Grace Potter is a sexpot, and I dare you not to fall in love with her.

I first heard of Grace Potter and the Nocturnals in 2007, when "Apologies" was played on The Hills and Grace was still a redhead. "Apologies" struck a chord with me at the time, but it wasn't enough to prompt me to buy their album.

Earlier this year, I was watching the VH1 Countdown when I heard this fun rock song featuring a gorgeous blonde. I waited anxiously for the tag to pop up at the end of the video to find out who this amazing band was ... The song was "Paris (Ooh La La)" and the band was a glammed up version of the somewhat somber and lethargic Grace Potter and the Nocturnals I'd been introduced to in 2007. I bought the newest album and loved just about every single one of the fun pop-rock songs. When I found out the band was going to play Central Park's Rumsey Playfield, I knew I had to experience this for myself.

I'm unable to put into words how complete and the performance was. Grace Potter has a je ne sais quoi I obviously can't describe. So I'll say this:
Grace Potter's performance skills, from her voice to her stage presence, are impeccable. To say that backup band The Nocturnals pales in comparison would be a vast understatement. I have never felt like I have been in the presence of a legend as much as I did during this concert. Grace Potter just has "it" -- she is like the perfect rock goddess package. She's perfected her bluesy and sometimes cutesy sound. She knows when it's okay to pepper a song with a moan or a squeal. She can command a guitar and caress a piano. She even has perfect hair and bangs I lust after (apparently my forehead is too short for blunt bangs), both of which fall neatly back into place after several rounds of headbanging and swishing. I don't know how she does it; it's magic.


Saturday night's crowd may have been a testament to just how hard it is to resist her. There were men and women in their 50s, there were teenagers, there were hipsters, there were children, there were Europeans. There were belligerent drunks, potheads and even posh preppies. Men and women alike left that night a little more starry-eyed than they'd entered.

Needless to say, if I didn't have a girl crush on her before, now I do.

My favorite songs and more photos behind the cut ...

Tucked away in the shadows of an office complex, Melt Shop is little more than a walk-up grilled cheese sandwich vendor, but it'd like to have you think otherwise. Its menu boasts the all-American comfort food done in a number of ways, many of them "gourmet" or, at the very least, "American Nouveau."

There's the three cheese melt, made up of gruyère, fontina and goat cheeses held together by homemade roasted tomatoes between sourdough bread ($7.75). "Creamy" and "buttery" are words that come to mind, but I'm not sure the roasted tomatoes (perhaps particularly suspect because they were "homemade") really work here. Altogether, the sandwich is nothing that can't be made at home following a quick trip to Trader Joe's.

We also had the fontina and goat cheese sandwich with wild mushrooms and parsley pesto on whole wheat bread ($7.50). This one I liked more because the mushrooms gave it an almost rustic (I'm reaching now) Provence-like flavor and a whole lot more to chew on. The goat cheese flavor was mostly absent and the pesto was concentrated towards the center of the sandwich, but appreciated when discovered. I felt this one was more worth its $7+ price tag, though more as a luxury than a regular comfort food item.


The highlight of the meal was probably the Stumptown coffee (hailing from Portland, Oregon) milkshake ($5.50). This shake would have been perfect if the coffee grounds hadn't been so plentiful and it hadn't been so milky. It had the perfect sweetness and just the right amount of coffee flavor, though the portion size was typical of Manhattan -- petite.


We considered ordering a $3.50 portion of tomato soup for tradition's sake but ultimately decided against it. Maybe next time ... and only if I'm really cold and really hungry for my childhood.

I was first introduced to Lady Antebellum in late 2008 in increasingly gnawing doses, until one night while in their hometown of Nashville, Tennessee where my defenses had been worn thin to country music, I gave in and sang (and maybe even danced) along to "Lookin' For A Good Time" on CMT. I've been a fan ever since.
I've had over 24 hours to digest the new album by Lady Antebellum ... it's very good, but it's not "Need You Now." I think the main reason for this is that they didn't take enough of a break between writing music for "Need You Now" and "Own The Night," which resulted in a sort of slurred mix between a sometimes stale rehashing of the storylines and sounds of the previous album and something that sounds like it may have been trying to go in a different direction.

The overarching theme of "Need You Now" was nostalgia, dotted with a few bursts of momentous youth ("Our Kind of Love," "Stars Tonight"), and it seems that the overarching theme of "Own The Night" is again nostalgia, albeit through a fairly more mature and sorrowful lens. While I have always seen Charles Kelley as the real singer of Lady Antebellum, Hillary Scott almost comes into her own on "Own The Night." She seems to challenge herself more on this album, with vocals that are surprisingly emotive and at times haunting ("Dancin' Away With My Heart," "Wanted You More").

The leading single "Just A Kiss" is very reminiscent of the song "Need You Now," but instead of the potent intensity of the moment that "Need You Now" captures, "Just A Kiss" seems diluted and generic. I would go as far to say that it is one of the weakest songs on "Own The Night." The first track, "We Owned the Night," is a more cheerful and more hopeful version of "Lookin' For A Good Time," from the band's debut album. It is entirely possible that "We Owned The Night" is about a one-night stand like "Lookin' For A Good Time," and if it is, the song romanticizes the notion with a sophistication that its predecessor did not.


The one standout on the album is the achingly sentimental "Dancin' Away With My Heart," which I already have a hard time listening to without getting clouded with emotion. From this track onwards, the band seems to crawl closer and closer to its comfort zone, with the exception of the self-assured and infectiously feel-good "Singing Me Home." The unusually folksy "Cold As Stone" is nice in its bareness and appropriately vulnerable lyrics. Something about "Somewhere Love Remains" feels like home, perhaps in its comforting predictability. And "Wanted You More" shouldn't work, but it does -- its lyrics are simplistic and over another melody would probably be annoying. Instead, its melody is sprinkled with a few twists and turns that keeps it from becoming a completely formulaic pop-country song (e.g. "Just A Kiss").