Swim Party, Talkdemonic & AM Vibe @ Casbah, 2-11-08

Yet again, I have a week's worth of pictures that I haven't gotten around to posting.

After we left Rodrigo y Gabriela at 4th & B, Andrea and I made our way to the Casbah. It had been a while since we saw AM Vibe play and once again they didn't disappoint. I have to say, I've never really had chick envy, but Lisah is one of the coolest chicks to watch perform. She rocks but has a sweet voice, she is sexy but doesn't dress in a suggestive way, and when she plays she has a smile on her face throughout her entire set. Plus, I heart Porter in a big way, so call me biased, but I love this band.





Talkdemonic was up next and I guess it was just over a year ago that they performed at another Anti-Monday League, which I wrote about here. It was kinda nice to go from all instrumental Rodrigo y Gabriela, to the melodic rock of AM Vibe, back to the all instrumental music of Talkdemonic. The live violin and drums had so much energy, even if once again I had to get over my slight bias against pre-recorded sounds playing from an iMac. It appeared that some of the people there were unfamiliar with Talkdemonic and a handful of people asked me if I knew who they were because they were so impressed with the set.









Last up was Swim Party, and gush gush. The crowd stuck around despite it being a bit of a late night. They are starting to incorporate a couple of their new songs into their set, though they told me they have been so focused on getting their next album recorded that they haven't worked out how to play most of them live. I captured a couple songs on YouTube, as did Natalie, so I'll post those when I get some real time to do so.









It was a really great night. One other thing I wanted to point out about the night was how impressed I was with all the local bands supporting other locals. Just looking through the crowd, I saw members of Firethorn, Someday Assassin, The Modlins, Writer, The Predicates, Frantic Romantic, Dead on Seven, The Tighten-Ups, Team Abraham, Republic of Letters, Blackout Party, Starcrossed and Roxy Jones. Anybody who says that locals bands don't support one another are dead wrong.

Monday Recap: Anti Monday League

If you didn't make it to the Casbah last night, you are almost forgiven because it was butt ass cold, but you missed a decent show.

Evervess was on first. Eric of Swim Party is a member of this band. If you're into shoegaze, Evervess is for you. I had flashbacks of high school and loving bands like Ride and Swervedriver which is pretty fitting since they are the first two bands listed as their influences on their MySpace page here. Grinding guitars and one of the biggest drumkits I've seen any local band use with the dreamlike singing of both guitarists and the bassist coupled with the lighting effect of projected liquid and I was back in 1991, and for me that was a good thing. Troy Johnson commented to me that the 90's are coming back, and I say better than the fucking 80s. Just don't start pulling out your flannels...

Talkdemonic was the second act onstage. The crowd increased...I guess everyone is accustomed to shows starting later. Keep in mind the Mondays start a bit earlier. The smoking patio was particularly empty due to the cold and everyone huddled inside to watch the experimental pair from Portland do their thing. The band is Lisa Molinaro on violin and Kevin O'Connor on drums, accompanied by a laptop (gasp!) with prerecorded accompaniment, such as bass, guitar and mandolin. This is an all instrumental pair and they played a long set of electro-acoustic and electro-classical music. They played a relatively long set and seemed to hold most of the crowd well.

Last up for the night was Dreamtiger. I've never seen them before and I really am not into slamming bands, but I really felt the vocals were weak. It was unfortunate, too, because any band with a chick on accordion would naturally appeal to me, but the vocals just didn't match the music for me. And it had nothing to do with volume or sound mixing...some people just shouldn't sing. Being that it was 11:45, I left during the 3rd song.

I raced home and arrived just in time for the repeat of "The Hills" season premiere on MTV which prominently featured Greg Laswell's cover of "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" during the closing montage of the show. Good work, Greg.