The Best Concerts of the Year (So Far)

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Landing a first headlining slot at the Hollywood Bowl is a cherished milestone for any major musical acts who claim Los Angeles as their home base. It can even mean a little more, probably, when it’s a sibling jubilee. Last summer, it was a homecoming-queens coronation for the Haim sisters, who got the honor a mere nine years into their professional career. This year, the Bowl debut honor for cherished locals goes to the Mael brothers, who only had to wait 52 years for their own crowning gig. What’s five decades among friends and family … everybody loves a slow build, right? The brothers would never be mistaken for rank sentimentalists, but Sunday night’s Sparks show might have brought a hint of a tear to a waggish eye, knowing it was a boyhood dream. Or at least when Ron and Russell Mael’s mom brought them to see the Beatles at the venue in 1965, it was “probably some good education,” as Russell allowed near the beginning of the show. At the Bowl Sunday, Mom was likely not around, but they did have the closest thing they’ve probably had lately to a surrogate parent, director Edgar Wright, whose consciousness-raising documentary “The Sparks Brothers” can be loosely said to have kind of nurtured them across a sort of finish line. (The show-closing photo seen above, plus some video snippets below, are courtesy of Wright’s backstage camera.)

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic If country music used to pride itself on being about “three chords and the truth,” the increasingly belligerent superstar Jason Aldean has a different idea of what the genre should represent: two chords and a beating, or maybe a shotgun blast. Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” is close to being the most cynical song ever written about the implicit moral superiority of having a limited number of neighbors, which is saying something, given how many attempts to write the Great American Small Town Anthem are generated in a single year. At least most of the others at least put up the appearance of celebrating local pride, not prejudice. But for Aldean, it’s about how tiny burgs are under the imminent threat of attack from lawless urban marauders who will have to be kept at bay by any means necessary — meaning, pretty explicitly, vigilantism.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The Who has released boxed sets commemorating many of the albums from the band’s storied discography, but never the coveted one that would celebrate the release that some fans consider the crown jewel of the catalog, “Who’s Next.” That changes Sept. 15 with “Who’s Next/Life House Super Deluxe Edition,” a 10-CD/1-Blu-Ray set that will include 155 tracks, 89 of them previously unreleased, plus spatial audio and surround mixes. The expansive set will hark back to the legendary origins of “Who’s Next,” the band’s follow-up to “Tommy,” as what was originally designed by Pete Townshend as a concept album in its own right, “Life House,” before it shifted gears to become a more traditional, non-narrative rock album.

Fairwell Festival is rolling into Redmond, OR’s Deschutes County Fairgrounds and Expo Center for three days of country and roots music.The biggest names on the bill this year include Willie Nelson, Zach Bryan, Sheryl Crow, Turnpike Troubadours and Gary Clark Jr.Other stars set to perform over the three-day weekend include Trampled By Turtles, Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats, Mt. Joy, Morgan Wade and Band of Horses.Don’t forget indie darlings Lucius either.Fairwell truly went all-out for their first-ever fest.And if you want to be part of the action, it’s not too late to scoop up last-minute tickets.At the time of publication, we found three-day passes going for $483 before fees on Vivid Seats.While that may sound high, we’re happy to report that single-day passes start at $46 before fees.Looking for a bit more information before committing to tickets?Slow your scroll.We’ve got everything you’re looking for and more about the 2023 Fairwell Festival below.All prices listed above are subject to fluctuation.A breakdown of all the best prices on single-day and three-day passes for the 2023 Fairwell Festival can be found right here:(Note: The New York Post confirmed all above prices at the publication time.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Taylor Swift is setting some high chart benchmarks with the release of her “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” album. Not only has it debuted at No. 1 with the biggest numbers of the year so far for any release, but it’s one of four albums she now has in the top 10 of the album chart. According to Billboard, that’s the first time a woman has done that in the entire six-decade history of there being an album chart — and she’s one of only three artists to ever accomplish the feat. Swift also set a record for the female artist with the most No. 1 albums in history: She now has a dozen, moving ahead of Barbra Streisand, with whom she was formerly tied with 11 each.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic It’s not many tours that take a complete left turn from the style, content and tone of how they started with just a few dates left on the itinerary before everyone heads home. That’s coasting time. Yet that’s exactly what happened with the final six shows on Elvis Costello & the Imposters’ “We’re All Going on a Summer Holiday Tour,” where no one who saw any of the first 17 gigs on the outing would have much recognized how things transpired in the final half-dozen. It was all due to the transformative presence of a three-man horn section, which the advertising had accurately promised would only be showing up for the tour coda. What was unexpected was just how thoroughly Costello retooled the whole show to build it around these new brass arrangements, discarding certain set staples and adding new ones to show just what different flavors could be realized with horns o’ plenty.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The vinyl boom is not going bust anytime soon. In the first half of 2023, vinyl LP sales were up 21.7% from the same period the year before, a robust vote of confidence for the format that has dominated album sales in recent years. That’s one of the findings in Luminate’s Midyear Music Report, being released by the leading data company today. That the vinyl format would be experiencing some kind of growth is not a surprise in and of itself is not a surprise. After all, 2022 marked the 17th consecutive year that vinyl saw a rise, so it was perhaps inevitable that 2023 would keep the streak going. Yet the whopping growth rate over the last six months is reassuring after, last year at this time, Luminate’s study showed the format had then only risen by 1%, leading some to believe the market had found its natural plateau after explosive bursts of quarantine buying that caused a 108% increase in 2021. This latest uptick is proving that a raging pandemic isn’t required for the avid interest in LPs to expand further still.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Will he turn an audience of 2023 theatergoers into screaming bobbysoxxers? That remains to be seen, but a bio-musical about the life of Frank Sinatra, “Sinatra the Musical,” has found an actor to play the late superstar in a premiere production set to open in the U.K. in just over two months. Tony winner Matt Doyle landed the prize role of Ol’ Blue Eyes in the show, opening in Birmingham Sept. 28 for a tryout run of just over a month. The musical is being presented by Birmingham Rep in association with Universal Media Group Theatrical and Frank Sinatra Enterprises, with an eye, obviously, toward a life far beyond England. Michele Anthony, executive VP of Universal Music Group), and Bruce Resnikoff, president-CEO of Universal Music Enterprise, are producing on behalf of Universal Music Group Theatrical.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The Global Citizen Festival will return to Central Park Sept. 23 for another ticketed-but-free concert, with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Ms. Lauryn Hill set as the day’s headliners. Megan Thee Stallion, Conan Gray and Stray Kids are also on the day’s bill.  As always, tickets to the show on the Great Lawn are free, but require fulfilling a task as part of the international advocacy organization Global Citizen’s initiative to raise awareness about hunger, poverty, climate change and inequities facing women around the world, among pressing related concerns. The broadcast component will be produced by Done and Dusted; broadcast partners have not yet been announced. The show is being presented by  by Citi and Cisco. 

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Taylor Swift really went back to December when it came to casting the music video for her just-released song “I Can See You.” Released late Friday night, the video stars an ex-boyfriend of many, many years back, “Twilight” star Taylor Lautner, along with Joey King, Presley Cash and Swift herself. The number of meta reunions happening simultaneously nearly required extra parts of Swifties’ brains to immediate calculate as the multiple surprises unfolded live and on video. King and Cash have their own history with the star, having co-starred in the “Mean” video once upon a time. All three co-stars made a appearance at Swift’s show at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri on Friday, letting the live audience see it right as it was going out into the wider world. Although it had been rumored that Swift was working on something with the three, the surprise premiere marked the first real confirmation that anything between them was afoot.

Madonna took off into the stratosphere with “Lucky Star” and other hits from her self-titled debut album — released 40 years ago on July 27, 1983 — the then-24-year-old hopeful had received some clairvoyant reinforcement regarding her future as the Queen of Pop.“She had actually gone to a psychic, and she told me, ‘Just watch what’s gonna happen,’” Paul Pesco — who played guitar on both “Lucky Star” and “Burning Up”  — told The Post.“She told me this in rehearsals one day, and it was like the equivalent of Bette Davis saying, ‘Fasten your seatbelts …’ I mean, she kind of knew it.”That would give prophetic meaning to “I Know It” — one of five songs that a young Madonna Louise Ciccone of Michigan wrote by herself for an eight-track classic that would get generations of future dance-pop divas into the groove. Possessing neither the gospel grandeur of an Aretha Franklin or the folky feels of a Joni Mitchell, Madonna — who was set to commemorate the 40th anniversary of her debut with her “Celebration” tour launching on July 15 until the Material Girl, 64, was sidelined by a serious bacterial infection two weeks ago — made her own path, as the mother of a pop reinvention.After the so-called death of disco as the ’70s twirled to an end, Madonna reclaimed the dance floor in a whole new way.“We really felt that if we were to combine disco and R&B and new wave, we would have something really cool,” said Michael Rosenblatt, Madonna’s original A&R man at Sire Records.

Diecast, Manchester’s newest venue, opened last night debuting its new style of pizza, dry-aged burgers, a huge outdoor space, frozen daiquiris and a raised runway for hedonistic nights out this summer.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Sorry, Hayley Williams and Fall Out Boy: Marjorie has stolen the show again. Not that Taylor Swift’s beloved grandmother actually puts in a vocal appearance from the great beyond, as she did on the “Evermore” album three years ago. But Marjorie Finlay still manages to be a dominative force in the Vault Tracks for the newly released “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version),” by having her photos appear throughout the lyric video for the closing track, “Timeless,” and having her relationship with Taylor’s granddad be a focus of the inspirational ballad. Twenty-first-century pop-punk or emo can hardly compete with that emotional a capper. But for those less sentimentally inclined, Paramore’s singer and Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump will be way up there in what Swift fans immediately take away from the six previously unheard compositions that have been appended to the previous 16-track running order of 2010’s “Speak Now.” The duet with Williams, “Castles Crumbling,” is particularly pungent, as a lament that just about could have been an outtake from the more recent “Folklore” or “Evermore” instead of an album that came out a full decade before those. As for the FOB-aided track, it’s the farthest thing from a Swift classic. But — having been written, like the rest of these tracks, when the artist was 18 or 19 — the number does hark back to an era when girls (and Fall Out Boys) could just wanna have fun.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic A lot of people who go back in country music, be it the fans or even some who work in the industry in Nashville, refuse to call the CMA Music Festival anything other than “Fan Fair,” the name the annual event had in the far more humble ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. That’s the era when it took place out amid the pungent aromas of Nashville’s fairgrounds, not in and around a downtown stadium. Rather than resist that nostalgia for a quainter era, the CMA indulged it this year by selling vintage-looking T-shirts at merch booths — which, by the way, Country Music Association CEO Sarah Trahern says sold quite well. The festival is definitely embracing its past by including that former moniker in the title of a new documentary, “CMA Fest: 50 Years of Fan Fair,” premiering on Hulu today.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic European Taylor Swift fans won’t have to look closely at the fine print on a grid to figure out who will be opening for her on which nights on the “Eras Tour” next year, as American fans did this year. Swift revealed Wednesday that Paramore will be preceding her on stage for her entire European tour. Additionally, she announced that 14 shows have been added to the lineup, all representing second, third, fourth or even sixth nights in cities that were already on the itinerary for May through August of 2024. “Really can’t contain my excitement because… we’re adding 14 new shows to The Eras Tour,” Swift wrote on social media. “And I get to travel the world doing shows with Paramore!! Hayley and I have been friends since we were teens in Nashville and now we get to frolic around the UK/Europe next summer??? I’m screaming???”

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic “What is that?” Neil Young asked toward the end of his solo-tour-opening show Friday night at the Ford amphitheater in the Hollywood hills, referring to a strange, seemingly distant but quite audible sound that occasionally punctuated his songs or commentary. “Are you hearing that all night?” This was not an audio hallucination; the fairly intimate crowd of 1,200 was privy to it, too, and some had been looking up earlier to see if it might be a mighty wind causing a whoosh in the scenically placed palm trees over the stage. It was not. “It’s One Direction!” someone in the audience finally shouted — not quite getting it right, but on point in alluding to the source of the noise, intermittent crowd roars from a Louis Tomlinson concert at the Hollywood Bowl, just on the other side of the 101. “How do you like my new band?” Young finally quipped, before getting back to business, resigning himself to the stray sound effects.

Without a doubt the Lake District is one of the most beautiful landscapes you’ll find in the country. It has rugged mountains, green valleys, and of course, breathtaking lakes.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic In “Into the Woods,” the audience laughs at the gluttony of the Little Red Ridinghood character, especially in the earliest, most deliberately cartoony parts of the production. But in a sense, the crowd is getting off on gorging, as well, since this is the ultimate having-your-cake-and-eating-it-too show. Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine weren’t too proud to cook up their 1987 classic with copious amounts of Mad magazine-style spoofery — or Looney Tunes-level laughs, even — and yet you can feel like those seemingly empty calories are justified, knowing you’ll be gulping back salty tears by the end. “Into the Woods” is as overstuffed with characters and ideas as any musical ever has been, but if everyone does their job right, you leave feeling like you’ve just been fed a perfectly balanced meal, and not a morsel more.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Is it heresy to say that one of the greatest albums of all time just got a little bit better, 57 years after the fact? Possibly, but it doesn’t feel like too strong a statement to make after hearing the just-released Dolby Atmos mix of the Beach Boys’ 1966 classic “Pet Sounds,” as played back in one of the most state-of-the-art Dolby rooms in the world. It’s going to sound different under other listening circumstances, of course, whether the spatially immersive mix is being heard in a home with dozens of carefully calibrated speakers or through one of the all-in-one Atmos boxes that are now coming out. But what’s almost certain is that any status Brian Wilson’s masterpiece might’ve had as your own personal pet project is only going to be elevated with a lusher and richer audio interpretation of the work.

Todd Gilchrist editor Nestled into a cozy corner of a shopping center high in the Hollywood hills, Herb Alpert’s jazz club Vibrato Grill was the site of a coronation Sunday for not one but three musical luminaries. The Jazz Foundation of America honored 10-time Grammy-winning composer and pianist Dave Grusin, saxophonist Charles Lloyd and trailblazing music executive Clarence Avant at a benefit to raise proceeds for jazz, blues and R&B musicians facing financial hardship due to unemployment, illness or old age. Though host Quincy Jones was unable to attend due to unspecified health issues of his own, he and the JFA assembled a program of speakers and performers for an evening of celebration and song that the phrase “star-studded” barely does adequate justice.