MCMAF Show Review & Video: The Music Lovers, The Hot Toddies @ the Make-Out Room
May 23, 2007
Alas, the Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival had to end. I couldn’t think of a much better way to end this eventful week of local music than by enjoying a pair of bands whose sound could not be lumped in with any local trend or scene. Both bands draw a great deal from the sounds of the past, yet each puts their own distinctive modern spin on it.
The Hot Toddies come complete with tight harmonies and unapologetic “shooby-doo-wops,” welcoming the obvious comparison to sixties female vocal groups. At the same time, they’re playing their own instruments and the lyrical content is not drenched in nostalgia. Instead, the quartet sings about the disappointment of teenage internet dating and missing your boyfriend when you’re in Seattle because, well, you’d like to “ride him like a horse without a saddle.” “Seattle” is my personal favorite, but each song – most sung with tongue firmly in cheek – is a custom-made crowd pleaser. Most importantly, it’s really, really fun, which – on a night before I must return to the confines of my office job – is just what I needed.
I’ve been following The Music Lovers rather closely since I heard them on The Bay Bridged. Under the watchful eye of frontman Teddy Edwards, the Music Lovers are performing well-crafted pop music at its finest. When the band transitions into a sea shanty, it feels totally natural. If you’re going to call yourselves the Music Lovers, you better be fucking serious – and it’s clear the band loves music and loves what they’re doing. Smiles are all around for the quintet who are also, undoubtedly, the most stylish band in the Bay, with each of their outfits complementing the next. The video posted is of a new song called “Saturday” which I thought was just absolutely fantastic.
Related Posts:
MCMAF Photos: Or, the Whale @ Cafe du Nord
May 23, 2007
Photos by: Kait Drace
Or, the Whale
Do NOT reproduce any photographs without explicit permission from The Bay Bridged
Related Posts:
Cool Waves Festival III this Saturday
May 23, 2007
If you’re at all a fan of post rock, shoegaze, space rock, slowcore, psych, ambient or dream pop music you really should check out Cool Waves, a web site dedicated to bringing local bands from these genres together to support the local music community. Bands have been using the site for information about local venues, press resources, and other bands and music fans should check out “Cool Waves Radio” to hear some music from this scene.
Saturday night, the organization is holding its third Cool Waves Festival at The Knockout. The show is headlined by Oakland dream-poppers Montana and also features performances by Fleeting Joys and Echodrone. The Club Injection DJs will be spinning psych, shoegaze and spacerock the entire night.
The show starts at 9pm, is $6 and 21+.
Related Posts:
The Death of a Party CD Release Party
May 23, 2007
The Death of a Party celebrate the release of their new full length album Thursday night at Bottom of the Hill. The CD, titled The Rise and Fall of Scarlet City has been released on Oakland’s Double Negative Records. You can hear four tracks from the CD at the band’s MySpace page, which demonstrate the group’s firm command of both the nervy, uptempo style of song likely come to mind when you hear “post-punk” as well as slower Fugazi-esque burners like “Scarlet City Millionaire’s Club.”
The band recently completed a West Coast tour and is in the process of booking an East Coast tour to happen in the next few months. If you can’t make it to the show, you can pick up a copy of the album via Double Negative’s web site, where you can also download a couple of songs from the album.
The show starts at 8:30pm, is $8, and 18 and up. Sheena and Pony Come Lately support.
Related Posts:
MCMAF Show Review: Black Fiction, Lemonade, The Fucking Ocean, Head Like a Kite @ 12 Galaxies
May 22, 2007
Saturday the 12th’s bill at 12 Galaxies traversed the pop, punk, and electronic universes, but provided a good time for the many who swung through for part or all of the night’s festivities.
Photo by: JJ Caguin
In bumming-me-out news, The Fucking Ocean announced during their set that John, one-third of the noisy post-punk trio, was soon leaving for New York, although the band intends to soldier on in a bi-coastal fashion. Having just returned from a cross-country tour, the band was in top form at Saturday’s show, and it’s a real shame that they won’t be playing as many shows in the coming future. Despite the more-than-capable stage at 12 Gs, the band opted to perform on the floor with a few vocal mics and allowing their amps and drums to deliver the band’s tense, immediate songs on their own. If you weren’t there, you may have missed the band’s last performance for a while and, if so, you missed out.
Photo by: JJ Caguin
The band followed a performance by Seattle duo Head Like a Kite, who may have been the anti-Fucking-Ocean in their sharp suits, synth and drum machine-fueled set of electronic pop, and the backdrop of home movie clips projected onto the stage’s screen. Like their visual presentation, HLaK’s sound is a well-orchestrated mix of live instruments and programmed sounds that I’d like to hear more of in the future.
The Head Like a Kite-Fucking Ocean trajectory made more sense when Lemonade took the stage and provided the surprise highlight of the evening. This trio mixed samplers and delay-soaked vocals with live bass and drums to create anthems that worked the crowd into quite a frenzy. It was clear that a good portion of the crowd was there to see them, including one guy who looked so much like a young Kevin Bacon, that it made me long for a contemporary remake of Footloose with a Lemonade soundtrack. I understand that these guys have multiple 12″s and a full-length that they have been working on, and I hope these recordings can capture the amazing energy they can create with their live show. Until the recordings come out, check them out if you’re looking for some psychy mind-blowing, forward-looking dance rock.
Photo by: JJ Caguin
Rounding off the night was a thoroughly enjoyable set by Black Fiction. As we learned in our interview with the band a little while back, these guys are not only working on new material, but are also continually reworking their older stuff too. To that end, Saturday’s set featured a more intense rock take on some of the material from Ghost Ride, including a version of “You Must Not Bury Someone” that ratcheted up the tempo and the guitars to powerful effect. It was an appreciated take on the material, although I’m also a fan of the band’s poppier, quieter moments as well (see: “I Spread The Disease”). Still, I have to give a lot of credit to a band willing to challenge its own performance abilities and its audience’s expectations by evolving on the stage–it’s one of the things that makes me keep wanting to see this band again.
Related Posts:
MCMAF Show Review: Port O’Brien and Andy Tisdall @ Hemlock Tavern
May 22, 2007
For Port O’Brien, Saturday’s set at the Hemlock Tavern served as both a homecoming and a farewell for a large and enthusiatic audience. The band’s set was certainly a more personal show than the well-received performance I saw when they opened for Bright Eyes’ at the Great American Music Hall a few months ago, a feeling generated more by the mixture of big fans and old friends in attendance than by the size of the room. The band played with an enthusiasm likely enhanced by the knowledge that this show was their last show for several months, as three of the four members are heading up to Alaska to spend the summer working in the salmon industry.
The receptive room ate it up as the band moved from one catchy, driving number to the next. Despite being a relatively young band, Port O’Brien seems to have already mastered the art of big choruses with group shoutalongs, an audience participation element that will no doubt help them win new listeners, and, which, in the conifnes of a room already on-board, brought things to a frenzy ablely sustained throughout the set.
It was during this frenzy that you sensed that this is a band nearing a turning-point. This might have been obvious before Saturday’s show, with a new Port O’Brien CD to arrive in a few months, shows booked at two British festivals in September and plans to tour sometime after that. Their performance at the Hemlock, though, confirmed to everyone there that the attention this band is about to receive is very well-deserved.
I was excited to see opener Andy Tisdall for a first time, since I’ve been listening to his 2006 solo CD I Want Your Brain regularly since we received it at the headquarters last year (and we’ve included songs in these two mixes). At Saturday’s show, Tisdall and his rhythm section played a strong, straightforward set of material from the CD, with Andy’s voice leading the charge. The live setting limited the opportunity for Tisdall & Co. to recreate some of the production and instrumentation nuances that pepper the CD, but Tisdall’s strong, emotive singing and songwriting, neatly balancing melody and passion, are the biggest draws.
Related Posts:
MCMAF Show Review: Petracovich @ The Make-Out Room
May 22, 2007
Photo by: Reid Williams
Thursday night, The Make-Out Room hosted a relatively rare performance by Petracovich. Playing some new songs amidst the favorites from her two albums, Jessica was joined onstage by a drummer, which enhanced the organic, folk-oriented side of her folktronica sound. The electronics made their appearance as well, in the form of loops of voice and sound recorded and played back live, which is a great detail I wish more artists would use to keep the audience engaged while incorporating samples. As warm as the instrumentals were, though, Jessica’s voice was just as compelling, and the large audience responded to her set with appreciative cheers.
Related Posts:
MCMAF Photos: Lavender Diamond, The Watson Twins, Winter Flowers @ The Independent
May 22, 2007
Photos by: Reid Williams
Lavender Diamond
Watson Twins
Winter Flowers
Do NOT reproduce any photographs without explicit permission from The Bay Bridged
