Recording: Pow Wows

Artist: Pow Wows

Song: You Haven't Got Me Yet^*

Recorded at The Piston ("T2K10: The Two Koreas’ 10th-anniversary spectacular"), March 6, 2014.

Pow Wows - You Haven't Got Me Yet

Full review to follow. Giving the crowd a breather as the Two Koreas celebrated their tenth anniversary by working their way backward through their catalogue, Pow Wows accelerated that to full-on rock'n'roll atavism, throwing some tasty new songs into the mix to boot.

^* Thanks to Frantic City for passing along the title to this one!

Recording: Pow Wows

Artist: Pow Wows

Song: Shock Corridor^*

Recorded at Bloor + Roxton Stage (The Bloorcourt Arts and Crafts Street Fair), August 18, 2012.

Pow Wows - Shock Corridor

Full review to follow. I've been meaning to catch the new-look Pow Wows for a bit now, so it was handy that they showed up to add some rock'n'roll volume to the Bloorcourt Street Fest. Key discovery: Pow Wows believe that children are the future.

^* Thanks to Chris for passing the title to this one along.

Recording: Pow Wows

Artist: Pow Wows

Song: Seeing Black

Recorded at The Horseshoe Tavern, June 7, 2011.

Pow Wows - Seeing Black

My notes for this set can be found here.

Gig: Sports

Sports (Pow Wows)

The Horseshoe Tavern. Tuesday, June 7, 2011.

Out for the Tuesday night free show at the 'Shoe to catch a band that I hadn't seen in a good while. The decision to head down was helped by the fact that they were preceded by Pow Wows, who I knew to be a raucous fun live band. Not necessarily a sonically precise one, mind you, as hinted at with this revealing soundcheck banter to the sound tech: "Can we just get destroyed with reverb? Let's get wet!"

Playing a fairly similar setlist to the previous time I had seen 'em, the band were mostly tackling songs that would soon emerge on their Nightmare Soda album. Alongside all that reverb, the band brought a rangy and at times wilfully sloppy attack to their garage rock howlers. The lyrics were not especially clear by design but the underlying intent was not at all obscure, with numerous odes to the sort of impulses best invoked in the anthemic set-closer "Seeing Black".

They managed to efficiently crank out ten joltin' songs in their half hour, despite — or because of? — the fact that they looked a little wobbly on their feet. "They were not at all drunk," a friend commented afterward with a I-mean-the-opposite shake of the head. That doesn't mean they weren't pretty good — just good in a way that implies slurred speech rather than clear elocution.¹

Listen to a track from this set here.

At one level, it's hard to believe that Sports was the same band that I'd seen a couple years previously. It's well befitting that they had, in fact, since then stripped away "The Band" from the end of their name, a symbolic act that pointed to how they were now a leaner, more rock-oriented machine under vocalist/guitarist Nathan Rekker's leadership.

There's still some points of intersect with the before-times, like "Warn Me", which was presented on the previous incarnation's EP. But live, it now sounded like it had several layers stripped off, and gave the impression it was based on hazy memories of Them's "Gloria" instead of, say, a New Pornographers song as the 2009 recording hints at. Some of the additional guitar presence came from a woodshedding Pete Carmichael (ex-Diableros, at this point beginning to assemble his Whirly Birds), who had taken on sideman duties.

With some likeable guitar textures, there was a good sound here as the band presented mostly material from their then-new album. Even with the more rock-forward positioning, there was still a balancing-off between the more aggressive and nimble material, with, say, "Castlots" (another holdover from the EP) leaning more toward the latter. For me, I liked it best more when they eased back on the subtlety and just rocked, even in a more restrained way, like in a new, then-untitled song (it had a refrain of "you and me and the devil make three"). And best of all was closer "Slacking Scholar", where it all came into focus, with crunch and hooks in equal measure — this is one that can really get stuck in your head.²

I'd previously posted something from the band's new album here, and now you can also check out the new sound of an older song here.

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¹ The band has more recently undergone some lineup changes, but they're still keeping busy. They'll be co-headlining a show at the Silver Dollar with Meanwood on Thursday, August 3, 2012.

² Sports also has an upcoming gig at the Silver Dollar, playing with Persian Rugs on August 25, 2012, which sounds like a promising Saturday night.

Recording: Pow Wows

Artist: Pow Wows

Song: Four Star

Recorded at The Silver Dollar, January 29, 2011.

Pow Wows - Four Star

My notes for this set can be found here.

Gig: Your 33 Black Angels

Your 33 Black Angels (Pow Wows / HotKid)

The Silver Dollar. Saturday, January 29, 2011.

Making for a non-stop day of music, my evening show ended early enough that I could hustle from the Music Gallery to the Silver Dollar in time to catch three jolts of rock'n'roll energy hosted by the always reliable Optical Sounds crew. I'd dug Pow Wows when I'd seen 'em at the Spacemen 3 tribute night, so I was glad to have a chance to see them doing their own thing. Not too surprisingly, their hazy-but-amped-up garage nuggets weren't too far from what I'd seen before. Jazzy Jimenez and Jay Holi traded guitar and bass back and forth, as well as sharing vocals (into a pair of nifty vintage microphones) that whiplashed from slurring to aggressively howled. They also kept things lively on stage while Jay Share-It (guit) and Matthew Michael (drums) kept the songs moving forward.

There were some summer of love harmonies, but the band's outlook wasn't particularly peace and flowers — besides a song about John Wayne Gacy, during "No More Light" Jazzy Jimenez shot off a capgun into the crowd. Then, toward the end of the set, the band handed out a bag of 'em to the audience, asking, "who wants to have a gun fight?"

"Now you guys wait for an appropriate moment to start firing at each other," warned the band, but the snap snap of caps exploding was already drowning him out, and by "Seeing Black" the acrid smell of gun powder filled the air.¹ The band closed out the set with a hi-speed lurch through "The Last Time", which could be considered to be a revealing cover choice. Good scrappy fun.²

Listen to a track from this set here.

Headliners Your 33 Black Angels were up from NYC to celebrate Optical Sounds' release of the ace new Songs from the Near Bleak Future. Heading up over the border often necessitates some personnel shifting for the band, and there was a five-man lineup on this night, with three guitars (including vocalist Josh Westfal) plus bass and drums. No keyb this time 'round, so even with five players the sound was stripped down from the more elaborate productions on the album. The band was clearly eager to showcase the new stuff, leading off with the album's first couple songs. Opener "Heart Stone Metal Bone" came complete with an instrumental introduction that at first seemed like a continuation of the soundcheck before it began to cohere and expand.

Celebrating the dark age ahead — or merely the already-prevalent hollowing out of ye olde American Dream — the album reimagines the end times as being something like last call at a particularly dank bar. Actually, the Silver Dollar stood in well for the latter, the floor filled with plenty drunk folk on hand, amiably staggering around and bumping into people — though not being overly aggressive about it — all with the occasional cap gun still popping in the background. The scene at hand actually felt like an apt setting for the narcoleptic Stones-y groove of "The Trouble King".

The band are prodigious writers, and their sets are always forward-looking — a few of the songs from the new album that they'd been playing for awhile (like "A Song About a Car") were already being supplanted — and instead there was one brand new song "from the next one". About the only look over the shoulder came with closer "I Want Something I Can Hold in My Hand" (from '09's Pagan Princess), with Calvin Brown (of Optical Sound brethren The Hoa Hoa's) joining in on some extra guitar action that stretched the song out to the longest thing in the set.

Your 33 Black Angels might feel right at home in a dark bar on Saturday night, but their music is good enough to stand scrutiny in the light of day. Do check out their albums if you get a chance.³

Listen to a track from this set here.

Closing out the night was two-piece rock attack unit HotKid. Singer/guitarist Shiloh Harrison founded the band in Cambridge in '05; drummer Robbie Butcher is a more recent addition. The pair brought a formidable live presence, even taking the trouble to set up a more elaborate lightshow than usual, with long bar-shaped LED's set up on the floor to add some visual flair.

"My number-one pet peeve is when drummers talk," opined Butcher, "but thank-you for sticking around." His presence was definitely one thing that made it worthwhile, given his tendency to play in a full-on limbs-flying style — until he'd freeze in place while waiting for the next song to begin. Included in the package was a pair of pink pants — later on, with self-knowing mocking, he'd ask in his best Spinal Tap accent, "how much more tight could pink pants be? I answer is, 'none more tight'." This would be a theory he'd put to the test later on while climbing on top of his kit toward the end of the set.

Harrison, meanwhile, had one of Pow Wows' cap guns tucked into her cowboy boot — and when, after a few songs, she switched to a Flying V, it felt like the equivalent of le mot juste — this is very much a Flying V kind of band, playing riffy no-bullshit rock. Unsurprisingly, the bottom end was a little thin at times, but otherwise, there was plenty of crunch.

Though mostly sticking with the blazing, rollicking stuff, there were a few departures — one song had a bastard-son-of-country vibe. The music didn't particularly stick in my head after, but it was rather entertaining while it was being delivered.⁴

Listen to a track from this set here.

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¹ In my mind I was pretending it was the smell of cordite wafting over the crowd, but that's probably because part of my brain wants to believe I'm a character in an old pulp gumshoe story.

² Pow Wows will be playing with Bloodshot Bill (and Hellaluya, Odonis Odonis and New/France) at The Academy of Sciences on Saturday, August 20, 2011.

³ The precise date and venue aren't nailed down yet, but expect to see Y33BA make an appearance during the upcoming Optical Sounds weekend-long celebration, August 25-27. Edit: Y33BA are now listed to be playing The Boat on Friday, August 26, 2011. And if you don't already have these dates circled in your calendar, do it now!

⁴ HotKid would go well with beer, so it sounds like an appearance at Beerfest this Friday (Exhibition Place, August 5, 2011) is a natural pairing. They'll also be playing the next night (Saturday, August 6, 2011) at 36 Chambers. Also, keep an eye out for a new video, which is apparently coming soon.

Recording: The Pow Wows

Artist: The Pow Wows

Song: Mary-Anne [Spacemen 3 cover]

Recorded at The Perfect Transcription (Spacemen 3/Spiritualized Live Tribute and Benefit for Natty Brooker), The Piston, December 4, 2010.

The Pow Wows - Mary-Anne

My notes for this set can be found here.

Gig: The Perfect Transcription (Part 2)

The Perfect Transcription (Live Spacemen 3 & Spiritualized tribute) (feat. Speedway / The Disraelis / Ostrich Tuning / The Mighty Oaks / Flowers of Hell / The Pow Wows / The Blooming Rosebuds / The Hoa Hoa's)

The Piston. Saturday, December 4, 2010.

You can read up on the first half on the night here, but to recap: this was a benefit show for Natty Brooker in the form of a live tribute to Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized, with a massive lineup of sixteen bands taking the stage. Commonalities between the bands included lots of lyric cheatsheets, plenty reverb, and quite a few of what we might term "older bands" (in terms of rock'n'roll, though, as opposed to, like, life.)

An appearance from Speedway — apparently reunited for the occasion — was considered to be a big deal in some quarters, though I admit I was unfamiliar with them.¹ Stripping the gear down to the minimum required for a howling squall, they brought three guitarists and drums. The band was perhaps a bit rusty — or maybe just a little too untethered — starting off with an instrumental, and moving into "May the Circle Be Unbroken".² I don't have anything to compare this to, but it didn't feel like the band was really tearing into the material.

Or perhaps they didn't get to leave such a strong impression after the searing appearance from The Disraelis. The start of what would be a definite Optical Sounds tinge to the rest of the night, this was the band's first time out with a new lineup, with vocalist Cameron Jingles switching over from bass to guitar, Dave Barnes on drums and Calvin Brown on bass.³ A bashed out "Losing Touch With My Mind" was quite bracing, but even better was the following "Rollercoaster" — a 13th Floor Elevators elevators song favoured by the Spacemen 3. That one featured Richie Gibson (also from The Hoa Hoa's) on second guitar. This was pretty fantastic — rough-hewn but holding itself together, and certainly enough to give hope that the band will be returning for more.⁴

Listen to a track from this set here.

No strangers to Velvets-influenced drone-rock, Ostrich Tuning were a natural fit for this show. Like several other bands on the night, they chose to contrast the quieter and louder tendrils of the S3 sound, starting with "Honey" before kicking up the noise and getting all cosmic with "How Does It Feel?". My notepad contains a scrawled note that I'm thinking reads "insta-raga!".

The Mighty Oaks brought a more straightforward classic rockin' sort of sound — these guys could probably fill in a slot at a Crazy Horse tribute night with equal facility. They followed up "Just To See You Smile" with a fabulous version of "Transparent Radiation" that owed just a little something to The Who and BTO.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Flowers of Hell are pretty malleable behind mainman Greg Jarvis, so I wasn't too surprised to see them as a lean rock attack unit on this night, with Jarvis backed by a second guitarist, bass (Calvin Brown again) and drums. They also reached into the S3 live catalogue for a rocket-powered version of MC5's "Starship" — a little sloppy, but more than adequately propulsive.

As the hour grew later, I was starting to feel a little tired and wobbly. I even thought I was suffering some sonic hallucinations, but it turned out that the phased sounds of the Bo Diddley album playing between sets was entirely deliberate, as if it was being run through a flanger. At this staggery point of the night, The Pow Wows came out like a shot of espresso, leading the crowd in a chant ("N-A-T-T-Y SAT-UR-DAY NIGHT!") before a garage-y "Mary-Anne", which sounded like the product of a band that had been spending some time playing "Gloria". After that, they played "2:35" — and whether by accident or design, the clock actually passed that point as the band played the song — building up into shouting and frenzied drumming. It was a real rave-up, ending with a small-scale stage invasion and bassist/singer Jazzy Jimenez climbing on the drums — Sat-ur-day night, indeed.⁵

Listen to a track from this set here.

By this point, it was late enough that the bar staff were coming around and physically taking everyone's drinks away as The Blooming Rosebuds were setting up. I don't know much about this band (and their online info is pretty slim) though I did recognize Katerina T from Planet Creature on stage. They did good work on "Take Me to the Other Side", followed by a rolling version of "Come Down Easy". But the treat of the set was a reverse-engineered "Let it Flow", doing the Spiritualized song in a scrappy Spacemen 3 style.

Listen to a track from this set here.

By this point I was feeling rather knackered, but I was hanging on for The Hoa Hoa's, the night's last band. It was so late that there wasn't even any music on the PA while they band set up, while Cameron from The Disraelis was laying down on stage. From last call on, the crowd had been getting thinner, and it was to a discombobulated cadre that the band played the entirely-appropriately-entitled "Don't Fall Down". That one would count as a bit of a crate dig — a 13th Floor Elevators song that Spacemen 3 once recorded a demo of. And then, a properly dirge-y vibe to close out the night with the two-chord vamping of "Amen". And the whole thing wound up right 'round 3:30, six hours after the first band had taken the stage.⁶

Kudos to all the bands that got involved for a good cause, and to Davy Love, who put the whole night together. To commemorate the whole night, I've thrown together a compilation with one song from each of the bands that played — you can grab it here.

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¹ I dug around a bit, but I didn't come up with any more information about the band. If you have anything further to fill in on the bands here, do feel free to pass it along — along with any corrections to anything I might have gotten mixed up while trying to keep sixteen bands straight.

² Given how the music of Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized spend so much time in vacillation between profound sin and the search for redemption, there was more soi-disant evangelical material on offer this night than at most shows I go to. I wonder if anyone has done a cultural studies dissertation on "Spacemen 3 as 'Christian Rock'".

³ Most often seen behind the drumkit with The Hoa Hoa's, Brown might be a secret MVP of the Optical Sounds family, adding bass duties with The Disraelis to a such diverse talents as album cover artist and DJ — all while sporting a flashy fashion sense.

⁴ After a bit of a wait, it looks like there's tentative plans for a full-fledged show from the band in late May, so keep an eye out for 'em.

⁵ The Pow Wows will be playing what should be a rock'n'roll good time this Friday (April 29, 2011) at The Press Club along with The Bon and The Mark Inside.

⁶ In what should be a psych night extraordinaire, The Hoa Hoa's, along with Ostrich Tuning, will be playing with Asteroid #4 at The Boat on Friday night (April 29, 2011).