Buzzed-about glam-rock youngsters powered by brothers Daniel and Kevin Hivick, who use their keys and vocals to build up 70’s aesthetics and punk-rock theatrics, respectively.

Red Satellites - Dancing [demo]

With openers James Wallace and the Naked Light, we’re mostly just talking about indie folk-rock in the vein of Richmond faves The Great White Jenkins — at least aside from the storytelling elements, that is. Sharper eyes might even catch a Jenkin or three as guest performers.

James Wallace and the Naked Light - Killing The Dog
James Wallace and the Naked Light - Dancing Star No Naked Light
James Wallace and the Naked Light - Colors

Local newcomers Pompadour also help get things started by trying to make you dance, which is a pretty good idea, and you should cooperate — it’s far more sensible than naming a band Pompadour, for example.

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Fuzzed-out and thoroughly surreal dream-pop family band. Local trio Manorlady opens with guitar and keyboard parts synchronized to video.

A Sunny Day In Glasgow - Failure
A Sunny Day In Glasgow - Ashes Grammar/Ashes Maths
Manorlady - Boy and Flippers [demo]
Manorlady - Red Juice [demo]

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“Like the chord, not the person.” That’s how jazz guitar madman Jamal Millner initially explained this electronica-oriented band to us, and it now includes elements of soul and metal.

Black Gsus - Tecnot
Blak Gsus - Made 2 Last
Blak Gsus - Mistra Man Bickle Knob RM

Also featuring DJ Ill Skill.

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As a member of harmonizing-heavy 2008 indie-folk mega-smash Fleet Foxes, fuzzy-faced drummer J. Tillman seemingly had quite a lot to do with setting in motion indie rock’s current well-documented predilection toward beards. And everyone was all “WTF” when he dropped a solo album, precisely the sort of moody and sometimes-depressed singer-songwriter deal that probably all too often results from trying to be creative under the gloomy grey skies of the Pacific Northwest. Thing is, it’s his eighth — he’s been at it for years, since even before the Foxes, spurred on in the earliest days by fellow Seattle folk singer and 2006 flavor-du-jour Damien Jurado. This should probably end with a Nick Drake comparison or something, but that’s mostly a foregone conclusion these days.

J. Tillman - Though I Have Wronged You

Pearly Gate opens, by which we mean that there’s a band by that name performing, and certainly not that your entrance to heaven is assured.

Check out Stephanie Garcia’s interview with Tillman and Tillman’s subsequent response

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The local songwriter celebrates the release of her new album, Down Home Girl, bringing with her sure-to-be-excellent supporting performances by folks like mando player Andy Thacker, bassist Darrell Muller, and drummer James McLaughlin. Peyton Tochterman opens with heavily bluegrass-influenced singer-songwriter tunes.

Kathryn Caine - The Rope
Kathryn Caine - If You Were To Wake Up
Kathryn Caine - Workin’ Man
Kathryn Caine - Far Away
Kathryn Caine - Wheels
Peyton Tochterman - Mamma’s Genes

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Appalachian flavors from midwestern ladies living in the Pacific Northwest. The dual lead singers of Portland’s Ah Holly Fam’ly enchant you with harmonies as the band — stripped to a quartet here, but known to include several others at times — backs them up with sax, clarinet, uke, and other instruments that hang out on the fringes of what one could reasonably call “folky.”Ohioan opens.

Ah Holly Fam’ly - Loneliest City

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Acoustic bluegrass

The Gold Top County Ramblers - 3 Days Blossom
The Gold Top County Ramblers - Raleigh N Spencer

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Hip hop, including a set from one of the Beetnix guys, who also has a new solo record; Lou Hampton describes his Cherryblossoms and Gunpowder, which is stuffed full of horn-laden beats written by his new favorite producer Josh “Rhetoric” Rhett, as a door-opening debut about “dualities and struggle, dreams and reality, life and death.” See also: lemonade and cucumbers, green tea and soba noodles…

Waterloo - Testify
ST/MIC - Sleepin

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Singer-songwriter

Rob Martin - Outside
Rob Martin - Speak
Rob Martin - To The Lighthouse

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Three folk-pop fruitcakes from the woods of North Carolina; for fans of Joanna Newsom, Devendra, and the Decemberists. Hometown indie-folk duo Birdlips open.

Bowerbirds - Beneath Your Tree
Bowerbirds - Northern Lights

Birdlips - Tire Chains
Birdlips - Some Kind Of Death

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Young buck Chicago folk-rock balladeer Ezra Furman and his Boston-based college-buddy backing band the Harpoons split the difference between Bob Dylan and Gordon Gano of the Violent Femmes. Presented by Daytrotter, the John Peel of the blog-rock world, whom you can thank for these student-budget bargain-bin ticket prices by downloading all their awesome free music. DC indie-pop quintet Middle Distance Runner opens.

Ezra Furman and the Harpoons - We Should Fight
Ezra Furman and the Harpoons - The World Is Alive
Ezra Furman and the Harpoons - Take Off Your Sunglasses
Ezra Furman and the Harpoons - God Is A Middle-Aged Woman

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CD release show for the new EP from the guitar-grit indie rockers and self-avowed space-cadets; “It’s definitely indie dance-rock, but there’s almost a minimalist style to it,” says new drummer Kyle Woolard, who you might also know from his other band Uncle Jemima. “It’s watertight — there’s nothing there that doesn’t need to be there.” Nonetheless, some of the new Brenner-produced tracks come off harder than he describes, somewhere between newer Muse and pocket-protector STP. Similarly celestially-minded local quartet Corsair and songwriter Travis Elliott open.

Newly re-recorded:
Astronomers - Or Maybe It’s Nothing
Astronomers - Perpetual Emotion
Astronomers - Stratagem

Older:
Astronomers - The Singularity
Astronomers - Shoes
Astronomers - My Hologram
Astronomers - Fermata

Corsair - Last Night On Earth
Corsair - Space Is A Lonely Place
Corsair - Starcophagus

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Already forever immortalized thanks to his work with the Blues Explosion, frontman Jon Spencer switched gears in 2005 to a new grumpy-Elvis country-rock project with guitarist Matt Verta-Ray which has now blazed through three albums of raw punk-rockabilly culminating with Midnight Soul Serenade, out last month on Fat Possum alongside guys like the Black Keys and the Heartless Bastards.

Heavy Trash - Gee I Really Love You

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Experimental electronic musician Benjamin O’Brien has both studied music with fellow avant-garde guitarist Fred Frith and earned a mathematics degree from UVA, thus leading to his improvised/randomized compositions on guitar/laptop. Also featuring appearances by Danna Thomas and Brandon Walsh as well as an improvised guitar-contrabass-electronics duet with local tinkerer Jonathan Zorn.

Benjamin O’Brien - Week 4
Benjamin O’Brien - Week 6
Benjamin O’Brien - Week 11
Benjamin O’Brien - Week 17
Benjamin O’Brien - Week 28
Benjamin O’Brien - Week 31

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Photo by Andrew Shurtleff

Space-lovers who take their cues from Iron Maiden and 70’s rock. The Great Eastern and Bowie-loving glam-rockers Red Satellites open.

Corsair - Last Night On Earth
Corsair - Space Is A Lonely Place
Corsair - Starcophagus

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Eight-legged indie-folk somewhat fashioned after Joanna Newsom from New York songwriter Jane Herships, former guitarist for Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson. Also featuring Magdyn Osh and a solo set from Arbouretum singer Dave Heumann.

Dave Heumann - Two Soldiers

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Offbeat alt-rock quartet Soul Coughing dissolved, fittingly, just as the 90’s faded into the 00’s, but poetic frontman Mike Doughty managed to flip their implosion into a viable solo career within about six months. His last couple albums have moved toward thicker radio-friendly pop production than the sparseness his fans grew used to, but the just-released Sad Man Happy Man tones it back down again and zeroes in on the acoustic skeletons and the programmed beats slated to move into the foreground with his upcoming electronic album Dubious Luxury.

New York singer-songwriter Porter Block opens with tunes co-written by several of his Brooklyn neighborhood’s finest musicians.

Porter Block - Youth’s Magic Horn
Porter Block - Got To Get Back

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Pitchfork once praised this funky Miami dance-rock duo, which has opened for both Girl Talk and Animal Collective, as “the right balance between magnet school and special ed” while simultaneously chastising them for “the worst name since Ninja High School;” local opener DBB Plays Cups makes a strong showing with that last one too. Also featuring Giant Cloud. Hoo boy. Come on, guys.

Awesome New Republic - Alleycat

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Catchy-ass guilty-pleasure NYU electro-pop-rap, occasionally filthy and/or in the spirit of Brazilian 2007 dance-rock sensations CSS, and probably the only band we’ve heard from all year which willfully compares themselves with the Black Eyed Peas. Local dance-rockers Bear War open.

Menya - Philly Gurls
Menya - Oh
Menya - Loose
Menya - Diana (I Heart You)

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If you’ve been following our occasional checkup chats, which you totally should be, you probably already know that local guitarist Eli Cook maintains roughly equivalent levels of enthusiasm for acoustic early proto-blues (see 2005’s Miss Blues’es Child), 90’s Seattle grunge (2007’s not-particularly-traditional alt-rock record Electricholyfirewater, and New Orleans R&B (the latest incarnation of his power trio). With the record released here, Static In The Blood, we get another angle: the singer-songwriter. Cook spent two years cooking up these seventeen tracks alone, playing almost all the instruments himself, and says they’re bluesy, but not actually blues per se.

Paradoxically, this will probably continue to make him even less marketable to those rare purists looking for someone they can call a blues guitarist without needing a footnote, but those people should put a sock in it anyway (as should you, if you’re thinking of complaining about spending your Saturday night up on Route 29 — this is definitely the Rivals show to catch).

Book Of Job opens, followed by sets by Eli both as a soloist and with the trio.

Eli Cook - Static In The Blood

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Old-school UK funk quartet The New Mastersounds, now hitting their ten-year anniversary, has been anchored for the past decade by the astonishing pocket of bassist Pete Shand through gigs alongside Matisyahu, the Crowes, and the Peas. Keep your fingers crossed for their 2007 instrumental cover of Roots Manuva’s “Witness (1 Hope),” whose bobbling bassline has been begging for a stoner-jam reinterpretation forever. This should be a no-brainer for Daptone fans.

The New Mastersounds - Thermal Bad [live]

East Ponce Soul Faction opens.

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In all the lamenting of lost venues, everyone seemed to forget the Chapel, which unexpectedly started hosting shows a few years back from Sarah White, Le Loup, and Ben Chasny’s Six Organs Of Admittance (which, mercifully, did not cost nearly as much as you might think).

Now, praise the Lord, it comes roaring back — figuratively, that is, since the great K Records‘ act Mount Eerie is actually an indie-folk project. Phil Elverum’s latest album touches on both field recordings and ambient black metal, though, so maybe there’s a roar here after all.

Mount Eerie - Between Two Mysteries

Opening: fellow K songwriter Tara Jane O’Neil, and Stephen Steinbrink, the (extremely) young Phoenix-based pop songwriter formerly known as French Quarter whose latest album is available as either a digital download or — wait for it — VHS. Crazy kids!

Stephen Steinbrink - Wet Cloud
Stephen Steinbrink - Warning
Stephen Steinbrink - The Cops
Stephen Steinbrink - Neighbors In The Bedroom
Stephen Steinbrink - My Cacoon
Stephen Steinbrink - A Set Of Hours

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Former Meat Puppets tour-mates and recent Kill Rock Stars signees The Shaky Hands thumb their noses at the mania typical of the indie rock bands constantly manufacturing ways to come across as progressive and instead resort to the simplistic and straightforward guitar parts that gave us Tom Petty and the Strokes. Case in point: Nick Delffs spent a month and a half in India shortly before recording their latest album Let It Die and didn’t fill it with tabla and sitar flourishes.

The Shaky Hands - Allison And The Ancient Eyes

Fresh-faced indie rock locals Pompadour open with a dance-friendly set.

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As you may know from his previous Tea Bazaar shows, Brooklyn songwriter Tavo Carbone used to take his pop and folk tunes on tour with a revolving-door band and often with outlandish instruments (glockenspiel, accordion, etc). Things have settled down recently, though, so now we have Horse’s Mouth, the new stable band which should prove to be a) tighter and b) louder (we heard all that straight from the, er, original source).

Tavo Carbone - Boxcar Serenade
Tavo Carbone - Off To Hawaii
Tavo Carbone - Blue Boats On Black Lakes
Horse’s Mouth - As I Climb In The Horse’s Mouth

With The Invisible Hand and Harrisonburg’s Preacher; says the latter of their gospel-garage-glam sets: “Saturday night services legitimize Sunday morning sleeping.”

Adam Smith and the Invisible Hand - There’s Room In My Will
Preacher - I Luv You My Friends
Preacher - How Can I Keep From Singing
Preacher - He Is A Rock

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Pianist Rachel Grimes (part of the folkish Louisville chamber-pop band Rachel’s, though confusingly not actually the namesake) performs her new pastoral-themed new abstract classical album Book Of Leaves and, if we’re lucky, maybe a few of Erik Satie’s intoxicating Gnossiennes, which she’s reportedly brought out at other shows on this tour.

Rachel Grimes - Bloodroot

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