It has been excessively quiet in Lazy-i land over the past week. I’ve spent this down time writing the annual Year in Review and 2021 Predictions articles for The Reader, which will be out in January. Seems like a long time to wait, considering every other publication already has posted/printed their year-end “best of” lists.

Pitchfork, the self-inflicted arbiter of hipster taste dipsticks, published its top-50 list last week. Pitchfork is more of an electronic/hip-hop review website these days based on these numbers, and no doubt that’s a reflection of indie’s ever-changing shift in direction. And yet, there’s still plenty of indie and pop to go around on this list — Taylor Swift at no. 29; Soccer Mommy at No. 26. And so on.

Who am I kidding. Pitchfork sneaks a few obscure albums on their list every year to appear to be hip, but in the end, it’s the same ol’ story. Topping the Pitchfork list was Fiona Apple, who is topping a lot of lists this year, followed by by Waxahatchee and gospel-tinged art rocker Moses Sumney on Jagjaguwar. Phoebe Bridgers, our pandemic It Girl, came in at No. 4.

Stereogum published its top-50 list three weeks ago. Fiona Apple, was again at the top, followed by Waxahatchee and Run the Jewels, with HAIM at No. 4 followed by Taylor Swift. Poor Phoebe was pushed all the way back to No. 28!

Consequence of Sound has become more rabid about its reviews these days. They try to be edgy, but they’re just as predictable. No. 1, Fiona Apple; No. 2 Run the Jewels; No. 3 Phoebe Bridgers. Waxahatchee drops to No. 6 on their list, right about the new Deftones album. Maybe they’re not that edgy after all. In fact, flipping through their list, it’s easily the most pop-centric of the bunch.

It’s here that we look at the aggregate site Album of the Year, which combines reviews from all the websites, assigns points for where an album falls on a list and then adds them up to come up with its rankings.

With that in mind, it should be no surprise that Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters was No. 1, with 444 points; Phoebe Bridges was a distant No. 2 with 364 points; followed by Run the Jewels RTJ4 at No. 3 with 304 points; Taylor Swift at No. 4 with 246 points and Duo Lipa at No. 5 with 223 points (I don’t get Duo Lipa having watched her on SNL and discarding her as a Katy Perry wannabe).

Missing from all these lists is the new Bright Eyes album, Down in the Weeks Where the World Once Was. It certainly got a lot of attention when it came out, but not nearly the push that Phoebe Bridgers got for her release on the same label.

According to Album to the Year, BE’s album did have some year-end lists appearances: No. 5 on The Sunday Times list, No. 9 on NBHAP, No. 10 on DIY; No. 12 on The Forty-Five; No. 21 on Double J; No. 40 on Slant Magazine and No. 45 on Uncut. Its year-end Album of the Year aggregate ranking was No. 267. Well.

BTW, the Gordon album I’m listening to is the three-song live set recorded at O’Leaver’s way back in 2014. I don’t know whatever happened to Gordon, but I can give you this holiday tip if you’re looking for something to listen to while wrapping gifts: Check out Live at O’Leaver’s. Within a few minutes of perusing the site you’ll be falling down the rabbit hole back to a simpler time when we all listened to live music surrounded by convicted felons and other assorted drunken miscreants. I miss O’Leaver’s. I might have to swing by at lunchtime and get a cheeseburger…

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily (if there’s news) at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2020 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Peach Kelli Pop plays tonight at Reverb Lounge.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Omaha readers already know that it would be a good idea to stay away from social media today, as all channels are being flooded with Omaha Gives solicitations.

Every year for one day every non profit in Omaha comes to Facebook and Twitter with hand in hat begging for cash to get them through the year. Fact is Omaha Gives is an effective way for them to raise money. Look, would you rather have someone asking for donations just once a year or all year long?

My advice: Jot down your list of favorite charities, bite the bullet and make your donations. Then step away from the chatter for the rest of the day. Kind of like turning off NPR during their semi-annual fund drives (after you’ve made your pledge, of course).

That said, if you’re a music fan and you’re looking for a good 501(c)(3) organization to give to, you’d be hard pressed to find a better organization than Hear Nebraska. I say this not only because I’m a founding board member of HN, but because no other non-profit does more for local music than Hear Nebraska.

HN’s sole purpose is to promote Nebraska bands and music. That’s it. If you’re in a band, consider HN your personal PR agency. It’s there to help you get people to come to your shows and buy your music. It does this through hearnebraska.org — a website that covers local bands and musicians with in-depth feature articles, interviews, videos and photos taken at performances (lots of them). The site also has the most comprehensive gig calendar for Omaha and Lincoln you can find anywhere online. HN also organizes a shit-load of programming featuring Nebraska bands all year long throughout the state.

Has Hear Nebraska ever:

— written about your band?
— covered one of your shows?
— posted photos from one of your gigs?
— promoted your upcoming concert on its calendar?
— booked your band to play one of its many programming events?

Or have you ever gone to an event sponsored by, organized by — or that you heard about from — Hear Nebraska?

Then, come on, take a second and click this link and donate to Hear Nebraska during Omaha Gives. Minimum donation is $10 — less than the price of a single movie ticket. That donation will help HN continue to promote Nebraska bands and musicians.

Do it.

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This morning Live @ O’Leavers announced via Facebook the reason why they haven’t released any new live recordings lately. The reason:

“...during an electrical storm, we happened to lose both our main and backup drives which we thought were safe as they were stored at separate locations. This means nearly everything from July to February has been lost.”

Well, not lost entirely. The data still may exists, but it’ll cost just north of $900 for a data recovery outfit to try to get the sessions back.

Among those lost sessions are live recordings of performances from Cursive, Beach Slang, Lithuania, Mike Schlesinger, Bib, Bus Gas, So So Sailors, All Dogs, Whispertown, The Subtropics, Wet Nurse, The Ridgeways, Super Moon, The Vahnevants, Brilliant Beast, Bellum Boca, Sucettes, Lithuania, Ex-Breathers, Boytoy, Eagle Seagull, Megafauna, Lineman’s Rodeo, Sean Pratt and The Sweats, Sharkmuffin, The Olympics, Tara Vaughan, MXMW, Ecstatic Vision, Pleiades and the Bear, The Sunks, Hag, Ocean Black and a ton more. As many as 85 sessions.

That’s a massive chunk of live recordings. O’Leaver’s doesn’t charge listeners for the service, so there ain’t no money to pay for the data recovery. What money they do have to invest in the Live @ O’Leaver’s project has gone toward making sure this kind of massive data crash never happens again.

“We have a better redundancy system in place now; multiple backups of each session spread across five drives placed in multiple locations and a cloud backup of the entire shebang. All told, we have over 11 terabytes of data since the February restart,” said Ian Aeillo, who does all the work surrounding Live @ O’Leaver’s.

Ian says new sessions could begin going online next week, hopefully. To whet your appetite, Ian posted the following recording from local super group Healer, recorded last October before the troubles, appropriately titled “Rainy Day Song.”

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Tonight at Reverb Lounge it’s Peach Kelli Pop. Read my 10 Questions interview with frontwoman Allie Hanlon from yesterday. Should be a high-energy show. Opening is The Way Out. $8, 9 p.m.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2016 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Kat and Nik Fackler

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Omaha filmmaker/musician Nik Fackler has been putting his nose to the grindstone working on a number of new film projects. He just finished a script about the music industry, which is in the hands of his agent at William Morris as well as iconic actor Martin Landau, who starred in Fackler’s first feature film, Lovely, Still.

In this month’s Over the Edge column, Nik talks about his film projects, his music (with Icky Blossoms) and working with his wife, Kat, who will be performing this Saturday night at Kaneko (where Nik also will be debuting yet another new film project). The column is in the new  issue of The Reader, on newsstands now, and online right here. Check it out.

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I’m rolling around in my head whether I should buy tickets to tomorrow night’s God Speed You! Black Emperor show at Slowdown. One Percent Productions just posted a “low ticket warning,” saying only 15 percent of tickets remain before it sells out. Here’s the deal: Advance tickets are $22 plus $4.15 service fee for a total of $26.15 right now; or I can wait until tomorrow and get tickets for $25 at the box office.  Do I roll the dice?

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Last week Live @ O’Leaver’s released a handful of new sessions on their illustrious website. Links to these quality recordings are below. Consider them a precursor to what I’ve been told will be three new mammoth sessions to be uploaded to the L@O site this week. Is O’Leaver’s trying to break the Internet?

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2016 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Thanks to everyone who emailed, Tweeted and Facebooked an entry into the drawing for a copy of the Lazy-i Best of 2015 Comp CD. This was the largest number of entries received in years!

One winner was randomly picked from each entry format. And the winners are:

Paul Eicher, Omaha – email entry
Bo Anderson, Houston, MO, Twitter entry
Caroline Borolla, Los Angeles, Facebook entry

Your CDs will be in the mail in the coming days. Thanks for playing, and for reading Lazy-i.

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The latest batch of super-exclusive Live at O’Leaver’s recordings hit the internet this morning, headlined by Head of Femur, a smoking set recorded live back on Oct. 4. Also this week, Austin band Xetas and Mint Wad Willy — talk about your variety pack. Check it out below:

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Jazz dude Luke Polipnick says goodbye to Omaha tonight via a special concert by The Delve Trio at Pageturners. Where he’s going is anyone’s guess. The free show starts at 8 p.m.

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Tomorrow, we gaze into the crystal ball at 2016 music predictions!!! Don’t miss it.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2016 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Miniature Horse at Reverb Lounge, Jan. 17, 2015. They play tonight at O’Leaver’s.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

The next trio of Live at O’Leaver’s recordings went online this morning. Check them out below.

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Tonight at fabulous O’Leaver’s it’s the return of Anna McClellan. The singer/songwriter just released a new collection of songs called Fire Flames on hip, cassette/digital-only label Majestic Litter, and it’s a scorcher. Also on the bill is Miniature Horse (a.k.a.  Rachel Tomlinson Dick) and Razors. $5, 9:30 p.m.

Also tonight, legacy ska act English Beat is playing a sold-out show at The Waiting Room. The Interpreters open. 8 p.m.

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Has anyone noticed that friggin’ photo of Digital Leather has been on this homepage for four years? What did The Sydney ever do with that awesome Phillips 66 sign?

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2015 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Mark Kozelek at Central Presbyterian Church during SXSW March 15, 2014. Kozelek plays tonight at Vega in Lincoln

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Another wave of live recordings just hit the Live at O’Leaver’s servers. Check out the tracks below. I’m told things really blew up after Stereogram wrote about the website last month. Wide the wave…

Check out the awesome Giant Claw tracks here.

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Classic ’90s Chicago act My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult headlines tonight at The Waiting Room. They’ve been called electronic-industrial-disco-rock, which I guess is pretty much spot on. Ruby Block opens. 9 p.m., $15.

Also tonight, Mark Kozelek returns to Vega in Lincoln. I’m sure there’s a very good reason why Kozelek has passed over Omaha for Lincoln the last two times through Nebraska, preventing me from seeing him perform. As I’ve said before, his set during SXSW 2014 was a highlight, where he played most of the songs off the amazing Sun Kil Moon album Benji. Expect songs off the latest SKM album, the rather verbose Universal Themes. $20, 9 p.m.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2015 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

McCarthy Trenching celebrates the release of the latest album this Friday at O’Leaver’s.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Just posted at thereader.com this morning, an interview/feature on Dan McCarthy of McCarthy Trenching. Dan talks about his new album, More Like It (Sower, 2015), which is being celebrated with an album release show this Friday, Nov. 6, at fabulous O’Leaver’s. The record is gorgeous, but what did you expect? You can read the story in the November issue of The Reader, which should be on newsstands any day now, or online right now right here.

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If readership of yesterday’s Lazy-i interview about Milk Run is any indication, the new music venue operated by Chris Aponick and Sam Parker is headed for big-time success. The blog entry was the most read item in Lazy-i this year.

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Speaking of One Percent (or at least Reverb), Looks like they’ve got a brand-spanking new website design over at onepercentproductions.com. Check it out.

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And finally, websites Stereogum and Diffuser have both published items about the Live at O’Leaver’s website.

Said Stereogum, “Back in 2012, Tim Kasher, Matt Maginn, and Ted Stevens of Nebraskan indie rockers Cursive and Chris Machmuller of Ladyfinger purchased O’Leavers Pub in Omaha. They’ve been using the space to host small DIY shows, and they had the excellent idea to start recording performances professionally and releasing them.”

Something tells me they saw my story on O’Leaver’s that went online last month…  Can’t blame them for wanting to spread the good news…

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2015 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

The Vibrators play at The Brothers Lounge tonight.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Seems like I’ve been writing a ton about O’Leaver’s lately. It’s not by design (and I’m certainly not getting paid for it!). It’s merely the fact that the bulk of local indie music news is emanating from O’Leaver’s these days, whether it’s their programming, or in this case, Live at O’Leaver’s, which yesterday released three more live-session recordings from three of the hottest national touring indie bands.

All three sessions are remarkable in their own way. The Speedy Ortiz songs capture the band better then what they’ve laid down in the studio. We hear why Cursive is so ga-ga over Beach Slang. And we get a look inside the madness that is The Hussy on a recording that captures that evening’s madness.

I was at two out of the three shows that were captured below, missing only the Beach Slang gig, which it looks like I’ll get a chance to make up for as Beach Slang is headed back to O’Leaver’s Nov. 5 (with Tim Kasher, Lithuania (members of Dr. Dog) and Worried Mothers).

Check out the new Live at O’Leaver’s sessions below:

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Tonight legendary ’70s British punk band The Vibrators are playing at legendary Omaha club The Brothers Lounge. Opening is Tiananmen Squares and Heavy Lungs. $8, 9 p.m. Slap on your Doc Martins and go.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2015 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

O’Leaver’s new patio / beer garden, looking from the back benches toward the new bar and patio entrance. The door from inside O’Leaver’s that leads to the patio is on the far left at the end of the concrete ramp.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

I had a chance to snap a few photos of O’Leaver’s new patio when I was at The Club the other evening. I’ve had lots of people ask what the new beer garden — which is now open for business, just in time for this weekend’s O’Leaversfest — looks like. Instead of describing it, see for yourself. It’s huge.

A look at O’Leaver’s new patio / beer garden from the new bar looking toward the back benches.

I’m told the patio’s new bar will be manned on Friday and Saturday nights, and the occasional special event. I could see people hanging out there all night, smoking and getting blasted. I’ve used the phrase “game changer” to describe this patio before. I think it fits.

Check it out tonight if for no other reason than the fact that there’s nothing else going on and it’s gorgeous outside.

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Speaking of O’Leaver’s, another batch of Live at O’Leaver’s recordings hit their website yesterday. The new batch includes Eli Mardock, Sam Martin, Once a Pawn, Roman Polanski’s Baby, Miwi La Lupa and Gordon. Check out the tracks below.

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CORRECTION to yesterday’s post: I said yesterday in the section that included my review of the new Mynabirds album Lovers Know that The Mynabirds show at The Slowdown was Wednesday when in fact it’s tomorrow (Thursday). Ooops. Sorry. Thanks to Nayef for pointing this out!

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2015 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Deleted Scenes are among the artists newly featured at Live at O’Leaver’s.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Live at O’Leaver’s released its next wave of recordings of bands performing live on the grand stage at fabulous O’Leaver’s. Check them out below or at the website. I know the tapes were rolling when Speedy Ortiz played Saturday and when Criteria headlined the site’s launch party. Will we be seeing / hearing those files soon? I can’t wait.

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Tonight at Slowdown Jr. it’s Gloom Balloon and Christopher the Conquered. Gloom Balloon, as you may know, is the solo project from Patrick Tape Fleming of The Poison Control Center. Christopher the Conquered just got “boosted” by Ryan Adams (as reported in Billboard). If that wasn’t enough, M34N STR33T opens the show. $10, 8 p.m.

Also tonight Max Holmquist headlines at O’Leaver’s with Extravision and Justin Ready & The Echo Prairie. $5, 9:30 p.m.

If that wasn’t enough, Timecat plays at Lookout Lounge with Kitsch, Rational Anthem and The Ridgways. $7, 9:30 p.m.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2015 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.