Athens, Georgia dance pop duo Yip Deceiver is the project of multi-instrumentalist Davey Pierce, best known as the bassist for of Montreal, and Nicolas Dobbratz. Their debut LP, Medallius was released earlier this year, a record that combines playfully experimental pop songwriting with analog dance production to create a charismatic sound built on powerful hooks. Tonight the pair will perform at Babeville's Ninth Ward along with local synthpop duo Love Scenes and dream pop band Small Smalls. According to Pierce, the band's live show is characterized by "music for a weird night of random adventure" and a "genuine expression of who we are and what we love without taking ourselves too seriously." Tickets are $10 advance, $12 at the door. Show starts at 8pm.
Kyle Reigle records ambient dream pop under the name Cemeteries, one of Buffalo's most interesting acts in recent memory. Reigle's ethereal songwriting style features elegant, reverb-laden vocals and melodic guitar riffs similar to Youth Lagoon and Porcelain Raft, both of whom Cemeteries recently opened for at Brookyln's Music Hall of Williamsburg. After catching national blog attention, and receiveing an album of the week nod here, last October with his full length release The Wildnernesson Lefse records, Reigle has been working on a side project under the name Camp Counselors and hopefully will put out another Cemeteries album before the year is over. Tonight, Cemeteries will perfom at the Waiting Room alongside fellow Buffalo acts Love Scenes, Bryan Johnson and Family, and Smart House. Tickets will be available at the door for $8 or can be purchased from the After Dark box office at 630 Elmwood Ave. Doors open at 9:30
Love Scenes, Buffalo's favorite dream pop duo, will be playing at Duke's tonight alongside Made Violent and The Revenge Therapists. Leah Loefke and T.J Grace started making hypnotic electronic songs together back in 2010, and since then, their impressive output includes 2 full albums: Classy Excuse for a Trashy Experience and Blissed Out Youth and a label signing. For those who are unfamiliar with the duo, Grace supplies the crafty synthwork and drum-machine sequences and Loefke's airy vocals further embellish the instrumentals by tying them up to create a cohesive melody while supplying them with the kind of heart-felt content that allows the music speak to listeners on a more deeply personal level. It's some of the finest original music that Buffalo has to offer and you can check it out tonight. The show starts at 9PM - see ya there.
With less than 24 hours until the plug is pulled on Mohawk Place for good, many of Mohawk's local staples and up and coming national acts are going to need a new home. One of the venues in Buffalo that has already taken advantage of this opportunity is Duke's on Allen. The bar has transitioned away from their mostly electronic acts to a wide variety of genres, and in turn, has really taken off.
Tonight, the bar hosts one of their better bills yet as they welcome Rochester's electro pop act Joywave to Allen Town. We just recently named their track "True Grit" our favorite Rochester tune of last year, and if you haven't had the chance to see them yet, tonight is as good of a time as any. For the local part of tonight's bill, the Rochester group will be joined by electro dance duo Love Scenes, who just last week made the hour long trip east to join Joywave at the Bug Jar, and soaring throw back emo rockers All Blondes Go to Heaven.
Music kicks off tonight at 10pm with a cover of $5. Duke's resident house DJ Bearskinrug will keep the tunes going all night long following the final act.
2012 brought in a flood of diverse and superb music in the national outlook, but it was also a prolific time that gave rise to a thriving local music scene. On top of all that, Buffalo racked in some incredible live acts and has seemingly put itself back on the map as a regular tour bus trail-marker. Yes, year-end lists are indeed the vanity of vanities when it comes to music and entertainment commentary, but let's face it, they're fun as hell and fill a certain journalistic void that is pretty harmless compared to the Facebook Year in Review feature. So without further ado, here are my favorites of the year:
With Dylan Baldi's newfound approach to corrosive post-hardcore rock it seems he has forever deserted the lo-fi tendencies of his previous bedroom recordings and taken up with surges of Strat, feedback, and a hair-raising belt that is intense as it is awesome. As a result, the band not only garnered a shit-ton of ink, but also expanded their touring output tenfold while more recently asserting that a new album is on it's way as early as next year (see 2013 wish list).
While it didn't make many year-end lists, let alone assemble half its due esteem in record reviews, Hospitality's debut self-titled record is certainly one of the most comprehensive debut records I've heard in some time. Each track, from the 50's singsongy"Betty Wang" to the choral tranquility of "Sleepover", play off each other, and as a result the album lends itself to the stresses of the twentysomething as Amber Papini sings of all the doors and locks that seem to plague the age. I've heard from many people that there were a lot of good albums this year, but no truly great albums. Those people need to hear this drastically underrated album.
I can distinctly remember listening to Strange Weekend for the first time at the beginning of February and thinking it was a special album. I knew it was going to be an aural impact to the year, as it was even further impactful as I saw mastermind Mauro Remiddi play an incredible show at The Ninth Ward during the summer. With it's delicate vocal melodies, wistful arrangements of synth and organ, and convoluted percussion, Strange Weekend masks itself as a modest album, but wields big ideas of relational wandering, beginning with practical images of heartbreak and slowly blurring the edges as it strangely grows more dreamlike and vivid.
4. The Men - Open Your Heart
With their third record, Open Your Heart, The Men proved they can't be pigeonholed into the abrasive indie-punk box that so many had sustained them to before. Diving headfirst into an array of stylings from the abyssal yells of "Animal" to the sprawling guitar licks surrounding "Country Song" to the true country virtue of "Candy", The Men have covered all the corners, even if their tight Brooklyn quarters confines them to just four.
5. Mount Eerie - Clear Moon As one of the many artists who decided it would be a good idea to release two albums this year, Phil Elverum dropped a couple gems with Clear Moon and Ocean Roar. With his soft-spoken lyricism and uncanny ability at delivering vocals via underlit instrumental arrangments, Elverum is a poet, seer, storyteller, and historian. The framework of his music is relative to the soul of Anacortes, WA where he resides, and from the Mountain called Eerie he extracts an abyssal sound that grows stronger with each listen. 6. Father John Misty - Fear Fun 7. Chromatics - Kill For Love 8. Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo Magellan 9. Sharon Van Etten - Tramp 10. Purity Ring - Shrines Favorite Local Albums of 2012 Like I said, there was a stunning amount of great local music released this year. Below, I've listed my favorite five local albums of 2012. Coincidentally, I also reviewed each of these albums this year. Next to each you can click 'review' to read what I had to say about each!
1. Damian - Soul Night (Review) 2. Cemeteries - The Wilderness (Review) 3. Love Scenes - Blissed Out Youth (Review) 4. Sonny Baker - Here Are Those Freaks You've Been Asking For (Review) 5. Anthony DelPlato - 8 Old Vines (Review) Favorite Tracks of 2012
1. Purity Ring - "Fineshrine" Megan James' spellbinding vocals and lyricism melted with Corin Roddick's stellar hip-hop beats create a unique sort of track that is both incredible beautiful and catchy as hell. Hit the repeat button for this one.
2. Cloud Nothings - "Wasted Days" This 8-minute epic contains a bonechilling line that will forever be etched into the brain of any listener: "I thought I would be more than this."
3. Porcelain Raft - "The Way In" I first heard this song via a YouTube video of Mauro Remiddi playing it on an organ in an old church. In it's purest form the song is a hymn, a prayer. The opening words contradictory to Remiddi's actual globetrotting experience: "Advising people not to travel far."
4. Grimes - "Oblivion" Clair Boucher has spun a dark yet poppy web with this track that seems to have made a lot of year-end track lists, and with good reason. Boucher's floaty vocal approach coating textured synths are deceiving as she sings, "If someone could break your neck / Coming up behind you always coming and you'd never have a clue."
5. Japandroids - "The House That Heaven Built" With it's anthemic guitar riffs, background chants, and tempo-setting snare Japandroids have created a rock song for the ages in "The House That Heaven Built".
Favorite Show of 2012 Sufjan Stevens at Asbury Hall, December 18
In one word, the show was life-changing. Every other word I have to say about it is in a review I wrote, which you can read here. Honorable Mention: Porcelain Raft at Babeville, Cloud Nothings at Babeville, St. Vincent at Town Ballroom. 2013 Wish List
1.) I was certainly sad that one of my more favorite bands in recent years Girls had split up. In the coming year, I am hopeful for frontman Christopher Owens' new solo album Lysander and wish that his tour includes a stop in WNY or Toronto. 2.) As you read above, I named Cloud Nothing's Attack on Memory my favorite album of the year. Last week, news broke that the band had already written songs for the new album and that it basically just needed to be recorded. Here's to hoping they hit the studio hard this coming year and that we get another awesome album from the group in the fall. 3.) All these rumors about Arcade Fire working with James Murphy are exciting, and also feel a bit over-hyped. Hopefully 2013 brings another great collection of music from the Montreal band and that Murphy's input stokes his fires to release more of his own music as well.
If you look around the city, November 1st is the most amusing walk of shame day of the year. Scores of tattered sexy kittens and nurses are stumbling home, eager to wash off the sin and put on a Christmas sweater to call Grandma. However, if the midweek Halloween hasn't satiated your appetite for shenanigans, you can head down to Duke's for an evening of boy-girl electro pop. Hank & Cupcakes are no strangers to Buffalo, but it will be their first time gracing the stage at the Allentown jaunt. Local electronic duo Love Scenes open the night, fresh off a packed summer of gigs culminating in an opening slot for Girl Talk at the outer harbor. It's a perfect opportunity to check out Duke's brand new sound system. Leave the Christmas sweater at home.
Tonight, head down to The Tralf to catch another night of the Betterdays Festival, which features some of Buffalo's best local music. For those of you who went to Day 1, you have already purchased your pass for tonight, so what reason do you have to miss another evening of great music, featuring Aircraft,Eppo, Love Scenes, Armageddon Party, All of Them Witches and Canary Girls? If you have not already purchased a pass, they are $10 and will also get you into tomorrow night's show. So, take the opportunity tonight and see all of the bands this blog has been writing about this year and then come back tomorrow for even more. That way, we can feel like we contribute to the greater good. I mean we do, but it is nice to be reminded.
Betterdays Festival Day 2
The Tralf Music Hall
7pm doors/8pm show
$10 for all three days
Ever find yourself listening to "The Weight" by The Band when subliminally in the back of your mind you hear the familiar shouts of Young Joc saying "anywhere ya meet me, guaranteed it's goin' down." Girl Talk tends to have that effect.
Under Illegal Art Record label, mash-up artist Greg Gills, better known by his moniker Girl Talk, will be taking the stage tonight at the Buffalo Outer Harbor. If you have no knowledge of his work and can't quite grasp the immensity of his jam-packed sampled catalog, his newest album All Day has 372 samples in a matter of 71 minutes. Yeah, 372 song samples in nearly an hour. Multi-genre and impeccably cut and blended, his tracks have a way of satisfying everyone's taste buds all the while keeping you bumpin' and grinding.
"Livetronica dubcore" will be heard from Rochester group RootsCollider and Buffalo electronic duo Love Scenes will be opening as well.
Supernaut, Funtime, AfterDark and MNM Presents
Girl Talk
Tonight - August 23, 2012
Buffalo Outer Harbor (325 Fuhrmann Boulevard, Buffalo, 14203)
gates at 7 pm
all ages
Tonight there is a not-to-be-missed triple bill over at DBGB’s featuring a double dose of local talent with The Mordaunt Sisters and Love Scenes, and Boston, psych-rock four-piece Dirty Dishes. As you know, we’ve been gushing about Love Scenes and Mordaunt Sisters here at the blog as much as possible, with Love Scene’s latest release Blissed-Out Youth being featured as our Album of the Week back at the beginning of July and The Mordaunt Sisters, who are consistently popping up on our radar, playing many gigs, not to mention being featured at the #3 spot on 2011’s Top Buffalo Bands list. As for Dirty Dishes, it is a rare experience to hear a psych-rock branded group that can stretch itself to such diverse corners of songwriting. Firstly, there are the vulnerable, 90’s style guitar riffs on display at the start of tracks like “Break” and “Bloom” that are paired so uniquely well with lead singer Jenny Tuite’s tip-toeing, breathless vocals as she ushers us so painlessly in. “Gaze” also starts very much like this, and suddenly the listener is tossed into coerced, seamless drum rhythms and feedback that send a shot of adrenaline along with the icy tag: “We are fading fast.” Within the structure of their songwriting, they tow the same line as alternative 90s gods The Smashing Pumpkins or My Bloody Valentine. This is definitely a show to get excited for, so clear your schedule tonight and get a move-on to Duke’s. The show starts at 10.
If I had it my way, Infringement would last two months, not two weeks. Now we are onto night nine of Infringement.
9pm RonaldRaygun @ Mohawk 2012 has been a big year for Raygun. First, former front man Steve Gordon stepped to the side to focus more on his guitar licks. Second, Gordon was replaced with riot girl songstress Ashley Kyle. The addition of Kyle’s gritty, raw vocals influenced by her classic rock idols has revamped the band’s previous indie rock leanings to a whole new direction. Now they are like if Bif Naked added a theramin. I bet you a hundred dollars their bassist wears huge sunglasses.
10pm –Handsome Jack, Sleepy Hahas, The Screaming Jeans @ DBGB’s Two veterans of buffaBLOG’s Infringement Party (Handsome Jack and Sleepy Haha’s) will team up with alt-rock quartet The Screaming Jeans. Handsome Jack’s feel good retro –blues rock will make you feel like you are time traveling back to the 70s, but only until Sleepy Hahas bring you back to speed with their modern indie rock a la Arctic Monkeys/Queens of the Stone Age.
2am – The Love Scenes @ Soundlab Electronic duo consisting of Buffalo’s indie songstress Leah Loefke and the Teller to her Penn TJ Grace. The two will be playing select songs off their recently released album Blissed Out Youth. It will be a late one, but the band’s perfect combination of dreamy vocals with upbeat electronic instrumentation will be a great way to come down while staying up on another fun-filled Infringement fueled night.
It’s rare that Buffalo has a killer local bill on a Wednesday. Nietzsche’s (248 Allen) plays host to Buffalo’s Aircraft and Love Scenes as well as Albany’s Alta Mira. The capital region’s Alta Mira is on a nine city tour, stopping first in Buffalo. Their upbeat, driving indie rock has gained numerous accolades, most recently named the Capital Region’s Best Indie Rock Band for 2012. Fans of Antelope, Ra Ra Riot, or Pinback should head to this. Also on the bill is dream-pop duo, Love Scenes, playing their new album, Blissed Out Youth, and 60’s retro-pop act Aircraft. Doors are at 9:30 and there is only a $3 cover. That is an incredible bang for your buck. Afterwards head to the Pink to hear me pump out the jams. See you there.
On their sophomore LP Blissed Out Youth, local dream-pop duo Love Scenes’ Leah Loefke and TJ Grace pick up where they left off, with another robust pairing of M83-esque instrumentals and Feist-y vocals, respectively. Considering the group only formed a little more than 2 years ago and have already released their second album, (not to mention the extent of their own solo back-catalogs) says a lot about their creative integrity and aspirations all together. Love Scene’s 2011 debut, Classy Excuse For A Trashy Experience, primed them for a commendable year as they gathered speed, garnering a lot of local attention as they played a slew of shows in WNY, including an opening gig for an indie buzz-band of similar tang, the electro-pop duo Purity Ring at Mohawk Place last summer. While they maintain a slightly more conservative approach length-wise compared to their aforementioned contemporaries, Blissed Out Youth still packs an effervescent punch, just as its title so staunchly proclaims, in just under 40 minutes.
Blissed Out Youth only seeks to capitalize sonically as each track grows more intense as the record progresses, breaking away from the more minimal tonalities offered on Classy Excuse. TJ Grace maxes out his capacity in under 9 tracks, producing a landscape of keys, synths, and drum rhythms that are equally danceable as contemplative, and Loefke helps mold and sculpt the ranges and caverns, eroding drum and chime motifs with languid vocals that articulate delicate, ethereal, desperate moods juxtaposed with cinematic heartbreak and elation. In the same way the duo is perfectly suited, Grace piecing together the skeletal puzzle, finesse-ing together each element, fusing the bone and muscle, and Loefke as the heart and modular soul, pumping hemoglobin into each bone-dry portrait, coercing the marble and carving it into an introspective effigy. And if the title is any hint at it’s effect on your serotonin levels, you might find yourself in a bind. ‘Blissed-out’ has a lot more implications once you attach the word ‘youth’ to it, and the notions of the title aren’t as trendy as they may come off. Each song is a memory, flashes of an account, bundles of images dumped out of a dusty shoebox only serving to give bitter-sweet headaches of nostalgia.
Leofke attempts this on “Enigmatic”, pleading, “Think out loud / Cry out loud / Scream out loud / Hold me out loud / Walls come down around us...” The repetition of these lines do everything they can to tug at worn heartstrings, especially when those same strings are being plucked so effortlessly by way of a harrowing kick drum and textured synth buzz. It’s an upbeat track in theory, but brings on similar dread experienced by Zola Jesus’s “Shivers”.
Similar desperation is captured on “Dreams on Fire” where Leofke comes in with fast paced lyrics, spouting honest and sometimes unintelligable lines. As a siren, her voice leads even the most calloused listener, delicately belting, “You put on quite the disguise / But I know the pain in those eyes,” before the tempo changes and you’re knocked into a dreamscape. Themes of youth are ignited: “When you were just a child...Your dreams are simply on fire.” By the seventh track “Collapse” is anything but blissed-out. It’s tells the story of an imploding relationship through the analogy of an abandoned house that’s falling apart. Loefke’s opening lines are blatant, “How many times are we ganna do this? / Return right home to that same room / ...listen to the songs that made us fall in love.”
The albums ends beautifully with “Child”, as it picks up from images left off in “Bombshell”, that being: “hopes and dreams that lie in disarray on the floor / no matter how many times I’ve swept them / swept them out the door.” Loefke’s songwriting bears an emotional weight that finally bottoms-out, and all the scaffolding of synths and drums are suddenly unnecessary. We are left with the image on the artist sitting indian-style at her keyboard on a hardwood floor in an empty room. Loefke's solitary voice echoes and the loneliness is intensified by the murmurings on the other side of the wall. Loefke’s songs have a remarkable way of talking to one another as only great poets can do. The next lyric in “Child” only capitalizes on this, “They are there again, again / If only I can make them sing again, again.” And finally affirms the protagonist’s feat at making sense of a collage of memories, “Glue them back together / If only I could remember...” These lines, so tragically ironic, are all spoken in the first minute of the track. The heavyness of the listeners heart at the repetition of “I won’t cry” does more to represent the tag “post-emo” on the group’s bandcamp page than any other lyric on the record.
While Blissed Out Youth often wears its heart on its sleeves, it is simultaneously pulling the shades on all the rooms that hold the most kept and dangerous memories. The hallways are cold, camouflaged by the electronic composition, which is the only thing that might mislead the casual listener from the melancholy of its whole. It’s a potent, yet intricate formula, similar to that of Purity Ring, where most of the audience will probably pick up on all of the buoyant attributes of its framework before it (or if it) picks up on the implications of its stories.
Tonight is a packed night for live music in Buffalo. If you're one of those people that have to go close your eyes at a Conspirator show to pretend you're seeing the Disco Biscuits, by all means do so, I've been there. Afterwards, head over to The Vault to catch some of Buffalo's finest original electronic acts. Show starts at 9.
After a successful Kickstarter campaign and studio sessions, local introspective dance duo Love Scenes are ready to debut their new album, titled Blissed Out Youth, this Saturday at the Vault. Today, though, the duo was nice enough to preview their album as a full stream, which is currently up on their bandcamp page. The band will be offering the stream of their much more danceable record, the folllow up to their 2011 debut Classy Excuse for a Trashy Experience, throughout the week until the album goes on sale this Friday.
Local indie electronic duo Love Scenes are the latest Buffalo entity (the Tins, Lloyd Taco Trucks) to throw their hat into the Kickstarter ring. The group is asking for a relatively modest $2,000 to help them record their sophomore release, the follow up to their 2011 debut Classy Excuse for a Trashy Experience. The band offers a wide selection of incentives for contributing to the cause, from handwritten lyrics to t-shirts to private acoustic and electric concerts. You may see all of the incentives, watch a charming video, and find out how to donate by going to their Kickstarter page. Don't hesitate as the April 12th deadline is not that far off.
So, it's New Year's Eve, and even
though the standard banter switched from “How was your Christmas?”
to “What are you doing for New Year's?” days ago, you still
haven't formulated a plan for the night. Best bet? Check out the New
Year's Eve Party for Drinking at SP@CE 224 (224 Allen St, 9pm). The
event is being advertised as a “Money Party,” meaning the
audience will be given stacks of fake money for bartering, and the
line-up features some of the best electronic acts in town. With
performances by the brain-bendingly trancey Jeff Repeater, synthscape
pop by Voodoo Friends, and a ball-drop set from electro-dance duo
Love Scenes, the Allentown gallery is set to start off 2012 right.
Jazzbollah vs. Jazzbollah is a unique event where many different Buffalo-based musicians share the stage with one other. Tonight there will be 3 different sets with 2 different groups of musicians. At the end of the night all of the participating musicians will join forces to create one super-band for the final set of the evening. For anyone that's into local music, it's quite easy to recommend this event. I have no word on any cover charge, so you may want to call in advance. If you somehow skipped over the poster the show starts at 9PM at Nietzsche's.
Participating Musicians:
-Group 1-
Keyboard: Mike Sentman (A.Pudding), Guitar: Jason Kunz (Motel Furnishing), Bass: Brian Gorman (Early Attic, buffaBLOG), Drums: Ryan Campbell (Rhubarb, Peanut Brittle Satellite).
-Group 2-
Guitar: T.j. Grace (Love Scenes), Gutar: Brian Quinn (Ould Pound), Bass: Matt Eppolito (A. Pudding), Drums: Geoffrey Peters (Shapes of States)
Thee Oh Sees – Castlemania: There are so many good things about
Thee Oh Sees: an insane rate of musical output, notorious live
performances, profoundly debauched aesthetics, and a propensity for
gradual innovation despite inherent stylistic simplicity. The group
started a decade or so ago as the artistic vehicle for
guitarist/vocalist/flutist John Dwyer. As the full group slowly
solidified, they became a wailing, garage-psych powerhouse, leveling
both the strongest of minds and the dingiest of dives. A
predominantly solo effort from Dwyer, Castlemania was only the first of two
full-lengths Thee Oh Sees released in 2011. But it reminded us that,
one: you don't have to be into grindcore to appreciate grotesque,
green monster album art motifs; and two: Dwyer can write some catchy,
bad-trip pop, even if the rest of the OCs aren't around.
Honorable Mention
The Found - III: I had wanted to avoid local shout-outs, because there are some dope local acts that could easily dominate this list. I really spent more time attending local shows and listening to Buffalo records this year than national ones, and among the many highlights was The Found's third record, released a few months back. Each member of this band might be the city's nastiest at their respective instruments, and this 17-track helping of funk-infused power prog is so head-bending... listening to it is like finding out Iron Butterfly is your real father. All the members. You know what I mean.
“Witchhunt Suite for WWIII” by Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti : I sorta feel like it's cheating to pick
“Witchhunt Suite” as my favorite “song” of 2011. For one, the
track is just a revisit of a 2006 basement tape. Second, it's more of
a sixteen-minute opus than a song. But even the artist's apex
release, 2010's Before Today, was primarily a full-band rehashing of
Pink's earlier solo recordings – even the single “Round and
Round” was just an updated treatment of the old demo “Frontman/
Hold On (I'm Calling).” “Witchhunt Suite” is an
allzu-Americana-impaired reflection on our post-9/11, collective
brain damage, framed within a disfiguring mirror of hyper-media
saturation in The West's Consumerist, Late 20th Century
Zenith. And how can you do that in under fifteen minutes? ...Call a
sitter right now and watch the video to see what I mean.
Honorable Mention
"Shut Up" by Jhameel: A fellow buffaBLOGGER brought this joint to my attention over the summer, and all of my mixtapes were forever changed. With its sturdy disco beat, catchy hooks, and that gnarly Jhameel scream, I haven't been able to find a body that won't start involuntarily dancing to this jam.
Purity Ring, Love Scenes, Early Attic at Mohawk Place (August 23, 2011): I'd hated hard on this band for a while
before the Mohawk Place show. With a half-million Soundcloud hits and
a bevy of blog-love before they ever even performed, I figured Purity
Ring was all hype and I planned to just sit this one out. But when
they started their Mohawk Place set, I ate my own words. Heavy glitch
beats, devastating lights, and banter that grounded the experience
with an integral, saccharine innocence. Even if Corin Roddick's
light-bulb-and-pipe “device” didn't actually generate sound –
and was just for looks as I semi-suspect – it was still an
impressive, compelling show. Support from local pop duo Love Scenes
was an adept pairing, but I missed Early Attic's opening set,
because, for once, a Buffalo show started on time.
Honorable Mention:
Laughing Eye Weeping Eye, Cinnamon Aluminum, YesYes HeavenTongue at Soundlab (June 11, 2011): This show reminded me of why I first fell in love with Soundlab; suspiciously low turnouts, uncomfortably
open-minded vibes, and deeply unsettling music projects make for a perfect hotbed of weirdness. LEWE stranged things up with their circuit-bending chant opera, followed by an acoustic set by rapid-fire poet YesYes, who was surrounded by a cult of vocal accompanists, and the night ended with the synth-jungle trio Cinnamon Aluminum, who were joined by friends for a rousing set of brain-scraping pop. Afterwards, I felt as though I'd beheld the maddening machinations of Nyarlathotep, and spilled, with a newfound schizophrenia, out into the yawning mouth of oblivion that is the Buffalo streets.
Tis the holiday season and once again we find ourselves in that reflective mood. We think about the things we're thankful for and the things we sometimes take for granted. Well, I'll tell you what Buffalo. I'm thankful that we live in Buffalo.... Why?
Chicken Wings that are awesome. Check. 4am bar closing. Check. The Pink's steak sandwich. Check. And because Buffalo is home to some of the most creative, interesting and talented bands around. Take tonight's show at the Vault for example. We have four absolutely excellent groups that you'd be hard pressed to find in any other city. Early Attic have been absolutely killing it lately, along with with the newly formed and self-proclaimed "slumbercore" group, Voodoo Friends. Indie rockers, Applennium, have released one of my favorite tracks in recent memory ("Fizzle") and then you have Primrose, which features TJ of buffaBLOG faves, Love Scenes. Get your local flavor tonight at the best holiday party in town...it's time to start appreciating what we have here. $5. Starts at 8pm.
Last night, Buffalo was treated to a great lineup of female fronted bands at Soundlab. Buffalo's own Love Scenes opened up the show with a solid set of favorites and a few rarities. The highlight of the night was their rendition of John Carpenter's Halloween theme, which led right into "Heavy". They finished their set with the rarely played "Precious Little Heart", the closing track to their debut album Classy Excuse for a Trashy Experience (which you can download here!). Memoryhouse took the stage boasting a 4 person lineup, including live drums, bass and guitar. Their live set had more of an indie rock feel than some of their studio work. While I enjoy the sound of their studio work, the full band made for a more engaging performance, at times seeming reminiscent of Beach House. You can check out videos of both bands below. Hooray live music!
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