Mid-Week Awesomeness: Drivin’ N Cryin’ (x2!), MAE, & Ian Sweet, All Playing Tonight

So, it’s a Wednesday — November 14th, to be precise — and that’s not normally a big day/night for shows, at least not around here. Mid-week tends to be slow a lot of the time, y’know? Today, though, things are a little different, and there’s a suprisingly sizeable slate of excellent stuff happening, and I didn’t want to let it slip by. Here goes:

Drivin’ N Cryin’ @ Under the Volcano
Drivin’ N Cryin’ @ Cactus Music (3-4PM; free!)
First up is a twofer of sorts, with long-running Atlanta band Drivin’ N Cryin’, who are playing both tonight at Under the Volcano and earlier in the day at Cactus Music.

Now, if you’re like me, most of what you know of the band comes from waaaaaay back in the late ’90s, when they briefly hit it big with “Fly Me Courageous,” a tune that managed to bridge the gap between boozy, Guns N’ Roses-style hard rock and Soul Asylum-/Gin Blossoms-ish rootsiness. Weirdly, I’ve actually had a chunk of that very song stuck in my head for days, driving me crazy (the “Oooh, baby / won’t you take it easy?” bit), and I couldn’t freaking place it until I re-listened to the song for the first time in a decade or two. And now I’ve got the whole damn thing stuck in my head, like it’s 1991 all over again.

It turns out that while I haven’t been looking, DNC have been steadily rolling along, cranking out a new album or EP every couple of years and playing pretty much nonstop; I honestly had no idea, none at all. And they just re-released their self-titled debut album (originally out in 1997), now with the actual title Too Late To Turn Back Now!, on impeccably-tasteful label New West Records. Listening to it now, it’s freaking great, like the middle ground I didn’t know I needed between The Black Crowes’ vintage Southern blues-rock and Craig Finn’s ground-level everyman storytelling. Looking back, I feel like the album originally came around at the wrong time, y’know? The world wasn’t quite ready yet; maybe now it will be.

I’m seriously wishing I could skip out on work this afternoon and go see the band at Cactus; if you can do it, though, you really should. The band will be playing some songs & then hanging out, and then this evening they’ll hit the bigger stage at Under the Volcano for a full show. Don’t miss these guys — I’m ashamed to admit I’ve ignored ’em so damn long, because they’re really a hell of a band.
 

MAE/Loyals @ Warehouse Live
Okay, and now I’m seriously torn, because dammit, I dearly, dearly love emo-pop-rock heroes MAE. Their first two albums, 2003’s Destination: Beautiful and 2005’s The Everglow, are honestly two of my favorite albums from end to end, just awesomely-crafted gems of sweet-voiced, ultra-melodic pop-rock that blurs the lines between indie-rock and emo and electro-pop; I know the latter sounds a little odd, but trust me, listen to “All Deliberate Speed” and then pretty much anything by Owl City and you’ll get what I mean.

I was crushed when they went on hiatus around 2010, figuring that was the death knell for the band, and it was, for at least a few years. Then they did a reunion tour in 2015, and now — at long last — they’ve got a new album coming out, Multisensory Aesthetic Experience, on original label Tooth & Nail Records. It’ll be the band’s first since 2007’s Singularity, and I am totally there for it.

No word yet on what the album itself will sound like, but they do have an EP out, entitled 3.0, which is apparently intended as a preview of sorts for the full-length. I’ve listened a few times through now, and I’m tentatively pretty psyched — it’s different, somewhat less epic-sized than most of my favorite old-school MAE songs, but there’s a warmth there I can’t help but love, a gentleness that melts any reservations I might have. Plus, Dave Elkins‘ voice sounds amazingly like Jeremy Enigk’s on the Sunny Day Real Estate frontman’s solo album, and it’s ridiculously great.

They’ve also just released a new song, “The Overview,” via Consequence of Sound, which is an even further-afield example of the way in which the band has changed. It threw me off a little bit, particularly the “rap” bits (which, to be fair, are closer to Peter Gabriel than 2Pac), but it’s addictive as hell:

Ian Sweet/Young Jesus @ White Oak Music Hall
Next up, we’ve got Ian Sweet (or IAN SWEET, in all caps; I’ve seen it both ways), which isn’t the middle-aged British rocker you’re envisioning but actually Boston/L.A. musician Jilian Medford, who makes noisy-yet-beautiful, messy-but-hypnotic rock that draws heavily on a lot of my personal-favorite ’90s alt-rock sounds (think The Jesus & Mary Chain, Curve, and Marine Research, for three). The music sways and shambles, always feeling like it’s about a half-step from collapsing in a sweaty, disheveled heap at the edge of the bed, languid and woozy in the best way imaginable.

These days the “band” is just Medford herself, but that’s a relatively recent development; Ian Sweet was a trio as recently as 2016, but the format wasn’t working out, so she decided to give her erstwhile bandmates the boot and go it alone. And if new album Crush Crusher is any kind of proof, Medford made absolutely the correct call.

I’ll admit that I’ve only heard bits and pieces of Ian Sweet’s previous album, 2016’s Shapeshifter, but I already like this one a hell of a lot more — it’s more intense, more on-edge, making me think of Warpaint at their most tightly-wound. Check out the video for “Hiding,” below, and then go see Medford/Sweet up at White Oak Music Hall tonight:

Alright, that’s all I’ve got time for; layer up, brave the cold, & get out there, Houston…