Mosaic Music Festival 2010: preview

Au Revoir Simone

14 Mar; 7.30pm & 10pm, Esplanade Theatre Studio
If you already know this achingly cool all-gal Brooklyn trio there’s a good chance you first met through a mutual acquaintance: Hot Chip, Neon Indian, Best Fwends, James Yuill, The Teenagers… Nearly every hipster indie outfit has had a crack at an Au Revoir Simone remix in the past couple of years, with the results often received to louder fanfare than the source material could manage – especially in the ephemeral, squat-gobble-spit world of the music blogosphere. Still, it’s certainly not fair to say these part-Mazzy Star, part-Ladytron Casio-synth popstrels owe their success to the borrowed cachet of hip producers. Their most recent album Still Night, Still Light was their best, a standalone triumph pepped with the kind of sparkly, lo-fi, sotto voce atmospherics the Theatre Studio was built for. AB

St. Vincent

15 Mar; 7.30pm & 9.30pm, Esplanade Recital Studio
Yet another Brooklynite, the multi-talented Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens alumna, Annie Clark makes obscure, dark and beguilingly whimsical alt-pop, the kind for which her 2007 Beggars Banquet-released debut Marry Me drew inevitable but deserved comparisons to Kate Bush and, more ambitiously, David Bowie. Actor, her second album as St. Vincent, boosted her left-field art-rock credentials with its contorted instrumental arrangements, subtle pop hooks and catatonic polyrhythmics: Clark deftly flits from the serene to the chaotic with her porcelain coos and racy guitar flourishes (see opening track ‘The Strangers’). Expect songs from both albums, and hopefully her signature Beatles cover ‘Dig a Pony’. AB

Dinosaur Jr.

16 Mar; 8pm, Esplanade Theatre
A cornerstone of the late-1980s US alternative scene, Massachusetts’ heavy folk/rock trio never broke sales records, but had famous fans – most notably Kurt Cobain. Led by hobbit- esque J Mascis, Dinosaur Jr brought together the grunge formula of punk-rock trio, Neil Young-style vocals and muddy melodic guitar long before America smelled teen spirit. The title of its breakout album, You’re Living All Over Me, also expressed perfectly how the other founding members – bassist Lou Barlow and drummer Murph – felt about Mascis. Both quit, and from 1991’s Green Mind Dinosaur was virtually a solo project for the frontman (Barlow formed Sebadoh). 1994 hit ‘Feel the Pain’ summed up for many the end of grunge’s brief but bright promise, but a decade of greying hair healed some wounds, and the original trio reunited for 2007’s Beyond, delivering another wave of bittersweet vocals and pleasantly ear-numbing guitar noise. Those who loved Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged in New York shouldn’t miss this. LC

The Go! Team

17 Mar; 7.30pm & 18 Mar; 10pm, Esplanade Theatre Studio
One of the biggest surprises in indie music over the past ten years is that The Go! Team are a good live act. Not just good, but brilliantly energetic, kickass, crash-bang-wallop awesome. Their two albums Proof of Youth and Thunder, Lighting Strike are laden with nostalgic laptop samples, heavily produced ’60s doo-wop vocals, engineered trumpet lines and fuzzy, home-recorded guitar riffs – so how did it ever work live? Band founder Ian Parton assembled a stage-friendly outfit in just under three weeks, his masterstroke coming in the form of lead vocalist Ninja – a super-charismatic party provocateur who will no doubt have crowds attempting her infectious, cheerleader-style dance routines. Not to be missed. AB

Kings of Convenience

18 & 19 Mar; 7.30pm, Esplanade Concert Hall
Cult curios Camera Obscura, Patrick Watson and Stars packing auditoria to the rafters, while Green Day take weeks to fill a small stadium? Yep, Singaporean tastes sure are tough to predict. Similarly, this Norwegian duo has struck a comedown-friendly chord with mellowed-out indie hipsters, making Friday’s gig the first Mosaic show to sell out. Deceptively geeky Erlend Øye has dabbled in chilled electro and cosied up with Röyksopp, and he’s no stranger to our city, having ‘rocked’ Zouk with The Whitest Boy Alive. With psychology graduate Eirik Glambek Bøe he’s fashioned three albums of gently autumnal acoustica, 2009’s Declaration of Dependence nestling in a comfy hinterland somewhere between Simon & Garfunkel’s close-harmony pop, Belle & Sebastian’s jazz-flecked indie and José González’s soft-focus folk. JE

Vashti Bunyan

19 Mar; 11pm, Esplanade Concert Hall
Here’s an unlikely comeback story to rival that of lost-in-action oddballs Sixto ‘Sugar Man’ Rodriguez and Os Mutantes. Free-spirited warbler Vashti Bunyan fell under the spell of Bob Dylan in New York, wowed Stones svengali Andrew Loog Oldham in Swinging London and with Nick Drake/REM producer, Joe Boyd, cut Just Another Diamond Day, her fey trilling a delicate hybrid of Sandy Denny and pre-heroin Marianne Faithfull. And then? Total obscurity for 31 years, until the album’s re-issue sparked a fanatical cult. Suddenly the toast of the nu-folk set, Bunyan recorded with Animal Collective and Devendra Banhart and finally crafted a gorgeous follow-up, Lookaftering. Her legend sealed, she’s happily no mere footnote (pardon the pun) in folk’s annals. Sixties pixies should sink a Red Bull first, though – mystifyingly, she’s not on until 11pm. JE

Kool & the Gang

20 Mar; 7.30pm, Esplanade Concert Hall
When these loveable NYC perennials hit payola in the mid-’80s, new fans were startled to find they’d already been together for twenty years. Like shape-shifting peers The Bee Gees and Fleetwood Mac they’ve charted across several decades and genres, gradually mutating from jazzy R&B, via James Brown-style, horn-heavy funk, to the James ‘JT’ Taylor-fronted pop balladry of ‘Joanna’ and ‘Cherish’. Now in its 46th year, Robert ‘Kool’ Bell’s gang has straddled the entire history of modern soul along the way – taking in such brilliantly named acolytes as Eumir Deodato, ‘Funky’ George Brown and Earl Toon Jr – and with its exhortations to celebrate good times, put smiles on countless millions of faces. For this booty-shakin’, pan-generational jungle boogie, it’s only appropriate that we get down on it. JE