The Pleasures of Merely Circulating @ Super Happy Fun Land

Right, so I’m normally fairly merciless when it comes to bands that don’t send us actual CDs to listen to when they e-mail or send promo stuff — sadly, despite this being the age of the free-floating MP3 file and all that junk, I’m a relatively low-tech boy at heart. I generally need to have a CD in hand before I can really give the music a good listen. (Which is weird, I’ll admit, since I do download random tracks from that Internet thingy and plunk ’em on my iPod fairly regularly…)

Marfa punk-poppers The Pleasures of Merely Circulating dodged the bullet, though, by sending not a CD but a beautifully-done full-size poster of their show on heavy-duty poster paper, rolled up in a big cardboard tube and everything (my two-year-old daughter finds the tube very entertaining, thanks). So I figured, “what the hell?” and meandered over to their MySpace page. No tracks to download, unfortunately, but hey, it’s a slow day at work, so…

The verdict? Not half bad. Raw but still tuneful garage punk-y rock — think The Jam’s angrier bits plus nicely sneering female vocals, or maybe the Eyeliners with more sarcasm. “Loners,” in particular, is an entertaining track, enough to make me wonder if they’ve got an actual album out. Hey, maybe this MySpace thing is kinda useful, after all…

Oh, and the band’ll be playing here in town tonight, Fri., Jan. 26th, up at Super Happy Fun Land in the Heights (which is almost worth the price of admission for the sheer Quirk Factor alone), along with Adam Bork (who apparently used to be known as “Earthpig”; nope, no idea) and locals Nowhere To Walk. If this sounds like your kind of deal, stop on by & check ’em out.