It's debatable which is more striking: Gauntlet Hair's awesome name or its explosive sound. The duo of Andy R. and Craig Nice is originally from Chicago, but relocated to Colorado, which has become one of the country's leading incubators of glazed-over art pop. The group's self-titled debut, which was released in October on Dead Oceans, is full of ear-catching yelps, woozy guitar reverb, and bumping drums. Gauntlet Hair has earned something of a reputation for being elusive, and this email interview won't change that. But they did discuss their dream tour (Seal in 1993!) and their lack of familiarity with the District. They play DC9 tonight with Mercies.

Washington City Paper: It seems like a lot of blogs define your genre as "unclassifiable". How would you describe your own sound?

Andy R.: I couldn't say really...All I know is that it is going to change.

WCP: How long have you two been playing music? How has the Denver music scene developed since then?

AR: Craig and I have been making music together for about 10 years. We're from Chicago so we don't know how the Denver scene has developed since then. I can say that in the past three years that we've been here, it hasn't changed very much. There have always been talented people there.

WCP: Did you have any particular influences when recording the album? What were they?

AR: I personally try to stray as much as possible from any specific influences while recording and I'm sure Craig feels the same. We don't really listen to a lot if music...Nothing current at least. Yeah.

WCP: Is there anyone you'd like to collaborate or tour with?

GH: I couldn't name anyone current. Maybe with Orange Juice back in like '84' or opening for Seal in '93.

WCP: Have you ever played in D.C. before? What are you looking forward to seeing in the city?

GH: We played D.C. while on tour with the Dodos. I don't know much about the city, though. Maybe you can give us a tour while we're in town?

Gauntlet Hair performs tonight at 8:30 p.m. at DC9. $10.

GAUNTLET HAIR – I WAS THINKING from ( . )( . ) on Vimeo.

October 15, 2011 will mark the one year anniversary of Ali Mohammed’s tragic vigilante style death after an alleged altercation with DC 9’s owners and employees. The case also follows the DC Medical Examiner’s ruling that the death was indeed a “homicide.” Although the United States Attorney has declined to prosecute the criminal case, the family now seeks justice in civil court.

Read the rest at City Desk.

Benjamin R. Freed

Chris Heller leads the arts section with a look at once-shuttered nightclub DC9's smooth return to normalcy—well, minus one booking snag. David Dunlap reviews a new five-CD box set of early recordings by fingerstyle-guitar pioneer and local son John Fahey. Tricia Olszewski reviews two films about trouble on the horizon: The stirring and paranoiac Take Shelter, and the aimless Butch Cassidy adventure Blackthorn. Chris Klimek reviews After the Quake, Rorschach Theatre's adaptation of two short tales by the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. And in One Track Mind, Marcus J. Moore talks to Northern Virginia dubstep producer Martyn, who isn't a massive presence on the local DJ circuit and explains why.

DC9 booker Steve Lambert

By its own count, DC9 hasn’t had any trouble attracting musicians since Ali Ahmed Mohammed died feet from the 9th Street NW venue one year ago. “Hundreds, if not thousands, of bands have played since that time,” says Steve Lambert, who books acts at DC9 and other venues in the District. “DC9’s been booking full storm since we were exonerated.”

Exonerated, he means, after the incident that saw one of DC9’s owners, Bill Spieler, and four of its employees charged with murdering a 27-year-old Ethiopian immigrant who had thrown at least one brick through the club’s window last October. And exonerated, perhaps, in the public’s eyes—even following Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier’s description of the alleged murder as a “savage beating” and “vigilante justice” not long after Mohammed’s death; following a liquor license suspension issued by the Alcoholic Beverage and Regulation Administration that left the club shuttered for three months; and following numerous protests and vigils.

Considering that the U.S. Attorney’s office dropped criminal charges against the DC9 employees in November and stopped pursuing the case in June, it’s no surprise that Lambert describes business as “normal booking as usual.”

That said, savvy concert-goers may notice that DC9 is booking fewer buzz acts in 2011 than in years past—a product, most likely, of another venue booked by Lambert, The Red and the Black, merging with the bar next door and doubling its capacity. (The newly minted Red Palace and DC9 each hold about 200 patrons.)

As far as Lambert will admit, there’s really been just one blip: In March, local bands The Cornel West Theory and Noon:30, facing pressure from fans and peers, pulled out of their DC9 show. The concert was with Trophy Wives, a four-piece punk outfit from Louisville, Ky., and Phonic Riot, a D.C.-based noise-pop group (who did not respond to interview requests). The concert was one of the first live acts scheduled at DC9 after Mohammad’s death; ABRA had lifted the venue’s remaining liquor-license restrictions only weeks earlier.

“Phonic Riot had contacted us and we were really excited,” Noon:30 guitarist Aissa Arroyo-Hill says. “We contacted The Cornel West Theory and honestly, we weren’t really tapped into the substance how everybody was feeling about DC9. We weren’t aware of it until we took the booking. It wasn’t anything that was thought about before.”

According to DC9 co-owner Joe Englert, bringing live music back to DC9 was tricky. The club officially reopened in December, but only on weekends and holidays, and at first without live acts. “We were basically screwed,” he says. “We couldn’t book high-caliber bands because they book so far in advance.” When ABRA lifted its restrictions, he explains, the venue relied on booking “faithful locals” to fill the first few months. The March 28 concert, like other shows in the spring, was an important step toward returning to DC9’s standard routine.

Arroyo-Hill says she caught the first inkling of trouble when she told a fan about the concert. That’s when she learned about ongoing tension between the club and some residents that live near 9th and U Streets—the neighborhood knows as Little Ethiopia. “It was around the time we were all like, ‘Oh wait a minute. There’s a protest,’” she says.

The Cornel West Theory, on the other hand, had kept tabs on the Mohammed case and was eager to play DC9. “I’ll listen to anyone say anything, but it always comes down to us,” vocalist Rashad Dobbins says. “My goal was to play at that place to smash it all and touch those people.”

Noon:30, which makes atmospheric art punk, and The Cornel West Theory, which makes politically conscious rap rock, are among a fairly small number of acts whose members are mostly black and have followings within D.C.’s largely white indie-rock scene. You could put rapper Head-Roc, who also leads the funk-rock band GODISHEUS, in the same category.

“Head-Roc left us a message on Facebook,” Noon:30 singer Blue S. Moon says. “He basically reiterated what we’d been hearing, that there’s this ongoing protest against DC9 regarding what happened and what it means to this community.”

Head-Roc, who contributes to Washington City Paper and has been a fixture in the D.C. music scene for more than a decade, is a prolific critic of Lambert, who in addition to scheduling DC9 and Red Palace also books Rock & Roll Hotel, where he’s a co-owner. Many shows at Lambert’s venues use a practice called “door polling,” in which fans are asked which act they’re there to see; bands are paid according to that data. Head-Roc and other indie rockers have criticized the practice in recent years.

Head-Roc proudly admits to “taking chunks” out of Lambert on his Facebook page; in conversation, he calls him a “menace” and a “predator” to the scene. “It’s such bad karma and such bad juju that these unfortunate things, like the death of the Ethiopian cat, have befallen that establishment,” he says.

Moon says that she knew about Head-Roc’s history with Lambert when she read his message, but nonetheless considered his advice. “Everybody knows about his issues with DC9,” she says. “I don’t really know what his intentions were, but all I can really go on is the face value of what he wrote.”

Dobbins, who has known Head-Roc since 1994, also heard from the rapper. “I understand how he felt, but personally I wanted to go right into the belly of the beast and talk about it,” he says. “I want to go right to the center of it all.”

In the end, though, it came down to respect. Noon:30 kept hearing from peers that playing DC9 would be disrespectful to Mohammad’s memory and his family. Dobbins didn’t hear from fans of The Cornel West Theory, he says, but friends within the Ethiopian community told him that playing “would be like stomping on their soul.” So with two weeks to go before the concert, the bands called Lambert and told him they wouldn’t play. “If what happened to that young man happened to my brother, I would hope people would handle it with respect,” Moon says. “Our choosing to pull out had less to do with Heady or any other person and more to do with wanting to respect his family and the people who were affected by this tragedy.”

After The Cornel West Theory released a statement announcing its decision, Head-Roc sent out a Facebook message lauding them. “The Cornel West Theory is family to me,” he says. “I would never put any type of family business out in the street, so I congratulated them.”

The news caused the smallest of ripples within the local music scene. Some black musicians, such as Steve McPherson, who has performed at DC9 as DJ Stereo Faith, never even heard of pressure to avoid the venue. And if he had, McPherson says, he wouldn’t have budged. “As far as I could tell, there hasn’t been a thing going around where you shouldn’t play that particular venue,” he says. “As a black man who has run up against false accusations with the law, I feel like that’s wrong—banding against people who were proven innocent. That’s something I cannot support.”

Englert says that opinions like McPherson’s—which he says are shared by “the people who know the club, the kids who come and dance and know what we’re all about”— are largely responsible for getting DC9 back on its feet. And now, the venue’s decidedly upright: Since Lambert started booking major acts again in June, Englert says sales have jumped 75 percent compared to past months. “We really had no business from Oct. 15 on because we couldn’t book bands and the miserable spring weather kept the outdoor deck closed,” Englert says, estimating the club lost $500,000 in income and attorney’s fees. “It’s been a hell of a comeback that proves this is a good place.”

And for what it’s worth, Lambert says he has no hard feelings about the dropped sets. “I booked The Cornel West Theory and Noon:30 numerous times before, and honestly, I would book them again,” he says. “It was annoying that they dropped off, but it was what it was and it was what they felt. There wasn’t any bad blood. I didn’t write them off or black list them or anything. We just moved on.”

With DC9 back to where it used to stand financially, Lambert says he’s no longer concerned. “These are two bands, relatively unknown D.C. local bands, out of the large pool of local bands that came back and played DC9,” he says. “This is a very, very small pool. Not downgrading either bands’ importance—but, for me, I don’t really need to dwell on this. There’s tons of other bands that want to play DC9. I’m not gonna put much thought into it.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Poll Position: On the occasion of the Fillmore's opening, WaPo's David Malitz runs through the area's nightclub landscape for some quick comparisons. And he includes this nugget about DC9:

What we don’t [love]: Door polling. When walking into a show at DC9 you’re usually asked which band out of two or three that you’re seeing. The ticket taker then marks a line next to that band’s name, and at the end of the night, the band’s payment may depend on the number of notches. The system helps the club gauge each act’s popularity, but it’s a little tacky.

Indeed.

From Bauhaus to Phillips' House: The Phillips Collection has re-created Duncan Phillips' Klee room.

Today on Arts Desk: Nina Pereg at the Hirshhorn, reviewed, Intervention con, and more.

Q: Christian tradition or black metal band?

1. Baptism
2. Ordination
3. Liturgy
4. Bathory
5. Eucharist

Answers and more after the jump...

A: 2, Christian tradition; 4, black metal band; 1, 3, 5, both.

The legendarily anti-Christian black-metal scene is rife with bands named after components of the ideology they aim to destroy (sometimes literally). To get pummeled by their crushing blast beats in person, you might be tempted to fly to Scandinavia—the home of Baptism and Eucharist—but Brooklyn's finest nihilistic outfit, Liturgy, is playing in D.C. tonight. The band's music is surprisingly progressive in a typically rigid genre, and their message somehow combines affirmation alongside dark existentialism, but they are no less heavy for it. 8:30 p.m. at DC9.

Chris Mills is one of the greatest contemporary singer-songwriter talents you've probably never heard. Mills has been steadily putting out incredible records since the late '90s, all the while building an loyal and adoring fan base with this driving, guitar-laden pop songs and smart lyrics. Promoting his recent 14-track retrospective, Heavy Years: 2000-2010, Mills hit the DC9 stage Thursday night with a tight backing band and a smile, ready to work and bring one more fan into the fold.

(More shows from the set can be found here.)

Jefferson Aircraft: Petula Dvorak applauds D.C.'s protesting dancers, then says she's planning to go fly a kite (just read it). I hope her editors at the Post demand that she actually do it.

Record Fair Unsleeved LIVE: The D.C. Record Fair takes place tomorrow at vitaminwater uncapped LIVE. Here's the DJ lineup. While Crooked Beat is no longer selling CDs, apparently some folks at the record fair will be.

Today on Arts Desk: Gil Scott-Heron in D.C.; Far Out/Hot Dang.

Chicago-based emo troubadour Evan Thomas Weiss isn't the first person to record a song called "Washington, D.C." In one of the sweetest moments on The Magnetic Fields' 1999 opus 69 Love Songs, Stephin Merritt sang: "It's not the spectacles and pageantry/The thousand things you've got to see/It's just that's where my baby waits for me."

Weiss, who records and performs as Into It. Over It., isn't feeling quite so rosy about our town. In March 2009, his then-band, Damiera, played a gig at DC9 alongside Seattle act Man Without Wax. The show was the first in a string of tour dates the two out-of-town bands were sharing, and it didn't end well. "A dude pulled a knife on one of our friends in the back of our van," Weiss says.

He says there was no logical reason for the confrontation: just a drunken DC9 patron who lost his jacket. "He for sure thought someone in one of the bands had stolen his jacket," Weiss says. So, as the bands were loading gear into the van, the drunken, jacket-less man walked up and threatened the bands. "He was like, 'where's my fucking jacket.'"

The cops were called to the scene, Weiss says, but they didn't do much, except for shine their lights before taking off. So Weiss and his friends had to take care of the situation, he says, by more or less intimidating the aggressor out of their van. "We had to, as a group of people, be like, 'get the fuck out of here.'" "Washington, D.C." reflects the spirit of the evening.

Rather than bury the memory, Weiss made it into something of a souvenir: Earlier this week, he dropped "Washington, D.C." It's a rough-edged pop-punk tune about doing something positive after a bad turn of events.

LISTEN: Into It. Over It. – "Washington, D.C."

Into It. Over It./Such Gold is out now on No Sleep/Mightier Than Sword.

Monica Hesse leads WaPo style today with some VERY IMPORTANT NEWS from London: Kate Middleton is the new Rachel Green. If you're a young British woman with spare time and cash, you too can look like the future queen consort. Hesse writes the following about Middleton's hair stylist: "He's young, stubbly and scruffy, a slouchy cool that makes one think that Kate must be cool and edgy, too." Gah.

Here's a pro tip for all the Kate-alikes out there. If you want to stay ahead of Ms. Middleton, you'd get an explosive, billion-dollar divorce or have your life adapted into a shitty movie that'll still manage to sweep the Oscars, because that's how 100 percent of royal marriages end.

But we play dress-up on Arts Desk too. Check out Megan Arellano's dispatch from last weekend's Katsucon, a get-together for people with spare time (and cash) who enjoy dressing as video game and anime characters.

Arena Stage is cashing in on Twilight (Finally!) with a sassy Team Edward (Albee) T-shirt on sale for the theater's upcoming productions of At Home at the Zoo and Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?, Maura Judkis reports. Just be careful Arena Stage, sometimes the Twihards go batshit in defense of their sexless vampire.

Reports from the Wammies are in, and last weekend's ceremony was, as usual, skewed toward the familiar, ignorant of Afropop and metal, and maybe altogether boring.

The return of live music to DC9 was—smoking amp aside—incident-free, TBD's Ally Schweitzer writes.

Click Track reviews in a paragraph: Adele's sophomore LP 21 is even better than her debut 19, but the girl shouldn't attempt synth-pop. DevilDriver's Beast is a "thunder-bringing, knuckle-dragging, 10-car pileup of an album." And with Underneath the Pine, it might be time for Toro y Moi to move beyond chillwave, "an ideal starter genre but not something to make a career of."

A Larry King stand-up tour? Yes, please.