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Old 97’s with Charlie Mars
Wednesday · Southgate House
Across the breadth of the Old 97’s’ decade-long career, the Texas quartet has generally taken a different approach to each of their albums. After the Country/Punk/Bluegrass/Psychedelia quilt of their Indie debut, Hitchhike to Rhome, in 1994, the band endeavored to present just a single genre on each successive album. But they continued to avoid any pigeonholing. Wreck Your Life classically rocked; Too Far to Care twanged and thumped; Fight Songs popped and jangled; and Satellite Rides showed their Carnaby Street-via-Dallas ’60s Pop chops. During the band’s subsequent long break, frontman Rhett Miller released his first solo album, The Instigator; guitarist Murry Hammond collaborated with his wife, Folk rocker Grey DeLisle; and the band lost its contract with Elektra. Reunited, signed to New West and given a free hand in the studio, the Old 97’s have assembled Drag It Up, a return to the pastiche of their debut 10 years ago. From “In the Satellite Rides a Star,” with its Pop melodicism dressed in Country gingham, to “The New Kid,” with its punky Country swing, to “Won’t Be Home” and its double clutched drumming and Hank Williams-meets-Elvis-Costello Country/Pub Rock soundtrack, the Old 97’s prove by example they haven’t forgotten the substantial and varied catalog they’ve established to date. The band keeps things loose and relatively raw while throwing around their standard brand of clever wordplay (from the AltCountry tome on infidelity, “Borrowed Bride”: “So take her inside, she’s your borrowed bride/And you would not guess how much she has not cried”). While none of it seems particularly essential, it’s a whole bunch of fun to listen to. With Drag It Up, the Old 97’s have put together a sonic scrapbook of their career and made a career album in the process.
(Brian Baker)
The Codetalkers
Thursday · BarrelHouse
The very mention of Colonel Bruce Hampton is enough to inspire jaw-dropped awe within the Jam community. After a good number of years plying his Art Rock craft in a variety of musical projects (particularly the Hampton Grease Band in the late ’60s and the Late Bronze Age in the early ’80s), Hampton got together with Oteil Burbridge and Jeff Sipe in 1988 to form Col. Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit, arguably one of the most cultishly revered group of Southern Rock eccentrics of the ’90s. The ARU offered layer upon layer of lysergically drenched Blues, Swing, Be-Bop Funk, Jazz and Rock, boogied out, amped up and jammed through at top volume. After conceiving the H.O.R.D.E. Tour with Phish’s Trey Anastasio, Widespread Panic’s John Bell and Blues Travellers’ John Popper, Hampton recorded a pair of highly regarded albums with ARU before taking his leave of the band in 1993 (although they ultimately proceeded without him). Two years later, Hampton surfaced in a new band, The Fiji Mariners, an extension and evolution of his work with ARU, but after a couple of albums with the Mariners, he departed their ranks as well. Eager to explore more of the Jazz facets of his creative persona, Hampton formed the Codetalkers in 1999, a trio of Jazz-minded Jam aficionados that has brought to bear all of Hampton’s incredible musical experience over the past three decades. If you haven’t seen the Colonel in all of his eccentric resplendence, you really owe it to yourself to take in the madness and genius of Bruce Hampton. (BB)
The Carlsonics with Heartless Bastards
Thursday · The Comet
The Carlsonics play a fuzzy, dank-basement brand of neo-psychedelia rife with dizzyingly powerful guitar outbursts that straddle the line between Mudhoney-like, out-of-control rapture and Sonic Youth’s bold adventurousness. On the raw, rugged quintet’s self-titled debut, released on the esteemed Arena Rock Recording Company imprint, the band takes the rambunctious energy and freedom of Garage Rock, splices it with a slanted, tripped-out boogie and adds its own unique melodic personality to keep it distinct. Spontaneous feedback and guitar noise add a level of immediacy to the recording, with the two-guitar interaction providing much of the album’s backbone, braiding dirty riffs together to create a tapestry of layered Squawk & Roll. There’s a creeping quality to the band’s melodic approach; songs like “I Dig the Bushwhack” and “Ice People” don’t hit you over the head, but they do manage to work their way up there pretty deep after repeated listens. The Carlsonics have a far-reaching grasp on vintage Rock forms, but they are never too overt and rarely do they treat the blueprint as an archetype. “Tonight We Dine on Fumes” is built on a ’60s guitar chime and radiant background vocals before exploding into a bridge of willful cacophony that Keith Moon would have been proud to be a part of, while the jaunty, slashing “Senator Trudge and the Clap Division” and pre-punkish “Done In” also provide album highlights. The Carlsonics have drawn as much praise for their vigorous live performances as they have for their recording output, so checking out this free show at The Comet on Thursday should be a welcome surprise from one of D.C.’s most promising new bands. (Mike Breen)
The Paybacks
Friday · The Comet
At what point does the world stop listening to those of us who continue to anoint Detroit as the once and future great new city of Rock? When will people become inured to the drums that we scribes seem to be perpetually beating for the likes of The White Stripes, The Singles, The High Strung, The Detroit Cobras and the dozens of other Motor City crankers who remind us what has always been best about the Michigan metro area that Kiss was moved to dub “Detroit Rock City”? Here’s hoping their attention spans last long enough that we can toss one more Detroit band name into the recent litany of Great Rock Hopes that have been streaming from the shores of Lake Huron. On the surface, The Paybacks aren’t doing anything monumentally groundbreaking other than building simply on the high-voltage foundation laid down three-and-a-half decades ago by the likes of the MC5 and SRC. Guitarist/vocalist Wendy Case is a whirling dervish of Joan Jett-meets-Chrissie Hynde proportions, leading The Paybacks (lead guitarist Marco Delicato, bassist John Szymanski, drummer Mike Latullipe) through their raucous 33-minute, 10-song debut, Knock Loud, with gale-force riffs and enough power spikes to have single handedly caused last summer’s blackout. Perhaps most impressive is the fact that the Paybacks have managed to generate their palpably concussive vibe in the sterile and restrictive atmosphere of the studio, where a good many bands have been intimidated into watering down their natural live tendencies into a pale imitation of their sound. The Paybacks know one gear (high) and one volume (loud) and that applies to stage or studio. See them live for an undiluted taste of Detroit on the Rocks. The Paybacks will also be at the Southgate House on Saturday, opening for The Mooney Suzuki. (BB)
This article appears in Jul 7-13, 2004.