Yr. Weekend, Pt. 1: Hobo Johnson + Rose Ette + EL LAGO + Astragal + Good Old War + The Bright Light Social Hour + DAZE + More

I dunno what it is lately, but there’ve been a ton of excellent, excellent shows happening in our hot-fog-enduring city, more than I’d generally expect for this time of year; it feels like Summertime Part 2 around here, both music- and weather-wise…

So let’s take a quick look at what’s going on tonight, Friday, October 5th, alright? Here we go:

Hobo Johnson and the Lovemakers/love-sadKiD @ House of Blues
First up, yes, this right here is where I’ll be taking The Kid this evening. I honestly can’t remember for sure if she found it first or if I found it and showed it to her, but she’s been a huge Hobo Johnson and the Lovemakers fan since the very first time back in the spring when she saw/heard “Peach Scone” live on NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest. With this band/rapper, she’s the kind of fan who annoys the shit out of her friends by talking about him all the time, seriously. (And no, they didn’t win the contest, but last month they played the Tiny Desk themselves, which is well worth watching, not to mention a bit more like their live shows.)

This will actually be the second time in a year we’ve gone to see the guy up at the House of Blues, which is normally something I tend to like sideways at; there’s other stuff out there to see, after all. But that last show was pretty goddamn incredible, truly, to the point where I’m looking forward to seeing what happens this time.

Last time around, we got to do the meet-and-greet thing, which was really sweet, and Hobo Johnson (real name Frank Lopes) sat on the floor and chatted with the earlybird fans for a while before giving lots of hugs and heading off to get ready. Surprise opener grandson came out and was awesome, doing this kind of Watsky-covers-Rage Against The Machine kind of thing and getting the whole room moving — his EP a modern tragedy vol. 1 is stellar — and then Johnson and his Lovemakers came back out, and things got really intense and personal.

See, Johnson’s less a rapper and more a poet, and his “songs” are more like poetry set to music than anything else. There’s a heart-bared honesty to all of it, just Lopes pouring his soul out through his words and the music he and his bandmates make and talking about love and pain and mental illness and fucked-up families. While I liked the group’s music already, I was still skeptical, but damn, it won me over in a big way to witness ’em live. The music was fun and crazy and heartbreaking, sometimes all three in the span of about 15 seconds, and the kids in the crowd knew every damn word.

Anyway, that’s the best I can do to explain Hobo Johnson in a couple of paragraphs; maybe it’s better if you just watch & listen:

Rose Ette (album release)/EL LAGO/Astragal/Small Chair @ Dan Electro’s Guitar Bar
Second on the list — and yes, it was a close one — is this excellent lineup up at Dan Electro’s tonight.

It’s the album release for Rose Ette, who are celebrating brand-new album Ignore the Feeling, which is a brilliant, smile-inducing throwback to classic indie-pop, all jangly, delicate tunes that drift and sway gently along like the best songs you ever heard from, say, Slumberland Records back in the early ’90s. It’s beautiful and sweet, meandering along at times and driving full-speed down the lane when it needs to.

They’re playing with equally-awesome band EL LAGO, who also dwell in the jangle-pop realm, albeit in a more shoegazery, watery, hazy part of that kingdom. Lauren Eddy and her compatriots make music that’s haunting and wavery, kind of like Kate Bush if she’d been recruited to front The Jesus & Mary Chain, and last year’s Colors is flat-out wonderful; it’s perfect sit-back-in-the-sun-and-bliss-out music.

These two bands are joined by Astragal, a band I’d been meaning to thoroughly check out for quite a while now; going by new single “Bloomer,” they’re pretty damn cool, riding a Britpop-y line that’s equal parts The Cure and early-days Radiohead. Starting things up will be Small Chair, who I’m sadly not familiar with at all ’til now but who are nicely melancholy and soulful, stumble-walking through slow-moving songs I almost want to think of as torch songs. Get there early & stick around for the whole thing, y’all…

 

Good Old War/Beta Radio/Danny Black @ White Oak Music Hall
I’ve liked wide-smiling Philly folk-pop dudes Good Old War for nearly a decade now but have yet to be able to see ’em live, unfortunately; that’s a shame, because I really, truly enjoy the hell out of their warm, soft-edged, ridiculously melodic pop music. They take the best part of Fleet Foxes’ early stuff, strip out the somnolence, and graft it onto the cheery poppiness of folks like The Lumineers. And those harmonies…oh, man.

At a time when it feels like most folk-ish bands have run their course, on their new Part of You EP, Good Old War are merely getting better and better, honing and improving their sound ’til it’s crystalline and bright and perfect. And if you’ve never seen or heard their quasi-hit song, 2012’s “Amazing Eyes,” yeah, you need to hear that, too:

The Bright Light Social Hour/Los Coast/Howard and The Nosebleeds @ The Heights Theater
And then, to follow up a band that’s not changing their sound so much as perfecting it, we come to a band that seems to never sit still for long. My first exposure of Austinites The Bright Light Social Hour was the Primal Scream-like “Bare Hands Bare Feet,” which stomped and crashed its way straight into my head, heart, and soul; the band’s self-titled debut was like classic rock updated for the modern day, evoking Hendrix and The Doors and Springsteen in equal measure.

Nowadays, though, TBLSH are a very different band. I’ve been listening to Missing Something, their new EP, and it’s funky and heavy-lidded and electronics-tinged, like psych-rock married to chilled-out soul, and yes, at first listen, my thought was “what the hell?” But as it’s rolled on and on, it’s grown on me in a big way, especially songs like “Alternate Loving,” which makes me think of the first Ambassadors (now Ex-Ambassadors) album more than anything else, and now I’ve had to go back and check out 2015’s Space Is Still the Place, too, to see where the metamorphosis really began. So yeah, there’s definitely something to be said for changing things up…

WURVE/DAZE/Mojave Red @ Satellite Bar
Last up for tonight, the good people at Wallflower Records have got a cool trio of bands doing a free show up at the Satellite Bar, with Austin-bred headliners WURVE (formerly known as TEEVEE, but not to be confused with Houston’s own Tee Vee, local shoegazers DAZE, and a cool-sounding acoustic set by psych-garage dudes (er, dude?) Mojave Red.

I’ve been listening to DAZE’s recent EP, Ritual, a fair bit lately and am enjoying the hell out of it; it’s dreampop-y and swoon-y, but ragged around the edges at the same time, with some well-placed angry distortion, frontwoman Nikki‘s downcast-but-bitter vocals, and some seriously creepy imagery combining to make it something pretty different from your average shoegaze outfit. Take a listen…

 

Runners-Up:
Bayou City Funk/Heights Funk Collective @ The Continental Club
Jesse Dayton @ McGonigel’s Mucky Duck
Terror/Harms Way/Backtrack/Year of the Knife/Candy @ The Secret Group
Metalachi @ Scout Bar (Clear Lake)
The Bad Drugs/Piss Poor/Muzak John @ Super Happy Fun Land
Tiger Trio (Joelle Leandre, Myra Melford, & Nicole Mitchell) @ MECA
Charm Bomb/The Hammer Party/Henry the Archer/Mean Motor Scooter @ Rudyard’s
Karbachtoberfest 2018, featuring The Texas Gentlemen @ Karbach Brewing Co.
ElectroLuv 2018, featuring Pierce Elevated, MOJO, Hellina Bucket, & Cut By Water @ Last Concert Cafe
Blaggards @ T-Bone Tom’s Steakhouse (Kemah)
Veer Union/Once Around/Calling Chase/Vehement Burn/Down For Days/Wellborn Road @ BFE Rock Club