Collin Crowe, a guitarist in Buildings who organized tomorrow's orchestral project, says 15 guitars will be on stage. "I hit up mostly friends of mine for it," he says. "To me, there's a lot of us not doing very much."

Crowe, who composed music for the orchestra, says he's "freaking out a bit" about the ensemble's inaugural performance. He says expect an ambitious piece that's "going to be really soft and chilling."

The band had toyed with the idea of a guitar orchestra before. "It's something I've always wanted to do, but never had the incentive to do it," Crowe says. "Being invited to play with Lightning Bolt was that incentive."

Rehearsing with large ensemble was "kind of cool," Crowe says. "It [felt] like a party every time."

As for the venue, whose second-floor space often vibrates during gigs? The employee who picked up the phone at DC9 this afternoon put it plainly: "Fifteen guitars? Oh man. Jeez."

In honor of tonight's Sockets Records showcase, All Our Noise recently hosted a live session for space-punk trio Buildings. The band performed two songs, "Tesselations" (see above) and "Tiny Mountains," which you can find at the AON site.

Sockets Records Showcase w/ Buldings, Hume, Cornell West Theory, Big Gold Belt, and Imperial China
@ Black Cat
Fri., 1/22 $12
1811 14th St. NW WDC 20009

Here's the tracklist:

1. "Love Showers" – The Dirty Church
2. "Tomorrow" – Buildings
3. "Would You Kill?" – The Cornel West Theory
4. "Fifty Seven" – Andrew Black
5. "Dope" (Ricky Rabbit Remix) – Food For Animals
6. "Preproduct" – Aaron Thompson
7. "Wilderness" – Roses They Won't Hurt You
8. "Doubting Thomas" (Sockets Mix) – Edie Sedgwick
9. "1000 Miles" – Metropolitan

This review involves a lot of name-dropping. So don't say you weren't warned.

And, really, how else to consider Free Energy? The Philadelphia-based blogosphere favorite doesn't strive for originality, nor even hipster cachet: You can hear Television or Big Star all you want in the quintet's peppy, big-guitar sound, but really, these guys are all about what you hear on "corporate classic rock stations." Why it works — at least on record in mp3s — has as much to do with the group's nonironic approach as its mindless raison d’être and taut, oft-inspired songwriting. We're understandably skeptical of "woo-ooh," "oh-oh," and "hey alright" choruses, but it's refreshing that Free Energy can actually sell them. Whether that places the band, in those gilded annals of nostalgia rock, closer to The Strokes or The Darkness, I can't say.

In a quick, fairly energetic, and underattended show at the Black Cat downstairs last night, Free Energy cribbed T. Rex's "Mambo Sun" almost verbatim and sometimes invoked The Stooges, but mostly, it reveled in the stuff of Alice Cooper, Cheap Trick, early Tom Petty, and (most centrally) Thin Lizzy — think big, loud, elemental, and poppy. Objectively, it was perfect: Hooks breathed, guitars sirened, cowbells clanged. Skinny as death and neon as fuck, singer Paul Sprangers pranced and strutted and crooned, a little bit Iggy Pop, a little less Julian Casablancas. And I was utterly nonplussed.

I suppose I owe you a mea culpa: Strange as it seems, somehow it's easier to appreciate Free Energy on an academic level than a visceral one. To Sprangers and his bandmates, they're just channeling their heroes and playing it straight. Hell, drummer Nick Shuminsky was wearing a Styx shirt. But the band's songs conjure up grander, arena-sized associations it can't pay off live — never mind the half-empty room. What I'm getting at is this: If you're going for pure homage, then mean it. Execute rock kicks. Flash a devil sign or two. Spit on your fans. As long as the songs are good — and Free Energy's songs are very good — it's not self-parody.

The lexicon Free Energy trades in — of partying 'cuz it's all you've got left, of girls called "child" and "babe," where "hold on" is the only imperative — is a seductive one. So are the choruses, repetitive, sure, but entirely infectious. And slowly, the charisma is creaking toward 11.

–

In an entirely different sense, the evening's openers also made smart use of repetition. With drummer David Rich hospitalized, Buildings (or BLDGS) , usually a quartet, became a one-piece for the evening (BLDG?). Guitarist Collin Crowe smiled nervously as he played, constructing slow-building soundscapes with his guitar, synth, and laptop (chirp noises abounded). In the post-rock tradition, Crowe's compositions involved much guitar noodling, but these moments were more barbed than fluid — more Nels Cline or Loren Connors, say, than Mogwai or Do Make Say Think.

And the Brooklyn band Bear In Heaven favored crescendoing song structures and unusual rhythms over verse-chorus arrangements and 4/4 beats. The quartet drew from bands blending the epic and the artsy — some Spiritualized, much Deerhunter — and half its members played synths half the time. What resulted was a glazed, insistent aesthetic that probably could use more attentive songwriting, but showed promise. Not terrible for an evening of works-in-progress.

Photo by Benjamin R. Freed.

Pastiche can be a funny thing: When Paul Sprangers and Scott Wells played fuzzy, proggy slacker pop in the St. Paul, Minn., band Hockey Night, I figured that as long as Stephen Malkmus keeps pumping out decent-or-better albums every few years, my brain just doesn't have the RAM for a Pavement Lite.

If this is beginning to sound like a half-hearted endorsement, I'll stop and say this: Sprangers and Wells' new outfit, Free Energy, makes anthemic, insanely catchy music with a hefty, forgivable debt to your favorite '70s pre- (but not proto-) punk bands — think Thin Lizzy's chutzpah, Cheap Trick's contagiousness, and the wide, romantic eyes of The Raspberries. The much-buzzed-about group (now based in Philly) recently signed with New York's dance-punk mavens DFA, which some people find strange or something, since Free Energy isn't a dance band. Bullshit. I'm shimmying in my desk chair just writing about these guys. What they lack in originality (plus ça change... and all that), they more than make up for with insistent songwriting, strutting rhythms, and insane hooks.

Free Energy brings its old-is-new-again rock to the Black Cat backstage tomorrow, and the show, also with Bear In Heaven and D.C.'s BLDGS, is well worth your $10. Unless, of course, you're set on getting your Gossip Girl on with Cobra Starship instead.

This blog has already covered Free Energy's self-titled single, so check out the hometown-loving video (and show deets) after the jump. (I lived in Philly for two years, so sometimes I gotta rep, too.)

Wednesday, Aug. 26 | Free Energy, Bear In Heaven, and BLDGS | Black Cat downstairs | 8 p.m. | $10

Photo courtesy of Free Energy's MySpace page.

All of this for a noisy, chatty, tape of a Grant Lee Buffalo concert.

Disclosed Mp3 must have built a better mousetrap, though.
They certainly don't seem to be mired in the microphone->chums->minidisc->cassette deck quagmire that plagued fans a few years ago. Instead, the blog has been turning around decent quality audience-recordings of local shows within just a few days of the performance. Right now there are Mp3s of True Womanhood, Laughing Man, BLDGS, and Hume, as well as some out of town groups like Mi Ami. And the whole access-via-downloading thing also knocks out another aggravating vestigial part of the bootleg process–trading via the postal service.

The music blog RCRD LBL recently posted a few songs for new Mp3s by D.C.'s own BLDGS (pronounced Buildings). The songs, "For You" and "Now," are drawn from the band's upcoming EP Endless, which should be out on Sockets within the next few weeks. Check them out here.

Buildings from Sean Peoples on Vimeo.

Per the video, location is 1256 Old Bridge Rd., Amissville, Va. (about an hour west of D.C.), and the cost is $10, which also gets you burgers, 'dogs, beer, and space to camp (the property is over 150 acres).

Oh, and the bands! So far, the list includes Future Islands (!), BLDGS, La Otracina, Laughing Man, Hume, Age Sixteen, The Black Powder, Cave Caverns, The Fordists, Ga'an, Gay Knowledge, Google Earth, The Independent, Invisible Hand, Landlords, Mystic Flavor, Paper Mice, Pretzlcoat, Rifle Recoil, Surf Nazis On Ecstasy, and We're Glad You're Dead, with apparently more to be announced.

Looks like the overall vibe is experimental and noisy, with some more straightforward punk and indie rock thrown in. Most of the bands are from D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, with a handful from New York and elsewhere.

Apparently, the people behind the Fairfax space Count Pyro's Castle are organizing the fest (and local polymath Hume tells me he's helping curate). And this Saturday, Count Pyro's is hosting a benefit for the festival featuring Ape! and A City Safe From Sea. Groovy.

More info is on the Old Bridge Festival's Facebook page, along with some Old Testament-y ramblings.

(Hat tip to Sockets Records.)

• An Evening w/ King Sunny Ade & his African Beats. 9:30 club. $25. All ages.
• The Paulverizers, Idle Americans. Bangkok Blues. Call for price.
• Oleta Adams. Birchmere. $39.50.
• Novalima, Pistolera. Black Cat. $18/$22. All ages.
• Lovvers, Small Doses, Cigarbox Planetarium. Comet Ping Pong. All ages.
• John Legend, India.Arie. Merriweather Post Pavilion. $36–$109.
• Hello Society, Marbin, Lucky Dub. The Red & The Black. $8. +21.
• Stellastarr, Wild Light, The Postmarks. Rock and Roll Hotel. $12/$14. All ages.
• BLDGS, Screen Vinyl Image, Cobalt & the Hired Guns, The Water. Velvet Lounge. $8. +21.
• Danny Harris (Fatback DC): Mashed Potatoes. Cafe Saint Ex.
• Eastern Music Festival Piano Program. Kennedy Center Millennium Stage. Free.
• Friday Nights Out Back w/ Chopteeth. Strathmore. $10.
• Aural Tapestry: An Evening w/ All Our Noise, feat. Seas, Typefighter, John & Paul Thornley (of US Royalty). Fort Fringe. $10. See Fringe & Purge for WCP's take on the best and worst of CapFringe thus far.

Saturday

• Emmet Swimming, The Dreamscapes Project. 9:30 club. $15. All ages.
• Jenn and the Tonics, Jeff Carmela. Bangkok Blues. Call for price.
• Bill Kirchen & The Hammer of The Honky Tonk Gods, Ruthie & the Wranglers. Birchmere. $25.
• Emarosa, Our Last Night, In Fear and Faith, Burden of a Day, I See Stars, Broadway. Jaxx. $13/$15. All ages.
• North of Canada, Typefighter, Maple. The Red & The Black. $8. +21.
• Drop Electric, Hypernova, Funk Ark, Dangerosa. Rock and Roll Hotel. $10. All ages.
• Beatnik Flies, Sleeper Agent, Pup Tent, Caustic Casanova (upstairs); DJ Busca, DJ Pascal (downstairs). Velvet Lounge. $8. +21.
• The Birdman. Cafe Saint Ex.
• AP Chemistry: A Night of Hip Hop, feat. Disturbed Individuals, Flex Matthews, Arda Mus. Fort Fringe. $10.

Sunday

• Rocknoceros, The Great Zucchini. 9:30 club. $15. All ages, esp. the kiddies.
• Blues Jam w/ the Idle Americans. Bangkok Blues. Call for price.
• Tortoise, Grey Reverend. Black Cat. $20. All ages.
• Future of the Left, Mount Vicious. DC9. $12. +18.
• Knot Feeder, The Maida Vail, Sun Tornado, Gordon Withers. The Red & The Black. $6. +21.
• Strangers Family Band, Speck Mountain. Velvet Lounge. $7. +21.

Novalima photo via MySpace.