(Flyer via Wolf Eyes)
Wolf Eyes: Trip Metal Residency
Thursday February 4 through Saturday February 6 at Union Pool: $12 – $14
Vape with the dirty dogs and witness half of Detroit’s noise music scene take over Brooklyn this weekend. The Poppa Bear old timers of Wolf Eyes will lead their little pack of trip metal prodigy puppies– all of whom you’re guaranteed only to have heard from if you lurk around shows in Detroit occasionally, or can claim at least a few drunken years of crashing/ trolling, pissing on pool tables at co-ed parties in Ann Arbor. Or maybe you just read the internet a lot. Who knows? Let’s go with internet underground music dweeb, that way everyone’s invited.
And what better way to celebrate the announcement of the inaugural Trip Metal Fest happening Memorial Day weekend in Detroit (a counterpoint to the molly-cut-with-Dramamine bloated Detroit Electronic Music Fest, aka Movement, aka whatever) than a marathon of harsh experimental sounds?
I dare you to try and get to sleep by bedtime after listening to a track or two from Tarpit (aka Sam Hooker). Your noggin will be far too clogged with bats, cigarette smoke, and black Carhartt canvas to make room for any white, puffy sheep fluff. As for Viki Viktoria, don’t let that infinite scarf and coy smile fool you, Vix is bringing her downright dirty “expressive electronics” to the lineup. From what I can gather, Thanks USA seems to be a bit of an amorphous folk-prog trio centering around one blonde-mopped Tyler Hicks (though judging by the show announcement describing his contribution as “all things strange, homemade,” we’re smelling something slightly different, but no less obscene wafting outta the kitchen)– check out this jello-shot soaked performance for a taste of what Hicks is pouring.
As for Wolf Eyes, they’re promising “new material heard for the first time this year,” plus tracks off their 2015 record, I am a Problem: Mind in Pieces (Third Man Records aka Jack White’s rubbers). Get slippy, there’s no other way to experience a show like this, coz Detroit’s where it’s at and everyone else is just dump trucks.
(Flyer via Queen of Jeans)
Exiles, Cosmicide, Ohnomoon, Sleepy Ha Has
Thursday February 4, 7 pm at Pianos: $8
Get your mid-winter pop fix at this downtown weekday show. Imagine your life is a noir film set in Old Las Vegas– it’s late afternoon and Queen of Jeans is the band you’d hear if you just won $100 and wandered into some scuzzy dive bar stocked with friendly strippers and all of your pals who were depressed until you arrived and bought them drinks. As per Queen of Jeans’s request, “Get off your ass and make me dance.”
Behind a lil’ NYC-based project called Ohnomoon are masters of an epic, stoned-out, selfie-gen-shaming sound. Best heard while anesthetized to pieces, but an herbal tea will do. Buffalo’s electro-clashy psychedelic pop mishmash, Sleepy Hahas, publicly apologized back in November for “dropping off the face of the earth” (maybe they were too busy promoting Bernie Sanders for Prez?), so if you missed em while they were clocked out, here they are.
Lucky for you the big hitters at this show are weighted toward the opening slots, so you’ll have plenty of time to get home and kick up your feet before finishing out the work week if you feel so inclined.
(Flyer by Ben Jaffe via The Silent Barn/ Facebook)
Dumb Wolves, Holy Tunics, Def Girls, Dan Soto & the High Doses
Thursday February 4, 8 pm at the Silent Barn: $8
I don’t know why this alternating Neil Young then Ramones-with-tenor-sax through a gramophone sound is so appealing to me, but Dumb Wolves‘ self-titled tape is really, truly pleasant on the old ears. You can’t argue with poppy shoegaze– well, in theory you could but you’d be a jerk. Instead of bein’ a wanton party turd, try on Holy Tunics for size.
If Deliverance is your favorite movie and you count Tennesseans amongst your kin but you grew up on heavy doses of Super Nintendo games, sugary cereal, and Ninja Turtles and small squirts of banjo lessons and Bob Dylan from your Grandpappy, your band might sound something like Dan Soto & the High Doses (all the way from a foreign land called Connecticut, lol don’t ask). Think: a self-hating Mac DeMarco with not one ounce of concern for commercial viability.
If you thought this show was already on its way to being glorious, plop in some projections by way of the regally-named gentleman Preston Spurlock– he’s real into Ren & Stimpy-style slobbering creatures and analogue TV static, both of which are welcome in this field of vision always.
(Flyer via Show Me The Body)
Show Me The Body, B L A C K I E, Moor Mother Goddess, DJ sets by Lee Bannon and Yung Gutted
Friday February 5, 8 pm at Market Hotel: $10
You know those menacing looking bugs with the two-pronged butts that wipe across the floor like sticky, overcooked green onions stuck to your foot? They’re called earwigs, and literally they’re late to every party because they’re busy dragging their asses. They’re worse than any roach, spider, or rat king, truth be told. Don’t let anyone call you an earwig. Ever. Get to Market Hotel before it’s too late and you’re a sorry, tardy turdy earwig.
Here’s a good way to get your foot in the door: no wave/jazz-fusion/hardcore outfit Show Me The Body is celebrating their new album (?) new record label (?) multi-band collaboration (?) Satanic cult (?) called “Corpus” which they announced yesterday to not much detail (check out their fresh track featured on the Corpus site, “Body Wars,” below). Get this band while they’re hot, though, these bbs are taking off on a European tour right after they light this resurrected DIY venue on fire.
Blackie, er sorry “B L A C K I E… All Caps, With Spaces” (aka Michael LaCour) is about a dozen broken windpipes worth of vengeful noise from Houston. “Aggressive” doesn’t even begin to describe this guy’s approach– maybe “cathartic” better captures LaCour’s compressed disdain for melody mixed with a love for muddled drumbeat, public demonstrations of self-performed open-heart surgery, and an unabashed embrace of seemingly clashing influences.