Alexa Wilding Plays Solo Show at Rockwood Music Hall on Tues., July 27th in Support of New Solo EP

DOWNLOAD: Alexa Wilding - "Black Diamond Day" (from new self-titled EP)

Alexa Wilding just finished a very successful tour with Au Revoir Simone and she is playing a homecoming show at Rockwood Music Hall on Tuesday (set time at 8PM). Alexa will be playing in support of her self-titled debut EP, which was mixed by Fred Smith of Television and features Tim Foljahn (Cat Power, Townes Van Zandt) on additional guitars and lap steel.

The recent tour with Au Revior Simone got great reviews and I particularly liked Nylon Magazine's preview: "Today, Au Revoir Simone announced they'd be joined by the Brooklyn singer-songwriter Alexa Wilding on their summer tour, which means you can see some cool girls with guitars, without having Sarah McLaughlin breathing down your back."

Alexa began her career performing with International Shades, the art-rock project of ex-Pussy Galore/Sonic Youth drummer, Bob Bert, and guitarist Mark C (Live Skull). "My time playing with the Shades is very dear to me. I was like the kid sister the older boys let into the club house! There would be times in practice where I’d wonder, why did they let ME in. I was thrown into a musical landscape very different from my own, and I had to learn, fast, how to swim – all the while playing it REALLY cool. I was too embarrassed to let on how exciting it was to play in a real rock band, opening for my idols like Mudhoney and Genesis P’Orridge, and maybe they thought it was pretty funny that a little girl in a dress had idols like that!" (from a in-depth interview with MeetYouAtTheShow)

Links:
Alexa Wilding

Int'l Shades Live @ Northsix, Brooklyn, Nov. 24, 2006

Int'l Shades (or IS as they are sometimes called) took the stage after The Star Spangles. The band has been around since 2002 but they play this side of the river way too infrequently often.

For anyone who hasn't seen Int'l Shades, last year Time Out NY said this about the band:

"Int'l Shades is the sort of band NYC needs more of - kind of an odd thing to say about a decidedly untrendy quartet of veterans (including Bob Bert, once of Sonic Youth and Pussy Galore, and Mark C of Live Skull.) But when musicians who've been around the block (and not just clockwise, either) set down rough-edged melodic rock songs, their assured nature rips the white belt off the local scene."

Since the Time Out piece was written, the band has added Alexa Georgevich on keyboards and vocals which gives the band more of a Fall like sound (but the band doesn't succumb to any of Mark E. Smith or Brix's excesses).

IS has one release (CD/LP) out on Cass Records. I haven't heard this release but if it is anything like the band's current and past live shows, it is worth picking up.