More warm music for more cold nights

"So, how was Calliope?" Brian asked me when I got home Friday night from a show at Company Brewing in Riverwest.  He would have joined me but as a second shifter, Friday night shows aren't a thing for him. Great, I told him. Finally, a band that lives up to their buzz. I'd call them psychedelic (as they do), but I want to say heavy metal. Not Metallica metal, more like Blue Cheer, Deep Purple, with more emphasis on the heavy rather than the metal. After all, this is a band that has the chops to cover "Bridge of Sighs."

"As in Robin Trower Bridge of Sighs?" Brian asked as I loaded up the (admittedly shaky-- I've never claimed to be a moving picture cameraperson) video I shot onto the computer. "Check this out," I told him. "I knew this cover was coming, because they posted on their FB page that they were working it up and that kind of ruined the surprise, but still. They nailed it."

Not Jim Morrison

"Is that a farfisa? And look at that gear! Vintage stuff!" Brian's eyes widened, "That stuff's gotta be older than they are, how old are these guys, what, 20s?"

Well, the whole show was for "Vic's 30th's birthday" and I'm assuming that Vic is guitarist Victor Buell, so ok, they're on the short side of 30. But their hearts seem to be firmly grounded in mine and Brian's youth, seeing as how we have not one, but two copies of Bridge of Sighs.**  The rest of their set of originals could very well feel at home in my 1974 basement, with keyboardist's Al Kraemer gritty soulful wail complimenting a rhythm section that was understatedly complex and interesting. And the guitar work is equally understated: it's precise but not obnoxious. The whole thing cooks into a really nice, deep psychedelic stew, worthy of bringing me and my companions that night back to our days of deciding what 13 albums to pick for our 99-cent introductory package from the Columbia House Record and Tape Club. In fact, it was Vinyl From the Vault's Sarah Filzen and her husband Joe Van Lanen who mentioned that Kraemer's voice reminded them of Jim Morrison. But I hate Morrison (not only because of his obvious mysogyny, but frankly, his voice always struck me as sounding like a lounge act) so I'm going to say it's more like Jack Bruce.

Brian could only say the same thing I'd been saying for months, "I've really gotta get out and see these guys." It's nice to see a resurgence of this kind of music.

Opening the night was one of my favorite finds of this past year, Slow Walker. I'd already written about them twice (their record from last summer is one of my favorites) and I've already said that while they claim a lot of contemporary influences from the West Coast (yeah, Seattle....) they always seemed more Detroit to me and until last Friday I couldn't put my finger on why, but it kicked in. As garage-y as their songs and overall sound is, their rhythm section has funk, good, foot-stomping, ass-shanking midwestern motor city funk. I'm not saying they're a funk band -- they're clearly a rock band, but what they have separates their jams from being boringly repetitive snoozefests -- there's movement happening, both physically and musically. They released a new piece of vinyl that night -- I'll download it when it's available digitally, since unlike Sarah and Joe, I'm just too lazy to deal with vinyl anymore.

In-between the two bands was an outfit from Minnesota called The Cult of Lip. The Cult of Lip, like the other two, has a psychedelia in their blood, but they're more shoegazy/gothy than either of the two. It sounded like they asked the sound man to drench the vocals with reverb and echo for that Cocteau Twins/My Bloody Valentine effect, but Company Brewing's high ceilings and expansive room ended up muddying the whole thing up. As such, you could hear the female voice somehow, but not hear a word she was saying, and the whole mix ended up having no dynamic or rhythmic variety, which turned them into background music while I chatted with my friends. I'm not going to blame this on the sound man -- both Calliope and Slow Walker sounded great. Just to check, when I got home I looked up The Cult of Lip and found that yeah, the reverb on the vox is part of their sound, but in a studio mix I could hear some better definition of songs. They actually go into odd rhythms and dark subject matter. The lead singer's voice is competent enough that she doesn't need that much reverb to make their point.  But they are a very cool band, and they were sandwiched in between  two very warm bands, and on this chilly night I was interested in warm, not cool. I'd like to see them in a smaller room that can handle that much reverb (Cactus Club maybe?), perhaps with somebody like Brief Candles or even No/No.


**When we moved in together and got married, we combined our record collections, but did not consolidate them. Where we have duplicates, we keep one out for playing (usually mine, because Brian took better care of his albums) and one enshrined in a nice plastic sleeve for posterity.