![]() Joshua Mellody, a DJ and producer whose upbringing in the EDM-rich United Kingdom has probably encouraged his interest in dubstep tangents. Troy Beetles, a Canadian DJ and producer as dedicated to dubstep as Bro Safari and Zomboy, a.k.a. Nicholas Weiller, is more or less top-billed.Īlso repeating are Datsik, a.k.a. This year's SIS duplicates the headlining lineup of last year's 20-city run. "The world's only traveling bass festival" isn't the most enticing claim to exclusivity, but it's not without impressiveness in a market that doesn't support plenty of electronic-dance-music roadshows like the Safe In Sound Festival. Piet Levy, In Sound Festival with Bro Safari, Datsik and ZomboyĨ p.m. At first the band merely had a four-song cassette titled "Cassette" that it sold at its shows, but the potential was just too great, leading to a well-received self-titled debut album that came out in January.Ī fellow Canadian act - noise rock band Greys -opens Viet Cong's Cactus Club show. It never re-formed - 26-year-old guitarist Christopher Reimer died in his sleep in 2012, due to complications from a heart condition.Īfter going through a mourning period, Fiegel returned to making music, establishing Viet Cong in 2012 with Scott Munro and recruiting Women drummer Wallace. But that same year, following a fight during a show in Canada, Women canceled its tour and went on an indefinite hiatus. It's a road Viet Cong's Matt Fiegel and Mike Wallace have been on before, with the psychedelic noise rock band Women.Įstablished in 2007 in Calgary, Alberta, Women started turning heads with its self-titled 2008 debut, returning to even greater reviews for its sophomore album "Public Strain" in 2010. $10 at the door and in advance at .Ĭreating brooding, blistering, electronically accented post-punk you can dance to - reminiscent of Interpol at its best - Viet Cong has scored deserved praise from music writers and bloggers. Keep Your Eyes Ahead is content to see where merely questioning gets you.9 p.m. Summers got religion right during "Hallelujah"- "We don't want answers, anyway"- but the wisdom is equally appropriate for his and Weikel's newfound skills. Even when it fails, Keep Your Eyes Ahead has a refreshing maturity and presence, old enough to admit that folk jamboree and synth-rock can coexist, hopeful enough to think Joshua Tree, or at least Ocean Rain, was a really good idea. On Keep Your Eyes Ahead's final track, the harmonica-led "No Regrets", the two get it right: clacking percussion behind a drunken sing-a-long that suggests that, yeah, the Helio Sequence might one day pull off this Americana tip, too. Lines like "Drank the dark wine of the New York night/ With shattered mind across the borderline" do not help. Singers like "carrying" songs, and Keep Your Eyes Ahead falters when Summers and Weikel set aside their wiring and aim for folk sounds subtly aided by ambient backgrounds, a swell idea if your slow tracks don't sound like the ballads from Dylan's Down in the Groove. The unfortunate side effect of Summer's newfound expertise is that, well, he's apt to use it. The muscular title track wrestles lustily with the Stone Roses: "You came on like you knew you would/ Wearing high-top shoes walking home from school/ And I just 'bout fell right off the balcony." ![]() The pulsing sequencer of "Hallelujah", the album's longest and most strident anthem, plays counterpoint to Summer's long, loose solos. The push-push verses of "Can't Say No" and the tremble-y guitars of "Lately" encompass the flat skies and multitudinous bridges of hometown Portland "The Captive Mind" eagerly recalls Modest Mouse's "Gravity Rides Everything". Keep Your Eyes Ahead is an ambitiously large album, gassing Summer's voice with reverb and bottle-rocketing all sorts of synths and effected guitars into lilting rock songs performed with the measure and craft of Northwest scene veterans. Summers and keyboardist/drummer Benjamin Weikel thankfully did not let this increased attention to detail and professionalism derail their ember-glow indie pop. The results lie in ascendant vocals that replace awkward growls and breathy whispers with precise notes and even phrasing. The resultant scare led Summers to a feast of indie rock anomalies: healthy living via exercise and a regular practice/recording schedule and technical improvement via singing exercises. Summers' development comes with a tidy backstory: Amidst touring for 2004 Sub Pop debut Love and Distance, Summers lost his voice, read Dylan's Chronicles, and saw a doctor who instructed him not to sing for almost two months.
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