Mira Loma and the Bad Vibes, AAN and RevoltRevolt @ the Red Room (7/15/12)

Between attending six shows the preceding week and spending three hours earlier in the day swimming in the Boise River with a friend, I was good and tired this past Sunday night.  Part of me would have liked nothing better than to stay home, watch the new episode of Longmire, maybe finally polish off Nicholas Nickleby and go to bed.  In spite of that, the chance to see AAN, a Portland-based rock band whose Treefort set I'd missed, motivated me to haul my frazzled carcass down to the Red Room.

I arrived in time to catch most of the opening set by Florida-based shoegaze band Mira Loma and the Bad Vibes.  Their music suited my sun-fried condition quite well: serene tunes, dreamy guitar and synth parts and warm, calm bass over thunderous drumming.  When their guitarist pushed his fragile high tenor into a raw, raspy scream, it almost sounded like Kurt Cobain wailing down from Heaven.

AAN played next.  "The band beckons a bevvy of comparisons," their Facebook page says, "but their sound cannot be pigeonholed."  A lotta bands will make some such claim, but there's a certain creedence to it in this case.  Angular, syncopated drumming and steady basslines pushed forward disorienting guitar riffs, eerie tunes and harmonies and weird keyboard noises.  Somehow, all the elements fit together and even rocked.  Fascinating stuff.

Local indie-rock quartet RevoltRevolt closed out the night.  Their droning guitar riffs and basslines, propulsive drumming and simple, straightforward tunes showed the clear influence of 80's-90's alt-rock (Pixies, Built to Spill, etc.).  Their set went down pretty well overall, although the songs started to blur together as it wore on and the pitchless singing grew severely tiresome.

You can look up info on all these groups on Facebook and elsewhere online.