Partyline (2005-present): Fascination with the riot grrrl movement burned brightly and briefly, but the members of Bratmobile—which formed in 1991—kept making music, on and off, until 2002. Sort-of based in D.C., Partyline isn’t the first other project for singer Allison Wolfe, but it’s had the most staying power. The band’s name sort of reminds me of that chirpy Doris Day/Rock Hudson movie where they share a phone line, but Partyline’s music—snotty, high-adrenaline, feminist—quickly corrects that association. The trio plays at the Velvet Lounge tomorrow night at 9 p.m. with Edie Sedgwick and Noisy Pig. Tickets are $8.

More riot grrrl second acts after the jump: flowcharts, riots in MTV studios, and Christina Aguilera!

Read More “Clip Job: Five Second Acts for Riot Grrrl Veterans” »

To hear its members tell it, Girl Loves Distortion is a group obsessed with substance and sound. “I can’t sing songs that are about nothing,” Jenn Thomas, who sings and plays drums and keyboard, told me yesterday, a few minutes after my voice recorder had run out of memory. She had much to say about music as an instrument of societal change, about women making independent music, and about Girls Rock! DC (she was running late, in fact, from a meeting for the girls-only rock camp, which she helps run).

Thomas’ bandmate, singer/guitarist/bassist Christopher Goett, showed enthusiasm for more aural topics—like why he loves My Bloody Valentine and colored vinyl, his band’s jagged, layered post-punk, and its studio sessions with Hugh McElroy in 2007 and Devin Ocampo this past winter.

The latter session, at Inner Ear Studios, yielded You Better Run, Your Highness, which the group (Steven Rubin is the third member) drops this week on its own Etxe Records. Girl Loves Distortion plays Velvet Lounge Friday with Trophy Wife and Thee Lexington Arrows to celebrate the release.

After the jump, my (condensed) interview with Goett and Thomas.

Read More “Q&A: Girl Loves Distortion” »

“Wasn’t he just here?” you might be thinking. Well, yes, but the last time famed free-jazzer Peter Brötzmann played the Velvet Lounge, just a few weeks ago, he wasn’t backed by a rhythm section straight out of the extreme metal world.

Full Blast sees Brötzmann in a trio with electric bassist Marino Pliakas and whirling dervish/drummer Michael Wertmüller. Pliakas and Wertmüller both indeed have metal backgrounds, and if you can imagine a grindcore band going full tilt with Brötzmann wailing mercilessly on top, you’ve got the right idea. Since I can’t make tonight’s show, I caught this trio last night at the Windup Space in Baltimore, and, just like two years ago at The Red Room, it was a show of epic proportions. Full Blast builds tension relentlessly, and while the music ebbs and flows, the overall feeling is of being swamped underneath an exhilirating wall of sound.

If Brötzmann and Wertmüller are obvious focal points, the crashing waves in this sea of noise – Brötzmann because he’s Brötzmann and Wertmüller because he is absolutely one of the most amazingly dextrous drummers I’ve had the pleasure of watching – Pliakas is the undertow: dangerous, unpredictable, rising with unexpected ferocity at various points in the music. Seeing the trio together in action is a revelatory experience, and this is pretty much mandatory if you’re a fan of free jazz, noise-rock or extreme music. And if you found Brötzmann solo a bit too much to handle, Full Blast is more accessible, even if simultaneously more extreme.

Full Blast plays at the Velvet Lounge tonight; PRV Trio and The Undisco Kidds are opening. Doors at 7:30, show at 9, $12, don’t miss it.

Check out some more photos from last night’s show after the jump. Full gallery here.

Read More “Don’t Miss Peter Brötzmann’s Full Blast Tonight” »

Personally, I didn’t believe that indie-pop could rise again.

That’s not to say that I didn’t want it to. I mean, love Heavenly and McCarthy records as much as the next bookish, sensitive, horn-rimmed glasses-wearing guy. But in keeping with that indie-stereotype, I thought I was completely alone in a lonely world of philistines and haters and that C86 was dead. You know, right up there with IDM on the scrap heap of unsalvageable sub-genres.

Fortunately, I was wrong, though. Slumberland is back to putting out good records, Vivian Girls have music videos, and when I was at SXSW I couldn’t cross the street without stumbling into a Crystal Stilts show. And now there’s Liechtenstein, who do pretty much the same naive and reverb-soaked style of pop as the bands listed above, only with elegantly arranged vocal harmonies.

Liechtenstein, Sundresses @ Velvet Lounge
915 U Street NW
9 pm, $8

Unless I missed it, there was no lecture to be had from Peter Brötzmann at the Velvet Lounge last night. Instead he did two sets: one solo, one group improvisation with Chromatic Mysteries (featuring drummer/avant-maestro Scott Verrastro).

The solo was classic Brötzmann, requiring great intellectual energy to penetrate his harsh, often shrieky tone for the melody and pace (”rhythm” isn’t quite the right word) of his tenor/alto/soprano saxes and clarinet. The clarinet was a particularly intense tune, Brötzmann running his fingers up and down the (much simpler than a saxophone) keyboard, hard—as if sanding down the burnished wood—and blowing with such force that he was audibly grunting.

Brötzmann’s ferocity was impressive…but honestly hard to take in a large (nearly 60-minute) dose. Without an accompanying ensemble, however chaotic, it’s hard to stay with his many twists and turns; my mind wandered, and I looked at my watch more times than I care to admit.
Read More “Improv Sandwich” »

And I here I was, thinking that this weekend was going to be as dead as this Rick Ross in-store. But no, turns our that the second annual DNA Test Fest will be kicking-off tonight over at Velvet Lounge. Curated by the guys who run WMUC’s DNA in the DNA radio show, the fest skews towards the the weird, the obscure, and if you’ve heard of half of the bands you’re probably spending too much money in the Fusetron distro. Or maybe you’re just following Dave Malitz’s blog posts.

At any rate, this year should be even clumsier, weirder, and better (relatively speaking) than the last, at least if the line-up below is any indication.

DNA Test Fest II @ Velvet Lounge
$10/1-Day Pass $15/2-Day Pass
915 U Street NW, Washington, DC

Friday: True Womanhood, Screen Vinyl Image, Rosemary Krust, Lampshades, Pygmy Shrews, Pfisters, Armida & Her Imaginary Band.

Saturday: Pink Reason, Kurt Vile, Drunk Driver, The New Flesh, Twin Stumps, Unholy Two, Eightyfive.

If your scaled-back, ramen noodle budget allows for such luxuries as rock and roll shows on a week night, then the Velvet Lounge is offering up a doozy this evening: Not only are Baltimore hip-hop knob twiddlers Food For Animals and cacophonous a capella goddesses Lexie Mountain Boys on the bill, but San Francisco dub-punkers Mi Ami will also revisit the District (two of the band’s members, guitarist/vocalist Daniel Martin-McCormick and bassist Jacob Long, were both in the raucous DC Dischord band Black Eyes).

Mi Ami is in the midst of a massive tour to support their new album, Watersports, which has been absolutely killing our stereos since it dropped in mid-February. Equal parts urgent and hypnotic, chaotic and funky, Watersports is a truly compelling, relevant rock record that goes well beyond the wealth of genres it references. You can preview a cut from the new album on Quarterstick’s Web site via a download of the awesome track “New Guitar,” which is discussed further in the following interview.

The band dropped off Baltimore tour-mates Thank You last night after a show at Floristree, ending the co-tour and beginning the circuit back west on their own, stopping off at SXSW along way.

Washington City Paper recently caught up with Daniel while the group was on the road from the Northwest down into California, which didn’t bode well for a cell-phone conversation throughout their mountainous trek. Despite a steady stream of dropped connections and static-laden reception, Daniel was kind enough to chat about the tour and the new Mi Ami record. Full text after the jump, details for the show at Velvet Lounge below.

Mi Ami
Food For Animals
Lexi Mountain Boys
@ Velvet Lounge
915 U Street, DC
9pm
$8
18+
Read More “Interview: Mi Ami” »

This could be the perfect getaway from all the official events.

My girlfriend actually told me about this after hearing it air last night, but it took me a while to get around to listening: a five-minute segment broadcast nationally on NPR’s All Things Considered about DC’s underground music scene, focusing on Sonic Circuits and the monthly Electric Possible series.

This comes right on the heels of an excellent feature story in the nationally distributed improvised music magazine Signal to Noise, which explored the same DC experimental music scene. (That article is actually mentioned in the NPR story linked to above.)

Tomorrow night the Velvet Lounge offers a very special treat: Outsider folk hero Max Ochs will celebrate the release of his new album, Hooray for Another Day, which features all-new instrumental recordings and poetry from the 67-year-old Annapolis native.

Along with John Fahey and Robbie Basho, Ochs was among the East Coast Blues Mafia that ushered in the tradition of “American primitive guitar” in the ’50s and ’60s. Along with his influential recordings on “Contemporary Guitar ‘67″ — the first compilation on Fahey’s Takoma recordings — Ochs also composed a piece entitled “Imaginational Anthem,” released via the Fonotone label in 1969. The recording was unearthed by Tompkins Square label-head Josh Rosenthal, who contacted Ochs and asked him to re-record the track for a compilation honoring the American primitive guitar tradition, which would also bear the name Imaginational Anthem. Now in its third volume (the latest of which was released earlier this year, along with a box set containing all three), Imaginational Anthem offers a fascinating document of guitar music past and present, revealing the links between luminaries like Ochs, and the newer crop of pickers like Jack Rose and Cian Nugent.

I recently caught up with Ochs via phone to talk about the new record, his life in Annapolis, and his musical evolution over the years. You can read more about Ochs via the previous City Paper feature, written by Mike Keefe-Feldman in 2005, or chat with him yourself tomorrow at the Velvet Lounge. Details for the show below, Q&A after the jump.

Max Ochs
Skeleton$
Kuschty Rye Ergot
Chris Grier

Thursday, December 4th
Velvet Lounge
9:30pm
8$

Read More “Interview: Max Ochs” »