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International Orange
Thursday · Radio Down
Though having played its first show less than a year ago, Chapel Hill, NC’s International Orange has already taken its tasty Pop/Rock up and down the East Coast (from NYC to Florida) and become one of the more talked about new acts in their Indie-lovin’ hometown. The group boasts three singer/songwriters of estimable talent — Django Haskins (who, as a solo artists, has made many stops in Greater Cincinnati), Robert Sledge (former bassist in Ben Folds Five) and Snuzz, who has also worked with Folds. The group’s debut release, the EP Spoon Box, kicks off with one of Haskins’ finest songs, “Hand to Mouth,” which was covered by Cincinnati’s Wojo on last year’s How To Try Without Succeeding. Spoon Box shines with superb Power Pop songwriting that takes cues from the greats (from Big Star to Costello), mixing clever lyrics, pristine three-part harmonies, joyful exuberance and sublime melodies. Fans of the genre and fans of great song crafting, take note — this is a must-see. (Mike Breen)
Porter Hall Tennessee with Hank Williams III
Friday · Top Cat’s
With his own brand of uncompromising, take-no-prisoners Hardcore Country, Hank Williams III has proven that there is still an audience out there for the old-school twang. He’s also shown a keen forward-looking eye for incorporating his love for Punk and Hard Rock into his music. And so it only seems appropriate that Porter Hall Tennessee would be the opening act on Hank III’s current tour. After some time spent alternating between Punk and Bluegrass bands themselves, the members of Porter Hall Tennessee have also found a way to combine their affinity for both in a raw amalgamation of rootsy Country with a youthful Punk energy.
Actually hailing from Murfreesboro, Tenn., Porter Hall is a five-piece fronted by Molly Conley and Gary Roadarmel.
Conley’s clever command of phrasing will have you hanging on every word of her heartbreak ballads, while Roadarmel handles the more rockin’ stuff like “Screwed Blue,” a two-minute blast of vintage Honky Tonk that had me tapping my foot and reaching for the bottle opener. With equally satisfying results, Conley’s yearning overtures to lost love and Roadarmel’s drunken swaggabilly are sung with beautifully bittersweet Southern harmonies, making the genuine mountain twang glide gracefully over the music like whiskey over ice. The band’s debut album, Welcome To Porter Hall Tennessee, sounds so hot and spontaneous that their live show is certain to be a barn-burner. (Ric Hickey)
Panicsville
Saturday · The Sunflower
The new, locally-based Dead Bunny Productions has taken over some booking duties at The Sunflower in “lower” Clifton (at 2999 West McMicken St., to be exact) and it’s safe to say that, from a musical standpoint, the cozy venue will be quite different from its days not so long ago under previous ownership, when the club featured acoustic and “Jam” style acts. The club will now be leaning more toward Noise, Electronic and other realms of experimental music, and on Saturday, The Sunflower hosts Chicago-based Panicsville, internationally-lauded in the Noise underground and headed up by notorious sonic and performance-art terrorist Andy Ortmann. Saturday will serve as a local CD release party for Panicsville’s latest enhanced-CD, Perverse (featuring an Ortmann-soundtracked film), the latest in a staggeringly long line of varied releases since 1993 (from 5-inch vinyl to a 10 LP box set to glued-together “anti-records”). Perverse — a patchwork of ambient-to-explosive noise — gets the local release special-treatment because its label, Liquid Death/Hello Pussy Records, is partially based in Cincinnati. Perverse‘s creepy and often antagonistic feel is indicative of Ortmann and Co.’s live show, which has reportedly included everything from microwaving shark-meat on stage to tossing eggs filled with spoiled food and bugs into the audience. What to expect this time out is anyone’s guess. (MB)
Gomez
Sunday · Bogart’s
After the 2002 release of the electronically dappled In Our Gun, Gomez (guitarists/vocalists Tom Gray, Ben Ottewell and Ian Ball, bassist/vocalist Paul Blackburn and drummer Olly Peacock) resumed the relentless touring schedule that had occupied them since the startling success of Get It On (which won the UK’s Mercury Prize for Music in 1998) and its follow-up, 1999’s Liquid Skin. Energized by a six-month sabbatical and a subsequent year-and-a-half of roadwork, the band decided to begin putting together the songs for their next album.
Touring behind In Our Gun helped to coalesce and flesh out the material’s more ephemeral qualities and set the stage for the writing of the songs that would comprise the latest Gomez album, Split the Difference. By the time the band decamped to a makeshift studio near Brighton, they had already written and recorded nearly 50 new songs but Gray notes that the more visceral Rock sonics of Split the Difference didn’t dominate the proceedings.
“We did record a lot of Electronic songs … it’s just that we selected a Rock & Roll record, (a) sort of a psychedelic Pop album,” says Gray. “I think that’s more or less what we’re always supposed to have been, a psychedelic band.”
At the end of the process of assembling Split the Difference, Gray feels like Gomez returned to the gritty Blues/Rock that won them their early acclaim. “It’s really a vital record,” says Gray. “It feels more like an album than a walk through the backwaters of our brains.” (Brian Baker)
mclusky with Oceansize and The Whiskey Dicks
Tuesday · Southgate House
It seems there’s an excessively large amount of dour brooding and whining in most of today’s Modern Rock and Indie music. If you’re tiring of the woe, pop mclusky’s latest CD into your player and get lost in the band’s daft yet powerful splendor. Hell, just hearing the title — The Difference Between Me and You Is That I’m Not On Fire — is enough to brighten your day. Vocalist Andy Falkous rants as much as he “sings,” spitting out mad couplets like an alien genetic splice of Jesus Lizard’s David Yow, John Lydon, Frank Black and Mark E. Smith’s DNA. On the musical end, the Welsh trio detonates volatile, muscular rhythms (again, a bit like the Jesus Lizard’s seasick sway) and feverish, rattlesnake riffs for much of The Difference, but also tones down the bombast (but not the eccentricity) on squirmy cuts like “Forget About Him, I’m Mint” and “Your Children Are Waiting For You To Die.” I’m tempted to call this one of the best album’s of the year based on the song titles alone (other choice samples: “Without MSG I Am Nothing,” “Falco Vs. The Young Canoeist”). But I’ll bestow the honor for a better reason — The Difference contains some of the best “Post-Punk” music being made today. Brilliantly erratic and astonishingly enjoyable, the difference between this album and most of the music coming out of Great Britain right now is that this album is amazing. (MB)
This article appears in Jun 9-15, 2004.
