First Borns and Color Animal @ the Flying M Concert-Garage (6/28/13)

A band I'd never seen before was going to play the Flying M out in Nampa.  That was all I needed to see.  I marked the show down on the calendar.

Not many others did.  There were six people at the concert-garage when I got there.  The audience never rose over fifteen.  So it goes, I guess.

Color Animal played first.  I knew that this Salt Lake City group would play the Red Room the next night.  By the end of this set, I was hoping that they'd play to a much larger crowd there.  Their boyish vocals, their sunny tunes, their bright, weaving guitars, their straight-ahead basslines and their fluid, driving drums sounded like a cross between the Strokes and the Very Most.  Wiry, dreamy, rocking.

In the modest crowd was a family whom the band apparently knew from SLC.  Didn't hear them griping about the drive out to Nampa...

First Borns played next.  This group seems to rock harder each time I see them, and this set was no exception.  Christopher Smith worked a little sneer into his vocals, Alex Hecht slashed away at his guitar strings and Erik Butterworth's drumming had a nice muscular swing to it.  They may have sounded a little ragged at times, but that just added to the punkish feel of this set.  Smith said that they might retire "Gene," the first song that they wrote together, after this set.  I like that song okay, but considering their uptick in intensity, I'm more interested in what they'll come up with next.

You can find info on these groups on Facebook and elsewhere online.  If you like what you've read and would like to help keep it going, click the yellow "Give" button and donate.  Even $5 would help.

Merchandise, Wet Hair and First Borns @ Neurolux (4/2/13)

What with the remainder of my Treefort coverage and the shows I'd seen since then that needed reviewing, I had a fair amount of work to take care of this past Tuesday.  Still, enough people had expressed excitement about Merchandise playing the Neurolux that I decided I could put that stuff on hold and check it out.

I'd had coffee with a friend at the Flying M that afternoon, so I got there good and early for the first time in a while.  I counted a little over twenty people at that point.  The crowd would peak at about thirty-four or thirfty-five.  Not bad.  I was kinda disappointed, though, that this spiffy light show got tested out during soundcheck (flashing, multi-colored circles spinning and darting all over the wall behind the stage) but never got used during the show.

First Borns opened the show.  Like the Gunfighters and Junior Rocket Scientist, these guys seemed to have stepped up their game considerably from their pre-Treefort performances.  Christopher Smith's tuneful basslines, Alex Hecht's ringing, hypnotic guitar lines and especially Erik Butterworth's driving drums all sounded fiercer than they ever have before.  Their older songs sounded reborn, and their newer material was equally strong.  Very impressive.

Up next was Wet Hair, a trio from Iowa City.  These guys sounded so much like First Borns in some ways that it was almost uncanny: pretty tunes, plain vocals, tuneful basslines, propulsive drumming, curlicuing synth riffs.  They felt much airier and more disco-ish than the locals, however, thanks in part to the intricate cymbal work.  The drums sounded a little low in the mix, but maybe that was just the way these guys like it.  Anyway, less Joy Division, more New Order.  Worked for me.

Merchandise closed out the night.  Now I kinda regret using adjectives like "fierce" and "pumped-up" so much.  I should have saved that stuff for this group here.  The slowest that this Tampa band got was a number that mixed slow-jam funk with Sabbath-esque sludge metal.  Other than that, their warped guitars, bullet-train bass and furious, Buddy-Rich-on-crank drumming got me nodding so vigorously that I started getting a little faint (I probably should have eaten more before the show).  It wasn't all just full-on aggression, however: the rhythms were supple enough that people could and did dance.  Carson Cox's limited, smartly subdued vocals gave the music some give too.  Grand fun.

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

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.

San Francesca, First Borns and Iconoplasty @ Neurolux (11/6/12)

I'd caught the tail-end of San Francesca's set when they played the Red Room's Atypical Tuesday a few months back.  I'd only gotten to hear one or two songs, but those had impressed me so much that I'd hoped that I'd get to see this San Francisco-based band again sometime soon.  When I learned about this show, consequently, I immediately marked it down on the calendar.

There were about thirty people at Neurolux when I got down there.  I expected more people to show up later on, but such was not the case.  Then I remembered that there was some kind of election going on...

First up was Iconoplasty, the latest project of musician/playwright/Boise Weekly reporter Josh Gross.  It would've been impressive enough to have watched/heard the man construct layer upon layer of beats, riffs and loops for fifty minutes straight with only a guitar and an electronic drum setup.  Then he confirmed afterwards that, aside from the very beginning and the very end, his set had been entirely improvised.  Probably the most immediately and straightforwardly likeable that Josh Gross will ever get.  It's just a shame that more people didn't dance.  At least one guy had the right idea...

Too bad he stopped before Eric Gilbert turned on the smoke and lasers.

Local group First Borns played next.  It might've been nice if, after pausing mid-set to announce that Obama had won the election, they'd launched into a cover of "Won't Get Fooled Again."  That wouldn't really have fit in with their moody, Joy Division-esque sound, though, and we can debate the point another time (the important thing: Romney and the Luna laws lost).  In any case, these guys sounded in excellent form, with Christopher Smith's detached vocals floating atop his own droning basslines, Alex Hecht's buzzsaw guitar and Erik Butterworth's clipped, nimble drumming.

San Francesca closed out the night.  This group certainly made no bones about their influences: they closed their set with an original song entitled "Manchester" that even stole part of its melody from "Decades."  As the proud owner of five Joy Division CD's and two Joy Division t-shirts, however, I say that you can do a lot worse when it comes to influences.  Besides, their misty guitar drones, solemn synthesizer and intricate, propulsive mix of live drumming and recorded beats proved distinctive enough in their own right.  The clincher for me, however, were Harrison Russell's flat, grating vocals.  I found them annoying at first, but as the set wore on, I came to regard them as a bracing sign of life.  The man sounded too pissed off and smart to surrender to suicide, decadence or cheap cynicism.  Consequently, this group appealed not only to the part of me that loves Joy Division but to the part of me that loves the Clash.

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

Marshall Poole, Pacific Nomadic and Mickey the Jump @ the Crux; the Mad Caps, First Borns and Skittish Itz @ Tom Grainey's (9/8/12)

This was a busy night.  I'd already planned to check out a show set up by Orriginal Promotions at the Crux when Keesha Renna told me about a promising bill set up by Vagabond Promotions at Tom Grainey's.  Honestly, I'm glad I started my new job: it may give me a chance to take a break.

There were over forty people at the Crux when I got down there, and some more trickled in as the show progressed.  Joseph Morgan of Pacific Nomadic mentioned that he saw a whole lotta friends and family in the crowd, but I doubt that that accounted for everyone.

First up was Marshall Poole, a power trio based in Caldwell, Nampa and Boise (according to their Facebook page).  I've said this before, and I said it to a friend who watched this set with me: groups like this really make me feel like I haven't done enough with my life.  The members of this band are only 18 or 19, I learned, but they've already got it all together.  Between Rider Soran's clean, firm voice and Melanie Radford's tough, sultry one, they boast two solid singers.  Between Soran's astonishing guitar solos, Radford's humongous, funky basslines, Mike Hoobery's fluid but foundational drums and the swaggering groove that held them all together, they didn't remind me of anything so much as Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys.  Between their spit-shined tunes and hooks galore, they sounded as if they could take the classic rock canon and at least wrestle it to a tie.  My friend wondered where they could go in five years' time.  So do I.

After Marshall Poole came Pacific Nomadic, a band from Boise originally but now based in Seattle.  Their sparkling guitar, streamlined bass, pensive melodies and pinched, nasal, moaned/whined vocals called to mind swoony popsters like the Cure and Coldplay.  They didn't too mopey, though, thanks in good part to Nate Ihli's drumming.

Nampa band Mickey the Jump closed out the show at the Crux.  Hearing their striking tunes, intriguing lyrics, protean guitar and bouncing, stomping, driving drums again confirmed my good opinion of this band.  Unfortunately, it also confirmed my sneaking suspicion that they have a weak link in Nate Berrian's lead vocals.  Berrian isn't the worst singer that I've heard in this town (no, I won't tell you who that is here), but as it stands right now, he just doesn't have the pipes to put the songs over like he should.  I should hasten to add, however, that I could tell that the spirit and the brains were willing even if the flesh was weak.  There's gotta be a vocal couch out there who can help the man.

I headed straight over to Tom Grainey's after the Crux show ended.  I got there too late to see Dear Rabbit's return to Boise, but I did get to catch the set by the Mad Caps, a duo originally from Las Vegas but currently based in Seattle.  I couldn't hear much of this group's lyrics, but I didn't really concern myself with that, what with Ted Rader's bluesy, elemental riffs and Jon Real's clipped, steady, pounding drumwork.  Rader told the crowd at one point that some state troopers gave them a hard time on their way to this gig.  I hope that doesn't turn them off Idaho.  Stripped-down, gloriously primal rock.

Local group First Borns played next.  Admittedly, I wasn't sure how well these moody dudes would go over with the crowd at Grainey's.  Happily, they sounded if fine form this night, with Alex Hecht's guitar cutting through the noise in the bar like a chainsaw.  Their strong beat and tunes got the people moving.

Local punk band Skittish Itz followed First Borns.  "SKiTTiSH iTZ [sic] have been playing shows since November 2006 and don't intend to quit," it says on their Facebook profile.  I certainly hope not.  Their catchy tunes and lead singer Rekn Russ's clear, charming wail combined with metallic dual guitars and a hard-charging rhythm section to close out the night's music in solid fashion.  It makes me happy that, even with all the shows that I've seen this year, there are still cool local bands out there to discover.

You can find info on these groups on Facebook and elsewhere online.  Special thanks to Keesha Renna and Vagabond Promotions.  Oh, and I've got a shiny dime right here for anyone who can tell me where Marshall Poole took their name from.

Deaf Kid, Clarke and the Himselfs, The Shivas and First Borns @ the Red Room (8/29/12)

The Shivas came very, very close to making my Treefort Top 10.  This Portland-based group's surf/garage-rock sound reminded me of both Dick Dale and the Velvet Underground.  It was a given, then, that I'd go see them when they returned to Boise.

I'd originally hoped to catch at least part of Go Listen Boise's promising all-local show at Neurolux this same night, but some work at home had taken up so much of my time that I decided to head straight over to the Red Room for fear of missing something.  I sat at the bar and read a little from my book.  After an hour had passed, I shook my head and reflected once again upon that cardinal rule of rock: no show ever, ever, EVER starts on time.

Attendance was surprisingly low for this evening's show.  I counted about 30 people at its peak, most of whom seemed to opt to hang out on the patio and smoke (which seemed a bit redundant, considering the godawful smoke in the air).  Hopefully, the folks who could've come here were over at the Lux watching With Child, Sun Blood Stories and the Hand.

Deaf Kid opened the show.  Despite Jacob Milburn's professed and evident drunkenness, this Caldwell group's sunny surf-punk riffs, terse solos, guiding-hand basslines and sure-and-steady drumming got the evening off to a good start.  I liked their songs so much that I hope they get titles someday.

After Deaf Kid came local act Clarke and the Himselfs.  Clarke Howell's flat, slightly nasal singing sounded rather affected but was pleasant enough.  Of course, it helped immensely that he boasted some sharp songwriting: intriguingly bizarre lyrics consistently found memorable tunes and riffs.  Equally impressive was his ability to strum his guitar and hit his snare drum at the same time.

The Shivas played next.  Jared Molyneaux and Robert Mannering's twangy drones and piercing solos, Kristin Leonard's sturdy drumming and especially Eric Shanafelt's Entwistle- or Jamerson-worthy bass work all sounded as far-out and groovy as they did at Treefort.  Seeing/hearing them live a second time, however, I noted a certain forlorn insularity to the Shivas' music (as I did when I listened to their recordings a few months back).  They sounded as if they yearned to attain the open, uncomplicated optimism of their 60's pop influences but knew instinctively that they couldn't.  Not for nothing have they been touring with Calvin Johnson lately, I suppose.  Still, the undercurrent of moody self-consciousness didn't keep the crowd from hopping and bopping.

First Borns closed out the night.  To my surprise, this local band's set had greater visceral impact on me than the Shivas' did.  It probably helped that First Borns' music was more up-front about its own moodiness.  It undoubtedly helped too that they sounded even more confident than they did when I saw them at the Crux a few weeks ago.  Chris Smith's high, tuneful basslines, Alex Hecht's sparkling, buzzing riffs and Erik Butterworth's pumped-up drumming surged forth with such concentrated force that they achieved something of the emotional honesty that the Shivas invoke but keep at arm's length.  A nice, cathartic finale.

You can find info on these groups on Facebook and elsewhere online.  Special thanks to Wes Malvini, Scott Pemble, the Manor and the Red Room.

First Borns, Sauna, Orca Team and Paperhead @ the Crux (7/30/12)

I greatly enjoyed Sauna's set at Treefort, so I got excited when I saw that they'd be returning to Boise.  Not only that, this night's show gave me the chance to show some support for the folks at the Manor, who set it up, and for the Crux, whose business seems to have improved since they finished remodeling and got their beer license back.

My notes say that only fifteen or so people, including me, saw Sauna play at Treefort (they had the bad luck of going on at the same time that Of Montreal performed on the main stage).  Not counting the members of the four bands who played this night, the crowd boiled down to about the same size.  That wasn't so bad, though.  For one thing, I thought that the modest audience suited a more intimate venue like the Crux as opposed to a larger one like the Linen Building.  Also, it included Eric Gilbert (who worked the soundboard), Jeremy Jensen from The Very Most, Keesha Renna and a handful of folks from the Caldwell scene.

Local trio First Borns got the evening off to a fine start.  Their murmured vocals, solemn bass hooks, droning guitar riffs and quick, clipped yet rock-steady drumming made me think of New Order or The Jesus and Mary Chain gone surf-rock.  Each song had its own distinct identity yet still fit within the group's minimalistic sound, which spoke very well for their writing and arranging skills.  I couldn't really make out the lyrics, but the music was so appealing that I didn't care.

After First Borns came Sauna.  This Denver-based group had had some trouble getting here--their van had broken down a couple of times on the road, and they said that they'd even managed to break a tow truck--but they sounded raring to go during their soundcheck.  Their set made good on that promise: they played even better than they did at Treefort.  Molly sang the irresistible punk-pop tunes in a slyly serene, girly voice.  Ethan chipped in with some charmingly flat harmonies and quietly propulsive basslines.  Adding some spice to the mix were Sammi's unquietly propulsive drumming and especially guitarist CJ's dollops of feedback and terse, bulls-eye solos.

photo by Megan Mallan Stoll

Sauna's playful music benefitted from some yellow balloons, which the audience bopped and popped over the course of the night.  They were such a perfect touch that you'd have thought the band brought them along, but no: this show doubled as a birthday bash for a handful of folks in the crowd (and a couple of people in the other bands).

After Sauna came the Seattle-based trio Orca Team, whose surf-tinged, danceable, slightly ominous rock fell midway between Sauna's spunkiness and First Borns' moodiness.  Leif Anders's gently insistent singing and rumbling basslines intertwined with Dwayne Cullen's nimble drums and Jessica B.'s hazy guitar.  Their sharp groove got the crowd moving, and their strong melodies and hooks maintained the tuneful standard established by the earlier bands.

Tennessee-based trio Paperhead played last.  Instead of hanging ten, their retro-60's sound came straight outta the garage by way of Andy Warhol's Factory: deadpan vocals, trebly guitar, eerie organ tracks, amphetamine-crazed drumming, artfully poppy tunes, looooonnng instrumental passages.  Their music evoked both shiny happy people holding hands and midnight ramblers putting their fist through your steel-plated door.  The perfect finale for the night.

Sidenote: Here's a picture I took of Keesha Renna doing some serious swinging with a guy during Paperhead's set.  When I showed it to her, she just scoffed that her posture wasn't what it used to be.  I dunno, looked okay to me...

You can find info about these groups on Facebook and elsewhere online.  Special thanks to Megan Stoll for her cool photo.