then come on down
STATIC STATIC
are to Los Angeles what a snow shovel is to Florida: out of place, but still sharp and heavy enough to fracture your skull if provoked, and full of enough angular and bent noise to cave in your prettiest features before you know what's happened. Once a two piece living room-punk glue wave machine, now a three-piece live unit with a real drummer (Leslie from the Red Aunts), Static Static cull all the most wretched scraps of electronic noise and set them up to a hypnotic beat that is somehow completely great and shirks any annoying predispositions. The combination of real drums and drum machines working together is quite a sound to behold and really works wonders when aligned with their gnashing and convulsing songs engineered to lay your mind to waste. Taking equal parts of VOLT and Spider and molding it into a whole new spectrum of sonance, Static Static have remained in the shadows long enough, and it's time Los Angeles realized what a great resource they have lurking around in it's dark corners.
THE BLIND SHAKE
from Aversion.com "The best thing about having a full menu of vices before you is that, once you get over your puritanical squeamishness and decide to become a libertine, you can open up a world of mix'n'match distractions that can keep you busy for years to come. Tired of getting drunk? Try throwing in a bowl and hooking up with your latest fling. Straight sex can get a little dull, and when it does, any combination of drugs, violence and perversion can spice it up. Heck, even when your beloved music collection isn't doing it for you like it used to, a trip to the pharmacy can change that up in a hurry.
Music's a lot like that, too. With so many styles, sub-genres and movements floating around in its history, it shouldn't take more than a little ingenuity to keep things fresh for us. And, we'll admit, that genre-blurring thing can lead to some abominations (see: rap-metal and jazz fusion), but it's still got some surprises in store for us. The Blind Shake make good on the potential of mix'n'match rock'n'roll vices, as its sophomore effort, Carmel, forces a little bit of psychedelia onto its punk. Or maybe it's the other way around. Either way, it doesn't matter: Carmel is a double-dose of amphetamine jitters and lysergic freakouts. Better yet, it's a good combination of its various vices.
The Blind Shake makes Carmel look so easy, you'll wonder why more punks hadn't hit on the notion to spin off into worlds of psychedelia. If the Jimi Hendrix experience found punk rock and began jamming after Hendrix drowned in his own puke instead of throwing in the towel, it might have sounded a lot like Carmel. "Midnight Scream" and "Peach Lines" borrow the sludgy guitar tones of The Jefferson Airplane or Iron Butterfly, but run them through the paces with the fury of Black Flag. "Been Young" merges the band's acid-eating guitar tones with clockwork-like arrangements and wiry lead guitars that show more than a passing resemblance to a young Fugazi, while "Wool Jacket" musters the noisome fury of a basement-punk outfit on full destructor mode. "St. Paul Creamery" and "Broken Down Stairs" sound more like a psychedelic rock revival outfit going off the deep end than a punk band meddling with LSD in the practice space.
As much of a novelty as genre-mixing acts can be, Carmel shows The Blind Shake is the real deal. With enough firepower and vision to cram its unlikely punk-adelic crossover to the brim with fire, Caramel isn't just a workable fusion of styles, but a glimpse at a lot of untapped potential. Let's hope The Blind Shake's able to make good with it.
..> ..> - Matt Schild"with local support from
AWESTRICH
and
THE COMPLAINIACS
from Phoenix
all ages/ 9pm
No comments:
Post a Comment