(Flyer by Kerry Santullo via Facebook)
Tuesday February 14, 8 pm at Trans-Pecos: $10 in advance/ $12 at the door
If you’re anything like me, you will be spending Valentine’s Day alone. But cheer up, flying solo is not such a terrible fate– just think about all the stupid flowers you won’t have to carry around in some silly bouquet or whatever, and all that dumb perfume you don’t have to spray all over your body just to smell like the mall. Unlike everyone else, you’re gonna spend your V Day being aggressively single, which means leaving your apartment, head held high, and rocking your natural scent with pride, because you’re going to need all the pheromones you can muster.
We told you about Mary Lattimore‘s Returned to Earth back in December and Soap Library, the locally-grown “holistic tape label” that’s putting the dang thing out on cassette tape, which is great because tapes rule. Lattimore gets bonus points because her cassette is accompanied by a custom scent that listeners can enjoy through a tampon-shaped sniffer. No seriously, it’s actually quite charming. And so is Lattimore– the girl really knows how to pluck a harp, if you know what I mean. But, like, actually play a harp. Which I’ve heard isn’t an easy instrument. So kudos.
On top of wielding such a beastly, unwieldy, blockish thing, Lattimore takes harping far away from the usual orchestra pit and old-ladies-in-pearls vibe, and blasts it into cerebral, ambient outer-space territory.
Presumably you can pick up a copy of the tape at the show, but if you simply can’t wait to get your snuff on, Soap Library sells its wares out of Commend, the Lower East Side speciality shop that stocks a whole bunch of pretty looking things designed by local artists (it’s also the “gravitational center” for another record label, RVNG). And it looks like the Commend crew is rolling in for this get-down: Lauren’s All Purpose Salve will be there handing out free hand massages for all the lonely hearts out there. And because Old Maids love chocolate, there will also be an appearance by Fine & Raw, the Bushwick chocolatier that makes those cute little bars bedecked with babes.
(Flyer by Foster Powell, via Facebook)
Monday February 13, 8 pm to 12 am at The Silent Barn: $8
Mostly, we were intrigued by this band called The Birth, which call themselves “twins still trapped in the womb”– which stirs up, like, wow a whole lot of weird childhood memories of The X-Files. If you dare to read on, I’m thinking of Season 8– the one that starts out with a dream sequence as Special Agent Scully wrastles with a bizzaro nightmare in which she finds herself not only pregnant (the horror!) but playing host to one Special Agent Mulder.
These are some weird Freudian problems, for sure. At this point in the series, the show has gone off on some malformed romance jaunt, but that’s not really my point, which I guess is more to say that birth, death, blood, and all that make for some super spooky interbody, trans-dimensional experiences of an unusual strength. Also, twins can communicate with their minds or something, right? I’ve also heard about their ability to speak in secret languages all their own, which is kind of what The Birth sounds like: bedroom pop drafted in a private twinner tongue. Yeah, and I guess some of the weirdness can be owed to the sacred herb. As the twins advise: “SMOKE A BLUNTTT.”
(Image via Facebook)
Wednesday February 15, 8 pm to 11 pm at the Park Church Co-Op: donations at the door
This one is a can’t-miss show, with a lineup that’s hard to beat, topped with a triple-threat including three of Brooklyn’s finest artists, all of them prolific in their own very unique right. Dreamcrusher contributes the finest in “nihilist queer revolt music,” which is guaranteed blow your butt off. And finally Jono Mi Lo,who describes his sound as something you might find “on a ghost tape, left in a basement somewhere,” will intermittently soothe and sting your senses back to waking life.
And hey, when’s the last time you saw a “negro gothic devil-worshipping free black man in the blues tradition“– that’s M Lamar, whose deeply soul-searching, history-sweeping, and demon-slaying operatic epics are mind-blowing in their originality and so right on always, but especially in this newly terrifying New World Order. As such, you will be comforted to know that proceeds benefit the Southern Poverty Law Center, meaning that your attendance will help plop a stinky one on evil’s lap even after the night ends.
(Flyer via Facebook)
Thursday February 16, 8:30 pm at the Silent Barn: $10
I guess if you’re really hurting for a straight-to-the-vein pop infusion this week, weird pop is totally the way to go. And you’d be hard pressed to find electro-pop that’s stranger than Montreal’s own Mozart’s Sister (who we have double-checked up on and can confirm for sure that Caila Thompson-Hannant is not, in fact, Mozart’s actual sister).
Teen Daze makes a similarly out-there effort, though they’re a bit more on the drifty, ambient side of the spectrum.
(Flyer via Mutual Dreaming)
Friday February 15, 11 pm to 5 am at Brooklyn Bazaar: $20
I’ve heard more than one person say that this “current political environment” has inspired a newfound interest in electronic music, or any art really that offers an exit to another realm. Dr. Rubinstein presents not only an especially trolly google search, but an especially Euro blend of techno. The surprising addition on her Resident Adviser release are the Bjorkian vocals that quickly devolve into typical trance-speak, but it’s kind of fun to be tricked. And I’m convinced that this Berlin-based DJ has even more tricks up her sleeve.
(Flyer via Bar Matchless)
Friday February 15, 7 pm at Bar Matchless: $8
In case you haven’t heard, Bar Matchless is back on the scene, hosting punk shows and booking excellent lineups chock full of the best local bands around. And Friday night is no exception. The “pretty boys” of Brooklyn-born band Rubber are all about that “dirty punk,” aka stripped-down, faded but nothing short of deliciously potent evidence that New York’s still got it.
The visiting headliner, Machine Gun, who are coming all the way out here from the savage forests of some place called Philly, to share their particularly beasty brand of hardcore.