Red Hands Black Feet, First Borns and Lakefriend @ the Red Room (12/20/12)

In a way, this show had been about a year in the making.  That's how long it had taken Red Hands Black Feet to record, mix, master and release their debut album, These Things Are Important.  From what I've heard, it had been tough finding the time and the money to get it done, but they finally did it.  Given how much praise I've heaped on this group, I probably don't even need to write that I put this show down on my calendar as soon as I heard about it.

Happily, I apparently wasn't the only one.  I counted about forty-five people when I got down to the Red Room.  By the time that Red Hands Black Feet played, that number had to have climbed to seventy if not higher.  It feels good to know that I'm not the only one who loves this group.

Caldwell group Lakefriend opened the show.  They sounded a touch tamer and looser than I've seen them recently, which gave me space to notice how quite a few of their songs seem to follow the same basic pattern (fast section, stop-start section, etc.).  This doesn't mean that they weren't still enjoyable, however.  Also, Gabe Arellano's bass playing sounded much smoother and more confident that it did at the Cheap Time show.  This helped ensure that, when they all hit their groove, Mason Johnson and Matt Stone's complementary guitars and Jacob Milburn's rapid drumming took off once again.

Local group First Borns played next and sounded in excellent form.  Erik Butterworth's drums sounded especially strong and added extra propulsion and power to Alex Hecht's chiming guitar and Christopher Smith's rumbling, droning bass.  A couple of new (I think) surf-punkish songs sounded good and menacing while their older material was as broodingly tuneful as ever.

Red Hands Black Feet closed out the night with a downright majisterial performance.  They glided, weaved, slammed and rumbled their way through the entirety of their album as if it were second nature to them (which, after playing the same damn stuff for at least two years, it probably is).  The audience seemed to know the songs by heart too: I heard folks cheering climaxes and shifts in mood and tempo.  This was in addition to the usual headbanging, whooping and screaming that RHBF's music tends to provoke.  Even one of the Red Room's bartenders gave them the thumbs-up.  The band members gave the love right back with multiple thank-you's to the crowd and to the people who have supported them (Eric Gilbert, Josh Gross, etc.).

This night reconfirmed a belief that I've held for a while: that this is a great band and one that deserves recognition beyond Idaho.  Now that they've got their music recorded, maybe they can truly start to make that happen.

You can find info on these groups on Facebook and elsewhere online.

Cheap Time, James Plane Wreck and Lakefriend @ the Red Room (10/15/12)

This show interested me because it featured a band I'd never encountered before, the Nashville-based trio Cheap Time.  The presence on the bill of solid local acts James Plane Wreck and Lakefriend was a nice little bonus.

I got down to the Red Room around 8:15.  The crowd started out pretty thin but built to about thirty people.  Pretty respectable for a Monday.

Lakefriend's strong opening set built upon the progress that they'd shown at their Flying M gig back in August.  Particularly impressive was Jacob Milburn's drumwork; at once more flexible and more solid, it provided the foundation and the ignition for the chugging basslines and for Mason Johnson and Matt Stone's blending, weaving guitars.  Their marginally slower tempos just allowed them to show off how assured their groove has become.  Very well done.

James Plane Wreck played next and kept the ball rolling.  The crowd whooped and hollered as this group's grinding riffs, terse solos, rumbling bass and thunderous drums hit with more concentrated force than ever before (as far as I've heard, anyway).  Aaron Smith's rough, charming tenor worked his rough, charming lyrics with increased finesse.

"F*** YEAH!" shouted an audience member at one point.

"Quoth the Raven," Smith quipped back.

Cheap Time closed out the night's music.  If the Sex Pistols had tripled their weed intake, they might've sounded a little like these guys: droning riffs, clipped but fluid soloing, slippery basslines, relentless drumming.  I didn't catch more than ten words out of their entire set, but I'd be willing to bet that the snotty, can't-be-bothered sneer in Jeffrey Novak's vocals told me all I needed to know anyway (possible giveaway: they named their latest album Wallpaper Music).  Luckily, they rawked more than hard enough to purge me of my desire to smack Novak in the face.  Songs for the bored, surly malcontent in all of us.

You can find info on these groups on Facebook and elsewhere online.  Special thanks to Eric Gilbert and Duck Club Presents.

The New Slang, Marlene Marlene and Lakefriend @ the Flying M Coffee-Garage (8/15/12)

Originally, I'd planned to check out the Swinging Utters show at the Shredder last Wednesday night.  I'd had it on good authority that it'd probably be a fantastic show, and the general buzz I'd picked up suggested that a lot of people would be there.  The more I thought about it, however, the more sense it seemed to make to do a write-up on something that didn't have so much buzz.  That's one of the things that I love most about doing this blog: making new discoveries, venturing out into the unknown.

The Flying M out in Nampa isn't unknown to me anymore, but the Olympia group The New Slang and the Davis, CA group Marlene Marlene were.  Also, the price was right ($3 cover), and the bill included the Caldwell group Lakefriend, whose opening set for the Soft White Sixties last month I'd enjoyed quite a bit.

I didn't see many people inside the Flying M's garage when I arrived.  As the evening progressed, the crowd built to about thirty.  Decent enough for an off night.  At least the folks dug the music.

The New Slang started off the evening.  "I'll say it hesitatingly," the gentleman pictured here playing the bass told the crowd, "but I'm glad you guys haven't heard us before."  Some people are just too hard on themselves.  Although they played with a reduced lineup (their bassist had apparently had trouble making the gig) and may have sounded just a little loose at a couple of points, their surf-tinged guitar riffs, melodic basslines and quicksilver drumming blended together nicely and fell into a comfortable, confident groove.  Things got even better, though, when Danny Carlson from Marlene Marlene took over on bass and allowed the New Slang to create some gorgeously interweaving guitar lines.  Throughout, their smart, deadpan vocals delivered both their poppy tunes and their ominous lyrics ("Someone will die in a deep volcano. / Someone will die in the Arctic ice flow") effectively.

After the New Slang came Marlene Marlene, whose tense sound mixed funk, disco, psychedelic hard rock, pop and just a little bit of country into its surf-punk base.  Jake Magit's tuneful, humorous snarl and blazing, Billy Zoom-ish guitar found able support in Danny Carlson's calm harmonies and sly basslines and Rene Macleay's fast-stepping drums.  "Whatever happened to the twist?" they asked in one song.  The crowd's moving and grooving answered that question.

Lakefriend provided a solid ending to the night with their careening, infectiously happy tunes.  Although they still sounded a little rough here and there, these guys showed marked signs of improvement in every department.  Matt Stone and Mason Johnson's guitars sounded sharper (even got some very nice interweaving of their own going), Chris Jennings's basslines sounded firmer and Jacob Milburn's drumming sounded more limber and even swinging.  Not only that, their vocals sounded as confident and joyous as their music this time around.

"That was the best set we've ever done," a couple of them said when they were finished.  Took the words right out of my mouth/pen/word processor.  I just might tack on a "so far" at the end.

You can find info on these groups on Facebook and elsewhere online.

The Soft White Sixties, Tropical Punk and Lakefriend @ Neurolux; The First Borns @ the Red Room (7/17/12)

As soon as I learned about this show, I put it down on my schedule.  I've been a fan of The Soft White Sixties since I saw their first show in Boise last December.  That was one wild time--people dancing, screaming, climbing onto the Red Room's stage, hopping around and slapping the band members' butts.  Then came the Sixties' Treefort set, by the end of which their lead singer, Octavio Genera, was literally swinging from the rafters before an ecstatic capacity crowd at, once again, the Red Room.  Considering the much higher ceiling at Neurolux, I doubted that Genera could pull off that stunt again--though if he did, that would really have been something--but no way was I gonna miss this San Francisco band's third go-round.

First up this evening was Caldwell-based group Lakefriend, who delivered a much stronger performance than they did at the Red Room last month.  Their sunny guitars, straight-ahead basslines and hyperkinetic drumming zoomed, swooped and soared as one.  Their predominantly instrumental music sounded far less dark and brooding than my beloved Red Hands Black Feet, and I considered that a good thing; as with a number of the other Caldwell bands that I've seen, they seemed to revel in the simple joy of being young and healthy.  The occasional rough patch in their playing only accentuated that feeling.

After Lakefriend came the Nashville-based garage-rock quartet Tropical Punk.  Their lead singer's sneering, Dylanesque sprechgesang started to wear thin as the set progressed, but their poppy tunes, humourously blunt lyrics, harsh guitars, grounding basslines and lean, mean drumming more than compensated.  Besides, if I'd wanted something gentle and sensitive, I'd have stayed at home and played my Nick Drake albums.

The Soft White Sixties took the stage next.  The energy level of this night's show didn't hit the 10 or 11 of the previous two, but the slyly intricate arrangements and the superior songcraft pushed it to a good solid 8 or maybe 9.  The way that Aaron Eisenberg and Joshua Cook's guitars, Ryan Noble's bass and Joey Bustos's drums weaved and flowed together called to my mind the Rolling Stones at their slickest and sharpest ("Start Me Up," "Miss You," "Beast of Burden," like that).  At the head of it all rode Octavio Genera, who crooned, drawled, purred and belted the songs masterfully.  Nearly everyone in the audience moved close to the stage and stayed there for the duration of the set.  One of the guys in the band called this show a "redemption" for them (they'd had some trouble on the road before arriving here).  For me and the other folks in the crowd, it almost felt like a benediction.

A gentleman I spoke with recently said he thought that The Soft White Sixties had what it took to be huge.  I agree completely.

After the Sixties finished, I walked over to the Red Room in time to catch a set by local trio The First Borns.  Their trancey music provided a nice coda to my night.  The gentle, detached singing rendered the simple tunes even more haunting, and both found support in the high-pitched, distorted bass parts, the droning guitar and the effectively spare drumming.  This was my idea of good late-night music.

You can find info on these groups on Facebook and elsewhere online.  Special thanks to Eric Gilbert and Radio Boise.