Tilly and the Wall

Music

Noise Pop Diary, Part 2: Tilly and the Wall, She & Him

Last weekend, San Francisco was thoroughly rocked by the 16th installment of the Noise Pop music festival.

Last weekend, San Francisco was thoroughly rocked by the 16th installment of the Noise Pop music festival. For six nights, local favorites played alongside national stars at some of the city's greatest music venues. I had the pleasure of attending four of this year's Noise Pop shows, and this week, I've been letting you in on my Noise Pop diary. I've already told you about seeing The Magnetic Fields and The Mountain Goats and coming across Whispertown2000 for the first time. Today, I'll tell you about my final two shows of the weekend: Tilly and the Wall and She & Him.

Tilly and the Wall, 3/2, The Rickshaw Stop — Here's the biggest thing I learned upon seeing Tilly and the Wall live for the first time: No matter how you feel about the band, you've got to have respect for tap dancer/percussionist Jamie Pressnall. That girl works harder than anyone else, dancing for the full 45-minute set and hollering out the lyrics of the songs to boot. Plus, hearing tapping take the place of drumming live is really something — and it's definitely no gimmick.

The rest of the band seemed to feed off Pressnall's energy, loosening up and getting more and more excited with each song. In addition to playing favorites from their full-length albums Wild Like Children and Bottoms of Barrels — even the ones, like "Rainbows in the Dark," that they weren't 100 percent sure they knew how to play — they broke out several songs from their new album, which is expected to be out in June. One new track, the single "Beat Control," was pure, dancey fun — and I think it bodes well for the album that it was my least-favorite of the new songs.

The highlight, for me, was the first encore song, "Lost Girls." With all their peppiness, it's easy to forget that the Tilly girls are actually great singers, and Kianna Alarid's piercing voice almost made me understand the guy behind me who kept yelling for them to have his babies.

Up next: She & Him, so read more

Music

What's Buzzworthy? Favorite Summer Albums

It's finally starting to feel like summer here in San Francisco, and I love walking down the street wearing sandals and a skirt, listening to some breezy, poppy tunes.

It's finally starting to feel like summer here in San Francisco, and I love walking down the street wearing sandals and a skirt, listening to some breezy, poppy tunes. Some albums seem like they're just meant to be played in the summer, while you're driving with all the windows down or lounging in the park, so I've decided to make summer albums the topic of this week's Buzzworthy challenge.

To start you off, I've compiled a list of some of the albums I keep on frequent rotation during the warmer months, including Bottoms of Barrels by Tilly and the Wall, Sights and Sounds of Summer by the Beach Boys, and The Best of Blondie.

Use Buzzsugar's cool bookmarking tool to bookmark your own and tag them with the phrase summer albums. I'll post some readers' picks here next week. You can also now make a list of your picks. Here are mine:

To find out how to create a Buzzworthy bookmark, read more