Dig ‘in: Lifeguard, Sweeping Promises, Bush Tetras
Check out what the No Wristbands team is listening to and what’s in our show calendars this month on our latest Dig ‘in.
INCOMING
Lifeguard - Dressed in Trenches (Matador Records EP)
I experienced an unsettling sense of place and time when I realized a couple of decades ago that the youngest performers and audience members at shows were now half my age. It felt strange to continue to identify with music without having a tangible social connection to the people who were creating it. That hasn’t deterred me from continuing to seek out new music even though my generational experiences are removed from what now comprises youth culture.
When considering Lifeguard, I do find parallels to the social circles I inhabited in a similar stage of life—finding an alternative music community, immersing oneself in a DIY culture of fanzines and self-taught musicianship, and reveling in the power of live performances. On the strength of last year’s Crowd Can Talk EP, Lifeguard were signed to Matador and Dressed in Trenches is the bookend to that record that was originally released by Born Yesterday. Collectively, the band’s creative neurons continue to fire at a rapid pace—it’s a dizzying and sometimes breathtaking ride as guitar, bass and drums wrestle each other until one momentarily emerges victorious from the pile-up. To their benefit, Lifeguard come across as still unsettled, searching for sounds not yet realized and meaning not clearly apparent. They have a whole lifetime ahead of them to figure things out, and there’s little doubt about what they’re capable of achieving. -Bruce Novak
Sweeping Promises - Good Living Is Coming For You (Feel It Records LP)
With a name like Sweeping Promises you can guess that this is band that’s always waiting for the other shoe to drop. The duo of Lira Mondal and Caufield Schnug have endured a nomadic existence of late, relocating from Massachusetts to Texas before currently residing in Lawrence, Kansas. Settling in somewhere comfortably has proven elusive as they reveal on the title track: “It comes and goes, and comes again / The thrill of changing, rearranging / But it gets hard by the year / Estranging, it’s stranger.” The bouncy backbeats, snappy refrains and percolating pop touches outwardly convey a celebratory vibe, but behind the curtain Sweeping Promises reveal something more sinister. The title of “Connoisseur of Salt” initially strikes one as a playful jibe until Mondal sings “You’re filling up your cabinets / With spices and salts to cover up / The bitter taste.” The sting of disappointment collides with practicality on the closing track, “Ideal No” when the duo conclude “There ain’t a place left on earth to be alone / Wish on a star won’t take you far, won’t take your home.” Their life journey continues with a roadmap of possibilities but no clear destination in sight. -Bruce Novak
Bush Tetras - They Live in My Head (Wharf Cat Records LP)
Bush Tetras are a band that can’t be denied. Perhaps the most representative group emerging from NYC to capture the urban decay of Manhattan’s Lower East Side as the ’70s ground to a close, those very same mean street perils had put them down by 1983. A reunion of the original line-up in the mid ‘90s spurred a second wave of creativity with the album release of Beauty Lies on Tim/Kerr Records in 1997 and the recording of its follow-up, Happy, the next year with Don Fleming producing. Disillusioned that Happy got shelved when Tim/Kerr’s parent company Mercury Records was sold, Bush Tetras fractured again. A post-punk revival in the aughts provided fertile territory for a return and a posthumous release of Happy on ROIR. They went back in the studio with Fleming for their Take The Fall EP (Wharf Cat Records, 2018) and seemed poised for greater things before drummer Dee Pop perished a month prior to the release of their Rhythm and Paranoia box set in November of 2021.
Undeterred, Bush Tetras enlisted Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley to fill in on drums and produce the album that they had begun to write prior to Pop’s demise. There’s a remembrance of years past on the haunting “Ghosts of People” and “Bird on a Wire” grapples with the recent passing of vocalist Cynthia Sley’s mother. Pat Place’s guitar continues to lacerate and launches into overdriven frenzy on “2020 Vision.” There’s more crunch in her playing than the syncopation and starkness that she once utilized, but she remains as true pioneer as evidenced by the shrapnel shredding she releases on the album closer “The End.” They Live in My Head showcases a band that feels invigorated, and as we’ve witnessed previously, it’s hard to keep the Bush Tetras down. -Bruce Novak
UPCOMING
Triptides
Where: Sleeping Village / Directions
When: August 10, 9:00 PM
Although aligned with The West Coast psychedelic scene, Triptides’ founder, Glenn Brigman grew up in Atlanta and started the band while a student at Indiana University. Brigman’s father was a Beach Boy fan, so his indoctrination to surf music and orchestral pop had a head start before the band relocated to LA in 2014. Drummer Brendan Peleo-Lazar was plucked from Chicago’s Lucille Furs with bassist/guitarist Stephen Burns rounding out the trio. Triptides’ sound inhabits the stratum of Real Estate to Stereolab—lilting guitar pop with vintage keyboard overlays. Brigman aspires to create timeless music, and while there’s some clear antecedents he’s tapping into, he achieves a level of listening pleasure that largely supersedes the confines of specific influences. -Bruce Novak
Dead Rider
Where: Hideout / Directions
When: August 11, 9:00 PM
A couple of weeks ago Dead Rider played a largely improvised, vocal-less set opening for the mystic and beguiling Faun Fables at Hideout. For those unfamiliar, DR grew out of U.S. Maple and leader/guitarist/singer Todd Rittmann continues to surprise, and frequently astonish, with his surreal, acid damaged blues-based funk and psychedelia. Fronting a crack trio with aplomb, Rittmann’s voice is a dusky, soulful, and at times, surprisingly tender instrument that works effectively with an often noisy cacophony and jagged soundscape. Check out the last three songs on Crew Licks (Drag City, 2017) “The Floating Dagger,” “Bad Humours” and “When I Was Frankenstein’s Monster” to get an idea. What I wouldn’t give to see DR blow minds in front of Pitchfork nation. Here’s another chance. Not to be missed. -Wade Iverson
The Clientele
Where: Lincoln Hall / Directions
When: August 15, 8:00 PM
London’s The Clientele possess one of the more singular sounds in music these days. There’s an underlying opulence to their work that echoes classics like the Zombies’ Odyssey and Oracle and George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass. Frontman Alasdair MacLean was inspired to learn Spanish guitar around age five after being enamored with Harrison’s style while listening to a Beatles record that his father had played for him. The Clientele’s latest release, I Am Not There Anymore, is an ambitious double album and a departure for the band that dials back the guitar playing in favor of a broader array of chamber and computer-generated instrumentation. MacLean doesn’t play on some of the tracks, preferring to execute the arrangements for the guest musicians and his bandmates. It’ll be a challenge to re-interpret some of the new songs when performed on stage with just the long standing trio of MacLean, bassist James Hornsey and drummer Mark Keen. That said, it would be difficult to imagine walking away from the show without descriptives like gorgeous and breathtaking swirling around in my head. -Bruce Novak
UNCOVERED
Contortions - Buy (ZE Records LP)
Minutemen poised the question “Do You Want New Wave or Do You Want the Truth?” to its listeners on their landmark 1984 Double Nickels on the Dime release. A half-a-decade earlier in New York City, a group of avant-garde performers had already unequivocally answered the query for themselves. The No Wave scene was an attack on the failed delivery of punk rock and its co-optation to the more commercially successful New Wave genre. Inspired by the atonality of free jazz musicians and combining it with unstructured elements of noise and dissonance, No Wave performers danced to a different beat.
Framed by the ersatz sax stylings of leader James Chance, Contortions provided the soundtrack for full-out spastic abandon on Buy. Drummer Don Christensen and bassist George Scott brought the funk and Jody Harris and Pat Place were hard wired for slash-and-burn staccato and slide guitar. The physicality on the record is impressive considering the genre might be perceived as overly conceptual. “Contort Yourself” is like James Brown gone mental; careening like a madman and commanding the rest of us to get twisted. “Design to Kill,” “Throw Me Away” and “Roving Eye” also crackle and leap forth from the speakers to live wire effect. Buy continues to sound otherworldly and remains as vital today as when it first appeared nearly 45 years ago. -Bruce Novak
We recommend listening along over at our Spotify page. Here’s this week’s content: