Martian Dance Band of the Week: Minutes

Last Memorial Day Weekend the band embarked on a weekend road trip that took us to Kalamazoo, MI for the first time. The show was set up by an internet pal, Isaac "Ike" Turner, a dude who posts on the EA Forum (the PRF: the #1 music scene and tour hookup spot on Eahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifrth). We were hoping at the time to play the show with his band, Minutes, whom i had not yet heard but being a PRF band i was sure we'd dig and whose fans/friends would dig us. Unfortunately, as fate would have it, Minutes were playing that same night in Chicago at our normal FIB stomping grounds, Quenchers, and thus we passed like ships in the night, only without the casual hookup that phrase implies in tawdry romance novels. A shame, really, because they sound like attractive, attentive lovers based on their stellar debut LP, which just activated on Bandcamp this week (you can order physical albums from the page; they'll ship in January).

The word from their Quenchers show was that Minutes was positively unfuckwithable, and i can see why as i listen to the new self-titled record. Members of the band have apparently done time in DC and played with Beauty Pill and the Most Secret Method, and it's apparent in the rustic, organic feel of both the songwriting and recording quality, which let's call perfectly mid-fi (not super-slickly produced, but not purposely recorded on a four-track for that hip lo-fi "shitgaze" sound, either). It sounds like a top-notch home recording that, were it coming out on CD, you could envision being wrapped in home-made cardboard sleeves individually screened with a band member's art. These are all positives, by the way.

The songs are quality post-punk that call to mind the classics of 90s indie-rock geography; there's a little Polvo-ish North Carolina in the guitars and vocals and definitely DC in the arrangements, a combination that reminds me of a few of the bands from late-90s Oshkosh that were drawing from the same wells (if i drop the names Chinaski and Hong!, that'll mean jack shit to about 95% of you, but the 5% "fuck yeahs!" will be worth it). They share a lot of influences with Milwaukee's Absolutely, although Minutes' riffs are more tightly focused into sub-three-minute nuggets instead of Absolutely's more adventurous explorations of the same material. The vocals throw around melodies and counter-melodies willy-nilly like they have extras stored away in a secret toybox somewhere in the closet. Sure, let's saturate "Float and Breathe" and "Sunday Not so Bloody" with hooks layered over each other. Fuck it; we've got hundreds. And let's blast through ten songs in twenty-five minutes so each song delivers a mere taste and peeps are forced to listen repeatedly to scratch out that earworm. Good plan, guys.

A download of ten mp3s will run you a cool Lincoln--for two of 'em you'll get the vinyl too. That is what we call in the blogging biz a god damn bargain. Now if you'll excuse me, i need to call a band meeting to see when we can swap shows and get these fools to Milwaukee and get us back to K-Zoo.

Martian Dance Bands of the Week (all-Boston edition): Pile and Ho-Ag

You know where i hear most of the new bands that excite the hell out of me these days? It's not the usual media outlets like Pitchfork, AV Club, what have you, because let's face it--what the big boys choose to cover just isn't in my wheelhouse at all most of the time. Sure, occasionally Pitchfork will happen to give a stamp of approval to viscerally thrilling, noisy music like HEALTH or Ponytail, but each of those bands found their way to my ears in a different way (HEALTH live, Ponytail from a friend's recommendation, then live). And yeah, AV Club's Loud column is doing some good, but the focus on metal and straight-up punk results in a lot of skimming.

Nope--my online source for all things baller awesome is the Electrical Audio Forum, home of the PRF BBQ music fests and thread after thread of killer recommendations (and no, you derisive naysayers, it's not just a bunch of bands that sound like mid-90s Touch & Go Records or Shellac soundalikes). A few days ago i finally got around to checking out a thread about Boston heavy-folksters Pile, and they have been kicking my ass up and down my apartment ever since.



There's not a lot of biographical info on their Bandcamp site or on their home page, but here's what i do know: they are from Boston, and they play loud, meaty rock and roll that sounds like the Melvins playing hard-hitting 70s folk-rock jams. Their current full-length, Magic Isn't Real, is a trove of bluegrass licks run through the most Sabbath of fuzz pedals. "Levee" and "Two Snakes" are big time highlights, while "Octopus" manages to pound out some serious grunge touchtones in a way that sounds completely fresh, more Mudhoney than Pearl Jam, but definitely its own thing. 2009's Jerk Routine, while not as indebted to the stoner gods of yore, has a heaviness all its own, while keeping the dark, thick, country-rock groove. It calls to mind a long-defunct Western Massachusetts band called EZT, actually, but that's probably way to obscure to work as any sort of a functioning comparison.



Pile just came through Chicago on a two-night stand, and while i wasn't able to catch them, crucial dude John Yingling of Gonzo Chicago captured them on film and uploaded a taste of their crazy, badlam inducing set at Casa Donde:

Meanwhile, i was massively stoked on Wednesday to learn that some old Boston pals of mine, Ho-Ag, had reconvened to unleash a new two-song single into the ether: "Seal the Room​/​Kuzka Mom."



While Pile strip-mine the burly forests of the Pacific Northwest for their inspiration, Ho-Ag's always looked toward the industrial desolation of Ohio for their Devo proto-punk influences. Kindred spirits with my band's weirdo brand of noise-punk? Absolutely, although while we embrace walls of noise and pop hooks, Ho-Ag's gone deeper into Area 51, jerking through alien hallways with sharp corners and dead ends with nothing more than a theremin's whine and a Moog's asphyxiated gurgle to guide them. Their previous full-lengths, 2006's The Word from Pluto and 2008's Doctor Cowboy were my favorite albums of their respective years, and would have likely made my all-decade list had i crafted one. "Seal the Room" and "Kuzka Mom" are more of what makes them great--solid, boilerplate entries into their spazzy, sci-fi Plan 9 catalog. Not a lot new happening on either track, but still better than your band (and mine). Careening drums, synthetic bridges, and faux-unnerving horror-film "woah-ooohs"? Check, check, and thank god, check.



Ho-Ag's been baffling the straights about as long as we have (the first release on their Bandcamp dates back to 2002, a year before we played with them for the first time), and have about as much success and exposure to show for it as we do. Crank this nonsense and tell your friends, and we'll see if we can lure them into another long-overdue US tour.

Martian Dance Bands of the Week! - X's For I's and Pregnant

A few weeks back a dude named Ethan sent me an email with some very nice words about Martian Dance Invasion! and a download link to a rad record called Gravity Wins Again. It's a 2010 release by Ethan's band, Portland's X's For I's, who--full disclosure--share a mutual friend with me in my old buddy Conan Neutron of Victory & Associates, Mount Vicious, Replicator, etc. Being the first person nice enough to send me free music as a direct result of this blog (let the record show that it took roughly 20 days for the first fringe benefits to roll in from this blog--not too shabby), i would be remiss if i did not grant it a few in-depth listens and a review. Good thing that it's pretty damn great.

(NOTE: it may happen--nay, it will happen--that many of the bands i pimp out in Martian Dance Invasion! will be people i know, or have ties to people i know. After touring in a band and meeting/helping out scores of people in bands for 13 years straight, and playing in other bands before that, it's sort of unavoidable. That being said, if you want to send me some music to review or check out, contact me! My info is over in that thar menu to your right. I don't only cover friends' bands, i swear, because some of my friends play in crap bands. The old "they are SUCH nice guys" syndrome, or "when bad bands happen to good people." It's a thing.)



So! X's For I's. Portland. The Pacific Northwest really kills it when it comes to noise-rock, people. From Form of Rocket in Salt Lake City to the Northwest's opposite corner, Seattle's, overabundance of riches (The Bismarck, Police Teeth, Absolute Monarchs, AFrames, The Intelligence, etc. etc.), there's a real appreciation out West for dissonance and hard-driving, scrapey/shredding volume. X's For I's is a worthy member of the fraternity, having schooled themselves in the 90s Dischord Records post-hardcore that bred Fugazi, Jawbox, Q and not U (woah, another alphabet-based name), and even the more emo-tinged Hoover/Crownhate Ruin family tree that has somehow managed to inform Absolutely here in Milwaukee. Gravity Wins Again is full of chewy, rhythm-heavy morsels that stop, start and jigsaw (honestly, there are more starts and stops on this record than a game of Freeze Tag) their way from the Ex-Models to Unwound with a clarity of purpose as direct as their thwomping drums. "4-Eyed Square" in particular owes a lot to the Jawbox catalog, from the J.Robbins-style vocals all the way down to the J.Robbins-style riffage.

This has become an overly name-droppy review. I apologize.

From the handclaps and segmented riffs of "Components" to the harmonized leads and the "you do the math, baby" singalong of "Wolf Tickets," to the head-spinning rhythms of the excellently titled "Alligator Fuckhouse" (which, at the risk of invoking the mighty 'Gazi once again, closes its final 30 seconds with an inspired drop from full-on rock to a gorgeously subdued Lally-style bass-flavored meditation), Gravity Wins Again is a fully engaging thirty-five minutes of driving, impassioned badassery that makes me really mad that we haven't played with them on any of our West Coast tours yet. The album can be streamed in its entirety on X's For I's Bandcamp site, so give it a click.

Meanwhile, in Berkeley,

...i did a bit of shopping at the legendary Amoeba Records and was lucky to stumble onto a copy of another killer late discovery from 2010, the self-titled 12-inch LP from Brooklyn's Pregnant. I first became aware of these guys when my pal Alli from Brooklyn's Nick Cave-worshiping Bootblacks hipped me to them as a possible band to play with on tour. A month or so later, Latest Flame Dan is showing me their LP in his bedroom with the sort of "dude, look what i discovered" exuberance that we over-35 types haven't forgotten but run into way less often than we did in our early 20s.


Pregnant is a bare-bones bargain-basement affair; the album sleeve is black and white and quite possibly was printed at a Kinko's, while the inside contains nothing even resembling anything so modern as a "download code." The music is equally stripped down and basic: songs of a ninety-second average length blur past the ears fueled by Mission of Burma-style post-punk riffs re-imagined by a garage-punk Descendents. The wrist workouts "Do You Feel It?" and "Help" kick things off with double-stroked sixteenth-note guitar chords with only the slightest hint of fuzz, the edge coming more from the downhill rhythm section and Kevin Manion's raspy, Greg Sage vocals.

For a collection of blink-and-you-miss-em supernova bursts of garagey proto-punk, these songs have some serious groove. The frenetic pace is broken only slightly by the waltzing "Skin Display," which spends a whopping 1:37 hammering through a couple verses and a chorus before moving on with a cough to the similarly-abbreviated "Toothache." Both songs swing and sway with some Enchantment Under the Sea slow-dance magic, but don't waste any time and rock no less harder than the barnburning "My Generation" two-note shamble of "Wormie" and "You Think."

It's incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to make straight-ahead punk rock sound fresh and exciting in 2011, but Pregnant pull it off with a combination of attitude, musicianship, and above all, vibe. From the economical packaging to the appropriately lo-fi (read: raw as hell), minimally-overdubbed (if at all) recording, there is a welcome lack of bullshit in this record that is as much a statement of purpose as an accident of economics. If you luck out and find this in the vinyl bin, grab grab grab and spin spin spin. Sure, the band posted a link on their blog to download a vinyl rip of the album (and frankly, i'm shocked they even bothered with such nonsense like a blog, although it hasn't been updated since last September), but this was meant to be listened to with needle on wax, and none of those bullshit ones or zeros.

Martian Dance Band of the Week! - The Blind Shake

Image via the band's website

Holy sweet tastes like mutton Baby Jesus do i love The Blind Shake. This Minneapolis "garage-stomp" threesome is rapidly gaining a reputation among those who've seen them as one of the best live bands in the world, if not THE best (and really, the last time i saw Melt-Banana they had maybe slowed down a microstep, which is all the room The Blind Shake needs to pass them by), and luckily for Milwaukee, we get a chance to see them live up to that hype this Tuesday, July 19 at the Sugar Maple.

The Shake have been hitting the road like maniacs lately, spending the first half of 2011 traversing the states behind their new album Seriousness, of which i've only heard a couple tracks, enough to let me know it's definitely a worthy follow-up to their last proper full-length, 2007's Carmel (they've also tossed a few recordings in collaboration with noise artist Michael Yonkers between LPs). Anyway, blah blah recordings blah--it's all about The Blind Shake's live show, which will kick you in the teeth, punch you in the crotch, and scrape your brain clean of rational thought.

The typical burst of sonic fury from this surf-flavored, psych-tinged, garage-punk whirlwind goes something like this:

"Hi, we're the Blind Shake from Minneapolis."

***REVERB***

***REVERB***

***HIGH KICKS***

***REVERB***

***yeah, i guess if you really wanna show the floor tom who's boss, you SHOULD stand up over it, that makes sense***

***MORE REVERB***

(repeat for approximately 23 minutes)

"Thanks, good night!"

Somehow, The Blind Shake's amp volume, effects, and local draw achieve the perfect balance between thrilling and overpowering when combined with the reflective concrete cube that is the Sugar Maple's back room, providing the sensation of taking a bath in sound waves and getting the dirt vibrated off your body. That being said, i wouldn't complain if so many people started showing up to their Milwaukee gigs that a move to larger confines would be necessary. They deserve the attention, after all.

Milwaukee's own instrumental post-punk combo Wereworm opens, featuring local artist and flier producer extraordinaire Tom Stack on drums. A droney, minimalist, trance-inducing warmup for a band that will then shock you out of your comfort zone like a bracing snow drift after an hour in sauna.

ANYWAY, enough flowery prose. Check out this video of The Blind Shake playing the Hemlock Tavern in San Francisco (a killer place to play, i can say from experience) earlier this year, kicking off with the vibranium-alloy twelve-bar-blues of "Hurracan" from the new record.



JULY 19. SUGAR MAPLE. Do this, Milwaukee. Do this thrilling thing.

Holiday Band

Like i said last night, i don't have much confidence in my ability to turn people in my hometown on to new bands, but it doesn't hurt to try, especially when a band like Memory Map is worth the effort.

It's amusing that their album is named Holiday Band, since their show at Y-Not III took place on Memorial Day. It breaks down like this: one of their guitar players, one Michael Bridavsky (the blue one), is an old Bloomington, IN pal whose other band, the mathy, crazy, currently-on-hiatus Push-Pull, has done time on stage with the HiFi. Dixie hooked his new outfit, Memory Map, up with a show as we were too busy planning our own out-of-town hijinks for that weekend. However, we were back from our lower-Midwest swing just in time to hang out, grill out, and rock out with what turned out to be a brain-sizzling blend of alt-country flair and post-punk drive.

Memory Map's lineup is three guitars and drums, with one of the guitarists (Mike, i think) running some signal through some bass processing to get the low end. The triple-guitar work results in some busy-ass intricate, cascading melody lines that interweave and harmonize in ways that would knock Duane Allman on his ass. Combine with equally harmonized vocal melodies and (the green one) Josh Morrow's driving, thumping drums (which are actually held in check compared to his dazzlingly confounding rhythms in his other band, the ridiculous-in-a-good-way Slutbanger), and the alchemical rock cauldron spits out a band that would fit seamlessly with any of the alt-country bands that NPR constantly creams its collective trousers over, yet would knock all those bands on their asses with a quickness.

For all the yelling i do about the oversaturation of alt-country in the public indie consciousness, when it's done right, it's hard to fuck with. And while i wouldn't call Memory Map an alt-country band, they provide enough of those flavors to sucker people in while also delivering the hard-rocking goods. Since that Y-Not III show, during which i spent equal time shaking my head in disbelief and in "don't stop rockin!" affirmation, i've probably listened to Holiday Band about fifty times. The month immediately after Memorial Day saw me spinning it twice a day minimum, the vocal lines of "Park Bench" and "Big City" an inescapably hypnotic mental trigger commanding MORE SPINS.

You can stream all of Holiday Band on Bandcamp. Check it out--if this record ever got into the right hands at NPR, or into the face of Ryan over at Muzzle of Bees, this shit would take off and they'd be on their way to ten buck shows at Turner Hall. In the meantime, they'll have to be satisfied with me raving about them, and hopefully you.

Check out "Big City" right here: