Zodiac killers
Right about now’s when we’d be pimping the Hideout Block Party to you, kissing summer goodbye, and slowly drifting home while running our hand across the iron fences of our neighbors.
Would it kill someone to get some rain out here? Yes, it’s September, but it’s still technically summer. Half our trees are brown and it’s going to look like November for three stinkin’ months. Sorry — we’re just frustrated because there hasn’t been a Hideout Block Party since co-owner Tim Teuten left to join President Obama’s education cabinet. All we have left is a surprise, local block party down our street that ends at 6. It’s a good time for . . .
. . . Electric Six! Admittedly, it took a while to wrap our heads around these Detroit-based weirdos. (Not for IE scribes Trevor Fisher and Penelope Biver, though.) If you’re not feeling campy the first second you hear them, you might just brush aside their career entirely. Fret not, however, because it’s not some saga you can’t just join in the middle. Nonsense. Zodiac (Metropolis), Electric Six’s seventh album, is as aggressive, incomprehensible, and enthusiastic as ever. Dick Valentine’s intentionally campy rhymes and the band’s Devo-esque rockin’ remain charmingly intact and ready for newbies to get drunk and fall in love. (Friday@Double Door with The Constellations and Javelins.)
Keeping an eye on Colour Revolt should be a pretty well-paying gig, as it’s never quite simple to tell where they’ll go next. That’s due mostly to a comedy journey through the music-business landscape: A debut EP made them a hot commodity, earning a contract with Interscope; that deal was quickly scuppered, however, and their proper debut found release on the Mississippi-based band’s homestate Fat Possum label; it (the record) disappointed fans of the EP, inducing three of five band members to flee, and The Cradle (Dualtone) results. Most of these trials are poetically captured in opener “8 Years,” a we’re-still-here exhale and reaffirmation. From there, Colour Revolt toil at resculpting a personality — something that’s dogged them from the beginning. Harkening to the serious, sprawling nouveau-Band folk-rock of Midlake, The Cradle is an exercise in finding strengths, trial and error. (Friday@Schubas with Pomegranates.)
Folks break out in dream-pop hives when School Of Seven Bells appear out of the mist. Once thought to be a side-project for Secret Machines and Onairlibrary members, SOSB have turned into a right, post-My Bloody Valentine juggernaut, flirting coyly with M83 and Cocteau Twins. Disconnect From Desire (Vagrant/Ghostly) leans toward the latter, utilizing the sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza’s unison harmonies to chilling effect, while Benjamin Curtis — who also serves as producer — floods the air with dry ice fumes. Though tracks like “Heart Is Strange” hint at dancing and leave plenty of room for remixers to add throbbing bass, the album’s title couldn’t cut a more appropriate framework for these ingenious pop sculptures. (Friday@Lincoln Hall with Active Child.)
— Steve Forstneger
Category: Featured, Stage Buzz, Weekly
