Yr. Weekend, Pt. 1: False Idols + Peloton + A Sea Es + The Temper Trap + Two Star Symphony + More

Start of the weekend, folks, and yeah, it’s looking like a damn busy one, kicking off tonight, Friday, October 26th, and rolling on from there. Here’s what’s up for this evening:

False Idols: The Halloweening, featuring Young Mammals (as The Pixies), The Wild Moccasins (as Madonna), The White Strips (as The White Stripes), LIMB & Pals (as Kate Bush), Mikey and The Drags (as The Mummies), Wicked Poseur (as The Buzzcocks), DJ ADR, Little Joe Washington, & more @ The Continental Club/The Big Top ($10/$5 with costume)
Okay, so this one’s probably the biggie in terms of anticipation, and for good reason — it’s the latest of Joe Mathlete‘s series of “False Idols” shows, where bands you know and/or love from ’round the way (i.e., Houston, primarily) get up on stage and play songs from bands you also love (or hate, whichever) and attempt to channel said bands/musicians in their actual performance. What does that look & sound like? No freaking idea. But the prospect of electro-mess outfit {LIMB} doing a set of Kate Bush covers is both terrifying and awesome, at the same damn time. Ditto for {The Wild Moccasins} performing as Madonna. ({Young Mammals} as The Pixies is also cool, but not really that much of a stretch, y’know?)

This shindig spans that whole area of Main St. where The Continental Club is, I’m told, with bands playing both at the Continental and down the block a bit at The Big Top. $10 for the normals, $5 for the crazy, costume-wearing-before-Halloween types…

Peloton/Honey & Salt/Holder/Hoofprints @ Mango’s ($6)
Yes, yes, yes. Great, great heavy/noisy post-punk rawk goodness from {Peloton}, plus extremely cool old-school emo supergroup {Holder} and {Hoofprints}, which is ex-members of {Golden Cities} & {Stadium}, among other things and which I hear sounds a lot like Mineral(!). Hot damn, y’all.

A Sea Es (record release)/Poor Pilate/Mystery Flavor/Candy Coated Mothership @ Fitzgerald’s (free!)
Another Halloween-y show, this time over at Fitzgerald’s, and the organizers aren’t just inviting people to wear costumes, but there’s a $500 costume contest — whoa. More prizes, too, apparently, although I’m not real clear on what they are, but those {Free Press Houston} folks don’t mess around, yo.

And hey, the bands sound pretty great, too. I’ve raved recently about {Poor Pilate}, but it bears mentioning again how very damn cool they are. Then there’s headliners {A Sea Es}, who appeared a while back and have been making waves since with their swaying, swirling, low-key-yet-thumping electro-indie-pop, which brings to mind Freelance Whales or a less-misanthropic Say Hi, albeit with more soulful vocals. Check ’em out, seriously; heck, you can take a preliminary listen here:

Doubler by A SEA ES

The Temper Trap/The Neighbourhood @ House of Blues
While I’d heard of The Temper Trap prior to this week, I hadn’t really given the band a serious listen ’til a couple of days ago, and now I’m damned glad I did. The band almost comes off like an Aussie version of Coldplay, but there’s something else lurking in there, a gorgeous, soulful sense of serenity that hits deep down, right where it counts. It’s lush and beautiful and hopeful, and damn, I’m going to need to hear more. Take a listen here:

As an added bonus, I’m told the band’s excellent live, particularly Indonesian-born vocalist Dougy Mandagi, who has one hell of a magnificent voice…

Two Star Symphony/Sideshow Tramps/J.W. Americana @ Avant Garden ($10)
Very cool; two of the quirkiest, coolest bands in town playing together tonight at the Avant Garden, {Two Star Symphony} & {The Sideshow Tramps}, and the resulting collision promises to be something great. The TSS folks blow me away every time I hear them, playing these inimitably eerie, chamber-music-of-the-damned compositions, while the Tramps are the band who’ll actually be playing at your wake, stomping hard enough to wake the dead. Oh, and this is also a birthday celebration of sorts, marking the fact that all three bands involved are now 10 years old. Wow. (And hey, y’all: any chance of doing some songs together? ‘Cause that’d be extra-special awesome…)

Ghostland Observatory/DJ Dave Wrangler/Benjamin Wesley @ Warehouse Live
I wasn’t going to say a whole lot about this one, honestly, because I’m kind of up-and-down on Ghostland Observatory — I do like them, generally, but Codename: Rondo didn’t appeal to me all that much. Just saw today that {Dave Wrangler} and {Benjamin Wesley} have both been added to the bill, however, and that takes the show — in my estimation, at least — from “Not Bad” to “Holy Freaking Crap, Y’all.”

I mean, if there’s anybody in town who fits with the Austin duo’s party-funk-soul aesthetic, it’s these two guys — Wrangler crafts some truly mindblowing mashups/remixes, mangling together folks as disparate as Rage Against The Machine & Jay-Z, while Wesley does this head-nodding, mesmerizing one-man-band-style slouch-pop thing, layering sounds on top of one another ad infinitum while crooning over the top in that rough-edged voice of his. Damn good.

Runners-Up:
Eloe Omoe/Crawl/Kruds @ Vinal Edge (239 W. 19th; 7PM)
Zwee @ House of Blues (Restaurant Stage)
MFAH Mixed Media Designed by IKEA, featuring Rewards (DJ set), Night Drive, DJ Fredster, & Ceeplus Bad Knives @ MFAH (1001 Bissonnet; 8PM-12AM)
Spirits & Skeletons, featuring Molly & the Ringwalds @ Houston Museum of Natural Science (5555 Hermann Park Dr.; 8PM-12AM)
Hod/Funeral Rites/Termination Force/Spectral Manifest/Legion @ Walter’s (1120 Naylor)
D.R.U.M./Tim Reynolds & TR3 @ Last Concert Cafe
The Temper Trap @ Cactus Music (3:30PM)
Carry the Storm/Fallacy/Cronophage/Within This Hour/Area of Effect @ The 19th Hole (The Woodlands)