock bands that range from electronic tinged to garage rock and powerpop. Synth pop band Humble Braggers, Rochester-based experimental pop band Kopps, garage rock band Ugly Sun, and indie rockers The Demos make for a powerful line up you won’t want to miss this weekend.
[JAZZ] There’s a universal consensus that A Charlie Brown Christmas is the best Christmas album of all time. That’s simply a fact. Now, Buffalo jazz band The Ed Croft Trio will recreate that magical holiday album by the Vince Guaraldi Trio at a special show at Pausa Art House this Saturday, December 8.
[HOLIDAY] This isn’t your typical Horton show. This is the Horton’s Holiday Hayride, a roots-rockabilly Christmas spectacle featuring the one and only Reverend Horton Heat. The psychobilly-superstar brings his holiday show, complete with support from Arizona-based surfy, honky tonk act Junior Brown, to the Tralf Music Hall on Thursday, December 7.
[ROCK] Canadian alt-rock band Headstones make a return to Buffalo for a show at the Town Ballroom on Friday, December 8. The band, which formed in Kingston, Ontario in 1987 plays a raw, punk-inspired brand of grungy rock and roll exemplified on albums like their 1993 debut, Picture of Health. In 2003, the band went on hiatus, and after almost a decade reunited. Since then, the band has released four studio albums, including this year’s Little Army.
[POP PUNK] Emo haircuts may have faded from the mainstream, but Simple Plan still remain, 18 years later. This year, the Quebec based band, lead by vocalist Pierre Bouvier, is celebrating the 15th anniversary of their debut record, the quintessential pop punk album, No Pads, No Helmets… Just Balls. The album, which features Mark Hoppus of Blink 182 and Joel Madden of Good Charlotte became a pop-punk staple when it was released in 2002.
[HARDCORE] This year marks the 20th anniversary of metalcore band Hatebreed’s debut album Satisfaction is the Death of Desire, and the 15th anniversary of their follow up, Perseverance. Formed in Connecticut in 1994, the band’s only remaining original members are lyricist and vocalist Jamey Jasta, and bass guitarist Chris Beattie, but their line up has stayed consistent for at least the last decade, which has been a pretty fruitful for the band, who released their seventh studio album, Concrete Confessional last year.
[HIP HOP] There’s no mistaking Lil Pump’s single “Gucci Gang” for anything else. The young rapper repeats the single’s title and hook, the words “Gucci gang,” 53 times over the course of the two minute and ten second song, which averages out to aboutonce every 2.4 seconds. That’s one way to hammer in an idea for a rapper who probably doesn’t want to be confused with the similarly named and recently deceased Lil Peep.
[POETRY] There’s a new poetry collection in town that attempts to capture the city’s newest generation of verse-composers and mythmakers. My Next Heart, from BlazeVOX Books is coming out for a little party next Wednesday at Mohawk Place. Readers include Janet McNally, Joe Hall, Eve Williams Wilson, Rachelle Toarmino, Paige Melin, Julio Montalvo Valentin, Tom Dreitlein, and Nathanael William Stolte.
[ELECTRONIC/DANCE] Bass music producer, Illenium, is relatively new to the scene, dropping his debut studio album, Ashes in early 2016. The producer has gained a pretty massive following in only the last few years, however, due to his brand of soaring, emotional, and poppy bass music. Hailing from Denver, Colorado by way of San Francisco, Illenium, real name Nick Miller, unleashes a complex live set that combines mixing and live instrumentation in a wholly mesmerizing way.
[GOTH] To celebrate their two year anniversary, the Cold Wave at the Cat Wave folks are shipping in the New York City based darkwave band, NØIR to headline the show at Mohawk Place on Friday December 8. Lead by Athan Maroulis, the industrial electro group released their latest EP, Reburning, in October on the Philadelphia based label, Metropolis Records. As usual, expect some synthy, dark underground music from the last 30 years or so from DJs Collin Gabriel and Nicholas Reid late into the night.
[RALLY] The regulation which keeps internet services relatively free of corporate influence is under serious threat by the Trump administration’s Federal Communications Commission, headed by Buffalo-born Ajit Pai. The peel back of the consumer-friendly regulation in favor of corporate profits would endanger the free, open, and frankly democratic internet we have now.
[INDIE] In the next few week’s you’ll inevitably begin to see The National’s latest record, Sleep Well Beast, pop up on year-end best-of lists. The album, the band’s seventh since forming in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1999 is a dramatic, dark, and lush confessionary achievement. Critics and fans alike have recognized this, and for that reason, the band has been selling out venues across the country—and Buffalo is no exception.
[ROCK] A solid line up of underground punk and rock n roll bands are lined up for a gig at Electric Avenue this Friday, December 8. Catch Toronto-based rock band Tough Age, and Buffalo’s Uniform (OPR), Little Summer, and Slinky x for this “important punk gig.”
[TECHNO] Ugly up that Christmas sweater, because you’ll need it for the next edition of Pyramid, the monthly techno at the Gypsy Parlor. This time around DJs Kyle Moody, Charlie Abbott, and Nate Howell b2b Chad Lock will lock down the dance floor with a hypnotic flow of techno and tech house sounds while decked out in their ugliest, tackiest holiday sweaters. If you don’t have one, get to work finding one and make sure it’s a sweater you won’t mind getting covered in taco sauce. That’s because the Gypsy Parlor is serving up free tacos until midnight.
[HIP HOP] Any in-the-know hip hop fan would rank New York City-based OG hip hop producer Large Professor among the most important early 1990s hip hop producers. His production work on A Tribe Called Quest’s “Keep it Rollin,” from their 1993 album Midnight Marauders with its dubby upright bass and rattleclaps add a shadowy, atmospheric, and grooving style to an album that permeated hip hop for years afterward. The next year, in 1994, he contributed four tracks to Nas’ seminal album, Illmatic, alongside producers like Pete Rock, Q-Tip, and DJ Premier.
Artist Lara Buckley is best known as a musician, whose songs and singing nearly defy description.