the echo and echoplex

Gram Rabbit || Listen

They’ve gone from strange to stranger, those Joshua Tree denizens known as Gram Rabbit. On their third album, RadioAngel and the RobotBeat, out November 17, they come out spitting, with lead singer and co-songwriter Jesika von Rabbit coming off like Grace Jones with a bunny fetish on the fed-up-with-technology electro-ditty “American Hookers.” Considering they go to sleep every night under a sky filled with more stars than the rest of us can only dream of, it’s not surprising their lyrics express a great deal of concern for “the world gone wrong.” They also come from a place with fewer teeth per capita than the rest of the state, hence references to priests smoking crystal meth and pit bulls. Even weirder is “The Rest of Us Sleep,” which sounds like video-game effects. My pick hit is “Fancy Dancy,” with what may be the best line of the summer: “Any way you slice it, it’s still bologna.” They even wrote a song about Landers, called “Landers,” which is some blips and plucks and pounds and maybe some voices. Bonus: Most of the new tunes are excellent for doing “The Robot.” - LA Weekly

complimentary champagne toast at midnight

10pm / $15 adv, $20 dos / 18+

Melvins || Listen

With a similar sardonic glee, Melvins (now swollen to a quartet with the addition of Coady Willis and Jared Warren of L.A.’s Big Business) add to their already-weird canon with this latest 10-song bounty. Willis and Warren are themselves known for prostration before the almighty riff, and the partnership seems to have inspired in Messrs. Crover and Osbourne a measured return from their recent, more experimental work to the rock and roll drawing board. No trifling from the lead-off “The Talking Horse,” which blasts off with a tenderizing fuzz bass grind and interlocking play from the dual drummers. Here and throughout the record, the band’s new double-kit approach steers clear of bash-happy exploitation, and Crover, for one, downplays his megaton-concussion capability. When not locked into unison, honest-to-gawd grooves, Crover and Willis squeeze off clackety, dueling cymbal and percussive patterns and superimposed fills. “Horse,” along with “The Blood Witch,” introduces the Melvins’ new three-throated vocal attack - nearly every stanza is delivered via a raucous gang harmony. - Dusted Magazine

with:
400 Blows || Listen
Tweak Bird

@ Echoplex
1154 Glendale Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026

9pm / $16 adv, $18 dos / 18+

Rumspringa

As drummer Itaru de la Vega and guitarist/vocalist Joe Stevens take the stage where a million hopefuls have previously set foot, it’s as if I was in some sort of mystical ceremony. Fans were dancing in this sort of sacrificial trance-like state and it wasn’t a surprise. Something about this band’s music is hypnotizing. As the show progressed, Rumspringa include their fans in their music by handing out tambourines and maracas—this sort of union speaks to the down-to-earth quality of the band and proves that (more or less) they are one with their crowd, as well as humble people. The crowd definitely took full advantage and it was absolutely a beautiful sight to see. Looking around, it was inevitable that between the first song and the third or fourth, everyone in the room had succumbed and were dancing or—to say the least—bobbing their heads. - LA Record

with:
The Devil Makes 3 || Listen
Army Navy
Chief

8:30pm / $5 / 18+

with:
Hey Chica!
Dream Date
C-Town
Sin
Hyphy Crunk
Dia
Scarlett Casanova

spinning the best in: indie, international pop, britpop, electro, disco, post-punk, new wave, no wave, hiphop and more..

FMI:
Hang The DJs on Myspace

10pm / $8 / 18+

Mellowdrone || Listen

If there’s ever an award to be given to an unsigned act that’s opened for some of the coolest bands, it’s hands down - Mellowdrone. Aside from touring with The Smiths’ iconic Johnny Marr and his group The Healers (both in Europe and America) this Jonathan Bates- led project has also logged stage time with The Killers, Secret Machines, Elbow and Fire Theft. Along the way, the enigmatic entity also inked a major label deal and readied the official national debut disc Box by recording at various Los Angeles studios with producer Tony Berg (Beck, X). The results are a hodgepodge of all the aforementioned road mates, plus a lot of laptop derived electronics that move from melancholy to dreaminess to downright pulsating in one instance. - Concertlivewire.com

5pm / $10 / All Ages

A Crazy Worldwide Hannukah Party

with:
Balkan Beat Box || Listen
Dengue Fever
Soulico

and
Festival of Rights

@ Echoplex
1154 Glendale Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026

9pm / $15 / 18+

with:

PLASTICIAN
(Rephlex, Terrorhythm, Rinse FM, BBC Radio1, London UK) Plastician came into the spotlight with a nod from the ‘Grime’
compilation on Aphex Twin’s Rephlex label. Riding the line between dubstep and grime, Plastcian is both - yet neither. This year he gained control of the BBC airwaves by hosting a regular show on Radio 1’s ‘In New DJ’s We Trust’.

BREAKAGE
(Digital Soundboy, Pure Filth, London UK) While well respected in the world of drum n bass for his dubbed out musical masterpieces, Breakage has been working hard at producing dubstep worthy of his name. This year he’s put out genre breaking tunes like ‘Clarendon’ that have turned heads across the world.
Currently he is working on a new album which has been highly anticipated.

EMCEE CHILD
(Narco.Hz, Grime City, B.I.G. Crew, SF)

DLX
(Smog, Steps In Time Records, LA)

KNIFE DREAMS
(Smog, Sub FM, Pure Filth, LA)

SOUND REINFORCEMENT BY:
PURE FILTH

ART INSTALLATIONS BY:
SPECTR

Buy Tickets at Groovetickets.com

FMI: www.smogla.com

9pm / $8 Presale, $10 before 11pm, $15 after / 21+

Moving Units || Listen

Moving Units’ latest has the swagger and sneer of the most iconic rock, combined with catchy, sexy, melancholic dance riffs recalling classics from New Order to the Cure. Opener “Pink Thoughts” is dramatic yet focused, with guitars that remind me of favorite Chameleons songs of yore. Miraculously, even with all these 80’s references, Moving Units never sound dated. Instead, they’ve got enough going on in their novel electronics and within the music’s subtext to come off as fresh and modern. - Sentimentalist Magazine

with:
Scissors for Lefty || Listen
Tigercity

Plus special guest DJ Le Castle Vania

@ Echoplex
1154 Glendale Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026

RSVP to get in for FREE

8pm / FREE / 18+

with:
Surkin
Dre Skull
DJ Hyphy Crunk

Plus resident DJs:
Franki Chan
Paparazzi

@ Echoplex
1154 Glendale Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026

9pm / $10 / 18+

Gwendolyn & The Good Time Gang

It is very much to Gwendolyn’s credit that her second album for kids, Get Up and Dance!, released late last month, is entirely irony-free. Somehow, though, the songs are eager without turning off the parents. For example, kids will enjoy her exhortation to “bounce and bounce and bounce” (ad nauseam) “around” on the leadoff title track, while parents will smile wanly at the recognition of the fact that this, yes, is exactly how their child moves. But somewhere in the course of the song, the music opens up, adding handclaps and becoming sonically interesting (without losing the kids). The rest of the album is like that, too — the super funky “Eensy Weensy Spider,” the disco freeze-dance of “Red Means Stop,” and the best song never recorded for Grammar Rock!, “I Can Read.” The listing of vegetables “Out in My Garden” is reminiscent — in a good way — of their debut album’s “My Anatomy.” I also appreciate the fact that the album doesn’t end with a typical kids-album-closer slow song, but instead with the peppy “Sunny Day.” It fits perfectly here. - ZooGlobble.com

with:
DJ Lance Rock from Yo Gabba Gabba

@ Echoplex
1154 Glendale Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026

10:30am / $12, Family of four for $44 / all ages

The Thermals || Listen

Portland, Oregon natives the Thermals have been hovering on the periphery since their 2003 debut, delivering solid records to undersized acclaim. The band’s third album, The Body, The Blood, The Machine, conjures an America piloted by some sort of Christian-fascist regime (”They’ll pound you with the love of Jesus…They’ll own your days/ They’re only God’s babies/ They follow, they know”), and traces the frantic, fiery flight of an ex-pat and his girl (”I can see she’s afraid/ That’s why we’re escaping/ So we won’t have to die, we won’t have to deny/ Our dirty God, our dirty bodies”). The Body’s story is just vague and gruesome enough to be weirdly terrifying, totally Orwellian, and grander, louder, and more electrifying than anything the Thermals have spit out before. - Pitchfork

with:
The Big Sleep || Listen
Scandells

@ The Echoplex
1154 Glendale Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026

8pm / $13adv, $15dos / all ages

with:
Rademacher || Listen
Wait Think Fast

Plus Underground DJs

Spinning the best in Brit / Indie / Soul / Twee / Madchester / Punk / Glam

FMI: ClubUnderground.net

9pm / $5 if 21+, $7 under 21 / 18+

with:
The Morning Benders || Listen

Plus Underground DJs

Spinning the best in Brit / Indie / Soul / Twee / Madchester / Punk / Glam

FMI: ClubUnderground.net

9pm / $5 if 21+, $7 under 21 / 18+

with Underground DJs

Spinning the best in Brit / Indie / Soul / Twee / Madchester / Punk / Glam

FMI: ClubUnderground.net

9pm / $5 if 21+, $7 under 21 / 18+

with:
Hello Stranger
Io Echo || Listen

Plus Underground DJs

Spinning the best in Brit / Indie / Soul / Twee / Madchester / Punk / Glam

FMI: ClubUnderground.net

9pm / $5 if 21+, $7 under 21 / 18+

A Hee Haw Styled Country Variety Show with:

5 O’clock Somewhere
Kingsizemaybe
Mike Stinson
David Serby || Listen
Leslie and The Badgers
The Psychedelic Cowboys || Listen

8:30pm / $10 / 18+

Port O’Brien || Listen

But Port O’Brien has earned the right to the salt-crusted imagery adorning its first full-length, The Wind and the Swell, as well as to the numerous mentions of seas and oceans and fishing boats and puffins in these jagged, intelligent indie-folk songs. Port O’Brien mainstay Van Pierszalowski, a California native and son of a commercial fisherman, spends his summers aboard an Alaskan salmon schooner, either fighting the seas or bored in port if the weather’s bad. He named the band after an Alaskan port, uses photos of his father’s crew as album art, and keeps a detailed ship’s blog on the group’s web site. But The Wind and the Swell, which collects the group’s first two out-of-print releases on one disc, sounds like a much better journal of days at sea. Like most tracks, opener “I Woke Up Today” could be a sea-legs lament: “Yes I understand I cannot live on this land,” Pierszalowski sings, “but does that truly mean I have seen all that can be seen?” The song is all windworn surfaces: the guitars sound rough and creaky, the voices cracked but resolute. These same lyrics repeat on the sparse closer “Simple Way”, which slows the tempo and pares down the music: instead of a stormy passage, the song fades gradually, like land disappearing on the horizon. - Pitchfork

with:
The Cave Singers || Listen
Whispertown 2000 || Listen

8:30pm / $8adv, $10dos / 18+

White Magic

Like an acoustic Electrelane, White Magic weave monkish mantras and spiraling instrumentation into weirdly amorphous yet direly catchy pop: This is some snake-charming, kaleidoscopic, aboriginal shit. “The Light” uses hidden hinges to amalgamate several distinct, melodically ingenious permutations of billowing vocals, terse pianos, rumbling drums and sinuous guitars in a seamless unfurling motion. The chunky bass-plink-plink piano phrase slyly accumulates squiggly digressions, while imbricate vocal harmonies doppler complexly through the fluctuating arrangement. They intone fallow vowels, chirp clipped consonants, helix around each other in dizzy oscillations, and resolve, out of a languid soup, into actual, emphatically moaned words with big rounded edges. The song in total describes a gentle pitch and yaw, like liquid sloshing in a bucket, reflecting back a cockeyed world symmetrically distorted by concentric ripples. - Pitchfork

with:
Luke Top
Layer || Listen

8:30pm / $10 / 18+

Spinning the best in Brit / Indie / Soul / Twee / Madchester / Punk / Glam

FMI: ClubUnderground.net

9pm / $5 if 21+, $7 under 21 / 18+

Medium Medium || Listen
Yes. That MEDIUM MEDIUM. The ones who were produced by Adrian Sherwood. The ones who toured with Gang Of Four, PiL and The Pop Group. Better than Glaxo Babies or Minimal Compact. And as underrated as APB and, more recently, The New Bloods. DO NOT MISS THIS SHOW!

with:
Abe Vigoda
Guest DJ Paul V || Listen

plus resident djs Michael Stock and Benny Shambles spinning mutant disco * Postpunk * indiepop

FMI:
Part Time Punks on Myspace

10pm / $10 / 18+

with:
Savage Republic || Listen
Solid Eye

Along with NERVOUS GENDER [see above], SAVAGE REPUBLIC
were LA’s other most important offering to Post-Punk. Think Joy Division, Cabaret Voltaire, Fela Kuti and his Afrika 70 crammed onto a stage with stacks of analog electronics and massive oil drums. On fire. Contemporary name-dropping might also include Indian Jewelry (and we’re working on that pairing for next time). Meanwhile Rick Potts’s SOLID EYE enemble, like Savage Republic, were originary members of LA’s LAFMS noise/artcore scene of the late 1970s/early 80s. And if you don’t know more . . . well . . . you should.

plus resident djs Michael Stock and Benny Shambles spinning mutant disco * Postpunk * indiepop

FMI:
Part Time Punks on Myspace

10pm / $10 / 18+

resident djs Michael Stock and Benny Shambles spinning mutant disco * Postpunk * indiepop

FMI:
Part Time Punks on Myspace

10pm / $5 / 21+

resident djs Michael Stock and Benny Shambles spinning mutant disco * Postpunk * indiepop

FMI:
Part Time Punks on Myspace

10pm / $5 / 21+

resident djs Michael Stock and Benny Shambles spinning mutant disco * Postpunk * indiepop

FMI:
Part Time Punks on Myspace

10pm / $5 / 21+

resident djs Michael Stock and Benny Shambles spinning mutant disco * Postpunk * indiepop

FMI:
Part Time Punks on Myspace

10pm / $5 / 21+

Spindrift || Listen

“Kirpatrick Thomas, the founding member of Spindrift, a self-dubbed ‘psychedelic Spaghetti Western’ band, made just such a journey-in true cosmic cowboy fashion-from Delaware to Southern California in late 2001. He was already heading up the experimental post-punk incarnation of a band called Spindrift when he took off. His fuel: fragrant dreams of the Western mystique rooted in the stylized ’60s cowboy movies of Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone (often grandly referred to within the burgeoning L.A. ‘neo-cosmic cowboy’ scene as simply ‘Sergio’).” - LA Alternative

9pm / FREE / 21+

Now On || Listen

A sound so universally appealing you’ll be calling your jet an “aero-plane.” A sound so rich with the soul of Detroit you’ll be calling your pilots “cats.” A sound so progressive you’ll begin to wonder why you’re sitting on a floatation device and not a parachute. The music you’re listening to on todays flight comes care of Michigan’s ground-breaking Hip-Hop take-over, Now On. Hip-Hop lovers the world over have been inundated by cynics who think they’re part of a dying art form. On the contrary, the members of Now On are leading a rebirth of the very fundamentals that defined Hip-Hop thirty years ago: originality, voice, culture and of course, entertainment. In fusing and confusing this elemental barometer, Now On emerges with a grimy freshness unseen or heard to date. Consisting of emcees IX Lives (son of Larry “Squirrel” Demps of the legendary Dramatics) and Jackson Perry formerly of Funktelligence, together with Haircut of Athletic Mic League (AML), Now On is set to make their tenure in the music industry the very definition of Def.

with:
Othello
Buff1
DJ Manwell

8:30pm / $10 / 21+

with:
Demons
Smegma
Shannon Walter & John Wiese
Animal Charm

plus DJ Sets by:
Frosty (Dublab)
Ras G (Poobah Records / Crate Creator Music)
Kutmah (Poobah Records / Dublab)

5pm / $5 / All Ages

Emma Pollock || Listen

Pollock is a huge fan of Dusty Springfield and Sixties pop. You can hear her love of the production of the time: strings, elaborate arrangements and the importance of melody all shine in Watch the Fireworks. She oozes enthusiasm for “If Silence Means That Much to You”, a tune that encapsulates all that she loves in a song. “It just sounded to me like it could be from a Sixties film soundtrack and the melody just sounded like it could comfortably appear on the Dr Zhivago soundtrack.” She talks excitedly about how they dug a Sixties hammer dulcimer out from their cupboards for the chorus. While the songs retain similarities to The Delgados (their eclecticism and the changing tempos) it is this eccentricity that keeps the music fresh. - The Independent

with:
American Music Club || Listen
Two Sheds || Listen

8:30pm / $10 adv, $12 dos / 18+

Black Dice || Listen

Load Blown is the fourth album by Brooklyn’s Black Dice. The beats drip and roll, tar-pit voices sing into an oil can, and the guitars crank like calliope. Some tunes crackle and burble like submerged television, others bump and click along like a Summer Jam concert series from another dimension. While a noticeable change in tone encompasses Load Blown (some tunes veer close to pop songs), this is a work of over-stimulation, a product of frenzied media culture, a sonic sifting of the gratuitous amount of “stuff” out there. - Insound

with:
No Age
Mika Miko

8pm / $10 adv, $12 dos / 18+

Los Campesinos || Listen || Watch

Silly names aside, Los Campesinos! play superbly crafted indie pop that bounces off walls like Love Is All, grins with the childlike exuberance of Bis, and throws the toy chest into its arrangements like Architecture in Helsinki. Glockenspiels and pizzicato violin veer into reckless guitar riffs and full-bodied handclaps– or fizz over, like Mentos and Coke, into happy-stupid crescendos. Gareth shares lead vocal duties with the similarly pseudonymous Aleksandra Campesino!, and their boy-girl exchanges give the music an extra, sweet frisson. Newfeld’s treatment turns “You! Me! Dancing!” from a lo-fi rallying cry into an unstoppable force for converting spindly legs into dancefloor blurs. - Pitchfork

with:
The Most Serene Republic || Listen

8pm / $13 adv, $15 dos / all ages

Little Jimmy Scott || Listen 

Billie Holiday often singled out Jimmy Scott as her favorite singer, and over the course of a long, circuitous career that dates back to his 1949 jukebox hit “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool” (with Lionel Hampton’s big band), and a series of 1950s-’60s recordings for the Roost, Coral, Brunswick, and Savoy labels, Scott achieved notoriety as an R&B singer and pop balladeer. However, Scott himself took a much broader view of his talents, and always considered himself a jazz singer as well, a point driven home convincingly on his latest Milestone recital, But Beautiful.

@ Echoplex
1154 Glendale Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026

7pm / $28 GA, $32 Seated / all ages

TSOL ||Listen

When T.S.O.L. blasted onto the Orange County punk explosion in 1979 with white face paint, 6′ plus frames and blazing punk anthems, they were automatically a force to be reckoned with. Today, 10 years since it’s last “reunion”, the band is back to give us what they gave then. “Superficial Love”, “80 Times”, “Code Blue”, “Wash Away” and the rest of those vintage punk nuggets will be blasted live into our faces again. Those who were not around to witness TSOL in their heyday can finally see for themselves why the band spawned a generation of bands and changed the shape of music today.

D.I.||Listen

@ Echoplex
1154 Glendale Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026

7:30pm / $15 adv, $18 dos / all ages

Vampire Weekend || Listen

Fans describing Vampire Weekend often mention “Graceland” — the album, not the estate. It’s an inexact reference point, but an effective one, evoking 1980s nostalgia (it’s getting harder to find people who pretend to dislike that Paul Simon masterpiece) and an unfussy approach to Afro-pop. On Saturday the band members laid down a series of playful indie-rock grooves: plinky keyboards and spidery guitar lines, rattling drums and nudging bass. One of the band’s best-loved songs, “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa,” seems to evoke the pleasant confusion of making out, or not making out:

Can you stay up to see the dawn,
in the colors of Benetton?
Is your bed made? Is your sweater off?
Do you want to? Like you know I do?

The title makes reference to Congolese soukous music, and so does Mr. Koenig’s guitar figure. But if fans can’t tell exactly what has been borrowed from where, that’s part of the point. And in the refrain Mr. Koenig name-checks the guy who helped make so-called world music a genre unto itself, singing, “This feels so unnatural/Peter Gabriel too.” The band members all attended Columbia (online they claim to be specialists in “Upper West Side Soweto,” among other styles), and something about their preppie, polyrhythmic sound feels fresh and funny and, weirdly, inevitable. Instead of borrowing from early Talking Heads albums (the way Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and many other bands have done), they’re borrowing from Afro-pop, just as Talking Heads did on later albums. In retrospect it’s a brilliantly well-timed approach.

with:
Grand Ole’ Party
Princeton || Listen

8:30pm / $10 / 18+

Heavy Trash || Listen

Spencer and Verta-Ray do rockabilly so well that even if they stuck to that sort of genre play, Way Out would still be a fun record. They’re not disciplined enough for that sort of release (nor should they be), though. “Outside Chance,” minus the guitar solo, could have been a girl-group song, and the rock-influence delivery makes it hard to pin down to one precise influence (see much of late ’60s radio). The brief “I Want Refuge” toys with gospel before giving way to the Bo Diddley blues, and “Crying Tramp” splits its sound between early rock ‘n’ roll ballad and country and western weeper. “I Want Oblivion” (fittingly, given its title) mines Johnny Rotten’s vocal style. - Stylus Magazine

with:
Powersolo || Listen
Jail Weddings

with:
The Ponys || Listen
The Ting Tings
Chin Up Chin Up || Listen
DJ Low B || Listen

Plus Resident DJs:
Franki Chan
Paparazzi

@ The Echoplex
(Beneath the Echo)
1154 Glendale Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026
Main Entrance is Through the Alley

8:30pm / $10 adv, $12 dos / 18+

Saturday Looks Good To Me || Listen

Finally the array of comparisons critics have made regarding this band is to be found in its entirety on the same release. The moody crescendos and meanderings of Fred Thomas’ voice cut slices of Stephin Merritt; the shimmying guitars on “Money in the Afterlife” suggest the dance-rock quirks and pop romances of Vampire Weekend, BOAT, and the Brunettes. These great discrepancies of mood and genre slant are welcome as standalone pieces and contributions to the band’s already hodgepodge oeuvre. So as a collection, the album is fitful and pleasantly disconcerting, a far cry even from July’s Cold Colors EP, which was a wintry aperitif to this full-length’s sweet, sultry, and dimly sentimental refreshments. - Pitchfork

with:
Cryptacize
Princeton || Listen

5pm / $8 / all ages

Eek-A-Mouse || Listen

Eek-A-Mouse has all of Perry’s goofiness without any of the latter’s tendency towards actual physical mayhem or his off-putting tendency to do things like drink gasoline and pray to bananas. Instead, Eek has satisfied himself with inventing a “bing-bing-boing” school of reggae scatting whose sounds continue to echo in the dancehall, and with projecting and perfecting a happy but inscrutable persona in a musical marketplace that doesn’t generally know what to do with anyone who isn’t either a glowering locksman or a chest-beating, chain-wearing dancehall don. - All Music Guide

with Resident DJs:
Tom Chasteen / Roy Corderoy / The Dungeonmaster / Boss Harmony

Spinning the best in classic reggae, dub and dancehall

@ Echoplex
1154 Glendale Blvd
(Main Entrance is through Alley)
Los Angeles, CA 90026

FMI:
Dub Club on MySpace

9pm / $10 / 21+

with Resident DJs:
Tom Chasteen
Roy Corderoy
The Dungeonmaster
Boss Harmony

Spinning the best in classic reggae, dub and dancehall

@ Echoplex
1154 Glendale Blvd
(Main Entrance is through Alley)
Los Angeles, CA 90026

FMI:
Dub Club on MySpace

9pm / $5 / 21+

with Resident DJs:
Tom Chasteen
Roy Corderoy
The Dungeonmaster
Boss Harmony

Spinning the best in classic reggae, dub and dancehall

ENTER FROM GLENDALE

@ Echoplex
1154 Glendale Blvd
(Main Entrance is through Alley)
Los Angeles, CA 90026

FMI:
Dub Club on MySpace

9pm / $5 / 21+

with:
Natty King
Welton Irie || Watch

plus Resident DJs:
Tom Chasteen
Roy Corderoy
The Dungeonmaster
Boss Harmony

Spinning the best in classic reggae, dub and dancehall

ENTER FROM GLENDALE

@ Echoplex
1154 Glendale Blvd
(Main Entrance is through Alley)
Los Angeles, CA 90026

FMI:
Dub Club on MySpace

9pm / $10 / 21+

Golem || Listen

To call a band punk suggests that it’s willing to sacrifice finesse for the sake of energy and on Fresh Off Boat there’s every sign that Golem means to keep hold of both. This “Ushti Baba” is looser than the Koçani Orkestar’s but it’s just as tuneful. The accordion is biting and jaunty and there are some tense moments between Aaron Diskin’s beseeching voice and Alicia Jo Rabins’ shivering violin. “Aven!” he sings. “Aven! Me phenjake aven!” (”My sister, my sister, they’re coming for my sister!”), and the violin jitters on a raw knife-point. You can’t listen to the exactness of the percussion stings in “Czardas” or Rabins’ controlled up-and-down wriggle in “Mazel” and think of them as punks. When they go into a frenzy, as they do in “Golem Hora”, it’s all thanks to happy enthusiasm. Diskin sounds as if he’s having fun with his singing, and he does it with such openness that you have fun listening to him having fun. - Popmatters

Plus:
Quazar & The Bamboozled || Listen
Mr Uncertain || Listen

8:30pm / $10 / 18+

Restaurant

At 16, Bobby got a job bussing tables ironically in a Cajun eatery in Rangoon, Texas where he impressed the owner with his wide range of knowledge pertaining to roux and Creole spices. Shortly thereafter, Bobby was promoted to head-waiter/sommelier but kept the position only 6 months after which he applied and was accepted to the University of Texas at Austin’s Botany Department where he would meet his soon-to-be bandmat