Update: City Light (Tonight!) + listenlisten (5/15!) + O Pioneers!!! (5/16!) + Jandek + Lamb of God + More

New week (er, two weeks), so new stuff up on the site, in typical oh-so-timely SCR fashion. First up, San Franciscans City Light will be opening for the also-excellent Her Space Holiday (see Wes B.’s review of the last time HSH came through town here) tonight up at Walter’s on Washington, along with the utterly badass Benjamin Wesley (check out a video of Ben playing at The Orange Show, courtesy of Houston Calling). I checked out the band’s one-and-only(?) full-length, Down The Pacific — which features the indefatigable Denver Dalley, of Statistics, Desaparecidos, Intramural, & who knows what else fame — and was pleasantly surprised at how freaking cool it is, in a Postal Service-esque sort of way. Full review up here, for the intrigued/interested…

Next, tomorrow night, Friday, May 15th, my favorite, favorite, favorite folk-ish band of the moment (and, uh, generally, too), listenlisten, will be playing at Robert Ellis‘s CD release show over at Mango’s, along with fellow cool-dude openers Buxton. Now, listenlisten’s new album, Hymns From Rhodesia, won’t technically be out ’til July 7th, but the guys were kind enough to let me hear it, and holy crap is it cool. It takes the already-great EP from a year or two back (you know, the one with the cover made of real wood) and fleshes it out six ways from Sunday; it retains the band’s trademark murky, melancholy, band-playing-while-the-Titanic-sinks feel, but improves the production and moves out of Appalachia somewhat and into the world at large. Again, read the full review, up here.

Oh, and Buxton rule, obviously, and Robert Ellis plays some wonderfully soulful, backwoodsy, Cat Stevens-ish folk songs that manage to be sweet and tender and threatening at turns; definitely worth paying attention to. And listenlisten are also playing on Saturday, May 16th, at that whole ArtStorm Summer Exposure compilation release I blathered on about yesterday, so you’ve got double the chances to check ’em out this weekend.

Also on Friday, good folks Teri Sue & Rich over at i.am.we.commUNITY are putting on a show at Walter’s with Ninja Gun, Mike Hale (ex-In The Red/Gunmoll), cool local rawk boys This Year’s Tiger (who have a new 7″ out now, I believe, also courtesy of the i.am.we folks), Hobo Mouth (ex-Idle Kids), and last but not least (okay, so they’re second-from-first in the lineup, but it reads better this way; work with me, here), jangly/rough-edged pseudo-punks O Pioneers!!!.

The latter have a badass new-ish album out themselves, Neon Creeps, and I have to say, it’s made me redefine my view of the band. In the past, I’d liked ’em live but was always a little put off by the recorded stuff, for reasons I can’t really explain — it was too loud, too messy, too rough, too…well, whatever. On Creeps, though, they’ve focused their newly-established three-man attack down to laser-like intensity, with songs that are still rough around the edges but don’t ramble too far from where they need to be. And the more I listen, the more I love it — it’s steadily made its way into the pile of CDs I haul everywhere with me (yes, I do have an iPod, but sometimes I kick it old-school, esp. since I filled the iPod to the brim long, long ago & can’t bear to take anything off). Good, good shit. Read the full writeup over here.

And hey, there’s reviews of other stuff besides, like The Christmas Lights, Swedes Dead Man, & Aussies Guns Are For Kids. Full list below…

Of course, we’re not all about the CDs (alright, so we are, but we’re about other stuff, too), which is why there’re also two brand-freaking-new reviews up of recent H-town shows, specifically the second-ever appearance of enigmatic Houston weirdo musician Jandek, kindly written up for us by prodigal reviewer Creg Lovett (up here), and the recent stop at the Verizon of metal-dude heavies Lamb of God, as recounted by writer Scott Whitt (up here). Enjoy ’em both; here’s the whole pile:

Live Reviews: Jandek; Lamb of God

Reviews: City Lights; listenlisten; O Pioneers!!!; The Christmas Lights; Dead Man; Guns Are For Kids; & Noush Skaugen.

More to come, as always…