Little Lungs - Hoist Me Up

Regular JS-NYC readers (this means you, Mom) may recall my being kinda lukewarm about Little Lungs, then catching feelings for them pretty hard after one of their live shows. Well, after only a half-year of slacking, I managed to come up with a copy of their record. Yowza! I am now officially all about Little Lungs. Split between Jersey and Brooklyn, the trio really does a great job of catching their lightning in a bottle on Hoist Me Up. It's a great recording, especially with the vocals. Neither Angie nor Jackie is in any danger of being mistaken for Mahalia Jackson, but they are great to listen to, alone or together. There's a healthy dose of Lemuria / Potboiler end of the If You Make It vibe about the proceedings, as well as some early 90s North Carolina. Rarely is this a bad thing, and Little Lungs do no injustice to the pairing. I can't say enough good things about Little Lungs or Hoist Me Up. Buy it immediately from the good folk of Salinas Records. Here's a link.

R

Live: Canadian Rifle, Daylight Robbery, Fatal Erection @ Tommy's Tavern 6.15.9

Ah, Brooklyn and its punk rock. In my old age, it takes a lot for me to get on the bike and ride out into the wilds to see shows, especially on a school night, but I've been on a bit of a tear as of late. I really liked the Iron Chic demo, and as Get Bent seem to have gone the way of the Potboiler, it seemed prudent to dodge the storms of late spring and make it out to Tommy's, especially if there was a midnight curfew.

I rolled in around the 10 o'clock hour, just in time to catch the end of the Fatal Erection set. The three or four tracks I saw were pretty great. Female singer, and pretty abrasive in the Poison Idea end of things. Good stuff, especially as I understand this was one of their first shows. Check their webspace here and maybe snag one of their charmingly anachronistic cassette demos.

Daylight Robbery were next, although I had hoped that it would be Canadian Rifle. The presence of their exceedingly lovely bassist dashed those hopes for me, but the fellow Chicago three-piece sure did bring it. Vocals were a little sketchy (due to the sound guy, not the singers), but the kids sure did bring the Chicago/Naked Raygun noise in a sweet fashion. Check them out here. Looks like they are doing the whole tour with Canadian Rifle and that is not a bad thing at all.

Canadian Rifle stepped up next and proceeded to pretty much level the joint from where I was standing. They have dropped a couple demos in the last year or so that I know I have heard, but can't find at this point. If you like early Jawbreaker, Tin Armor and/or the aforementioned Raygun of much Naked-ness, you could do exceedingly worse than Canadian Rifle. Here's a link to some MP3s. Peep the tourdates and make it out if you can, the Canadian Rifle/Daylight Robbery one-two is pretty damn hard to beat.

Iron Chic closed the night. I would have liked to see them, but the sheer amount of dilly-dallying by them in between (and the flyer {pictured} that said they must be over by midnight) the CR set and their post-12am start time did not bode well for a long set that wouldn't be cut short, so back across the bridge to JS-NYC HQ I went. Hope it was good and that they get their shit together next time.

R

Jonesin'/Shang-a-lang split

Got a chance to catch up with Dave Bierling over the holiday, which is as awesome as you might suspect. In shooting said holiday shit, it came to light that one of the main proprietors of the If You Make It empire was the drummer for the dear departed Potboiler. Yet another reason to lament the passing of that stellar franchise.

That said, IYMI has got the Jonesin'/Shang-a-lang split up in the download section. They put it together for their Summer tour last year and it's well worth checking out. It's a bi-coastal affair, with Jonesin' representing from Long Island and Shang-A-Lang repping for New Mexico, I believe. I'm more of a Jonesin' guy, as they are purveying the sound that the current crop of Phil Douglas-curated rock that currently rocks my little world. The two songs have an early Hot Water beard/PBR vibe that has more of a Mats-y spin than a Dag Nasty one. It's good, and free here. Jonesin' web world portal is here.

Shang-a-lang I'm a little moe ambivalent about. The ratty original they ponied up for this split has a an early Built To Spill overloaded-single-mike-in-a-rehearsal-space sound that is not helped by digitization, but is still kind of catchy the first couple of times. The other song is a Lou Reed cover. Having suffered through any number of insufferable art school VU Lou Reed jockers (as well as LR personally) in the last couple decades, I will not entertain the notion of the New Mexican version of same, but grab the songs here and check out their web presence here. Maybe it'll work better for you.

Donate to IYMI, fools.

R

If You Make It demos, part three: Halo Fauna

I didn't think that I knew Halo Fauna until the other shoe dropped and I realized that Dave Bierling had been out on tour with them this summer. Checking out their tour dates, it would appear that this Buffalo/Brooklyn collective hasn't stopped since then. As of today, they appear to be keeping up with the kids in Lemuria and are out on the road until December, with stops at The Fest and a big ass loop West and back after that. Here's hoping they hold up, as the five songs here are pretty damn great. Evidently this is a precursor to their current record on Plan-It- X, but don't think it's going to get all twee up in this mofo. They seem to be pretty DIY, and judging by the spate of touring, either are doing pretty well or driving the old Potboiler van that ran on vegetable oil. The current tour is the seventh incarnation of the Gadabout Film Fest partnered with the Just Seeds travelling art tour, so perhaps the Plan-It-X bus is transporting the kids.

If I was going to have to go to an travelling indie film festival, I think I'd want to be able to see Halo Fauna. They number anywhere from one to four-pieces and play their trade in a folky punk that sounds a lot like early Built To Spill. Scenescence is only five tunes, but they picked a good batch to represent them. New Paltz Summer is a quality track that deserves to be cranked in a car in that aforementioned time, capturing an optimistic ennui in a few short minutes without overstaying it's welcome. That aesthetic extends to the entire demo. The five songs pass far too quickly for this asshole. Looks like I'll be picking up the new one. In the meantime, download Scenescence here from If You Make It and leave a damn donation. You can get the new record Durak from the band here.

If You Make It demos, part two: The Brass

The Brass are from Brooklyn. There's quite a little scene jumping off out there around between the various house and basement shows, Don Pedro's and the like. With the Astoria and Jersey pop-punk scenes imploding, it seems like a lot of bands are taking a different tact on the 90's Midwestern sound that's become so trendy as of late. While the pop-punkers opted for Screeching Weasel, bands like Meneguar, Get Bent and The Brass are taking more of a Boys Life or Braid tack. Works for me.

There are four songs in the demo, ranging from 'promising but falling a little bit short' to 'these guys could be a problem'. You can get the demo from the good folk of If You Make It here. Make a donation, cheap-ass. For the statisticians in our midst, you've got ex/current members of Latterman, Potboiler, On The Might Of Princes and Air Raid Barcelona in the band. The Brass are at Lost And Found in Brooklyn on 10/23 and seem well worth checking out. They also like taking shots at Rick Healey. Check out the web presence here.

If You Make It demos, part one: Thousandaires

Well, I guess the first thing to point out with Thousandaires is that despite the proximity factor, and with all due respect, I am not referring to these gents. If extraneous HTML code was jewelry, these guys would be Slick Rick.

No, my friends, our debut in the If You Make It spotlight is the NYC area band Thousandaires. It features Jeff from Bridge and Tunnel, with Jared from Get Bent and Potboiler and Dave and Dom from Halo Fauna. Only three songs so far, but they are pretty great. Phil Douglas recorded them in his usual masterful fashion. He may be our next J. Robbins at this rate. The three tunes here sport a Braidy kind of midwestern vibe with the expected NY spin. It makes me feel really bad about not having seen Get Bent live as yet. I'm going to rectify that situation ASAP and hope that we hear a lot more from Thousandaires in the very near future.

Get the demo here from If You Make It

Make a donation!

R

Get Bent - demo

One of the biggest disappointments of last year (and believe me, there were a shit-ton) was the break-up of Potboiler mere months after their relocating down to NYC. I got the heads up from Dave Bierling a couple months ago that there was a new band with some of the ex-Potboiler and Down In The Dumps dudes called Get Bent. Dave and the rest of the Potboiler dudes fostered a little bit of a renaissance in JS-NYC headquarters when it came to the local DIY scene, so while I was well gutted at the Potboiler dissolution, I could take (very) small consolation in the fact that there were a bunch of new bands on my radar, even if Dave wasn't in them. The Izzy Alcantara Potboiler record was top-notch and I really enjoyed the brown bag Down In The Dumps CD-R, so all in all I was pretty intrigued as to how the new band would sound. It arrived in the post about a day later and wonderfully enough, it kicks a whole lot of ass.

I was neck-deep in the mid 90s Midwest rock scene. My old band Musclecar played a fair amount of shows with a lot of those bands and I have made a killing recently divesting myself of hundreds of releases from Giants Chair, Boys Life and bands of that ilk. Even with my vow to pare down to a single wall of records, there are certain bands like Braid and Kill Creek whose catalog I'm holding on to. Get Bent are cut from the same mid-western cloth as Bob Nanna and the boys, with clean interweaving guitars and strident vocals that are dead ringers for the best of that era. Now that the whole 'hot topic emo' thing has almost kinda sorta gone by the wayside (or more accurately - South to Mexico), it's nice to hear a band bring back the sound without the pretense. There are only five songs, but there's really no way that you won't play this four or five times back to back the first, if not every, time you throw this bad boy on. It really is that good. I really need to get off my lazy ass and see one of their shows.

You can buy their stuff from them here using PayPal. I believe they'll be at The Fest this year so buy some stuff and give the guys some gas money already.

R

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