There’s a lot going on this week. On Wednesday Snacks and Bran(…)Posplay 21 grand. Snacks are a Baltimore duo who tape electronics to themselves and make squiggles and unholy snacks. Not electronic snacks either, food ones. Maybe its entertaining, maybe its stupid. The I’m going to find out!

On Thursday, at the The Terminal will be LA noise devastation dudes (with John Wiese) Sissy Spacek, Death Sentence: Panda! will do their tribal woodwind punk thing, Gerritt, Jason Crumer, and Chen Santa Maria (whom I always miss, but it sounds like they’re still mining that post rock thing for new sounds. Be careful guys, a lot of miners are getting trapped these days!) . Also, there’s the San Francisco debut of Mayyors (featuring Chris Woodhouse of FM Knives) at The Eagle, along with The Oh Sees and Master/Slave. Word on the street is that the first Mayyors seven inch is already sold out despite the fact that they don’t have a website and neither does their label. Is the band that awesome or are they the kings of the ‘buy now ebay later’ scene (read: did they do a small run of seven inches and sell them to a large group of friends)? I guess you’ll have to go and find out (I am).

Friday is a total unwieldy cluster fuck of a night. There’s The Mantles and The Botticellis(record release) and The Papercuts at Cafe du Nord; Jucifer at the Uptown in Oakland; Buzzer and The Aerosols at the Hemlock; Club Sandwich at the ATA; Awesomefest featuring Girls, The Oh Sees and Port O’brien.

Its kind of overwhelming. The Mantles are solid, Buzzer features Andy from The Cuts and its fun enough, Club Sandwich has some interestingly sensual moshing that you simply have to witness, and if you read this blog at all you know how we feel about Girls. You should definitely check all of these bands out SOME OTHER TIME because Friday is the Hard Place record release party for Get Your Hopes Up

Hard Place
Easy Street
The Sarrees

4/18/2008
9PM
Smile @ The Knockout
3223 Mission St. (where misson and valencia meet)
$5

And if you just can’t wait, or want to be able to sing along with every song, or you’re obligated to be at one of these other shows but feel like you could be missing out on a piece of rock ‘n roll history, you’re in luck. The record is totally for sale on iTunes right now. Come on out on Friday and say hi!

Apparently John Dwyer is being evicted or something. Love his music or hate it — or, actually, love him or hate him, everybody seems to have an opinion (but not us! and he did come across quite grateful and charming this evening) — it sucks to get evicted so we were at this show. Plus, it was Thursday Night Live at The Eagle and Pale Hoarse, Death Sentence:Panda!, Kelley Stoltz and The Oh Sees were all on the bill. Fun, yeah? Actually it was, even if it was a scene. A total scene with a big fat helping of scene politics. Speaking of (the scene), how come these mission bike kids (kids? nah, not anymore) still dress the same seven years later. I don’t understand Mission bike fashion! I’m looking at your cap titled just so John Dwyer!

see the rest here

So, as usual, we missed the first band. Sorry Pale Hoarse! But we were in time for DS:P! which has Paul from Total Shutdown and Kim from Crack: WAR (whom I sorely miss) and T.I.T.S.. I have been a fan of DS:P! since their Puppy Kitty or Both CDR (which I guess got a vinyl release, hmm…). That ep was a short blast of weirdo (post) punk rock stomp fueled by distorted, freaked out horns, tribal drums, and yelped female vocals. And then I kinda lost track so I was excited to check them out again. I was pleasantly surprised. The same musical elements, but with less three chord punch and more dynamics and textures in the horns and drums. Pretty darn cool.

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Next up was Kelley and I wasn’t all that psyched. He didn’t compliment my Thin Lizzy purchase earlier in the day when he rang me up at Grooves. Whatever, Thin Lizzy rules and is total cause for comment! Actually, no. Its just that the last few times he’s played I’ve been kinda bored. Seriously! See our shamelss in san francisco review of the passionistas! But, as it turned out, Mr. Stoltz was really good. There were tons of new songs in the set, the band suddenly has personality (they weren’t dull at all), and the songs sounded more like Kelley than his influences (I think I only heard Kelley slip into his impersonation of Ian McCullough impersonating Jim Morrison schtick once). So totally cool, I’ll be checking out the next record.

see the rest here

Last was The Oh Sees, yet another Dwyer band. This guy has been in band after band after band of two man guitar and drums mutated garage skree nightmares. Pink and Brown. Zeigenbock Kopf. (ok, no guitars and definitely not in the garage. Fake gay German dance disco thrash that was funny until the joke went on way too long and I wondered how much he liked getting in his undies and rubbing on innocent boys). The Coachwhips. The Hospitals (which he isn’t in any longer). Swords and Sandals (who didn’t exist long enough to generate a web page and I didn’t manage to see and might have been more than two people and I hear was, um, jazz). And also he did a three person band, Yikes with the guy from Fuckwolf. Somehow, all of these bands managed to be exciting and energetic and everybody was talking about them. And I’d go, and the live set would rule but the recordings never matched it (trebbly, reverby, the same three chord song over and over). At some point, you get over it. The guy is obviously a great performer, but the hype! We all know he’s on the scene.

So I hadn’t seen the The Oh Sees (or OCS when it was all weird and folk and acoustic and home recordings or whatever) yet. Like all of his other bands, the energy level is high and the performance is great and the songs sound undeniable and its easy to get caught up in the moment while everybody is dancing. Unlike his other bands, this one has a fuller line up (two guitars, drums, lots of tambourines, and the vocal duties are shared with this woman called Brigid) and I could hear more melody in the songs and the female vocals add this kind of country twang to the affair that made me think that he was doing something a little different with this band. So I was excited to go check out the myspace page and give the songs a listen. I guess I’m a bit of a sucker. But, the recordings sound a bit better this time even if there is still too much reverb/cave echo which reminds me of all his past bands. But the other elements manage to struggle through (Elton thinks it sounds like the Country Teasers) and maybe in the future those elements will overcome!