Live: Cloak/Dagger, Psyched To Die, Young Hearts @ Charleston 12.6.8

It's been a pretty good run for shows lately. I'm not complaining, especially when most of them are either in town or easily Dragon Bus-able. I got off the bus from Charm City and was on the bike a couple hours later to see Psyched To Die at the Charleston.

I haven't been to The Charleston in the better part of a decade. I'm no huge lover of that part of Brooklyn, but it was a crappy night and I was in the rhythm of going out, so one snowy ride over the bridge and I was in it to win it. It was nice to come in to the DJ playing The Arrivals. I was less pleased to find that The Charleston has a basement and that was where the show was going on. That is one dank-ass, smelly, ambiguously drippy basement. I came in and caught the better part of the Young Hearts set. They have some Get Up Kids records in their collections. The songs were decent, and the young cute girl factor was there, but they were a little Warped Tour for me. They'll probably do well with The Hot Topic set.

Psyched To Die is a NJ-based quartet of Black Flag-o-philes that have been stirring it up in basements and loft shows for a couple months now. If you're looking for a little kick in the ass, they've got a demo out that will cure what ails you. Good idea, cause you could sure catch something in that Brooklyn dungeon. They ripped it up for twenty minutes or so, with many a Queens and Jersey Scenester chugging a Miller along with the down-picking. I'm not sure I'd wanna hear it every night, but it worked this time. Keep tabs on the PTD posse here.

Cloak/Dagger are from Richmond and seem to have the millionth permutation of the {Cloak} + {Dagger} moniker. They sound like they are from RVA, with some more dissonant Flag and Hot Snakes moments for good measure. They sound like a fairly typical later period Jade Tree band on the shoutier end of things. One band in that vein is a good time, but two in a row after a long bus ride isn't enough to get me for the duration. Get positive with them here while you wait for them to come back to town.

R