Neil Young & the Chrome Hearts - Willie Nelson & Family - Live 2026.09.24 Highmark Mann, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

I missed Neil Young in Berlin last year, although I happened to be on the Teufelsberg that evening and could hear it wafting over. When I listened to a bootleg recording, his voice seemed rough and the band seemed a bit worn out. I was still sad I missed it. It’s usually better in person.

This show was opportune given previously-made travel arrangements. I got lucky, as Neil hasn’t toured in a year, and this was just one of two warm-up shows leading up to Farm Aid. I arrived too late to see any of the opening set from 19-year-old viral country pop star Ty Myers, but I don’t think I missed much. I did have the pleasure of seeing Willie Nelson & Family. Willie is 93 years old and looks and sounds it, but he was still warm and vibrant.

The name of the backing group can be taken literally, in that Nelson’s son Micah now plays guitar and provides backing and even some lead vocals. Waylon Payne, son of longtime Family member Jody Payne, also does the same. The group also includes longstanding members Mickey Raphael (harmonica), Billy English (drums), and Kevin Smith (double bass).

The band did a lot of work to lift up Willie, who is clearly aging, although he still tours regularly. He’s frail, a bit like Johnny Cash on his last albums. His voice is thin but still works. He’s given up on rhythm guitar, but still plays leads on his acoustic. His style has become clipped and loose, but it was still great to see him go for it. Micah and Payne filled in a lot of the gaps. Payne sang lead on two covers and Micah played three songs, one of which he’d cowritten with his dad (“Die When I’m High (Halfway to Heaven)”), a humorous but heartfelt song about Willie’s well-known habit. Another was “Everything Is Bullshit”, a solo song with a darker, heavier edge that still retained a touch of humor, particularly in Willie’s “bullshit” echoes.

The band rolled through songs at an incredible pace. They packed in 21 songs in just over an hour. Micah’s were highlights, but so was the Tom Waits cover “Last Leaf”, a touching song about aging. “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die” made for a rousing crowd singalong. Neil Young came out for his duet part on “Are There Any More Real Cowboys?” (changing a lyric to reference data centers), and Myers and Philly native Kurt Vile came out to sing along on the medley of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” and “I’ll Fly Away”.

I loved the collaborative nature of the set, particularly that the band traded parts and seemed genuinely comfortable and fluid with one another on stage. I wish I’d seen Willie when he was younger and sprier, but this was a noble path for him to take. He’s still the star, but he’s graceful about his band’s support.

[Willie Nelson & Family.]

Neil Young appeared with his recent touring band The Chrome Hearts, which is basically old hand Spooner Oldham and half of Promise of the Real. Ironically that included Micah but not his older brother Lukas, who founded and led POTR. For most of the set, Neil played acoustic guitar or piano, and with Spooner on keys and Micah also frequently on acoustic guitar or piano, they were less intense than when I saw Young with POTR in 2019. They had more of a country rock feel, and at least initially stuck to that side of the back catalog. (When I first saw Neil in Dallas in 2014, he played solo acoustic, so I was happy to witness a different configuration.) Bassist Corey McCormick and drummer Anthony LoGerfo rounded out the band.

“Long May You Run” was a beautiful opener, and “Human Highway” is also one of my favorites. “Comes a Time” was yet another solid classic that I’d not yet seen him do. “Casting Me Away from You” from Neil’s brand-new album Second Songs was written in the 60s well before even Buffalo Springfield, and while it wasn’t too sophisticated, hearing the line “we found things to do in stormy weather” that he later reused in “Long May You Run” was cute. “Earth Girl”, a new song from the new album, was somewhat bland and by-the-numbers.

After some greatest hits, we were treated to a fantastic, rare, full-band version of “After the Gold Rush”, with Neil playing the solo on harmonica. Then he finally picked up his electric guitar (Old Black) and tore into “Powderfinger”. It rocked. Neil played lengthy solos for an extended, roaring rendition. “Roll Another Number” was a delight, with the crowd singing along about as much as they had for “Heart of Gold”. The encore opened with the brooding but still relevant “Living with War”, but Neil lifted the mood by closing on “Rockin’ in the Free World”, this time without multiple fakeout endings.

This was a great show. “Old Man” was just a bit sloppy, and Neil’s voice on “Living with War” was rough, although that kind of fit. Otherwise, they were in strong form. I was worried they’d be out of practice, but they sounded fresh. We also got a longer set than the prior show, and both bands had shorter sets at Farm Aid a couple days later. Willie might be a little worn down, but I appreciated his easygoing charm. And Neil isn’t slowing down at all!

[Neil Young & the Chrome Hearts. Not the best picture, I know.]

Willie Nelson & Family’s setlist:
01. Whiskey River [Johnny Bush cover]
02. Stay a Little Longer [Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys cover]
03. Still Is Still Moving to Me
04. Bloody Mary Morning
05. I Never Cared for You
06. Die When I’m High (Halfway to Heaven) [cowritten and lead vocals by Micah]
07. Workin’ Man Blues [Merle Haggard cover, lead vocals by Waylon Payne]
08. Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys [Ed Bruce cover]
09. Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground
10. On the Road Again
11. You Were Always on My Mind [Gwen McCrae cover]
12. Good Hearted Woman [Waylon Jennings cover]
13. Georgia on My Mind [Hoagy Carmichael and His Orchestra cover]
14. Help Me Make It Through the Night [Kris Kristofferson cover, lead vocals by Waylon Payne]
15. Everything Is Bullshit [Particle Kid cover, lead vocals by Micah]
16. Last Leaf [Tom Waits cover]
17. Are There Any More Real Cowboys? [Neil Young cover, with Neil Young]
18. I Thought About You, Lord [lead vocals by Micah]
19. Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die
20. Will the Circle Be Unbroken? [Ada R. Habershon/Charles H. Gabriel cover] → I’ll Fly Away [Albert E. Brumley cover, with Kurt Vile and Ty Myers]
21. I Saw the Light [instrumental outro; Hank Williams with His Drifting Cowboys cover]

Neil Young & the Chrome Hearts’ setlist:
01. Long May You Run
02. Human Highway
03. Comes a Time
04. Casting Me Away from You
05. Earth Girl
06. Old Man
07. Heart of Gold
08. Daddy Went Walkin’
09. Harvest Moon
10. After the Gold Rush
11. Powderfinger
12. Roll Another Number (For the Road)

Encore:
13. Living with War
14. Rockin’ in the Free World

Scores:
Willie Nelson & Family: B
Neil Young & the Chrome Hearts: A

P.S. This was the first time I’ve ever seen the line to the men’s bathroom far outstretching the one for the women.

P.P.S. Thanks to the Hammons-Murphy family!

Buzz Kull / Kontravoid / Normal Bias - Live 2026.09.20 Saint Vitus, Brooklyn, New York

A friend recommended this show while I was in town and it sounded like a good time. The beloved metal bar has recently reopened in a new space, although this was more of a darkwave night. I failed to pack black and felt conspicuous in a pink top.

Normal Bias opened. I liked their synth-goth atmosphere even if it leaned a little too hard on Depeche Mode. The singer was good and even had Gahan’s powerful baritone. The one other member, less stylish, handled the electronics in the back. I wished there was a little more complexity in their music, but I could move to it.

[Normal Bias.]

After a lengthy DJ break came Kontravoid, a solo synth performer. In a haze of fog machines and delirious strobe lights, he barely touched his desk and mostly just harshly shouted into his mic. The intensity only picked up as he went along. A few songs had hints of pop that were consistently crushed by the aggression. Friends told me this was not what they expected given his studio recordings. I found his industrial jungle too abrasive, although I still could dance to it. What else was there to do? I couldn’t understand the words.

The headliner was Buzz Kull, the solo act of Marc Dwyer. He had a little more personality and balanced the beats better with texture. I heard a bit of Skinny Puppy. Dwyer was more involved in his synth rig and used thick effects on his vocals. I wished I could’ve understood him better, too, but he played the best set of the night. The venue has clearly invested in a good sound (and light) setup, but the perennial problem of unclear vocals was still an issue. Or is that just the genre?

[Buzz Kull.]

Scores:
Normal Bias: B-
Kontravoid: D
Buzz Kull: B

P.S. Thanks to Keagan and Chris!

Emotional Alcemy: An Interview with Laurentius the Profit

I saw Laurentius the Profit perform on a rooftop bar in Tempelhof in May and was immediately stunned by her dexterous, luminous voice. She spoke of an album recorded while living in a cave church in Turkey, and she also had written a book. Both are titled FUCK LIFE — When On High and are available on Bandcamp here. I listened to the album first, and the sound of the cave pulled me in. The beautiful, long reverb rings out her bitter, wandering, entrancing melodies. Listening closer and then reading the book, I could feel pain seeping from her words. I heard a need to escape, to feel real freedom, to find new meanings and a new place in life after a long stretch of darkness. Her work is metaphysical and mysterious, like being caught in a labyrinth you don’t understand any of the rules to, but it searches for patterns and past wisdom to make sense of the world after emerging from a dungeon. I had so many questions, so I reached out for an interview. You can read some of our conversation on Bandcamp Daily here.

International Music / Gregor - Live 2026.08.22 Festsaal Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany

When International Music announced a new show in Berlin without a larger tour announcement, I wondered if this was going to be something special, perhaps a way to introduce new material to gear up for a tour. The former wasn’t the case, and the latter doesn’t appear to be; but it was Peter’s birthday, which received significant musical attention from Pedro and the crowd.

I saw the band last year at Immergut when their 2024 album Endless Rüttenscheid was a little fresher, and they unsurprisingly played quite a bit of the album then. To my surprise, at this show it was just a few songs, about as much as from Ententraum (2021). The real focus was on the debut, Die besten Jahre (2018), from which they played almost the entire album. I suppose that is still the crowd favorite, but I missed the psychedelia of Rüttenscheid.

By and large, the songs they chose were great, so it’s hard to complain. The only real dud was “Tür”, a harder and more aggressive song, although it was apparently specifically requested by email. A few others like “Du Hund” and “Mama warum” didn’t speak to me much and felt a bit indulgent, but “Farbiges Licht”, “Metallmädchen”, and the Rüttenscheid songs were all bangers. I enjoyed the harmonies, particularly on “Country Girl” and “Immer mehr”. The latter also had a great open, jammy feeling that let the musicians explore the space, as did “Lass es ziehen”. I was (naturally) entranced by Pedro’s bass, particularly the great tone he got with just fuzz and chorus pedals.

I could tell the band hadn’t played much lately; they were just a bit loose. That said, it kind of worked. They were clearly having fun and were in an upbeat, playful mood. Even when they missed a line or had to restart “Lass es ziehen”, it didn’t feel like a problem, but rather just part of the spontaneity that kept it lively and engaging. They also acknowledged that a certain Ludwig was adding a tape delay effect to the vocals and guitar from the mixing board. It was really well done and never overpowered the mix or went awry. That was a small thing but it added a little extra spice to the songs.

There was an opener, Gregor, but I didn’t like his simple muzak backing tracks or his half-baked melodies. I struggled to keep my focus. He certainly provided a contrast to International Music’s spark!

[International Music.]

Approximate setlist:
01. Pfeffer
02. Fehler
03. Country Girl
04. Mont St. Michel
05. Cool bleiben
06. Nebel
07. Raus ausm Zoo
08. Du Hund
09. Misery
10. Tür
11. Immer mehr
12. Farbiges Licht
13. Daddy Is Rich
14. Lass es ziehen

Encore 1:
15. Kneipe
16. Liebesformular
17. Metallmädchen

Encore 2:
18. Mama warum
19. Für alles

Scores:
Gregor: D
International Music: A-

P.S. Thanks to Tim!

John Cage Organ Project Halberstadt - 17th Klangwechsel 2026.08.05

In Halberstadt, a sleepy but pretty town in eastern Germany, an organ is playing a 639-year-long rendition of a John Cage composition. It’s not in the big cathedral in the center of town, nor in the other big churches nearby, almost all of which have mighty organs. It’s a little walk further, past the splendid half-timbered houses, in a former Cistercian cloister that was secularized in Napoleon’s wake in 1810. On August 5th, among election campaign posters that spoke of deportation in openly racist terms, most of the sparse pedestrian population appeared to be tourists. Some were there to admire the parts of the city that weren’t bombed to bits in 1945 when the surrounded Nazis wouldn’t surrender, but most came for the same reason I was there: a Klangwechsel, a chord change. The last one was in February 2024. They don’t happen often. The name of the piece is ORGAN²/ASLSP, where “ASLSP” stands for “as slow as possible”, and that instruction is taken quite literally.

[The Burchardi-Kirche.]

I came early with a couple friends who were there for the last one. The night before, we caught the free concert put on by the John Cage Organ Foundation Halberstadt, the volunteer-led organization that keeps the organ running. The last time around, they did a similar event in the cathedral featuring a shorter version of ORGAN²/ASLSP. This time they assembled a myriad cast of musicians and dancers to “set the mood”, as the flyer announced.

First up was Loré Lixenberg, a mezzo-soprano who performed excerpts from Cage’s Song Books along with a backing track. It was highly unpredictable, ranging from dissonant noise to Lixenberg gurgling water and opening a bag of chips on mic to waving a black flag and chanting “the best form of government is no government at all”. She also did a piece of her own, Bird, which started as her explaining birdsong. She gradually sped up her speech and interspersed it with wild flights of whoops and trills, and a backing track of actual birdsong gradually similarly built up to an ecstatic cacophony.

[Sarah Maria Sun and Clara Hyerim Byun.]

The other highlight was soprano Sarah Maria Sun and pianist Clara Hyerim Byun. First, they used found objects, harmonica, synth, and voice to perform selections from Benjamin Scheuer’s Fragwürdige Fragmente, which was arrhythmic, almost atonal, and very silly. They came back later for a straight piano and voice version of “Meine Stadt”, written by local composer Hans Auenmüller, but then veered back hard left into György Ligeti’s Mysteries of the Macabre. The text was described as “half-nonsense”, but that could be said about almost everything I saw on stage. This piece was more physical and theatrical, including Byun ranting while Sun held her hand over Byun’s mouth, and Byun ripping up her sheet music.

Tanz Harz, a local dance company, performed Moving Silence accompanied by a soundtrack of prepared piano pieces by Cage. They danced with a digital timer on stage, which they frequently stared at in fascination or glanced at in curiosity, although the majority of the choreography was constant fluid motion. They seemed to be expressing tension and anxiety about the passage of time.

Otherwise, Gunnar Brandt-Sigurdsson performed parts 3 and 4 of Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonate in an expressive display of human vocal sounds. Moderator Christoph Ogiermann broke the avant-garde flow to sing a set of traditional political songs (Franz Josef Degenhardt, Wolf Biermann, Hanns Eisler and Bertolt Brecht), accompanying himself on piano. The night closed with PSON (Dietmar Gubin), performing a blend of live electronics and pre-recorded material.

[Tanz Harz.]

When I came back the next day for the Klangwechsel, there was excitement in the air. Hours before it opened, there were already people lined up by the entrance to the church, and plenty lounging around the courtyard of the cloister, trying to escape the heat. I could feel the anticipation. Inside the church, video teams set up their rigs, photographers angled for good spots, and I could see I wasn’t the only one recording audio. I could sense something stirring within me, but I was distracted by all the people and activity. The foundation had a little ceremony and thankfully asked everyone to be quiet and just listen for a few moments. I could finally focus and started to feel at peace. Eventually, an elderly organist inserted the new pipe, an A4 (a’). There were already seven pipes in use, including the adjacent A♯4, so the tone was richly complex and mildly dissonant.

[The organ with the pipe to be added.]

After a few more moments, the crowd cheered. I saw lightness, giddiness, and a buzz among the people. Something mystical and strange had happened, and we had witnessed it. Gradually, people filtered out. I stuck around for a while, but there was still too much commotion to fully relax and enjoy it. I sat outside with my friends for a couple hours, listening to the amplified chord projected into the courtyard while we talked to volunteers and other attendees. I heard multiple comparisons to witnessing a total eclipse. Some described it as a religious or spiritual experience.

Eventually, I went back in the church. It was thankfully much quieter. I was immediately transfixed. I was mesmerized. The sound wasn’t particularly loud, but omnipresent and warmly inviting. I stayed inside for about an hour, meditating on the flow of time and the relative insignificance of my existence. For once, I was in no hurry. I didn’t want to leave.

[An installation inside the Cage-Haus.]

I was struck by the playfulness of the entire experience: Cage’s approach to composition, the performances the night before, and the hubris of performing an organ piece for as long as the modern 12-tone keyboard organ has existed. At face value, it’s all comical and absurd. Simultaneously, I found it profound. How slow is “as slow as possible”? Why do we take the passage of time so seriously? What does the future hold? Will humanity even exist in 2640 to see the performance to the end? Isn’t climate catastrophe basically inevitable at this point? Can anarchism (or socialism, or any other ideology) defeat the stranglehold capitalism has on the distribution of wealth and welfare? Why aren’t more disused churches used for fun art projects? What is the meaning of property? What happens if the extremists win the state election?

Okay, you can see how the mind can wander. But one’s environment influences thought. And when I was enveloped by an unceasing, discordant pipe organ drone, I felt on one hand relaxed and deeply connected to the world around me, and on the other starkly at odds and ready to fight. I want to live in a world full of strange and idiosyncratic art. It’s part of human experience, and everyone should have the opportunity to create and witness it. I’m not sure I understood all the music I heard the night before the Klangwechsel, but I don’t care. I think most of the performances would’ve benefited from being about 30% shorter, but can I really complain? It was fun. I laughed. It felt like a set of instructions on how to take things less seriously, while still fighting for what you know is right. Will they still be holding pre-celebratory concerts in a couple hundred years? I hope so. I hope the world isn’t on fire, or underwater, or a nuclear wasteland by then. What other ridiculous things can we get up to in the meantime?

Further Reading and Listening:
My friend Gabe’s piece for The World on PRX
A longer piece by Gabe from the last Klangwechsel
Homepage of the John Cage Organ Project Halberstadt

The Cure / The Twilight Sad - Live 2026.07.11 Parkbühne Wuhlheide, Berlin, Germany

This was my fourth time seeing The Cure, and my first time since moving to Germany. I missed their 2022 show but decided I couldn’t dare miss another opportunity, even though all three nights sold out before I even caught wind of it. Thankfully I managed to get a ticket from the approved reseller with only a slight upcharge!

I biked the whole 19 kilometers to the venue and arrived just as the first band, Just Mustard, was wrapping up. I liked what I could hear, but based on reports from friends, I didn’t miss much. I did catch The Twilight Sad’s set. They’d also opened the last time I saw the Cure in 2016. Unfortunately, they were a bit drowned out by the crowd. The snare was just loud enough that I needed earplugs, but that rendered them quiet and indistinct. I liked the style of noisy rock but couldn’t quite get into it. I enjoyed seeing them last time around more, but it seemed like it wasn’t their fault.

The Cure appeared without bassist Simon Gallup, who was ill. In his stead was his son, Eden Gallup. If you didn’t look too closely, you wouldn’t have known the difference. He might not have had his father’s exuberance, but he could play all the riffs with finesse! They started strong with the wondrous “Plainsong” and then just started charging through the hits. I was surprised that they didn’t play a single song from their last album, Songs of a Lost World (2024), which I really enjoyed. I was looking forward to seeing how it would translate to the stage and disappointed that they didn’t even try.

[The Cure, with Eden Gallup on bass.]

They did play “The Last Day of Summer” from Bloodflowers (2000), which was a welcome deep cut, but otherwise there weren’t a lot of surprises. I mean, they did give us a trio from Pornography (1982), but that was never my favorite album. “Play for Today” with the traditional audience singalong (to the keyboard part!) was fun to finally participate in. There are always plenty of minor setlist variations, but it generally felt like the same show I saw ten years ago, but more predictable. That time around I got two new (still unreleased!) songs and two great b-sides.

While the mix was generally quite good, Reeves Gabrels was oddly low in the mix when he wasn’t playing his annoyingly flashy solos. I still don’t really like his style, so I wasn’t particularly upset, but I felt like some of the songs were missing something. “High”, “Never Enough”, and “Just Like Heaven” in particular were conspicuously missing riffs that really help to make those songs. “High” and “Heaven” were superb anyway, but at some point I realized that the band has arranged their material for six musicians, and they were making do with just five. Perry Bamonte had rejoined the band in 2022, making the band a six-piece for the first time since 1989, but he sadly died last year. Eden had actually joined to fill his position, and he can be seen on the video of their performance at Primavera Barcelona and others. Impressive that he can fill two very different roles, but unfortunate that one was left unfilled for this night!

Regardless, most of the songs fared just fine. Everything recorded before The Top (1984) was performed with just three or four members, so on some songs, I wasn’t even sure how much all the members were really contributing. And as far as the set goes, it’s hard to complain about two and a quarter hours of 27 bangers. They didn’t play a bad song. They might not be the most exciting band, but they’re still a lot of fun, and I’m glad they’re not done.

[The Cure, with green lighting for “A Forest”.]

The Twilight Sad’s setlist (thanks to here):
1. Dead Flowers
2. Designed to Lose
3. VTr
4. Attempt a Crash Landing – Theme
5. Last January
6. There’s a Girl in the Corner
7. And She Would Darken the Memory
8. Waiting for the Phone Call

The Cure’s setlist:
01. Plainsong
02. Pictures of You
03. High
04. Lovesong
05. Burn
06. Fascination Street
07. Never Enough
08. Push
09. In Between Days
10. Just Like Heaven
11. The Last Day of Summer
12. A Strange Day
13. One Hundred Years
14. Cold
15. A Night Like This
16. Play for Today
17. A Forest
18. Shake Dog Shake
19. From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea
20. Disintegration

Encore 1:
21. Lullaby
22. The Walk
23. The Lovecats
24. Friday I’m in Love
25. Close to Me
26. Why Can’t I Be You?
27. Boys Don’t Cry

Scores:
The Twilight Sad: C
The Cure: B

Transchor Plänterwald 2022 @ Casino for Social Medicine

Transchor Plänterwald 2022 will be performing at this fundraiser on July 23! The fun starts at 6pm and we'll sing around 7:30pm. It's at the Casino for Social Medicine, Sonnenallee 100, Berlin-Neukölln.