Tom Petty Tribute Recap / Brooklyn Buzz Band of the Week: Hospitality

Last night's multi-band Tom Petty tribute at the Bottleneck elicited mixed-reactions from the crowd. Our friend King Tosser (author of the upcoming book Brit Wits: A History of British Rock Humor: pre-order your copy here ) was enraged that the technical prowess of Magentlemen was being squandered on a tribute set. Chip, of course, was pleased with the Magentlemen's absolutely fidelity to the recorded versions ("It sounds just like my cassette tapes."). And Richard was annoyed that none of the bands playing "Breakdown" attempted to recreate Petty's live version in which he sings only the first line and lets the audience do the rest. We were totally prepared to sing.

You can see Magentlemen doing their own thing at the Replay this Wednesday, along with Caroline Smith and the Good Night Sleeps. Here they are last night rocking "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around":



















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It's starting to seem doubtful that any band will ever fill the twee hole in our heart left by the Transmittens, but this four-star Rolling Stone review of Hospitality's new record gave us hope:

"Synth doodles and squeaky-cutesy vocals abound on this Brooklyn trio's aggressively adorable debut.But Hospitality have more to offer than mere sweetness: Check how the wistful ballad "Eighth Avenue" left-turns into a spastic guitar outburst, like Tom Verlaine crashing a Belle and Sebastian session."

So we turned to Pitchfork to see if they are indeed worthy of our attention. Verdict: a 7.4. Some excerpts:

"an appropriately languid tribute to mapless post-graduate ennui..."

"The not-new songs here don't sound reworked so much as run through some kind of cartoony scrubbing contraption, Wonka Wash-style, emerging stunningly clean out the other end, the curvy surfaces all gleaming in the sun."

"...the darling strangeness of her voice... sounds more like she's channeling Hayley Mills duetting with Hayley Mills."

Read the Pitchfork review and listen to "Betty Wang" here .

Check out this cute photo from Brooklyn Vegan: