The Tris McCall Report
Calendar, April 16 - April 19
Wednesday, April 16
Jim Testa & Val Emmich @ Ristra Bar, 9 PM, (with Mimi Cross and Neil Sabatino
There's really no reason I should be afraid of the Ristra Bar -- Gibby plays there all the time, and any place that passes muster for the dean of Hoboken indie recording ought to be good enough for the likes of me. Still, there's something about the restaurant front that puts me in mind of one of those brick-walled firing squad comedy clubs, and since I don't always thrill to the Washington Street sense of humor, I've yet to attend an event at Ristra. My streak won't be broken this Wednesday, since I will not be in Jersey, but if you are, the Rodeo/Ristra is the place to be. Val Emmich reverts to acoustic form after a series of rock shows, which shouldn't be a tricky adjustment for him -- after all, he and Drew Isleib toured the private rooms of the country with nothing but their guitars. An account of the Emmich/Isleib living room tour is running in the latest issue of Jersey Beat, which'll be freely available at the show, since zine founder and major contributor Jim Testa is opening the bill. Jim's songs juxtapose fifties tropes (sci-fi movies, wireless radio, drive-ins) with pithy accounts of his lived experience as an indie rock critic, and are all infectious pieces of sardonic acoustic-punk. Community-minded to the core, he's also prone to covering songs by artists who share his bill, so you can probably expect to hear his version of a Val Emmich song or two before the night is through.
Thursday, April 17
The Hissyfits & Aerial Love Feed @ Pianos, 11 PM
Two nasty pop bands, or perhaps sweet rock bands with a nasty pop aftertaste, together at a club whose website I still can't manage to unearth. Both draw heavily on UK sources -- for Aerial Love Feed, it's late eighties guitar fuzz-out music such as Jesus & Mary Chain, while The Hissyfits walk the more abrasive edge of female-fronted Britpop groups like Echobelly and Sleeper. It'll be a visually appealing double bill, to be sure: what Aerial Love Feed manages with stage lights and brooding, The Hissyfits match in onstage adrenalin and energy. Drummers Tracy Thompkins and Sivan Harlap are both mesmerizing, but in completely opposite directions -- Thompkins plays with a studious reserve befitting ALF's dream-pop architecture, while the exuberant Harlap sets off at a gallop and never breaks stride. A melodic, distorted, hook-laden, pop-hummable, rock buzz-and-crackle late evening.
Baby Dayliner & Vic Thrill @ Luxx, 9 PM (with Arbor Day)
When I first arrived in the NYC metro area, The Bogmen were The Strokes. None of them married Drew Barrymore (which, techinically speaking, would have been illegal in '93), but it was their cap that sparky MTV veejays would wear on the air, their name that made the rounds of the hottest club as the city's next big contribution to mass culture. But their music owed very little to traditional New York influences, and their major label albums didn't catch on. By 1996, a new wave of career-conscious rock groups displaced the class of '93, and the Bogmen were relegated to the cutout bins. Old rockers never throw in the towel, though -- they just reinvent themselves, and satisfy their addiction with new permutations. The bandmembers regrouped in Williamsburg, the lead singer renamed himself Vic Thrill, and he set to work carving out a niche within the indie rock subculture. Thrill, freed from the unhealthy expectations that dogged The Bogmen, has morphed into a far more valuable artist and subcultural actor, writing, recording, and contributing energy and some considerable intellectual heft to the great tapestry of NYC indie rock. He probably wouldn't have done that had his records gone gold. As for Baby D, you probably know him by now -- he's hyperliterate, beat crazy, and a phenomenal songwriter, crooning and emceeing over prefabricated (but never less than thrilling) backing tracks. The last show's pick hit was the baseball metaphor "Beatdowns", now, with graduation looming on the horizon, expect the showstopping "Silent Places".
Circulatory System @ Southpaw, 10 PM (with Dao Son For and Deer Park)
When two-writer rock groups split because of artistic differences, the offshoot projects invariably become caricatures of the tendencies caused the break-up. In a sense, it's just human nature to overemphasize the elements your writing partner hated once he hits the road; i.e., "thank God Johnny's finally gone, now we can at last be the cow-punk masters he never allowed us to be." First records after splits are always overcompensations. The members of the Olivia Tremor Control might have taken the reactive jones a little farther than Lennon and McCartney did, but at base it's the same problem: sweet popster Bill Doss defiantly delivered an album with the Sunshine Fix that was all icing and no cake, and experimentalist W. Cullen Hart fired back with the absurdly dense and byzantine Circulatory System. That's not to say that both records didn't have their charms, because they did. The savvy lo-fi songwriters who delivered Cubist Castle and Black Foliage are still kicking aroung in there somewhere. I'm giving Hart and Doss a pass on their first time out apart; my guess is they'll be back in full force before long.
Mark Gardener @ The Knitting Factory, 8 PM & 10:45 PM
Speaking of overcompensations after split-ups, Exhibit A has got to be the disintegration of Ride. Like Cullen Hart, Mark Gardener was once the more adventuresome half of a two-headed songwriting duo; also like Hart, his adventures out of the fold have seemed surprisingly shapeless. (Traditionalist partner Andy Bell has gone about as far as you can go in the opposite direction by actually joining Oasis). Ride junkies -- and there are many -- will get versions of songs they know well from the group's classic albums. They'll also hear fresh originals that might find Gardener leaning back in the direction of that characteristic fusion of psychedelic music, classic rock, and dance grooves that he used to pursue so successfully. Here's hoping.
Friday, April 18
Hollow Rocket & The Charms @ Luna Lounge, 10 PM (with AM)
A mixed-gender world demands mixed-gender bands. Hollow Rocket democratically divides the singing between the girls and the boys, and splits the rhythym section duties straight down the middle, too. I'm partial, of course, but with the compelling Martin Nienstedt and Robin Van Maarth providing a front line of sheer rock power and integrity, this is a group with charisma to burn. Nienstedt doesn't take as many leads as you might expect, but what he does provide is a solid foundation for the Rocket's frequent explorations into sonically challenging territory. It's a delight watching the onstage interplay, too. The Charms are a Boston group with a radio-ready collection of tuneful rock songs; in other words, they're your quintessential Luna act. The lead guitar player is a bit, er, on the obstreperous side, but his excesses are more than compensated for by their budding Farfisa star -- a Russian expat named Kat Kina who looks like an extra from Little Shop Of Horrors and plays like a pococurantist garage-rock hero. Too bad she only sings a small handful of the songs.
Saturday, April 19
Fresh Kills @ Luxx, 10 PM (with Tyler Keith and X The Owl)
Sometimes, missing links are too obvious to fail to report. Fresh Kills frontman Zach Lipez used to sing and contribute his succinct, foul-mouthed and booze-addled verses to The Candy Darlings, the same group that Hollow Rocket guitarrist Robin Van Maarth used to call home. Ethan "Baby Dayliner" Marunas logged service time as the Darlings' bassist, and collaborated on many of their most memorable songs. Former Candy Darlings' lead player Joshua Taggart doesn't have a show this week, but Sivan Harlap and Karen Correa, who now share stages with him in the Beauty Supply, also provide the rhythm section for the Hissyfits. The Darlings were seminal, rude, derisive, ridiculously exciting, and are now much-missed. The feeling here is that if they'd stuck it out a year longer, they would have been at the forefront of the NYC garage revival, if for no other reason than that none of the currently-hyped Stooges-knockoff groups possess a lyricist of Lipez's caliber. That said, it's an open question whether rock stardom is really Lipez's goal. My guess is that he'd far rather be a New York City poet-legend like Richard Hell than a mass cultural celebrity like the one Julian Casablancas has become. I think he's a fortunate person, and one who'll eventually find his way to his heart's deepest desire -- the real question is whether he'll flee from or acquiesce to the inevitable Harry Potter comparisons that his bespectacled appearance draws. It can be worked into his poet's stance, surely. I've been wearing out my copy of the Fresh Kills EP Here For The Backlash (recorded at Studio G, for all you Tony Maimone completists). The Kills situate their six songs at the precise juncture between filthy garage-rock blues and mid-eighties psychocandy like early Echo & The Bunnymen, and spin out connections from there. Lipez's performances, always somewhat unhinged, reach a crescendo of paranoia, aggression, and twisted vulnerability here, and often communicate desperation and hilarity simultaneously. His is a true New York City voice, and it's a great one to have back.
Tin Huey @ Maxwell's, 10 PM (with Gavin McGraw)
In the very late Seventies, Akron had to have been a cool place. We all know about Devo and the Wonder Bread fumes -- what few remember is the angular, jazzy, and frequently comic Ohio rock scene that sprung up among the factories. In retrospect, Tin Huey was probably the most intriguing of the Akron groups as well as the most representative -- midwestern wiseguys with cosmopolitan aspirations and a catalog of unforgettable songs. With an adventurous streak that occasionally took the band into Ubu territory, Tin Huey put out the artful Contents Dislodged During Shipmentand went their separate ways. They're back, for the time being, and their mini-tour takes the group to Maxwell's and Hoboken, adopted home of guitarrist Chris Butler. Two years after the dissolution of Tin Huey, Butler would contribute heavily to the playbook of new-wave and eighties pop with The Waitresses and Patty Donahue, and it's fascinating to hear some of those ideas in nascent form.
Just for the bang of it, check out last week's calendar.
I want to know what you're scared of. Go faster, I wanna go faster.