The Mathletes

Saturday night had some pretty decent options.  Bummerfest looked like a hoot but I ended up deciding to go to Fitz for the Mathletes album release just because, as it should be apparent from my two-part interview last week with Joe Mathlete, I’m pretty enamoured by the new album, Excalibur.  I got there pretty early just after the doors opened and found these two guys in the back…

Preparing for a second night at Fitz!

I was sitting back, talking with a few people about stuff like how B L A C K I EE’s amp caught fire at Friday night’s show and these two dudes just sat there with their head on that table for at least 30 minutes.  When they walked by I said, “Man, you dudes don’t look to good.”

“Oh, uhhh.  It’s our second night at Fitz.  We were here last night.”

AWESOME!  Now that is dedication! 

FISHBOY

Round 1 - Fishboy Vs. Kanye West. Kanye, a no show.

Can your keyboardist do THIS?

First up was Denton’s Fishboy.  Fun, quirky indie pop with a vocalist who sings with this nerdy nasally voice.  The thing that stunned me is how, despite the fun upbeat songs, nobody was dancing.  That’s OK, the keyboardist made up for everyones chill.  Someone called them, in a complimentary tone, Joe Mathlete Junior.  I think that is a pretty apt comparison given the songs about robots and goofy stuff like that, plus the bassist liked like the son of Alan Moore and Jaron Lanier which is a pretty awesome look.  The band’s set, being billed at Fishboy VS. Kanye West,  also had the best running joke of the evening:

“ Ladies and Gentlemen, Kanye West.  Ummm, Kanye West….where’s Kanye?”

“Oh he said he’s running late.”

Of course Kanye never showed and his spokespeople never replied to our request for an explanation.  I think we know who won that showdown.

WHIT STRIPS

Jack Vs. Meg... errr Chris Cascio VS Hearts of Animals (Mlee Marie)

OK it was more Chris vs his effects, vs his cables, vs the microphone....

The Whit Strips (the Chris Cascio & Mlee Marie White Stripes cover band) was billed as a Chris Cascio Vs. Hearts of Animals but it was more Chris Cascio vs. the world.  The set was pretty awesome ( I mean c’mon it’s a whole set of awesome White Stripes tunes) and Mlee’s drums sounded like John Bonham heavy (kudos to the sound lady on emphasizing the kick drum) but the show was dominated by Chris’s bratty stage persona.  Watch as Chris gets flustered with his cables.  Oh my god, is that Mic stand too loose?  What will he do?  Why is the world against him?  Marvel as Mlee keeps a steady beat to try to get Chris back on track.  It’s pretty bratty stuff that I find hilarious.  Some small little detail that nobody would else even care about and Chris just goes into his best early career Nicholas Cage freak out.  I know this was just a small part of the entire set but all I am saying someone should collect these and release a compilation of Chris stage freaks out and contact Ecstatic Peace to release it.  It would be awesome like that Venom 7″ they put out years ago with all the stage banter of “YOU GUYS ARE WILD! WIIIILD!!!” except it would be two sides of all “UGH!”, “STUPID CABLES!”, ”GAAAAAHHHH!’, and the like. Just sayin’.

 WIGGINS VS. B L A C K I E

I will defeat you B L A C K I E

Wiggins, I will fuck your shit up!

Foolish B L A C K I E, I have Giant Princess under my control! Colin Dispose of him!

NOOOO!!!!!

B L A C K I E is free! Rise my friends! Defeat the Wiggins!

You won this round B L A C K I E, but I'll be back! Bwahaha!

OK, maybe it didn’t go down like that but it was a pretty awesome Vs. set with Wiggin’s fucked up crazy indie pop vs. the balls-out aggression of B L A C K I E.  At one point I said, “Man, can’t Michael show some mercy to John and just take it down a notch.  It just doesn’t feel fair.”

“I’ve known him since the third grade; he can never take anything down a notch but I think John can hold his own.”

 Tru dat and sure enough John did.  In fact the juxtaposition of the two sets perfectly complimented each other with this push of B L A C K I E and the pull of the Wiggins going back and forth, giving each a dynamic that neither would normally have alone.  Winner of this round, the audience.

GIANT PRINCESS VS. BABYSHOWERS

Giant Princess - never has there been a truer slacker band

Babyshowers of awesome indie rock.

Giant Princess seconds before they exploded on stage.

Babyshower/Woozy Helmet's Jay Crossley - too much man for just one band.

The next Vs. was pretty awesome.  Giant Princess was in fine form and and Jay Crossley’s newest project Babyshowers was rip-roarin good. Unfortunately, it was here that I realized that I had the wrong (smaller) SD card in my camera and I was maxed out on pics.  So I spent most of this set, deleting pictures to make space on the card and then, trying to figure out where I misplaced my phone.  

HE THAT WILL NOT BE NAMED

KTRU to the Rescue!!!!

Wasting the Giant Princess/Babyshowers set with my camera and my phone issues was made even more lame because the next set was….well let’s just not name names and say that it was obviously something that was going for the “so bad, it’s great” aesthetic but just stayed in the bad and never changed course for the entire set.    It was one of those sets where you felt you were “on the clock” as a music writer.  At one point, though, I realized it wasn’t going to get any better – it was just going to be bad, and stay bad.  It was the kind of bad that is so bad that it hurts your feelings.  It’s the kind of bad that makes you count every second of your life being stolen.  If you could imagine Hell’s worst community theatre troupe, they would be entirely watchable in comparison to this.  It’s the kind of bad that leaves you like a deer int he headlights until you remember you have the free will to just walk away from it all and escape to the KTRU DJ’s upstairs.   Thank you KTRU!

THE MATHLETES

Joe Mathlete getting all rock and roll!

Sheri Jennings, Joe Mathletes newest Mathletic foil.

It's not a Mathletes show without a gaggle of people on stage.

Goodnight Mathletes, you done good.

The Mathletes closed out pretty damn well. Playing as a four piece for half and an expanded six-piece for the second half, the band tore through material from the new album as well as older material.  Old songs like Pinnochiobot were a gas to hear and the band played it like they were on fire but I have to admit, I always think that song benefitted best from the crazy Mathletes “orchestra” days; back when Joe had a full on horn section to really drive that riff home.  Yet, I found myself driving home humming “Da    DaDa   DaDaDaDaDa   Da   Dee  Da” so don’t take that as anything more than a minor quibble.  Kudos to Joe’s newest female foil, Sheri Jennings, who’s keyboards and vocals really were a perfect compliment to Joe’s.  Also, Mlee Marie’s contributions on vocals (the excellent “I’ll be your shoe”), keyboards, sax, and guitar couldn’t be ignored.  I’ve always liked the fact that Joe has always been smart enough to have strong women musicians in the Mathletes and generous enough to not hog the spotlight.  That is way cool in my book.  The set closed with my favorite of the album, “Elephants and Hummingbirds” and with its upbeat melody, heartfelt lyrics, and the band at full force, it was a great way to end the evening.  Well done Mathletes.  Well done Joe.

(You can see more pictures from the show here.)

Joe Mathlete

Yesterday, Joe Mathlete took us through Side 1 of the new Mathletes album Excalibur (Link to Part 1). Today we conclude as he takes us through side 2.

FPH –OK, so I’m Your Shoe.  This, Elephants, and Culture, are my three favorite songs on the record.  I love Mlee’s guitar tone too.

Joe – That’s me.

FPH – Wow, you stole the Hearts of Animals guitar tone?

Joe – (shrugs and smiles) Yeah. No amp; just a guitar into a fuzz pedal then straight into the input. Mlee and Chris [Cascio] used to live above me; we and a few other people used to do this thing, ICS… I forget what it stands for, there are groups like it all over the country but basically we’d get together every week or two and show each other recordings we’d made. This was an instrumental I wrote for that, to give to someone else to do vocals on… I didn’t think it’d end up being a Mathletes song but Mlee’s been in the band on and off for awhile and I loved what she did. I did the same thing, added vocals to one of her instrumentals, and it became the Hearts of Animals song “Versus.” So that’s how I joined Hearts of Animals.

Maybe it’s because I co-wrote it with someone else but this may be my favorite song on the album. Just a nice, sweet love song. There’s a decent amount of weirdness and frustration on the album but things can be simple and lovely too. Mlee’s voice is incredible, her and Jenny’s songs make a good case that I shouldn’t be the vocalist in my band.

FPH – Iowa

Excalibur

Joe – Yeah, weirdness and frustration. This began life on my four-track as kind of a folk song thing, and somewhere along the line it turned into this odd beepy thing. In a world where I had 36 hours in a day and better recording equipment and software I’d love to produce a Fat Tony album or something but I don’t know. Everything I recorded was on Fruityloops 3.56 and CoolEdit / Adobe Audition. I’ve been using the same software for about a decade now. Also one microphone. That’s why most of the drums sound like that.

It’s a song about communication. I don’t want to… I was about to say I don’t want to over-explain it, which I guess would suit a song about communication… But I have a hard time relating to people most of the time, and when it comes to relationships I feel like a robot, or somebody who doesn’t speak the language, trying to … Just waiting for one of us to get frustrated and walk away, no matter how much love or… whatever there is.

I misunderstood the first line of a Vic Chesnutt song and took it from there… his was about a dog on a trampoline. I mean, I thought it was. I don’t remember.

FPH – Reasonable

This is a very Houston breakup song. Pretty brief sorta interlude-y thing between the two beepy songs. I like schizophrenic albums where every song sounds different, the Wowie Zowies and White Albums… So here’s the Blackbird, or the… We Dance, I guess. Probably more direct than a lot of the other songs, lyrically. “We’re done but we’re not children. We don’t need to be friends but let’s not be enemies.”

FPH – What makes this a “very Houston” song, specifically? I don’t hear that so much…

Joe – Oh… Well, it’s more just a breakup song for any small town. Houston’s a big city but a lot of the time it seems like a small town to me. “You know I’m gonna see you again, and I know you’re gonna see me again…” Nothing’s ever over when you keep running into the same people and the same stories and the same history over and over again. Not a bad thing necessarily, just something to be aware of. Also I tried to make it sound like August: hazy and thick and humid. But thankfully a lot shorter.

FPH – Hopscotch

Joe - This one’s an old, old, old old old song… It tells a little story I guess. I have little movies for all these songs in my head, but this one’s the most vivid probably. There’s a guy and a girl at a party, everybody’s dressed really fancy and the girl’s drunk and spilling wine and talking about all the guys who want to fuck her, and the guy’s just looking straight ahead and gritting his teeth and not saying anything. There’s a lot of dancing. I make a lot of movies in my head every day, and there’s usually a lot of dancing.

There’s a point I think a lot of people have to face in their lives, like an exact instant where you realize the person you’re in love with and thought maybe you’d be with forever, like a soul mate or whatever for people who believe in that kind of love… There’s a point where you realize that person is just a person. And maybe you don’t know what you’ve been doing. But for awhile you’ve still got to process that, so you kind of limp along until… You know what, I guess maybe this is a breakup album.

FPH – OK and the last song on the album, Wish Right Thru U

Joe – This is my Prince homage… Mostly just in the title, misspelling things. Prince is the patron saint of home recorders… I don’t know as much of his stuff as I ought to, I only have a couple records, but anybody who records music on their own should have a picture of Prince hung over their four track or computer or whatever.

I have a lot of unrequited love songs, this is one of those. You can wish at somebody as hard as you like but if you don’t do anything about it… Wishes don’t do shit, you know? And the more you run things over in your head the more they crumble and disintegrate into this shitty, sad, confused mush. This started out as a strummy folk song but i remade it as what I imagine chillwave might sound like.

FPH – Well, it’s a great album.  You should be pretty proud of it.

Joe – I don’t think this is an album most people would be into; that’s why we didn’t make many copies. It’s clumsy and scattered and if you’re not already into sort of navel-gazing bedroom pop you might never be. But I wanted to make a record I would’ve loved, something to explore and listen to on headphones and mythologize and stare at the artwork and make me want to make my own music and all that. I met a bit of resistance at first from people who wondered about the song selection, why I wasn’t including more of “the hits” or whatever, but I’m proud of this album. And I’m excited about the next one. I’m always excited about the next one.

Fin.

Saturday, August 13 – The Mathletes vs. Houston Record Release Show, featuring The Mathletes, Giant Princess vs. Babyshowers, B L A C K I E vs. The Wiggins, Keith Reynolds vs. The Sparkle Ponies, Hearts of Animals vs. Christopher Cascio, & Fishboy @ Fitzgerald’s

Joe Mathlete

Sometimes you pick up an album and it’s so lovingly packaged that you can just tell that the maker is trying to tell you it’s important. With its great cover and exhaustive inserted booklet, The newest album by The Mathletes, Excalibur, is one such album. Drop the needle and you’ll understand why Joe Mathlete went the extra mile with this one. Sure, The Mathletes haven’t lost their sense of melody, wit, or youthful charm but underneath all the catchy tunes and ear-grabbing DIY-meets-studio production is quite a bit of serious business about life, relationships, heartbreak, insecurities, and a whole lot more. It’s The Mathletes grow-up album and, as such, it has a deeper resonance than anything they have released since. We sat down with Joe Mathlete to discuss the album and ended up with a kind of track-by-track director’s commentary. In today installment Joe discusses the record, its themes, and side one.

FPH – Mathlete records are usually pretty fun affairs. You have things like robots and unicorns and all this childish stuff but, with this record, things get a little heavy. You’ve got a lot of serious emotional stuff going on here dealing with relationship issues, insecurities, and similar themes. Why the change in tone?

Joe – Well, those elements were always there. I just used to coat things with a layer of unicorns, robots, and childish metaphors but a lot of kids stories can be really depressing if you look at them on a different level. I was a lot more insecure about putting that stuff out there as directly so I’d use analogy to lighten it up. I guess, as I grow up, I’m more OK with peeling back the layers.

Excalibur started as a double album that had 30 songs on it but that was a big sprawling thing and then I didn’t want to bankrupt Bubba, Steve, and Rob. Also, a double album from a band nobody…well, it was a dumb idea. You know that idea when you are sculpting? Just take away everything that doesn’t look like an elephant. I just did that with the material and I didn’t know what I was going to end up with but these were the songs that made sense for what I wanted to present.

Excalibur

FPH – I was chatting with Jenny [Westbury] about the album and she said that her track was recorded a few years ago. So this isn’t something that was conceived and recorded in one shot. Some of these songs go back a ways, don’t they?

Joe – Well the oldest song come from, gosh…the basic melody comes from 2024 or 2024. The majority of these songs I wrote after we broke-up the third or fourth time. After that show at Mango’s, I didn’t know what I was gonna do so I went back to the 4-track and I started making songs that way. “Chivalry 2024” was one of those songs, “Spin My Wings” was from two songs I mashed up…about half the songs were like that. A lot of them just didn’t seem ready to be put out until now.

FPH – There are a lot of keyboard and guitar tones that remind me of the feel of a Brian Eno’s Another Green World. What do you do for your keyboard sounds?

Joe – It’s just regular Casio, Yamaha, Korg…you know, the stuff you can buy at Target or Toys R Us but I process them…what do you call them? Treatments! Like when I lived with Amye [McCarther], Will Adams and Heath [Flagtvedt] would leave their guitar pedals over a lot so I would run a Casio with a Holy Grail or a Fuzz Pedal. I love the sound of a keyboard through a distortion pedal – the different tones and vibrations you can get. I fuck around with that stuff all the time. I never worry, when I record or write songs, how we can translate them live so I don’t have to sit down and write down all the settings. I just want to get whatever the coolest sound I can get is for the recording and I’ll probably never be able to reproduce it again.

FPH – Spin My Wings…

Joe – That’s Jaime of Giant Princess on drums. Ghormeh Sabzi, the band we’re in together with Cameron Bina…we were recording an album last summer over at Cameron’s house. Diego of Giant Princess was recording it and I came in saying, “Hey, I have some songs. Cameron’s off doing his thing…” So I kind of snuck in and got to do a session with them.

That’s kind of the thesis song of the album. I’m obsessed with cycles where things come around. We keep making the same mistakes in life and we keep getting into patterns. It’s all about how things are going to change and they are going to get better but that means they are going to get worse again after they get better. I guess it’s the idea that you make enough mistakes long enough, the same way and eventually you kind of figure out the solution but sometimes…There’s a line in there (“the Autumn air is like a tourniquet / I haven’t earned it yet”), like you get used to the air conditioning and then Autumn comes around and the weather is great, but with Autumn comes that kind of gloom and the days get shorter. I sit at home inside and there is something in me that doesn’t want to go outside sometimes so I think “It will just fix everything if I can just get the fuck up and walk outside but…I’m not there yet.” It’s a call to introverted, depressive arms.

FPH – Good Advice Bad Advice for Romantics Who Think Too Much…

Joe – Well that’s about it isn’t it? “There’s a million folks to kill your dreams before you even have a chance to have them.” That’s the good advice. When you have a passion for something out of the ordinary, you need to know how the odds stack against you. Most people think the things other people love are really silly. As an artist, it’s good to know that.

The bad advice comes like…”give it up or you are going to self-destruct” or “you fly too high, you fly too low,” or “if you are not what you are supposed to be then you are done – you are fucked.” That’s the bad advice. I don’t really think that’s true. I think you’re supposed to do whatever the fuck you are supposed to do. But you should know that if you go off and do your own thing, and that thing is not what’s expected of you, there’s a whole world out there that’s pretty sure you’re going to fail.

FPH – Chivalry 2024….That’s a funny one.

Joe – I’m glad you think it’s funny. Yeah, I think it’s the funniest song I’ve ever written. There is actually a Chivalry 1000 that we recorded for the next record. That’s a song that was about something that, at the time, I wished I’d said to somebody and I’m really glad I didn’t now. It’s something very out of character for me. But I just wanted some kind of 50’s gang rumble at the sock hop sort of thing. I hate seeing guys treat girls like dicks and the way dudes talk about girls behind their back so I wanted to do one…pretending to be the alpha male but there is also the tongue-in-cheek thing where it’s just puffing yourself up.

FPH – OK my favorite song on the album, Elephants and Hummingbirds. I love it on so many levels and, by the way, it’s funny to hear Jenny Westbury curse.

Joe – (laughs) Yeah, there is a version with me singing it where “shit” is a lot more prominent than her version. She wasn’t uncomfortable with it but the style was definitely her own. I wrote that when I was in a pretty prolonged shit period of my life and realizing that you have to pick things up and get excited about being alive and making progress. It’s probably the song with the most musicians – Brianna on violin, Ryan played trumpet, and Jeff on drums. Jenny…there was just no question who was going to sing that song. “Elephants and Hummingbirds” goes back to the animal metaphors. I’ve been in love situations where it kind of hits like that. I’ve actually have a lot of songs called “Elephants and Hummingbirds” dating back years and years.

FPH – That’s When I Reach For My Culture.  By the way, I love the cascade of guitars and keyboards on here.  I think this is the one that sparked the Eno comparison in my head.

Joe – Well the title is a Mission of Burma joke; “When I hear the word culture/That’s when I reach for my revolver.” I kind of thought the opposite. When things get serious, I want to dive into art and lose myself in creation and I know a lot of people like that. I kind of feel that if shit came down, like a war in big heavy times, I probably wouldn’t be a person to take up arms. I’d probably be like “Fuuuuuuuck it, where’s my guitar!” and I’d write some songs and wait for someone to kill me. I dunno, I spend a lot of time in my head.

I had a lot of fun getting sounds for this one. It was co-written with Ryan Goodland, the longest-serving Mathlete who isn’t me… He came up with that Of Montreal/Flaming Lipsy baseline. Then I played every keyboard and guitar I had through every delay and reverb pedal I could borrow. Thank you for saying Another Green World. Holy crap I love that album.

FPH – Majesty In a Vacuum

Joe - This one’s… This is kind of a strange song, I guess. You ever see a quiet person, they never talk to you or anybody else, always sit in the corner, maybe they even seem a little rude? Shy to where it seems rude, what a terrible feeling for an introvert… If you haven’t been there you might not give a shit about this album. I just imagined someone like that, who leads a rich and beautiful inner life that nobody would ever know, suddenly releasing everything wonderful she’d ever had bottled up inside her and exploding into a rainbow or a supernova, taking out everybody around her in a burst of light. It kind of sounds like a Sonic the Hedgehog song. Not the best song on the album.

FPH – Context Ruins Everything…I think this is the sweetest song on the album.

Joe - The oldest song on the album. I’ve tried for years to get this right. I’m not completely happy with the way this one turned out. I’m never happy with what I do after I do it, that’s why you always have to make more. It’s another fable song I guess. For years I worked on this… opera, or concept album or some other dumb thing called The Secret Science, all these connected songs about religion and love and the end of the world. I never finished it but this was connected to that. There’s an idea that the moon was formed when an asteroid hit the Earth and broke of a chunk that ended up in its orbit, and I always liked how that might tie in with Adam and Eve. And also the solar system is a great metaphor for unrequited love – the moon loves the earth, the earth loves the sun, the sun’s a complicated motherfucker. And with all that cosmic stuff… If the moon can’t be with its true love, how could I not feel lucky to find someone? Pretty cheesy.

End of Part I

(Go to Part 2 )

Saturday, August 13 – The Mathletes vs. Houston Record Release Show, featuring The Mathletes, Giant Princess vs. Babyshowers, B L A C K I E vs. The Wiggins, Keith Reynolds vs. The Sparkle Ponies, Hearts of Animals vs. Christopher Cascio, & Fishboy @ Fitzgerald’s

Saturday was one of those days where there were so many options of what to do that you couldn’t shake a stick without finding a good show. Over at Indie Houston World Headquarters there was the Buxton/Robert Ellis tour kick off with Listen Listen, Super Happy Funland had a great evening benefiting the ever scrappy Sedition Books that included A Thousand Cranes, Anarchitex and Room 101, Dansparc over at Numbers was celebrating a 7 million years of bootie shakin’, and Rudyards had the Hell City Kings record release going on to name a few.

Ironically, given all the things to do, it seemed as if I wasn’t going anywhere and, thinking this, I left my camera at home (which is why the only image you’ll see here is a poorly drawn picture of Joe Mathlete using MS Paint ). Thankfully, fortunes changed and, after considering all the options, I had to put my money down on seeing the final Mathletes show over at Mangos. I mean as great as the other shows were, this could possibly be my last time to hear songs about robots and unicorns performed live like the good lord intended! How could I miss out on that?!

So, off to Mangos we went and we made it just in time to catch the last few songs by Young Mammals. Bonus was hearing Andrew Ortiz playing behind the kit with all the fun and joyful fury he’s known for. I’m still bummed about him leaving Wild Moccasins but seeing him behind the kit only reinforced why he’ll be missed as he’s one of the few drummers who can upstage the people in front of him. The Mammals themselves played with all the fun and hoopla you’d expect and closed with a guns blazing version of Dragon Wagon. Hooray! Glad we made it in time to see some of their set.

Afterwards, the The Mathletes, opening with a stellar Pinnochiobot, raged into a great jukebox set of some of their best songs. The crowd ate it up as the band played with the kind of friendly intimacy you’d expect at a house party where nobody is trying to impress anyone but are just there to have fun and celebrate a very talented and wonderful friend’s music. Surprisingly, the spectre of this being billed as the final Mathletes show never hung over the evening. I don’t think any of us really believe that The Mathletes won’t return to the stage in some form or other; after all, Joe is the Mathletes and the Mathletes are Joe. So, instead of listening to the songs with a bittersweet ear, we in the audience simply smiled, hooted, cheered, and forced the band to play multiple encores until it was clear that the band couldn’t play anymore. Hell, chaos is half the charm of the Mathletes anyhow and the fun sloppy unrehearsed encores were a blast. So for our efforts we got sloppy versions of a Smashing Pumpkins song; a mash up of the Velvet Underground’s Sister Ray, Wire’s Strange, and The Modern Lovers’ Roadrunner; and a rip roaring version of my favorite Mathletes song Animals which was still great to hear even without Jenny (Robot McGee) on vocals. I can’t ask for much better than that and, in point of fact, I’ll take a fun unrehearsed encore by these guys over the most polished soulless Buzz band any day.

So, long live the Mathletes and all who sail with her and thanks Joe for 10 years of singular, quirky, droll, fun, and uncompromising music. I expect at least another 10 more.

I remember having a conversation with April 5K a while back about the music scene. Her basic premise was that there has been a sea change in the scene with an old wave is finding itself pushed out by a new wave of kids and a lot of the grumbling about “The Scene” had to do with an old guard not willing to recognize or accept what was overtaking them. I think to some extent April had it pegged. Nowhere was this sea change more apparent than at Indie Houston’s hugely successful New Year’s Eve party. You want to know where the kids are? You want to see DIY? You want to see community and celebration? This was the place. For all you old old old schoolers out there let me just say – remember Lexington? You remember the parties we’d go to on that street? OK Imagine that vibe. It was there – alive and well. Bands playing great music, people having fun, and sharing hugs; you know one big happy family. From beginning to end it was the best way to ring in 2024 you could possibly imagine.

I missed openers Ghormeh Sabzi but arrived to catch Galveston’s Darwin’s Finches who apparently come with their own dancing neo-hippie fans. Kicking-off with a song that cops a Stooges riff is not a bad opening gambit and the flailing abrasive guitar work of Justino Saladino grabbed you by the collar and shook you to the core all night. As performers, they understood how to dig into that primeval cromag thing that made you whip out that Dio devil sign and when the material matched the performance it was earth shattering. One song…something about a party. Holy Rob Tyner! Justino’s nervous stuttering phrasing on that song killed!!! Seriously, the energy of the performance and the primal rock and roll power coming off the stage felt like the band was channeling the MC5 in all its glory. That’s not to say that every song pegged it to that level but, for the most part, I can see why people have been bandying their name about – here’s serious island rock and roll.

Next came The Tontons whose set was probably one of the best I’ve seen them do. Being the focal point of any band is no easy chore and you have to give it up to frontwoman Asli Omar (whose vocals are singular in the scene) for channeling the music like a jazzy priestess when she sings. But the wonderful thing about the Tontons is it’s not a one woman show – the rest of the band is phenomenal. I generally rave about guitarist Adam Martinez channeling Hedrix but this time I was on bassist Tom Nguyen’s side and, man, that dude can rip like no man’s business. There’s this Bossa Nova song they do, which I never particularly cared for, but they completely tore that one up on Wednesday and when Tom started getting all Geddy Lee on the bass I wanted to shout “You bastard! Stop, I don’t like that song dammit!” and then concede that they were just too hot to let any song not come across as anything less than stellar.

So here you have a band red hot on new year’s eve and what do they do after their set? Do a video shoot. A little backstory first – they were scheduled to do a video shoot from 7-9pm but for reasons unknown they didn’t do it at that time and just got bumped up to third on the bill. That’s fine; nobody was complaining. I sure wasn’t as I would have missed them perform had they started early and I was loving the film crew’s lighting (great for taking pictures) but here is the problem – I don’t care to see the Tontons lip-sync. I’m sure the results are great but, given the brilliance of their live performances, it’s horribly dull stuff to sit through. It’s kind of like driving a car over 100 mph only to then find yourself in a 5mph school zone. You guys have fun; I’m gonna refill my beer.

Riff Tiffs eased the party back into gear. I’ll admit it was weird seeing Tom Nguyen filling in for Althea Topek on bass but he didn’t miss a step and within no time that thought was put the background. Pausing the set, IH’s Robert Delossantos, counted down to the New Year and the night continued with hugs, kisses, fireworks, and the Riff Tiffs which made you hopeful for 2024. What can I really say but what better way to hear Houston’s best shoegazers‘ jangly and atmospheric guitars than framed by swaying trees under the shimmer of stars on a chilly New Year’s Eve.

Scheduled next were The Mathletes, but as they set-up we got a treat – Fat Tony commandeered the stage. It was as if he looked around at people just standing there chatting and having a good time and thought “No, no, people! This will not do! This is a party! This is serious business!” So, holding a jug of wine in his hand, he strutted on stage and barraged us with rhymes until people were talking this party thing seriously. Standing? Unacceptable! Chatting? Unacceptable! Dancing! Yes, now you’re with the program! So, ladies and gentlemen if you are going to crash a party, take a lesson from Fat Tony!

After the Fat Tony power-up, it was time for The Mathletes to carry the torch and they did not miss a beat. Opening with Pavement’s “Summer Babe” they stubbornly refused to accept any beat that was not up-tempo. You in the front dance! Joe Mathlete commands it! He will sing Pinnochibot and, yes, I liked it when the horns better for the coda too but dance dammit! Actually that was the only song where I missed the huge Mathletes full-on ensemble. Other than that one song, the smaller and more stable Mathletes were no less about pounding your skull into a joyful, happy, melodic bliss than the Mathletes of old. They sing, you dance – it’s the natural order.

Unfortunately, right after the Mathletes set, the cops came in around 12:48am and closed down the outdoor stage. Someone seemed worried worried about the cops hassling people but I shrugged it off; If you have an a-hole cop shutting down a show, you’re gonna know immediately – when the cops come in and all chill and have a look that says “sorry to ruin the party” odds are they aren’t there to mess with people. As it turned out moving things indoors seemed to have worked in Giant Princess’ favor anyhow. The party was moved indoors and what you got you got was all this energy confined to a small room and Giant Princess feeding off this like some crazy sci-fi energy monster. Hands down, Giant Princess was the highlight of the evening. With drums raging, the keyboards oscillating, the bass thumping, and Colin looking like he was possessed by some demon, holy shit it was like a Rock ‘n’ Roll tent revival. Seriously, it was like the insane energy of a hardcore show but with an Indie Rock band instead. People atop people’s shoulders, bumping into each other, screaming shouting – holy crap! It was Rock and Roll giving you an epileptic seizure. Diego instrument of choice I think sums up the band in two words – Fun Machine! All hail the Fun Machine! All hail Giant Princess!

The last band I saw was Time Machine Veterans (sorry I missed B L A C K I E) . Now mind you TMV started last week as a trio – Carlos (Young Mammals), Andrew (Wild Moccasins) and Jaime (Giant Princess) – but somehow by the end of the night it was, what 10 people? Insanity! As they were setting up (which took forever) I commented with my tongue in my cheek “How you say…clusterfuck?” But that was kind of the idea, pulling off a big huge clusterfuck kind of like the Mathletes used to do but with more chaos. Guess what? They pulled it off. Keeping the songs (well, more like riffs) simple, the band just shouted and bludgeoned its way through the morning to everyone cheering, dancing, hopping, and carrying various bodies overhead. It’s great to see all these indie bands jump together, throw caution to the wind, and create this supergroup (which seemed to have expanded to include members of Buxton, News On The March, Elaine Greer, etc.) whose sole purpose was to have fun. To me, Time Machine Veterans only strengthened April’s thesis – The new wave was here, has been here. Thanks Indie Houston for leading the charge.

Given the choice of
looking fashionable or warm legs
The Tonton’s Asli Omar chose the former.

The Riff Tiffs ring in a shoegazing New Year

Indie Houston’s Robert Delossantos leads the countdown
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…

Happy New Year!

Fat Tony shows you how to Party Crash in style!

B L A C K I E ponders the ramifications of the Mathletes
covering Pavement on the space-time continuum.

Holy crap! IH World Headquarter’s is
being attacked by Giant Princess!

…can’t hold out much longer!
…Giant Princess…too powerful!

AAAAAAARRG!!
We’ve lost the Cameraman sir!

Giant Princess is down!
Repeat Giant Princess is Down!

Hail Hail Time Machine Veterans!

Time Machine Veterans – think of them as
The Superfriends of the Houston Indie Scene

Remember when TMV was billed as a trio?
That was last week.

Colin (Giant Princess) in a subdued moment
during the TMV’s set.

Happy Sparkly 2024!

Links:
Indie Houston (Link)

Ghormeh Sabzi on myspace (Link)
Darwin’s Finches on myspace (Link)
Tontons on myspace (Link)
Riff Tiffs on myspace (Link)
Fat Tony on myspace (Link)
Mathletes on myspace (Link)
Giant Princess on myspace (Link)
B L A C K I E on myspace (Link)