Less than three years ago, Cincinnati trio Bummers Eve played its first show (a party in Northside), and since then the Psych/Rock/Garage/Punk crew has worked the road hard to build its name. The progress the band was making in a relatively short period
of time hit a potential momentum killer last year when singer/guitarist Michael Cipollone moved to Richmond, Va., with drummer Tommy Lee Biddle and bassist Victor Valentino staying in Cincy. But living out of a van had become second nature to the band, so Cipollone’s new geographical location did little to slow the threesome down. In fact, 2015 turned into Bummers Eve’s biggest year yet. The group stepped up its touring duties, recorded a live set for influential New Jersey-based freeform radio station WFMU and landed a slot at one of the Garage Rock world’s biggest events, Gonerfest in Memphis, Tenn.
Bummers Eve also hooked up with respected Brooklyn, N.Y.-based label Almost Ready Records, which has put out releases by underground faves like Nobunny, Cheater Slicks and Natural Child. The label released Bummers Eve’s debut single, “Fly on the Wall,” last June, and on Feb. 26, it gave the world the band’s magnificent full-length debut. The 10-track self-titled effort — recorded and mixed by Jerri Queen, who worked on Wussy’s latest album (among many other projects) and plays in locally based bands Vacation and Black Planet — will get the hometown release party treatment Friday at MOTR Pub (1345 Main St., Over-the-Rhine, motrpub.com). The free 10 p.m. show also features Tennessee’s Pujol (see interview here).
The songs on Bummers Eve’s debut long-player are drenched in layers of noise, distortion and reverb, creating the whirling, fuzzy atmospherics that are a cornerstone of the trio’s sound. Columbus, Ohio, band Psychedelic Horseshit, which has also done some work with Almost Ready, coined the term “Shitgaze” to humorously describe its noisy lo-fi-meets-Shoegaze psychedelia approach, and Bummers Eve flirts with that overall aesthetic on its debut. But as cacophonous and sonically unhinged as Bummers Eve can sound at times (the wall-of-noise ending of “No Weed, No Friends, No Life” is probably the riotous pinnacle of the trio’s aural derangement), there’s too much color within the band’s songs to simply dismiss them as impulsive noise-outs.
Listening to Bummers Eve’s full-length is a little like discovering Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy (or The Ramones, for that matter) for the first time; it doesn’t take long before all the abrasive and caterwauling elements simply become context, another endearing texture that surrounds some ridiculously great melodies and tight, potent rhythms. In that same way, Bummers Eve’s debut is brilliantly subversive Pop music at its finest. It’s prickly, punkish, melodically surreptitious, often funny and consistently captivating, from the pulsating, overdriven opener “I Want Your Drugs” to the ’50s-ish Pop shimmy of “Candy Hall” to the soaring swirl and spastic freak-out in “Life’s a Rag.”
You can preview and purchase Bummers Eve now at bummerseve.bandcamp.com or just click below.
Rockin’ with Purpose
Last fall, Adam and Matt Forsthoefel from the Cincinnati Rock band The Grove found out that their father had been diagnosed with brain cancer. In response, the musicians called on their friends in the local music community to play a benefit concert, the proceeds from which will be donated to the UC Brain Tumor Center and its research efforts to find a cure.
This Saturday, more than a dozen area artists will take over all three stages at the Southgate House Revival (111 E. Sixth St., Newport, Ky., southgatehouse.com) for the Rock N’ Revival for a Cure concert. Along with The Grove, Here Come Here, BAOKU, Go Go Buffalo, Almost Heroes, Rockstead, Silver Pockets Trio, Jim Trace and the Makers, Matt Schneider, Sundae Drives, Near Earth Objects, Lullaby Crash, Founding Fathers and Jamwave are scheduled to perform.
Music begins at 7 p.m. Tickets for the show — which is open to those 18 and up — are $8 in advance, or $10 at the door.
CONTACT MIKE BREEN: [email protected]