Live: The Copyrights, The Unlovables, Dear Landlord & House Boat @ Fontana's 6.22.9

I had been saying for a couple weeks now that this show was the NYC show of the year (thus far) and now that it's done, you'd be hard-pressed to get me to say otherwise.

I showed up at Fontana's a couple songs into the House Boat set. Wonderfully enough, the listing of the bands was woefully inaccurate, listing The Copyrights as going on first, an eventuality that was rapidly rushing me towards apoplexy. I was pleased to find that someone was just an idiot. House Boat features the ubiquitous Mikey Erg on drums, along with Grath and Ace from the The Steinways. Zack Rivethead fills out the lineup on guitars and vocals. It's better on paper, at least at this juncture, but it was only their second show. Don't get me wrong, it was real good, but I think I'd like it a lot more with more time to marinate on the songs. There's evidently a record coming soon, recorded at Sonic Iguana with Luke from The Copyrights. Somebody would do well to hook a brother up. Hint, Hint.

Next up was Dear Landlord, who are simply awesome. Featuring half of The Copyrights and half of Rivethead (R.I.P), they have finally gotten around to recording a full-length that's coming out this Tuesday on No Idea. It is staggeringly awesome. Pick it up immediately. We got most, if not all of their canon and the room got real frisky real quick. Every song is a slice of some post-Weasel pop punk goodness that should be played as much as possible. See them live, buy their records, name your children and bands after them.

The Unlovables made one of their increasingly frequent live appearances next. They had a couple of new songs and sounded pretty great. Hallie has not gotten any less lovely, I will tell you, and the older songs still hold up nicely. The local kids were out in force and loving said Unlovables (aided and abetted by liberal amounts of Rolling Rock). They are an awesome time live and the Archers Of Loaf cover doesn't hurt one damn bit. Here's hoping we get some new stuff out quick, and some more live shows soon.

The Copyrights closed the evening in righteous fashion, churning out banger after banger that would make lesser bands hang it up stat. The well-lubricated crowd was chomping at the bit to see the Kings of Carbondale and the gents did not disappoint. If there is a better punk sing-a-long than Cashiers, I have yet to hear it. Luke didn't make it on this trip and Ronnie from The Arrivals has stepped into the breach to savage the drum kit, but that was the only thing close to disappointing. For the record, Ronnie was awesome, as was everything about their set.
How four of the best punk bands in America could play for $8 and not sell out is beyond me. I heard the next night in Brooklyn had a lot more bodies in the room, but there is no reason why a show this good shouldn't have been better attended. You punks need to get off your lazy asses.

R