I don’t know what else to call weekends like this, ones where there are no shows to write about or attend. So, take-a-break weekend. In the old days, I’d suggest hanging out at The Brothers, but The Brothers ain’t there no mo’, so fill in the blank with your favorite rock ’n’ roll dive bar.
The weekend isn’t a complete washout. Sunday night New Jersey indie-punk trio Screaming Females headlines at Reverb Lounge. Their latest album, Desire Pathway (2023, Don Giovanni) got a nice write-up from Ian Cohen, the go-to punk/rock guy at Pitchfork, who called the 6.8-rated record “their most consistent album yet,” which doesn’t say anything. A better description: it’s “their most mainstream album yet.”
Here’s what I said about them when they opened up for PUP at The Waiting Room back in March 2020, the last show I went to before the dreaded COVID shutdown:
“A New Jersey power trio, their style was reminiscent of Seattle grunge with a hint of metal (by way of that guitar). The songs were powered by Mike Abbate’s base lines that laid the groundwork for Paternaster’s fretboard gymnastics. When she wasn’t playing (or when she was) frontwoman Marissa Paternoster sang with an affected style that sounded like Grace Slick channeling Eddie Vedder on melodies that weren’t terribly memorable. It’s her guitar work that I’ll remember. Why isn’t this band headlining yet?“
They are now. Also on this four-band bill are LA Latin American garage rockers Generacion Suicida, Cincinnati’s The Mimes, and Omaha’s Sazcha. 7:30, $22.
That’s all I got. If I missed your show, put it in the comments section. Have a great weekend.
Well, I didn’t go to either show last night because I was busy and I’ve seen both bands countless times in the past. Here’s hoping y’all had a good time. The show calendar is looking pretty light over the next couple of weeks…
About tonight’s Black Flag show at The Waiting Room, according to the 1% website: “Black Flag will be performing 2 sets. In the first set, they will be performing their groundbreaking 1984 album “MY WAR” in its entirety. The second set will have the band performing over an hour’s worth of their most classic material.”
The line-up includes founder and only original member, Greg Ginn, on guitar and Mike Vallely on vocals. No Rollins, obviously.
8 p.m., $40, no opener.
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Yesterday, Saddle Creek Records released a new song by Neva Dinova called “Something’s Out There.” Says Saddle Creek: “Temporarily tabling their signature melancholic guitar tones for a twinkling keyboard and drum pairing, their marked shift toward exploration on this track finds its spacey home alongside an otherwise otherwordly experience.”
This track appears to be more of a Jake Bellows solo project, with Jake getting credit for vocals, electric guitar, bass, drums, percussion and keyboards. Adrienne Veerhoeven (The Anniversary, Art in Manila) provides backing vocals and keyboards. Ian McElroy (Desaparecidos, Rig. 1) produced it with Jake, and Mike Mogis mixed it. Not sure why they call this a Neva Dinova track when it’s just Jake, but maybe they just want it to tie-in to Saddle Creek’s recent reissue of the Neva catalog.
Ah, life is filled with difficult choices. Tonight is no exception as you have two blue ribbon indie rock shows to choose from. Which will you choose?
Over at The Waiting Room, Pedro the Lion a.k.a. David Bazan and his band, returns, this time performing two of his classic albums. It’s Hard to Find a Friend is the band’s debut, released in 1998 on Jade Tree records. I honestly have never listened to that record, having discovered Pedro the Lion two years later with the release of Winners Never Quit, but. strangely, Bazan is skipping over that record and instead also performing 2002’s Control tonight. I’m sure there’s a reason behind it and if you’re curious you can ask Bazan yourself as he usually takes questions during his set.
Opening is Seattle singer/songwriter Erik Walters, who has played guitar for a number of artists including Telekinesis!, Perfume Genius and tonight will be performing as part of Pedro the Lion.
This is the tour kick-off (Hurray!). $28, 8 p.m.
The Mountain Goats at The Slowdown, June 13, 2010. The band returns to The Slowdown tonight.
Also tonight, The Slowdown welcomes back The Mountain Goats. John Darnielle and his band continue to tour their latest studio album, Bleed Out (2022, Merge). There was some question (in my mind, anyway) if this show was going to happen as one of the band members came down with COVID last week, but here they are. Judging by the setlist from their April 4 Baton Rouge show (the last before the break), this will be a greatest hits set with a few songs from the new album thrown in.
I’ve seen these guys a few times over the years and the band puts on a very entertaining, fast-paced show. Knoxville singer/songwriter Adeem the Artist opens at 8 p.m. $45.
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.
Water from Your Eyes at The Slowdown, April 8, 2023.
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.
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.
A week or so ago a Facebook memory showed up on my timeline – a photo of my laminate from the Flatlander Music Festival – “3 full days of intense musical ecstasy” hosted at Sharky’s at 7777 Cass St. I reposted the image and asked if anyone remembered who played the fest – it was almost 29 years ago after all. Other than a few “likes” and comments, not a word.
It got me digging through my stack of The Notes, the regional music monthly I wrote for back in the early ’90s published out of Lawrence, Kansas. I faintly remembered The Note was one of the fest’s sponsors and was how I got the laminate.
Sure enough, in the July 1994 issue, Flatlander Music Festival took out a full-page back-cover advertisement (see above). The fest boasted bringing in “industry representatives” for this “regional music showcase.”
The line-up was:
Thursday, July 7, 1994: Dashboard Mary, Honey, Ci2i, Stick Figures, Nudie Voodoo, St. Nicklehead, Flatwater Circus, Slowdown Virginia, Heroes & Villains and Sufferbus.
Friday, July 8, 1994: Brian Good, They Came in Droves, Beatkitchen, Fischer, Klass K, Such Sweet Thunder, Lavender Couch, Bartlby, Turquoise Sol and Solefish.
And finally, Saturday, July 9, 1994: Richard Schultz, Cowtown, Scott Laurent Band, Secret Skin, Jimmy Skaffa, Straw Dog, Green Machine, Town Crier, My Childhood and Squidboy.
Notable among the acts was Slowdown Virginia, a band consisting of Tim Kasher and Matt Maginn who would become half of Cursive, Steve Pedersen who would go on to front The White Octave and Criteria and Casey Caniglia. The band’s name is the namesake for The Slowdown music venue.
I know I was at this festival, but I don’t remember a minute of it.
Strangely, the next day Sharky’s hosted Sharkfest ’94. Headlined by The Beat Farmers, the line-up for that one also included The Kind, Ritual Device, Beef Curtains, Mercy Rule, Fischer, Secret Skin, Digital Sex, Shovelhead and Turtle Moon.
Sharky’s was in the the building that used to be the old Firmature’s restaurant, which if I remember correctly, had been a number of establishements before that. We used to joke that it was a cursed proprety because nothing lasted long there. The building had a rail car attached to it that was one of the first offices of weekly publication Sound & Art, which became The Reader. Local satire publication The Great Red Shark also was officed out of that building. Sharky’s didn’t last long. After it closed, the new Music Box took over that space, but it didn’t last long, either. Eventually the building was torn down to make way for a 24-Hour Fitness, which now is a Genesis Health Club. So there you have it.
Reading through these old issues of The Note is a hoot. Whoda thought a 32-page monthly magazine dedicated entirely to local music and the industries that support it could thrive for a decade?
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.
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…
A few random notes that are getting dusty in my in-box:
Yesterday Bright Eyes announced the “special guests” on the next leg of their tour will include Stranger Things’ star, singer/songwriter Maya Hawke, who also appears in the new Wes Anderson film Astroid City. But more notable is that Cursive and Neva Dinova will be the band’s special guests for the May 14 show at Tulsa’s Cain’s Ballroom and that Azure Ray will be a special guest at the May 18 gig at Houston’s White Oak Music Hall.
Conor also is in the news because of the release of the new Boygenius album, which has member Phoebe Bridgers doing the media circuit. Yesterday, Nylon speculated that the record’s closing track, “Letter to an Old Poet,” was about Oberst, which would be a less-than-flattering portrait if true.
Rolling Stone asked a similar question to Bridgers back in February about lyrics she added to a SZA song, where she calls some bloke an asshole. She declined to acknowledge the asshole was Conor and went on to say she didn’t know what the future holds for Better Oblivion Community Center, the project she had with Oberst.
Ah, the complicated lives of rock stars.
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Patrick Buchanan, the frontman to ‘90s Omaha punk band Mousetrap, will do a one-off performance of his new project, House of Transgressor, May 11 at miniBar in Kansas City. Says Buchananon, “The live setup is actually NO stringed instruments at all. I will be singing & playing synth, there’s a 2nd guy who is playing dual synths, and a drummer who is playing a completely modular electronic drum kit AND synth. It’s a bit like a gothic Kraftwerk or an electronic Bauhaus.” Check out their recorded music here.
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Hand Habits announced that their next album, Sugar the Bruise, will be released on Fat Possum June 16, apparently ending their relationship with Saddle Creek Records, who release their last couple albums, including 2021’s Fun House, which was one of my favorites that year.
It also appears that the label’s Los Angeles A&R person, Amber Carew, left Saddle Creek sometime last year. Carew was involved in signing many of the band’s recent acts, including Palm, Indigo De Souza, PENDANT, Shalom, Tomberlin, Black Belt Eagle Scout, Ada Lea, Disq, Spirit of the Beehive, Stef Chura and Young Jesus. The only reason I found out was that Shalom mentioned Carew left the label in a recent interview. Carew’s LinkedIn indicates she left Saddle Creek last May, so this is pretty old news.
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And finally, Nebraska native Mary Ruth McLeay reached out in late February to let me know she released a new indie tune called “I Want Too Much.” McLeay, who’s a student at Berklee College of Music, produced the track and played on it with Dean Andreadas, who engineered and played guitars.
I’d never heard of McLeay before, though she said she’s played at Reverb and The Waiting Room, where she’s opened for acts and taken part in Femme Fest. I checked out her older music and it was anything but indie, more pop-flavored in the Swifty vein. Was the change intentional, and why?
“Definitely intentional and for so many reasons, many of them relating to simply growing up,” she said, adding her early stuff was recorded when she was 17 and influenced by acts like Lorde and Blackbear. She produced a couple pop rock songs at Berklee, which were examples “of me honing my pop writing chops but not necessarily carving my personal place as an artist.”
“The making of ‘I Want Too Much’ felt like my arrival to the place I’ve been trying to get for eight years. I went into my friend Dean’s home studio (I discovered that’s my favorite way to record over the years) with my only objective being I wanted to make something that sounded like my interior and my thought processing and reflected my presence. Therefore, the sound turned out like the exact path genre-wise I’d like to be on for a long time.”
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A friend of mine met me at O’Leaver’s last Friday night for the Scout Gillett set. The show was scheduled to start at 10 p.m. with Anna McClellan, but by the time I arrived a little after 10, McClellan had already wrapped up her set, so they must have moved her start time.
There was my friend with his beer. While I hadn’t been to O’Leaver’s in at least six months or more, he hadn’t been there in a number of years.
“Were those booths there before?” he asked, pointing at two sets of black leather booths installed along the south wall, directly in front of “stage right.” No, those are new, at least new post-Covid, when O’Leaver’s changed their business plan to become more of a burger joint and less of a rock club.
“What’s with the projector screen behind the band?” he asked. I told him once upon a time, O’Leaver’s installed a big screen TV that was behind bands, and then created some sort of cover-up for it and then took it down. Now it appears they’re using a projection TV and no longer lift the screen, giving the staging area an office party vibe. Not sure why they’d leave the screen down unless they were watching the women’s Final Four game before the set and forgot to close it.
The wall of electronic candles also was new, as were a couple beer signs I didn’t recognize, and every so often someone would emerge from where the Tiki Bar used to be with baskets of French Fries, but all in all, O’Leaver’s hadn’t changed much. I told my friend how despite its tiny size and lack of a real stage The Club used to be one of the most important — and fun — places to see a band, and some pretty remarkable bands at that.
You can still relive some of those crazy O’Leaver’s nights at http://www.liveatoleavers.com, where high-quality soundcloud files of sets are still stored and playable online, including by bands like Johnathan Rice, Xetas, Head of Femur, Dolores Diaz & the Standby Club (Conor Oberst project), Speedy Ortiz, Cursive, Bob Log III, Orenda Fink, Mike Schlesinger, Simon Joyner, Matthew Sweet, Iska Dhaaf, Digital Leather and tons more.
Anyway… Scout Gillett and her band kicked off their set at around 10:30. Playing as a four-piece, the Brooklyn crew sounded more straightforward and less hazy and moody than what’s heard on their delectable No Roof No Floor (Captured Tracks) album, more like a bar band than shoe-gazers, surrounded by around 30 people in the half-filled club as the Iowa women’s team celebrated their Final Four victory on the overhead TVs.
The highlight was Gillett’s lead guitarist, whose name I didn’t catch and who isn’t listed on her Bandcamp page. He played some soaring fills and solos over a band that you could tell has the fire power to fill a big stage when/if the situation calls for it, unlike Friday night when a more subdued rhythm section was the state of play. At one point late in the set Gillett walked through the main floor area playing her guitar, the only thing missing was a basket of Fries.
O’Leaver’s has yet another show coming up May 6 with David Nance & Mowed Sound and French rockers En Attendant Ana. Oui Oui!
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Pageturners has another of their sneaky Monday night shows tonight with Chicago singer/songwriter Maria Elena Silva. “Sweet, spacious songs sung in English and en español that evoke endless prairie,” says the Viking Choice Guide to Bandcamp 2021. Omaha ambient artist Phill Smith opens at 8 p.m. $10 suggested donation.
After a busy a week, a busy weekend, (or at least a busy Friday night).
Tonight at fabulous O’Leaver’s, former KC singer/songwriter now Brooklyn singer/songwriter Scout Gillette performs. Her new album No Roof No Floor (2022, Captured Tracks) vacillates between Mazzy Star dreaminess and Angel Olsen rock and is quite good. Opening is Omaha’s own dreamy singer/songwriter, Anna McClellan. $10, 10 p.m.
Also tonight… every so often out of the blue Yayo from Las Cruxes drops me a private track of something the band has been working on. I got three tracks last Sunday via Soundcloud, all produced by superstar producer/sound engineer/raconteur Ian Aeillo and all three pretty awesome. And all performed in Spanish, I have no idea what they mean, but they rock. The new records is due Aug. 5. No doubt Las Cruxes will be performing some of those tracks tonight at The Sydney where they play with NYC’s Sky Creature, Omaha’s Bad Self Portraits and Trees with Eyes. What’s it cost? No idea, probably $10. Starts at 8:45.
Also happening in Benson tonight at The Waiting Room, the return of all-female Led Zeppelin tribute band Zepparella, featuring Clementine in the John Bonham role. I saw them when they came through back in 2014 and they were lots o’ fun. Opening is rough-hewn all-male band Bad Bad Men. $20, 8 p.m.
Finally, Saturday night at The Waiting Room is a tribute to the late Lawrence Deal, who was a member of such notable local acts as Glow in the Dark and Civicminded. This five-band evening kicks off at 7:30 and is $12, with all proceeds going to a trust fund for Deal’s daughter (gofundme). More info here.
That’s all I got. If I missed your show, put it in the comments sections. Have a great weekend.
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