by Tim McMahan,  Lazy-i.com

Welp, after a day-long delay, Lincoln Calling finally released their lineup . The announcement was supposed to go out yesterday, but five minutes before the “information embargo” expired organizers sent an email pleading for media to hold the presses.

Of all the local festivals (and there’s one fewer this year), Lincoln Calling has the most eclectic lineups. No one genre dominates; instead they throw everything into the mix and this year is no exception. 

Slated for May 3 and 4 in venues throughout downtown Lincoln, the 20th anniversary edition boasts 55+ national and local acts. The headliner is pop-rapper Tkay Maidza, whose last album was released on 4AD, a label that used to be renowned for its ambient/indie/post-punk acts. Something tells me the label is making mo’ money from this pop/dance fare.

While LC2024 has a plethora of R&B/DJ/jazz/pop acts, it’s the indie stuff I’m interested in, and the list of touring indie artists is impressive. Among them:

• – LA trio Cherry Glazerr (Secretly Canadian)
• – New York duo Water From Your Eyes (Matador Records)
• – Louisville’s Wombo (Fire Talk Records)
• – Nashville punkers Snõõper (Third Man) and 
• – Chicago’s Friko (ATO Records). 

But maybe the most notable act announced is a reunion of influential ’90s Nebraska post-punk legends Ritual Device. I think the last time these guys performed was a holiday show in 2014 with Cellophane Ceiling. Frontman Tim Moss once told me that show was the end. Looks like we’re in for another ride. 

The rest of the so-called “regional acts” is just as impressive. Among them are David Nance and Mowed Sound (which, now that they’re on Third Man Records, should have relegated them higher in the LC2024 press release), Universe Contest, Clarence Tilton, The Dirts, PROBLEMS, Bad Bad Men, Pagan Athletes, Plack Blague, Face and, as they say, lots, lots more.

Venues include two outdoor stages along with 1867 Bar, Duffy’s Tavern and The Zoo Bar. Tickets are on sale at lincolncalling.com, with early bird weekend passes priced at $50 – that’s an insanely low price for a festival like this. 

Hey, what about a VIP option? Well, as a matter of fact, there is one: The Callers Club. There are four club levels and for $250 you’ll be in the “Immerse Level,” which includes VIP seating, a local meal and drinks. At the $1,000 level you can meet the artists, because let’s face it, everyone needs to meet Tim Moss at least once in their life…

Now all we need is a schedule…

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In the meantime… 

Birdie Edge is Alabama instrumentalist Richard Edge. According to an article in The St. Lous Music Report (Why don’t we have an Omaha Music Report?), Mr. Edge was involved in the St. Louis hardcore scene, including in bands Freon and Hippyfuckers. “Surprisingly however, a good chunk of their work has been dedicated to an earthy, rural acoustic solo self-titled project centered around the resonant nature of their steel string acoustic guitar and complex Americana finger-picked patterns,” said the Report.

I have no idea if this information still applies to Birdie Edge, as the article was published two years ago and there’s nothing else online (including at the Pageturrners website). According to Bandcamp, Jinx, the recording linked below, was tape dubbed by David Nance. And tonight’s opener for this show, Jim Schroeder, has played alongside Nance for years. 

It all adds up to saying that tonight Birdie Edge Dan McCarthy plays at Pageturners, with Jim Schroeder opening at 8 p.m. No cover but drop some cash in the hat for the bands, please. 

Note: Birdie Edge is unable to play tonight at Pageturners. Dan McCarthy is taking his place, and Jim is still on the bill. 8 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 © 2024 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

If it wasn’t a sell out it was the closest thing to it Saturday night at The Slowdown. Water from Your Eyes had just started their set when I arrived at after 9. They played as a three piece – guitarist Nate Amos and vocalist Rachel Brown with a bass player. The drums were prerecorded backing tracks that Amos controlled from a MacBook that sat next to his pedal board — full-on synth tracks and beats, which he cued up throughout the evening. 

Their set was almost identical to what they played at Reverb Lounge late last year opening for Palm, switching between mid-tempo, meandering crooners and harsh, brittle, noise symphonies that saw Amos playing cut-jab guitar riffs over acidic synth tones while Brown either spoke or sang lyrics in beat with the dissonance. Those art-noise experiments were the evening’s highlight, wonky and off-kilter and at times unsettling and/or groovy. I hope this is where they’re headed on their upcoming album rather than the serene tone poems heard on earlier recordings. 

Brown looked like a 13-year-old boy wandering around stage between songs while Amos re-tuned or cued up the next song on the playlist. The seemed like a very young band halfway to figuring out where they want their sound to go. I can’t imagine what Snail Mail fans thought of them.

That said, their set was far more dynamic and interesting than Snail Mail’s, which was low-energy by-the-numbers female-fronted indie rock. Lead singer Lindsey Jordan‘s voice sounded remarkably pedestrian in a mix that only highlighted her limitations. 

Jordan talked about tour bus problems (break-downs, crashes, near-death experiences) and mentioned recently firing a member of the band, which I assume was their guitarist. All this after being on the road for a solid year touring this record. She spoke about having written one song with a difficult guitar part, but thinking “it doesn’t matter because I won’t be the one who has to play it.” I guess the joke was on her. 

A flat performance, but it didn’t matter to the capacity crowd squeezed onto the floor in front of the stage who came to hear these songs and sing along, as they did throughout the night. 

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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 © 2023 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Busy weekend! 

It’s the first Friday of the month and that means Benson First Friday! Benson turns into an urban walking art gallery with art openings happening all up and down Maple Street, not the least of which is the opening at Ming Toy Gallery, 6066 Maple St., where Brian Tait has a one-man show. Tait is one of my favorite Omaha artists, with a style that combines street art and abstract, strange, colorful and pure pop. The show runs from 6 to 9 p.m. and refreshments will be available. Come by and say hi.

Later tonight down at The Sydney it’s a 3-band bill headlined by Those Far Out Arrows, with Healer (Dan Brennan’s band that recently opened for Protomartyr at Slowdown) and Jack. $10, 9 p.m. 

Tomorrow night (Saturday) there’s a pair of Matador Records bands playing at The Slowdown. The headliner is Baltimore’s Snail Mail a.k.a. Lindsey Jordan whose debut album, 2018’s Lush, was loaded with dreamy indie pop reminiscent of The Sundays and was an out-of-nowhere smash (and at the tender age of 17). Her follow-up, 2021’s Valentine, is harder and more mature but no less infectious, earning a massive 8.5 on the Pitchfork meter and “Best New Music” accolades. Maybe you remember them playing the 2019 Maha Festival? Joining Snail Mail Saturday night is lablemates Water from Your Eyes, who I wrote about earlier this week. Richmond, Virginia, old-school power pop band Dazy opens the show at 8 p.m. This one’s in the big room. $30.

Also Saturday night, The Sydney is hosting hard punk band Nowhere, Flooding and Omaha prog duo Pagan Athletes. 9 p.m., $10. 

BTW, it’s Bandcamp Friday, so if you were thinking of buying any new music (or old music for that matter) Bandcamp is waiving its fees as it does every first Friday of the month, so do it now.

That’s all I got. If I missed your show, put it in the comments section. Have a great weekend. 

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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 © 2023 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

The April issue of The Reader is out and it includes a tongue-in-cheek RIYL column about Maha. The copy editor at The Reader didn’t know RIYL meant Recommended If You Like and took it out of the headline, which I guess I get but isn’t the purpose of headlines to grab people’s attention? Anyway, in addition to being in print the column is online here. Fun!

Much in the same vein as that column, a friend of mine asked me about this Saturday’s Snail Mail concert at Slowdown, specifically, who is Water from Your Eyes? It sounds like the perfect name for an emo band, but they’re anything but emo. 

Recently signed to Matador Records, the Brooklyn duo consists of Rachel Brown and synther / guitarist Nate Amos (This is Lorelei) and is described as “experimental pop music that’s pretty and violent, raw and indelible” which makes one think of art-infected ninjas bearing Sharpees. 

They’re last album, Structure, was released on Wharf Cat in 2021, which apparently caught Matador’s attention, who will release Everyone’s Crushed May 26. 

I had the good fortune of being among the dozen people who caught Water from Your Eyes when they opened for Palm this past December at Reverb. 

From the review of that show: 

The duo of vocalist Rachel Brown and guitarist Nate Amos were joined by a third person on guitar and were backed by some thumping rhythm tracks. If you’d fallen across the duo’s past recordings, like 2019’s Somebody Else’s Song (Exploding in Sound Records) or even 2021’s artier Structure (Wharf Cat) you would have been ill-prepared for the sound barrage of last night’s set. 

At the heart of it was deep, blaring pre-recorded synths joined by Amos’ acidic, feedback-drenched guitar that interlaced with Brown’s untouched, unprocessed vocals that sounded like your little sister singing along to art-damaged post-punk. Harsh, throbbing sonic textures repeated trancelike with the second guitar providing counter riffs. 

The evening’s highlight was a brittle interpretation of “Adeleine,” a track from Somebody Else’s Song, reinterpreted with rough synths and guitar, barely recognizable compared to the original, but a better fit in what turned out to be one of my favorite sets I’ve seen this year. 

They were, indeed, somewhat awesome and are worth the price of Saturday night’s show by themselves.

Here’s their latest single. Get tix while you can…

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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 © 2023 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

The weekend went like this…

From all reports, I missed the best show of the weekend by about an hour. Head of Femur opened the Sydney Saturday night showcase and I wasn’t able to get there in time for their set but was told it was an absolute scorcher from four people who were there. I got to the bar just after it ended and walked into a crowd that looked like a scene from Sokol Underground circa the early 2000s. Head of Femur goes way back with a lot of the Saddle Creek crew. 

Lincoln emo-punk band The Obsurants were up next and played a solid set of high-energy emo-punk songs performed seamlessly one after the other with no break in between. Frontman Eric Maly has the right voice for these anthemic power-punk tunes. A few times during the set when he wasn’t playing his guitar he appeared to be doing America Sign Language while he sang, which was strangely affecting. 

Headlining band Dead Letters, who were celebrating the release of their new album, Songs from Center, were slightly Omaha’d (hey, that’s what you get when you let a legend like Femur open for you). All three members of the band yelled out their lead vocals while the other two yelled out harmonies on these endearing, short, sharp jangle-punk songs that had as much in common with Violent Femmes as they did R.E.M. And when I say short songs, the album’s 9 songs only span a total of 19 minutes — so do the math. You never have a chance to get tired of any of them. 

The best part about this band is that, unlike so many acts I’ve seen lately, it’s obvious all three members were having the time of their lives, and so was the audience.

Sunday night it was off to Reverb Lounge. Less than a dozen people were in the audience when Water from Your Eyes began their set at 8 p.m. sharp. The duo of vocalist Rachel Brown and guitarist Nate Amos were joined by a third person on guitar and were backed by some thumping rhythm tracks. If you’d fallen across the duo’s past recordings, like 2019’s Somebody Else’s Song (Exploding in Sound Records) or even 2021’s artier Structure (Wharf Cat) you would have been ill-prepared for the sound barrage of last night’s set. 

At the heart of it was deep, blaring pre-recorded synths joined by Amos’ acidic, feedback-drenched guitar that interlaced with Brown’s untouched, unprocessed vocals that sounded like your little sister singing along to art-damaged post-punk. Harsh, throbbing sonic textures repeated trancelike with the second guitar providing counter riffs. 

The evening’s highlight was a brittle interpretation of “Adeleine,” a track from Somebody Else’s Song, reinterpreted with rough synths and guitar, barely recognizable compared to the original, but a better fit in what turned out to be one of my favorite sets I’ve seen this year. 

I wasn’t sure how closely headliner Palm would follow the song structures heard on their new album, Nicks and Grazes. Would they change it up like Spirit of the Beehive did when they played at Slowdown earlier this year? The answer was no. 

The new record is rife with odd time changes, hard-to-grasp repeated musical structures, and flat, atonal vocals that are more accoutrement than melody. Call it modern indie prog for lack of a better description, well played (a fantastic rhythm section) but hard to listen to if you’re someone who enjoys melodies. It didn’t help that both vocalists were buried in the rhythm-dense mix. At its best, Palm is an intricate rhythmic puzzle box that can be fun to try to solve… for awhile, and then gets tiresome. That said, the 40 or so on hand for their set were into it. 

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Yes, it’s rare for me to go out on a “school night,” but I knew this would be among the last touring indie shows coming through town until next spring. In fact, the only upcoming One Percent Productions show on my radar is the Feb. 23 Unsane show at The Admiral. Virtually no indie shows are currently booked on the 1% calendar. 

The Dec. 15 Bartees Strange show at The Slowdown is that venue’s last touring indie show until the Feb. 25 Rural Alberta Advantage gig, and then Titus Andronicus way out on March 28. 

Yep, it’s slim pickings if you’re an indie music fan. I’ll talk more about that when I post my Year in Review column in The Reader (get a sneak peek in the printed edition, which is already on newsstands). Looks like it’s going to be a long, cold winter…

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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 © 2022 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.