Sunday, February 13, 7 p.m.: Thank You + Dustin Wong (Ponytail) + Ed Schrader + Combine, $5 donation
Thank You makes shambolic art-punk that thrashes, simmers, and eventually explodes. The band is often compared to Pere Ubu and Big Black—acts from the late ’70s and early ’80s that exemplified the bombed-out cities from whence they came—but a new album on Thrill Jockey, Golden Worry, functions on a more meditative level. The percussion is still fierce, and everything could fall apart at any second, but there’s always order to the chaos.
Dustin Wong is the guitarist for Ecstatic Sunshine and Ponytail (currently on hiatus), but it’s his recent solo work that’s getting a lot of attention. Infinite Love is a single 40-minute piece, composed of layered guitars and exquisite counterpoint, and totally worth getting lost in. Pitchfork’s Marc Masters describes Infinite Love as follows: “Pin-pricks congeal into chords, loops swing into low-end waves, and strums spawn glistening notes like a sparkler emitting embers.” Read that three times fast, and then hoof it over for the show.
Ed Schrader is the host of the Ed Schrader Show, an online video series that calls to mind Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party. He’s a Baltimore scene staple, and what he does on stage is hard to predict or describe.
Combine, opening the show, writes in with this description:
Combine is an an art punk group from Philadelphia that’s willing to get fast and snotty for the right price. They were marinated in 80s post punk, were julienned with 90s post hardcore, and then topped with a dollop of millennial anxiety. Think somewhere between Flipper and the Dead C. They have a mean experimental streak that cuts through their spacey, sludgy, double drum sound. The kids on Glee are going to cover one of their songs in the episode about the high school massacre next season (spoiler alert!). Best served with muscatel, the champagne of the people.
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Friday, February 25, 5 p.m.: Bird Names (Athens, GA)
Bird Names, proud members of the ever-fertile Athens scene, are playing at the Ox later this night - but they’re stopping by for a quick set right beforehand. Think psychedelic pop along the lines of your favorite Elephant Six bands—really great, really fun, pretty trippy.
I would write an elaborate description—and I may still do so—but for now, just wrap yourself up in the tunes. The tunes.
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Sunday, February 6, 3 p.m.: DJ Champe Presents Bob Marley’s Birthday free
Deep reggae cuts from DJ Champe, host of the Lion’s Den on WPEB 88.1, all afternoon.
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Saturday, January 22, 7 p.m.: Andrew Bernstein (Teeth Mountain) + Owen Gardner (Teeth Mountain) + Your Children Is Beautiful (Philly) + The New Heaven & The New Earth (Philly) $5 donation
Andrew Bernstein hails from Baltimore, where his band Teeth Mountain plays a crucial role in making that city a hub for off-centered sounds of all sorts. When he’s without his bandmates, Andrew leans toward heavy drone and tape-based textures—the sort that bewitch and confound in equal measure. If instruments are involved, they’re twisted and skewed into something completely new, as with this saxophone-based composition.No wonder Dan Deacon tapped him to play sax in the Dan Deacon Ensemble. Get on it.
Also performing here—and also in Teeth Mountain—is Owen Gardner. His solo work trades in expansive sounds, exploring the purity and potential of tone. If that doesn’t clear anything up…we understand. It’s sort of hard to explain. Think about what might happen if a guitar-wielding mystic put you in a particularly serious trance. (And check out this video to get a better sense of what we mean.)
Your Children Is Beautiful are from Philly. Or maybe they is from Philly. Either way, they kick ass. This city has a whole bunch of bands who take your more or less normal rock and roll and transform it into something a bit more meditative and heady. Think about Kurt Vile, or Purling Hiss, or Sun Airway. Your Children Is Beautiful work in a similar vein, taking tropes you might know and turning them into slowed-down masterpieces.
Notes: Your Children Is Beautiful Didn’t Play.
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Saturday, January 15, 7 p.m.: Radere (record release) + Anduin (Richmond, VA) + DJ Andrew Joseph (Philly) $5 donation
Radere is Carl Ritger, a local musician working hard to make this city safe for the deepest, most all-encompassing journeys in sound. It was he (along with DJ Andrew Joseph, see below) who brought Xela and Black to Comm to Younglove’s back in November, which ended up being a total blast. Holed up in his West Philly apartment, Carl creates ambient compositions that, in his words, “explore the fusion of acoustic sound sources and digital production techniques.” That might mean tweaking field recordings until they’re little more than washes of sound, and then re-processing that wash into endless iterative textures. A new album, A Season In Decline (Full Spectrum), is the best example yet of Carl’s intricate touch with cast-away tone; come celebrate its release.
It wouldn’t be enough, though, for Carl to perform. He’s also roped in Richmond’s Anduin. Anduin is the solo project of Jonathan Lee, a member of the excellent Souvenir’s Young America. When left to his own devices, Jonathan favors dark drones that go low and slow, as on his second album, 2009’s fine Abandoned In Sleep (SMTG). Drowned in Sound writes that Anduin “generates a nocturnal, threat-tinged atmosphere that suggests inexorably swelling panic.” Can you possibly think of a better way to spend your Saturday night?
DJ Andrew Joseph is Andrew Brzozowski, another West Philly denizen with a musical spoon in lots of musical pots. Along with Carl, Andrew put together the Xela and Black to Comm show. As one-half of Bunnies + Bats, Andrew makes minimal, IDM-inflected compositions. Here, he’ll be performing a DJ set that will most probably delight and defy your expectations.
Saturday, December 11, 7 p.m.: WOOM (Oakland, CA) + Party Photographers (Philly) + Soft Sea (Philly) $5 donation
WOOM makes amazing experimental organic noise-rock, to put it inarticulately. There are handclaps, the sounds of someone breathing panned rapidly between the stereo field, an off-kilter organ, fuzz, and Sara Magenheimer’s desperate pixie howl. Xiu Xiu, a guy from Deerhoof, and Talk Normal all recently remixed songs by WOOM, so you’ll be in good company if you get into them. They are awesome.
The Party Photographers’ rapid rise up the Philly’s indie-rock totem pole—a crazy pole, covered in oil and lined with corpses of countless bands that tried and failed to make it—is probably due partly because of their name. Needless to say, the Party Photographers have the best name in rock. (I was going to make fun of a bunch of indie-rock band names here, but I’ll let you do that.) But believe it or not, the moniker is just a small part of their appeal, because their sound—evocative garage-fuzz, with a little bit of shoegaze and a little bit of spilled beer—is so damn compelling.
The Soft Sea is a band we know very little about. It involves a guy named Al. In any case, you should show up and watch him (them?) play.
This is going to be a big show. Come early so you can stake out a spot. And bring $5 as a donation for the bands, because they deserve it.
Notes: WOOM didn’t play. Instead, the amazing, amazing Slutever did. They were great.
Sunday, December 5, 1 p.m.: Franz Nicolay (NY)
The ingenious composer, keyboardist, and all-around brilliant musician is dropping by on Sunday, and we are so, so psyched. Nicolay was a member of the Hold Steady from 2005 until earlier this year—all of the amazing keyboard, organ, and accordion parts on albums like Separation Sunday and Girls and Boys in America were laid down by the man himself—when he left to work on his own material. His latest album, Luck and Courage, is fantastic: a little bit folk, a little bit rock, a little bit chamber music virtuosity. We couldn’t be happier to have him. This’ll be an in-store for the ages…even if it’s not on Saturday. You’ll just have to leave church a little early.
Saturday, November 13, 7 p.m.: Xela (MA) + Black To Comm (Hamburg, Germany)
This is very exciting—the first show in the new Younglove’s. Local musician/cool dude Andrew Brzozowski approached us about hosting two musicians on the experimental label Type. We agreed immediately. Xela, from Massachusetts, has been kicking around for a while, making fantastic droned-out tunes that are hard to put aside. Way back in 2003, Pitchfork called Xela’s For Frosty Mornings and Summer Nights a ”chill-out album that makes the term “chill-out” respectable again.” We couldn’t agree more, all these years later. Black To Comm may have taken their name from an MC5 track, but…they’re not MC5. Not by a long shot. The Hamburg act—playing one of a handful of U.S. shows here—make careful, manipulated sound sculptures. You owe it to yourself to check them out.
