I’m not going to waste too much time here with an introduction because I have a lot of bands to cover here so let’s get right to it shall we?

LLORNA

Llorna - Mostly Harmless

Kicking things off was Llorna.  They came, they played, I found myself checking my watch.  They weren’t bad but there was nothing really unique enough to grab onto and hold my interest.  Next.

J.W. AMERICANA

J. W. American - Now the party has started!

Nice shoes, coach.

As if in sharp contrast to the openers, J. W. Americana came in and showed people how it’s done.  Sure you could argue that J. W. American isn’t breaking any new ground but they take those cliches, cheerfully thumb their noses at the audience, and do the whole thing with a shit load of energy and wit that makes a song about Hot Dogs sound like some fucked-up version of the E-Street Band or a song about Beltway 8 sound like early Butthole Surfers.  In other words, J. W. Americana knows how to take what could be old tired cliches and make them seem fresh and fun.  That’s no small compliment.

LISTENLISTEN

ListenListen - Why is this band not the hugest thing in Houston?

ListenListen - Jeez I got no caption here. They were just amazing is all.

If you want a band that plays it with intelligence and never underestimates its audience, then ListenListen is your band.  This is easily one of Houston’s best bands and they blow me away every time I see them.  It’s music with nuance and dynamics.  It’s music that is emotive and powerful.  It’s music that has as much respect for the silence between the notes as the notes themselves.  The result is powerful music and it does so not by volume or theatre but with a quiet thoughtfulness.

TAX THE WOLF

Tax The Wolf - Fun for both musician nerds and regular folk.

Tax The Wolf easily wins the Best Drummer Hair competition.

Going from the quiet introspection of ListenListen to the jazzy party of Tax The Wolf is kind of sick but fun.  TTW are just a flurry of ideas that blur by you.  It would be unfair to call them Prog in the traditional sense but their use of complex chords and melodic guitar lines that have a jazzy feel makes them unique in Houston’s indie scene.  Yet, unlike their Prog cousins, TTW doesn’t compromise fun for technical skills so guitar nerds can enjoy the technical aspects of the performance while everyone else (those people who could care less what a diminished 9th is) can just dance their asses off.

sIngs

sIngs - best set of the evening

I know this is going to sound weird but I have to admit, the best set of the evening had to go to sIngs.  If there was a set that took risks, challenged the audience, and kept surprising you with the unexpected, it was this one.  Brett Taylor led his players like some kind or stoner wizard who was creating this odd strange little world.  The songs at times veered toward the noisy and off kilter yet there was something in Taylor’s compositions that kept the whole thing together in a very human way that seemed earnest, real, and alive at that moment. Well done, sir.

YOUNG GIRLS

Young Girls - Aaaand we're done!

Unfortunately, I came down stairs to catch Young Girls only to hear the last five bars of Six Pack Stab.  I will say this much.  It sounded awesome and if any band had the ladies dancing (and dancing well I might add), it was Young Girls.  If you are in another Houston band, that right there should make you jealous.

ROKY MOON AND BOLT

Mike Hardin does his best Thin White Duke

The balcony was the best place to view the RMAB spectacle.

Finally, we get to the headliner – Roky Moon and Bolt – and from the get-go it looked like the band was up to something. Stagehands came out and unveiled banners and a giant lightning backdrop. After a self-promoting introduction by Zen Hill’s Ross Wells, the lights dimmed and Edith Piaf greeted the crowd as the band slowly made its way out in full glam rock makeup and costume. After the long long long intro, Mike Hardin finally came out in a white suit and the band kicked in full force. Stobe lights, flashing lights, costumes…it was a huge spectacle and the band was playing more broadly than ever. You just couldn’t pull this off in a smaller club and sure enough the balcony seemed to give a better perspective than front stage.

Now here is my personal bias and you guys can disagree with me all you want but to me what makes Roky Moon and Bolt special is that they play music that is big but the frills were never there; the music and the performers were big enough personalities that none of that was needed. Yeah, I get it – this was supposed to be a fun lark and they played with no less heart than any other time I’ve seen them but, to me, all the frills were just a distraction and I felt that, because of those frills, this performance lost a lot of what makes RMAB special for me. Thankfully, it appeared I the only one who felt this way.

Summer is just on the horizon and no Houston band evokes the season of beach trips, free time, and cold beers more than Young Girls. The trio’s reverb-drenched sound and upbeat songs like “Six Pack Back Stab” just beg for rolled-down windows, a cooler, and beach towels. Even though they have only been around for about a year, the band has made a huge splash on the scene garnering a lot of buzz from music fans, blogs, and local press. That’s not surprising given the full-steam-ahead attitude of this band. Slackers they are not – this is a band with places to be and things to do. They’ve got one 7” under their belts already and the band will be releasing a CD on Homeskool Records as well as a second 7” shortly. If that is not enough, the band is preparing for their first tour of the EU this summer. We caught up with Luis, Pete, and Charlie on a cool night over on the Rudyard’s porch last month to talk with them about their music, the band, and their plans.

FPH – How did you guys meet?

Carlos – I’ve known Luis since high school and we were in The Factory Party together. Pete has Program and later Springfield Riots.

Pete – This was originally Charlie’s solo project and I was just going to record it for him but I kind of weaseled my way into writing some songs.

Charlie – Nah, I needed some help writing the songs. Luis came along because he’s always been a real good writing partner of mine; it wouldn’t feel right if he weren’t along.

Pete – We asked Luis to join just as a guitar player but he turned us down.

Charlie – Later, we were doing a Kinks cover set and we had fired our last drummer but we waited until the last week to learn the songs. When we realized that, we were thinking what are we gonna do? So, we got Luis and he became our drummer by default.

Pete – We told him to just play a few shows with us and that became a few months and now it’s permanent.

FPH – How do you guys feel about the tour?

Charlie – We’re both stoked and scared. Now that I realize it, this is Luis’ first tour out of Texas and it’s gonna be Europe.

Luis – For this tour, we got a buddy in Austin from Sky Jet Black who sent us some contacts in England and we also e-mailed a bunch of promoters and they were all very responsive – they really liked the music.

Charlie – The thing is I’ve book shows before and always asked for money but on this tour, I wasn’t even going to try to ask for money – just let us play at your venue – but the funny thing is they would always offer us money anyhow. But we’ve gotten great responses on the road – Austin was probably the first place outside of Houston that really embraced us and we’ve made some great friends there.

FPH – How was recording at a studio?

Pete – I generally don’t like recording in studios. The sound seems dull to me and there is so much pressure. I get nervous and tend to fuck-up but recording with Bubba and Steve was the most comfortable recording experience outside of my house I’ve ever had.

FPH –Who brings what elements to the band?

Pete – These guys are more minimalists but right now I’m really into girl groups – you know that Phil Spector wall-of-sound. I also bring in a lot of melodic ideas as well as the sound.

Charlie – We [Luis and Charlie] bring in the rawness…

Luis (laughs) - …and the skinny jeans.

Charlie – I also like my shit fast but Pete tends to want to slow things down. I think Luis tends to mediate between us. He can find a way to explain my ideas to Pete or Pete’s ideas to me and we can move forward.

FPH – You guys have done a lot in a very short time period – things your other bands never even seemed to get close to doing. What’s different with this band?

Charlie – When we were working on the tracks for the 7” we decided right away that we weren’t going to procrastinate. In every aspect of our life we were going to procrastinate but not with music. We just wanted to hit the ground running. Whatever we did wrong in the previous bands, we wanted to correct in this one.

FPH – What do you mean wrong?

Charlie – We had people who weren’t pushing as hard as we were for various reasons – not wanting or able to tour, put down money…things like that – but all three of us are ready to drop everything. If I need to quit my job, I’ll do it tomorrow. We’ve always laid it all out on the table and done whatever was needed to be done. So, when the three of us got together, we all had the same mind set that we needed to push forward no matter what. We put everything we have into this band.

Luis – Like in Factory Party you had people who couldn’t leave their job because they needed the money.

Charlie – Now it’s like I really don’t have money but I’ll deal with that when we get back from tour. But I say if people want to hear you in other places, why not just go out and do it?

Look, when we talk about former band members that weren’t able to quit their jobs, we don’t mean that as an insult. It just means that, for them, there is life outside of music and that’s good. But for us there is nothing else – music all we want to do.

Catch Young Girls in Houston…
May 8th at Warehouse Live – Studio
May 26th at Fitzgeralds
May 27th at Rudyards
June 4th at Warehouse Live Stage
June 4th – 5th at FPH SummerFest

…or on the tour of the EU

June 8th at Le Motel (Paris)
June 10th at The Waterhole (Amsterdam)
June 11th at The Silver Bullet (London)
June 13th at Boilerooms Assembly Present (Guildford)
June 16 at 93 Feet East (London)
June 18 at Hobgoblin (Staines)

By Jack Betz

I showed up last night at Walter’s to watch Benjamin Wesley only to find that I had the wrong night, but no matter, Mike told me that Roky Moon was playing an acoustic set with some T. Rex and David Bowie thrown in. He played some original songs along with “Raw Ramp” by T. Rex and “All the Young Dudes” by Bowie and it was very satisfying. Unfortunately his set was only about fifteen minutes long and I definitely wanted to hear some more. He’ll be playing with keyboard player Cassie Hargrove next week at Walter’s.

Darwin’s Finches, from Galveston Texas, went on next and they rocked exceedingly hard. The band was fronted by this very timid, reserved-looking, guy but when he got up on stage he shredded in a way I’ve seen few people shred before. He was positively electric on stage as he squirmed and jumped and rocked. The vocals were great too, they reminded me of a higher-pitched, more articulate Les Claypool. One of the best parts of their set was a super-raw, garage-rock, cover of “Surfin’ Bird” by the Trashmen complete with water sounds and the bizarre “oom-pow-pow”. The members are really nice guys too. Check out their music.

The last band on was Young Girls. I talked to them a little before the show and apparently it was only their second or third show together but they definitely brought it. They had a tight, clean, well-composed indie-pop sound that made me want to dance during their entire set. Young Girls did a very good job using their bass playing effectively and used it to produce complex melodies when compared to an average indie band. Here is their myspace.

Mike, who has a lot to do with booking at Walter’s, told me that Walter’s will be doing a series of free Thursday night shows. Benjamin Wesley and Roky Moon should be playing next Thursday.