Playing Saturday night (in alphabetical order)

Daylight Robbery’s more recent tunes find the band growing in subtlety and the use of space. The tunes on their recent 3-way split with Foreign Objects and Defect Defect sound as influenced by New Model Army as by X (for better or worse, Christine Wolf has a not-un-Exene-like timbre making the comparison difficult to avoid). Their whole discography is available at Daylight Robbery’s bandcamp. Note: The Daylight Robbery that released Cross Your Heart is different — some glam metal/hard rock act which I thought it was pretty dreadful. Beware.

Libyans employ hardcore tempos, guitar parts that aren’t the least bit cookie cutter (and afford more breathing room than most hardcore) and gloriously trashy drum sounds. Aces. (check ‘em out on Spotify)

Pet Milk sound like they wore out records by The Primitives and maybe Velocity Girl or Heavenly. Nothing whatsoever wrong with that as far as I’m concerned. The super-peppy “I Don’t Love Anyone” is especially nice, and how could I fail to love a band with a song called “Husker Dudes”? Hear it all at Pet Milk bandcamp.

Population evoke several of the post-punk pioneers — Chameleons and Echo, particularly. But they’re weirder. “Heaven Can Help” has a keyboard part that almost seems to belong to a completely different song — and I kinda love that about it. Available at Population bandcamp.

Siamese Twins have me seriously intrigued. This Siamese Twins tumblr links to tunes that fair dare me not to mention The Cure in describing their pop hooks and gothy mood (not to mention the basslines). This Siamese Twins bandcamp features spastic, herky-jerky noise-rock that reminds me of Parts & Labor’s “Escapers”, Ho-Ag, or Hands on Heads (and doesn’t appear to have female members). Normally I’d conclude they are two different bands — but both sites mention the Ladyfest gig! And I like the band in both modes. (Maybe it really is two different bands, and one of the sites associates show dates automatically?)

Sick Fix answers a question I’ve been wondering about: would anyone ever tag a band fronted by (or even fetauring) a woman with my all-time least favorite genre label? (That’d be “powerviolence,” beating out “shitgaze” by a wide oogie margin.) Sick Fix proves the answer is yes, which makes me hate the term a teeny, tiny, infinitesimal bit less. Not nearly enough to apply it, of course. As far as I’m concerned, this is hardcore (and at that, a bit less mathy than the stuff that usually gets called the TermIWillNotUse).

This Is My Fist’s slightly retro punk sometimes remind more than a lil bit of The Avengers; Annie Saunders’ vocals frequently me of The Muffs’ Kim Shattuck. The split single with The Marked Men from a couple years back is particularly good (and streamable on Spotify).

Playing Sunday (in alphabetical order)

Ampere are, holy carp pond, brutal. Almost all of the songs on last year’s Like Shadows get in and do their damage in under 90 seconds. They’re not quite as dense as John Zorn’s Naked City, but not far off. Drummer Andy Skelly was in Wolves. Another reason to love this: so far as I can tell, Ampere have a woman as a musician and creative presence in the band — but not as a singer. Given that Ladyfest welcomes co-ed bands at all, I’m kinda delighted that Ladyfest is including bands of this ilk. (on Spotify)

Big Nils singer is Coco Gordon Moore. Right, that Coco Gordon Moore. She’s yelpy in a not un-Jemina Pearlish way; the band is a comparatively-straightforward-rhythm-section-supporting-seriously-anarchic-guitar affair. Mom and Dad should be proud. Check it out at Big Nils’ bandcamp.

Girlfriends include a dash of surf in their pop-punkish indie rock. I’m frequently a sucker for male/female harmony vocals, a device Girlfriends frequently employ. The new EP (streamable at Girlfriends bandcamp) sounds terrific.

Hilly Eye predates Amy Klein’s departure from Titus Andronicus; on record, at least, it’s a guitar/drum duo (with vocals from both Klein and collaborator Catherine Tung. Check it out at Hilly Eye’s bandcamp.

Honeysuck also evoke Be Your Own Pet. But Be Your Own Pet gone hardcore. You can stream their new release at Honeysuck’s bandcamp. Can’t find a source to buy the tracks so I can keep them forever and ever. Boo.

Slingshot Dakota are drum and guitar duo, not typical punk instrumentation, but even if they don’t necessarily sound punk qua punk, there’s a clear attitudinal kinship with more aggressive music. (It probably doesn’t hurt that Carly Comando’s voice is not dissimilar to Rainer Maria’s Caithlin De Marrais.) (Slingshot Dakota have one tune on the Are You with the Band? comp which I mentioned yesterday, you can check that out on Spotify. You can sample/buy their previous album Their Dreams Are Dead, But Ours is the Golden Ghost! at eMusic. And you can count me among the many eager to hear the upcoming Dark Hearts.)

Thick Shakes play garage-influenced music that is transmogrified into punk via the application of insane amounts of fuzz, overdrive, and other forms of distortion. This sort of thing often strikes me as too self-consciously retro, but this has an infectiously fun spirit. Also I definitely like the “umami” pun that named their debut record.( Thick Shakes are on bandcamp.)

Titfit are unabashedly riot grrl — you can tell they love their Bratmobile — with a pleasantly lwo-tech, slightly garage-y vibe. Titfit bandcamp.

Playing Friday (in alphabetical order)
Beautiful Weekend don’t make it easy to preview their music.

Foreign Objects play short, hard-hitting punk tunes that are often quite catchy despite weird chords and screechy vocals. Nothing against “Words of War” but if you check ‘em out on Spotify you can hear “Pill Popper” and “One Made Two.” I think I played this record five times in the first 2 days after I bought it. (You can check it out on Spotify.)

Procession fit pretty comfortably in the shoegaze/dream pop genre. The “Fade” ep sounds cheerfully lo-fi and is enlivened by some energetic drum work. Check it out at Procession’s bandcamp site.

Shepherdess features Hilken Mancini of Fuzzy and about a zillion other bands, also Emily Arkin formerly of The Operators. Their EP a few years back did a great tightrope walk between fierce and pretty. Very glad to hear they are not defunct and that new material is trickling out at Shepherdess’s bandcamp site. (You can also find Shepherdess’s self-titled EP at Spotify, although it’s jumbled up with a completely different artist of the same name.)

Shoppers specialize in super dense & noisy punk. If you dig Mutators, White Lung, or Nü Sensae this might be right up your alley. It is sure up mine. Their most recent album Silver Year is sold out, so the Feeble Minds label has a link to download it. Or you can stream all their releases at bandcamp. Caution: cover image may be NSFW

Waxahatchee is Katie Crutchfield’s solo acoustic project, but it ain’t no easy listening joint. I love her new record American Weekend, on which she continues to write songs that remind me in mood and quality of the late Elliott Smith. At times it’s so trebly and distorted that it’s a bit tough on the ears. But worth it. (You can check it out on Spotify.)

Playing Saturday afternoon (in alphabetical order)

Aye Nako first came to my notice by providing the lead track on Are You with the Band? the slamming compilation of mostly poppish female-led punk acts curated by Lauren Denitzio (formerly of The Measure (SA) and now of Worriers). Aye Nako’s five-song demo (available at AyeNako.org reveals some stylistic breadth: mostly it’s probably closer to indie rock than punk, but I’d almost call “Good Grief” hardcore. Definitely eager to hear more from these folks.

Cotton Candy is Mark (”needs no introduction”) Robinson and Evelyn Hurley (of Blast Off Country Style). Top Notch & First Rate is a crazy mix of indie rock, sound collages, and (usually faithful) recreations of DC-area radio ads from the 70’s. God knows what it’s like live. But I’m sure curious. (You can check it out on Spotify.)

Tunabunny are from the noisier side of the lo-fi block of indie-rock street. Last year’s Minima Moralia was a huge leap beyond their self-titled debut — still with plenty of attitude, but with much more solid hooks, and vastly improved production — still lo-fi, but maybe harnessing the chaos instead of being overridden by it. (You can check it out on Spotify.)

Whore Paint’s “Menarchy” EP from last year is dark, angry, and a little murky (maybe by design, maybe by budget. But I think on balance it works). “Amen” drops the tempo considerably; “Second Shift” reminds me obliquely of Rid of Me-era PJ Harvey, if PJ Harvey had been in a hardcore band. The band experiments quite a bit with putting space between the noise, which is promising. (on Spotify)

Joe Gross’s write up in Spin seemed like a reasonable starting point, but I’m going to go a lot deeper, and I’ll update this post with the results of my explorations.

001 1987.09.03 Washington DC, USA, Wilson Center

I’m going to go against conventional wisdom and say that the band’s first gig is worth listening to for historic reasons if nothing else, but absolutely not where you should start — there are only glimmers of the brilliance this band would soon achieve. This version of Fugazi is positively tentative, Ian MacKaye actually apologizes for inadequacies of the performance. If you saw them anytime in the 90s or after, this is a revelation just in how far they evolved. It’s also striking how much MacKaye’s guitar vocabulary in this trio performance includes held notes and noisy bits (which I think of as mostly Guy Picciotto’s domain) as well as the jack-hammer muted eighth-notes I think of as characteristic of his playing.15 Dec 2011

186 1990.03.14 Athens GA, USA, 40 Watt

So far my favorite of the early shows — 2 1/2 years on, they’re closing in on their 200th performance, and starting to sound like what I think of as Fugazi. Good set list. I like the “last call” announcement. 15 Dec 2011

420 1992.03.06 Washington DC, US, St. Stephens Church

By this point Fugazi is playing like the band members are reading one another’s minds. Jaw-dropping improv breaks in “Shut the Door” and “Reprovisional” are among the highlights here. 15 Dec 2011

478 1992.06.28 Berlin, GER, Tempodrome

“Suggestion” is the surprise here — it’s far from my favorite Fugazi tune, too nakedly preachy — the extended call & response break between MacKaye and Picciotto is almost chilling. “Glueman” is pretty amazing, too. I love the snare sound on this show, way upfront with a healthy amount of ‘verb. 15 Dec 2011

508 1993.03.21 Washington DC, US, Freedom Plaza

This one is remarkable in how honestly it documents what it could be like to experience Fugazi at a protest rally. This homeless rally took place in spitting distance of the White House, with repeated breaks — one thirteen wearing minutes long — while the event organizers negotiate with authorities to continue the event. Also a classic song-screeching-to-a-halt for MacKaye to request that an audience member modify his behavior. When the band is playing, they’re monstrous despite the dodgy sound (honestly/correctly flagged on the Live Series site as “poor.”) Not a starting point by any means, but gawd, it brings back some memories. 15 Dec 2011

510 1993.04.04 Charlottesville, VA, Trax

Hate to just parrot Mr. Gross, but “Promises” here is sumpin’ else. Fantastic vocal from Ian, pretty good recording of some fierce improv. The whales are angry! The run of old songs Gross mentions is also indeed intense. “Smallpox Champion” is a standout, too. Actually, the problem with this band is I want to claim almost every song is a standout. Audiophiles might want to start somewhere else, though.16 Dec 2011

I listened to the Neutral Milk Hotel albums a lot, but not so much in recent years. I felt like one of the few chumps there who couldn’t sing along with all the lyrics, even the really loopy ones. The audience mostly opted to double Mangum an octave lower; Jordan Hall has a very warm natural reverb, and it sounded pretty good. Mangum did some Q&A between songs, kinda like David Bazan does, which contributed to the intimate atmosphere. Spellbinding.

String quartet opener ACME (the American Contemporary Music Ensemble) treated us to a more-than-competent run through Satie’s Les Gymnopédies and an often stunning arrangement of Gavin Bryars’ Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, which I had somehow never encountered before. (In retrospect this seems odd; I can almost imagine one of my former band leaders sitting us all down and making us listen to it at tortilla point, or some such.) It’s odd-but-somehow-logical cadence has a clear structural kinship with Mangum’s cover choice for the evening, Daniel Johnston’s “True Love Will Find You in the End,” (although Johnston’s tune is set in a more conventional time structure) and it’s certainly not hard to hear its influence in Mangum’s own work.

Then he brought up his brother Bob on electric guitar, and his two of his former bandmates in Scud Mountain Boys, Tom Shea on mandolin, and Stephen Desaulniers on electric bass (since Bob played some guitar in Scud Mountain Boys, it was very nearly a full reunion, but Pernice mentioned there’d been some recent discussion with original guitarist Bruce Tull about playing together again, too). Last night’s set was special in a way you don’t get to hear very often: both a little rough, and also spot-on. I don’t think the quick pre-song conversations about key and tempo were staged for the audience’s benefit, and there were a few audible blown cues — but the guys recovered from them really fast, and without a trace of tentativeness. Only band members who are really listening to each other can pull that off. Pernice was visibly laughing in the first chorus of Olivia Newton John’s “Please Mister Please” — which didn’t stop him from singing it like a heart wound was being reopened. And Desaulnier’s harmonies were just there in a way I wouldn’t expect after a 14-year hiatus. Magic.

In addition to being a fantastic writer, Pernice is also — back to baseball again! — a five-tool singer. He’s solid at the technical things rockers are not necessarily known for: intonation, breath control, mic technique — and he’s got compelling phrasing and often gut-wrenching (but critically understated, not oversold) emotional delivery, to boot. To my mind, Pernice and Ted Leo are at the top of the male indie-rock singing heap. So when I saw some singer-songwriter dude I never heard of getting set to open for Pernice, my first instinct was pity: “poor guy, he’s about to get schooled.” Only it turns out Paul Melançon is also a pretty great singer — killer pure tenor, an effortless upper register, gorgeous delivery and solid technique. He knocked Neil Finn’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over” — by no means an easy song to sing — outta the flippin’ park. Basically after about 4 or 5 bars of his first number I’d decided to buy his latest disc, and after I stopped being too distracted by his voice to pay attention to the songs (and his wry patter), I was committed to picking up everything I could lay hands on.

Dept. of egregious naval gazing: The Lizard Lounge was one of the venues for my first date with she who is now my wife (my wife! I feel like that always needs an exclamation point) and the Scud Mountain Boys, in a weird but awesome bill with Jenny Toomey and Jale, were in the first handful of live shows I ever wrote about on the Internets. Danger Will Robinson! Creeping nostalgia!

Mixtapes live in a weird intersection between well-produced pop-punk and lo-fi indie pop. On the one hand they have a fatter drum sound than I expect from low-budget indies; on the other, the co-ed vocals sometimes have just enough unsteadiness to be endearing (not grating). They write insanely hooky tunes about stuff like sexual frustration, classic Metallica, coping with life, feeling sour grapes-y about an ex, and guilt over not wanting to go to a party. They tackle these subjects with keen observation and sharp humor. If they have a flaw it might be a little too much self-awareness; I could give them a song-about-writing-songs penalty flag, but it’s waived on account of general awesomeness. So far they favor frequent, short releases, which I am totally down with. The recent “Hope is For People,” is as a fine starting place; the title track is for sure on my year’s best shortlist. mixtapesohio will help get you hooked up with almost the whole enchilada. You’ll need to hit up Death to False Hope records to score the “Castle Songs” single (while you’re at DtFH, check out the Candy Hearts release, too). Most of Mixtapes’ releases are Creative Commons licensed, so you can download ‘em legit for free, then kick a donation to the band if you love their music like I do, and want more, more, more.

I’m tempted not even to mention that is sort of an indie/alt/electronic supergroup, founded by Cibo Matto’s Yuka Honda and That Dog’s Petra Haden, bolstered by Cornelius’ Hirotaka Shimizu and Yuko Araki, because If By Yes sounds nothing like the members’ best-known projects. It’s a far cry from the melodic alternarock of That Dog, the aural aggression of Cornelius, and the kitchen sink aesthetic of Cibo Matto. Those aren’t criticisms, just observations — I think Salt on Sea Glass deserves to be judged on its own terms, not saddled with expectations based on what its members used to do.

And I like much of it quite a bit, especially “You’re Something Else.”