The Points—pictured here, covered in beer and spit—recently posted five new demos on their MySpace page. Three chords used to be all The Points could handle, but these scuzzy, blown out recordings prove that the band’s aesthetic has evolved a little bit over the last year. “Now I Want It” has at least six chords.

Also, The Points are playing Friday, Oct. 16th.
@ Quarry House Tavern

Is Antelope broken up? Hard to say for certain. It’s been a minute since the band’s full length LP, Reflector, came out and they haven’t performed a show in almost a year. Then again, Antelope (which includes City Paper contributor Justin Moyer) has never really been in a hurry. Reflector came out two years after the band’s last 7″ single. Not exactly a hot-on-the-heels-type situation.

Whatever the status of Antelope may be, singer/guitarist/drummer Bee Elvy has been keeping busy. He recently posted some new material to his Website. Three video clips find him chanting over some house music-inspired synth bleeps.

Perhaps you’ve heard there’s a lot of free shit going down this weekend. If you haven’t, well, there’s a lot of free shit going down this weekend. Most of it revolves around the Kia Soul Collective tour, which has set up shop in a warehouse at 3330 New York Ave. NE, with free parking as well as a free shuttle from Union Station. Wale performs in the space tonight at 7 p.m., with DJs Stereofaith, Reed Rothchild, and Chris Burns spinning from 4 p.m. Tomorrow night belongs to Dan Deacon, The Creepers, and Nouveau Riche DJs; the music starts at 8 p.m. And MGMT is headlining an 8 p.m. show Sunday night following DJ sets by DJ CA$$IDY and Dave Nada. To get tickets to this last concert, however, you have to test drive a Kia first, which you can do all weekend, if that’s your thing.

And Future, Army Of Me (in an acoustic iteration), Laughing Man, and The Mighty Heard are all performing outdoors at the H Street Festival on Saturday, all along H Street NE. Brightest Young Things is also hosting a free party that night in the Rock & Roll Hotel’s upstairs bar. Baller.

Dischord Records is now distributing releases by Windian Records, a new label started by The Points drummer Travis “Cobruhhh” Jackson. The band’s new Beat In Hell 7″, whose 6-minute B-side is about four times longer than every other Points song, is available now.

This is a few days old: Dischord and DeSoto Records are rereleasing Jawbox’s 1994 career highpoint For Your Own Special Sweetheart, and they’ve included a few bonus tracks from the very rare Savory+3 EP. The remastered album drops Nov. 23.

The Velodrome dance/not-dance party is back from summer vaycay this weekend.

Local way-beyond-left-field hip-hop band The Cornel West Theory has a release show at Liv next Friday for its new album, Second Rome, and apparently the eminent Princeton African American Studies professor and group namesake will be there.

Image courtesy of Dan Deacon’s MySpace page.

“We’re trying to have fun right now and not make it too serious,” Travis “Cobruhhh” Jackson, the drummer of D.C.’s noisiest party punkers The Points said yesterday, discussing the pitfalls of long-distance rock ‘n’ roll — Jackson moved to Blacksburg, Va., not long ago, and his bandmate, guitarist and singer George “Geo” White, now lives in Chicago. The geographic disruption may mean more planning, fewer shows, and less spontaneity, but to hear Jackson tell it, the band’s hard-partying (and, more centrally, hard-drinking) ethos remains the same.

The Points dropped a new seven-inch single this week on Jackson’s own Windian Records (City Paper’s own Aaron Leitko recently reviewed the six-minute song “Shout” for Pitchfork), and Geo and Cobruhhh are celebrating tomorrow night at DC9. After the jump, my condensed interview with Jackson.

Washington City Paper: Every time I read about The Points, there’s always something about how hard you rock and how hard you drink. But what do you do when you’re doing neither of those things?

Travis Jackson: Well [he laughs] I guess people say that because, you know, the fact that we’re alcoholics. We definitely, you know, when we’re not playing in the band or having beer, well, I dunno. Life is a celebration.

Washington City Paper: The song “Shout,” at 6 minutes long, is unique for you guys. When you wrote it, did you want to make something so, well, epic? Or did it just come out that way?

Travis Jackson: It kind of just ended up that way. We’ve had a couple of other songs that were six minutes or over, from band practices … When it feels right, you don’t want to stop. We’re not always thinking up three-chord wonders or anything like that.

Washington City Paper: Tell me about writing “Shout.”

Travis Jackson: The song was written a while back. We recorded it and we never put it on any of records because it never really matched up with anything else — the more Ramones-sounding, two-and-a-half minute songs. So I started a label and I pretty much just wanted to get these songs that we really, really liked but that we had pushed aside in the past onto a record.

Washington City Paper: What about the rest of the seven-inch?

Travis Jackson: “Beat In Hell” is more a percussion-heavy song. It’s got a really cool guitar riff, and it’s pretty primal. … It’s a pretty bad, mean song. And “F. Dali” is probably the fastest song we’ve recorded. And it’s about Salvador Dali and how much we hate seeing his posters everywhere. We’re art fans, but you know…

Washington City Paper: …but Surrealism isn’t for you?

Travis Jackson: Well, really, it’s just from being around art schools and seeing Dali on all the dorm walls.

Washington City Paper: How did Windian Records come about?

Travis Jackson: Out of sheer boredom. Geo moved to Chicago and I’m in the mountains. … We can pretty much only practice once a month and I still wanted to focus heavily on something rock ‘n’ roll, so I started a label to put out singles. I’m doing a Two Tears single in October, and Personal and the Pizzas, from Hoboken, N.J., want to do a seven-inch this winter.

Washington City Paper: What else do The Points have planned this year?

Travis Jackson: We’re going to be recording our next record here in the next two or three months. We’ve got about 10 songs ready to go for that, and I guess we’re going to be putting it out on Mud Memory, with [label owner] Justin Moyer, the coolest guy ever. And after that, in 2010, we’re going to tour to support that. Hopefully we’ll get to Europe this time. We didn’t do it this year, for, you know, money reasons. But we really want to go to Europe and keep, you know, rockin’.

(An apology: One-third of the interview recording came out as intelligible as the vocals on a Brainiac album, so you’ve been spared the more discursive moments.)

Photo courtesy of The Points’ MySpace page.

Video by Broken Square Media

Dischord says remastered copies of Fugazi’s “7 Songs” EP are now available.

Gypsy Eyes need to update its news page. We know the label is hosting an inaugural-themed event at Comet. Just can’t find the details.

I’m really digging The Points.

Your Must Purchase: Sublime Frequencies has a another vinyl-only Tuareg guitar record out.

The Vinyl District revisits some classic Replacements tunes.

Nonetheless, it’s blowing my mind–if only a little bit–by placing a mug shot of The Points‘ drummer Cobruh in direct juxtaposition to a photo of Senator Ted Kennedy. On one side we have the second longest serving member of the senate and an respected member of the Democratic Party. On the other, we have man who once described the bruises that he and his band mate suffered after being choked-out by a Virginia Beach bouncer by saying “It looked like we had hickies all over our necks.” Yet the layout of this article suggests that these two powerful men are the beloved representatives of their respective social circles and thus should be perceived as equals.

Congratulations to The Points on their rapid ascent of the DC social ladder.

I’ll admit, the arts section of the New York Times isn’t the first place I turn when looking for the vanguard of loud and filthy rock music. For chrissake, they wouldn’t even print Pissed Jeans‘ name.
But New York Times critic Ben Ratliff had some genuinely kind words about The Points new album.

“Their record has poor sound quality, bad graphics and crooked typesetting, and it’s nearly perfect,” says Ratliff.

The Points are, of course, no strangers to adulation from the press–having been covered in The Washington Post, The Onion, and this very publication you are reading now.